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Here's the thing about BDSM rules. A lot of them aren't actually about your safety. They're about looking safe. They're about covering liability. They're about educators being able to say, well, I told them the rule if something goes wrong. So nobody can come back and blame them later. And I get it. I've written roles like that myself because it's easier to hand someone a clean list than to rattle off all the expectations and gray areas involved. So today I'm going through 10 roles you've probably heard a hundred times, the ones that get repeated, like they're gospel, and I'm going to tell you which ones actually protect you, which ones are just performance, and which ones might even be a waste of your time. Some of these are going to make you nod along, and a couple of them might make you a little mad at me. Good. Stick around anyway. Welcome to the Dom Sub Living podcast. Hey, I'm Alessandra, and a few years ago, I said something on Instagram that got me called a rape apologist. Fun times. I wasn't advocating for anything dangerous. I was just telling the truth about my own relationship. And by the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what I said and why I'd say it again, because it's rule number one on this list. It's the one people get the most defensive about. But before we get into this, a quick disclaimer because I already know exactly how the trolls are gonna clip this episode apart. I am not telling you to throw safety out the window. Every single one of these rules exists for a reason. And for a lot of you, especially if you're newer, these are genuinely excellent guidelines. Follow them. Like please follow them. What I'm challenging is the always do this or the never do this. The idea that there is one correct way to do this, and everyone doing it differently is doing it wrong. If you're a fan of this podcast, you already know I'm a Star Wars fan, so you already know where I'm going with this, but only a Sith deals in absolutes. And to be honest, I fell into this trap too. I talk in absolutes constantly. Some of that's just my personality, some of it's my OCD, wanting a clean role to follow. So this isn't me looking down at anyone. This is me, including myself. So here's what we're doing: 10 roles ranked from, okay, this one's mostly fine to bend, to okay, this one is going to make some educators mad. Stick around because the last two are the ones people fight about in my comment section every single time. So let's get into it. Rule number 10: there's no right way to do BDSM. This one might be the most controversial rule on the whole list, and it's usually set as a comfort. Like, there's no wrong way to do this. You do you. I get why people say it. It's it's meant to be kind of you know nice and freeing. Uh but is that actually true? Well, here's my take: there's no single style, no one relationship structure, no one kink, no one look. That's the real version of this. But what you see in porn isn't it? What you read in Fifty Shades of Grey, isn't it? That's a marketing version of it, not the real thing. But healthier and less healthy ways to communicate and negotiate and build a relationship do exist. A dynamic built on enthusiastic and ongoing consent isn't equally valid to one built on pressure and guilt just because both people are doing kink. I hear from women in my community all the time who were told, well, he's your dom, you just have to trust him. When what was actually happening was manipulation and coercion. That's not a style difference. That's actual harm. The style is flexible, the foundation isn't. So next time someone tells you there's no wrong or right way, ask yourself no wrong or right way to do what exactly? Like the aesthetic? Sure. You know, wear leather or don't, use the title or don't. That part is genuinely up to you. The consent part? No. I don't think that part is up for debate. And by the way, if you want a place to start exploring what you actually like without pressure, go grab our free checklist of over 50 kinks at domtubliving.comslash checklist. I'll drop it in the description too. But rule number nine is 24-7 is the real or advanced version. People accuse me of teaching this all the time because I talk a lot about 24-7 dynamics and total power exchange. I'm in a 24-7 dynamic myself. So let me set the record straight right now. That is not the goal. I am not teaching a relationship escalator where you start bedroom only and then graduate to outside the bedroom part-time and then level up to 24-7 and then finally unlock total power exchange like it's some kind of achievement system you have to grind your way through, like it's a video game. It's perfectly okay to stay bedroom only. It's perfectly okay to be scene only or part-time. None of those are better than the others. Half the time, they're not even more advanced or even harder. They're just different. And here's what I really believe: there's something to learn from every single one of those structures, no matter which one you're in. Someone in a 24-7 dynamic can learn from someone who's bedroom only. And it goes the other way too. I have members in my community who have been seen only for a decade, and they understand power exchange better than couples who call themselves total power exchange, who have never actually sat down and talked about what that means to each of them. What I do tell my students and clients though is that a lot of what happens outside the bedroom and scene affects what happens inside the bedroom and scene. But if you've ever felt behind because you haven't gone full time, you're not behind. You're not on anyone's timeline but your own. So stop comparing your relationship to a stranger's highlight reel on Instagram. Now, rule number eight that you should probably break try lots of kinks before deciding what you like. It's common advice, right? Like explore everything, try it all once. That's how you find out what you like. Here's my problem with that. This can genuinely be traumatic. If you force yourself into an experience that goes badly, your body doesn't shrug it off. It can build a real trauma response, and that influences how you feel about kink for a long time, sometimes even years. Here's what nobody tells you. You don't actually have to do something to know if it's for you. You can read about it, you can watch someone else do it, either at a dungeon or in a video. Being curious about it doesn't require participation. I have talked to so many people who assumed they had to physically try impact play or knife play or breath play to know if it wasn't for them or not. When honestly, just reading a detailed scene description could tell them everything they needed to know about their own reaction. If you do want a low-pressure way to figure out what actually interests you, that checklist I mentioned covers over 50 different kinks, so you can sit with the idea of something before you ever attempt it. But the bigger point still stands. You're also allowed to find one thing you love and just stay there. You don't have to try everything on the whole menu. Now, rule number seven, you should probably break you have to negotiate everything beforehand. This is genuinely great advice for newer partners, and I want to say that clearly before I push back on it. If you're new, formal, thorough negotiation before every scene is going to serve you well. But for established partners, negotiation usually stops being a formal checklist and turns into something organic and ongoing instead. It's like a conversation that never really closes. Some dynamics, though, thrive on spontaneity and the trust that's been built over years and not a fresh checklist every single session. That doesn't mean consent stops mattering or that you don't need a contract. It just means consent gets built in differently through years of check-ins and body language and knowing each other's patterns so well that a lot goes unsaid because it already has been said a hundred times before. This connects to a whole episode I did on free use, where we go deep into blanket consent and what that really means in practice, including how to build it slowly instead of just declaring it out of the blue one day and hoping for the best. So if this idea is new to you, go back and listen to that episode next. Quick gut check for you though. When's the last time you and your partner actually talked about what negotiated means for your relationship instead of just assuming you're doing it the textbook way? Okay, we're getting into the heavier rules you should probably break. So let's keep going. So, rule number six, aftercare has to happen immediately. Okay, I need to set the record straight on this one because even educators get this one wrong constantly. Aftercare doesn't mean cuddling, it doesn't mean a romantic wind down. That's one version of it, and it's a lovely one, but it's not the definition. Aftercare comes from the medical field, it's what you do after a procedure to help someone recover. When it's applied to a scene, it just means whatever happens after to help you come back down. And that can look completely different from one person to the next. And it doesn't have to happen right away. I'll tell you what mine looks like. So after an intense scene, a lot of times my Dom cannot touch me. He cannot talk to me. I'm in this otherworldly state. And especially after something like consensual non-consent, if he tries to touch me too soon, my body might actually react and go after him. So he gives me a lot of space, he gives me time. Sometimes we don't do aftercare until the next day. Does that make what we do wrong? No. It just means aftercare looks different depending on the person. And one more thing, people forget constantly: DOMs need aftercare too. This isn't a one-way service. If you're only checking in on the submissive afterword, you're missing half of the equation. I get messages weekly from DOM who feel selfish even asking for aftercare. Like they feel like the whole point of the role is to never need anything back. That's not sustainable and it's not fair to either of you. A relationship where only one person's needs get tended to isn't a power exchange, it's a power imbalance. Now, rule number five is you have to be part of the community to be legit. Now, I still encourage people to get involved, to go to munches, community events, even our free online boot camp that we do. We also have a free community at dumpsobliving.com/slash community. And honestly, community is one of the fastest ways to grow in this lifestyle. A lot of times I say it takes a village to raise a kinkster. But here's the reality. I know community isn't always accessible for everyone. In-person events are a lot of times hard to find if you live somewhere rural. That's why, if you're a member of our All Access Pass, we have directories for finding in-person events, even in rural areas, including a lot of ones where people wouldn't even think to search for on their own. But some people are also dealing with health issues. Some people have social anxiety that makes a room full of strangers at a dungeon feel impossible. Some people are part of marginalized groups, and so they legitimately don't feel safe attending in-person events. But if you don't go to munches, if you're not in the scene the way people picture it, you are still just as legitimate as anyone else in this community. In your own home counts, on your computer counts, in your bedroom counts. Now, rule number four that you can probably break is never play with someone you just met. This one gets taught hard, especially after the Me Too movement that hit the King Spaces too, and for good reason. Vetting is important, but when it's taken to the extreme, it can also turn it into gatekeeping that just kind of assumes that everyone's a predator by default. But to be honest, it can also be really, really fun and hot to play with someone you just met. You go to a dungeon, you meet someone, you hit it off, and you say, like, hey, wanna play for a little bit? You talk about hard limits, you talk safe words really quick, and ideally there are dungeon monitors on the floor whose entire job is keeping everybody safe and they're just kind of watching from a few feet without really hovering over you. So is that reckless or is it just a different community-supported way of meeting people? I'd argue that it depends on the precautions you take in the moment, not on how many months you've known that person. A stranger with a clear conversation about limits can be safer than a partner that you've had for five years who's never once asked what your hard limits actually are. I've seen both, so more time doesn't necessarily mean a more healthy relationship. All right, we're almost to the two everyone fights about in my comments. So rule number three, you can probably break. Don't enter a 24-7 relationship right away. The standard advice is to be in a DS dynamic for six months to a full year before going 24-7. And for a lot of people, that pacing is genuinely smart. But some people do better going cold turkey on vanilla. Me and my Dom, we didn't ease into this. We were doing kink a little bit in the bedroom, then started adding, you know, elements outside the bedroom. And then one day we just said, what if we just did this full time? So we did. There was no weekends only phase, no slow ramp up. We did check-ins constantly along the way, of course. We still do that, but we didn't ease into it. We just decided to completely stop being vanilla one day, and it worked. So ask yourself, is the one-year role or the six-month role is that actually protecting people, or is it just the average timeline getting treated like the only correct one? Now, rule number two, you can probably break never play under the influence of anything. This is a near universal safety teaching. And on the intensity and risk side, it's good advice for a real reason. I want to say that clearly before I say what I'm about to say. But I think the absolutism around it gets a little narrow, like culturally narrow. So many other cultures use alcohol completely different than we do here in America. A glass of wine before a scene means something very different in a culture where wine is just a part of dinner than it does in a culture here that has a huge drinking problem. And treating both cultures the exact same way ignores the difference. For the record, I personally haven't had a drink in years and I don't use recreational substances either. This isn't me arguing for myself or advocating for what I think is right. But other cultures do things differently. And if we act like everyone has to follow the American way, we're missing the point. The thing that actually matters is consent, making sure that if someone's had a drink or is using something, that they can still genuinely consent, that they can still speak up, still say no, and still mean it if they do. It's not my job or anyone else's to police that as long as it's legal. I've been to dungeons that allow alcohol and serve it, and I've been to dungeons that don't allow it. I've been to spaces that are 420 friendly and spaces that absolutely aren't. And yes, marijuana and other substances do carry added risk. You can misjudge the intensity that you're giving or receiving. So use caution. But saying use caution versus never under any circumstances, those are two very different rules. Okay, now here it is. The one I told you about at the beginning of this episode. So, rule number one, always use a safe word. A while back, I posted on Instagram that me and my Dom pretty much don't use a safe word. We've been married about 25 years. He knows me well enough at this point that we've moved past needing one. Maybe if we're doing specific endurance pain training or a maintenance banking where he's genuinely testing a limit, we'll pull out a safe word then. But day to day, we don't. And the people lost it. I had comments telling me I was advocating for rape, which is a genuinely wild reaction to a woman describing, you know, my own 25-year marriage. Some of the people I can tell they hadn't even read the whole caption. They just saw me saying, you know, we don't have a save word, and they went straight to the worst possible conclusion. Safe words are fantastic. I'm not walking that back. For higher risk activities, for newer partners, for anyone still learning how to read each other, they remain one of the best tools in this entire lifestyle. If you are new to this, please use one. But they're not the only way to communicate. There's tap-outs, there's gestures, other nonverbal signals, grunts, even that two people have built together over years and understand. All of it counts. A safe word is just a tool, it's not a requirement for consent. So is skipping a safe word reckless? Or is it just what happens naturally when two people have spent 25 years learning each other's bodies and reactions so well that the tool just stopped being necessary? I'll let you sit with that one. But there you have it: 10 rules, and honestly, most of them aren't really about your safety. A lot of them are about looking responsible and covering liability, doing it the quote unquote right way so nobody can say you did it wrong. And listen, I get why those rules got made in the first place. Somebody probably got hurt, or somebody got sued, or somebody just got scared, and a role felt safer than wondering what if something happens. The real role underneath all 10 of these is the same one every time: consent, communication, and knowing your own self and relationship well enough to know when the textbook applies to you and when it doesn't. If one of these hit a nerve, I want to hear about it. Tell me in the comments or reach out to me on social media or in my community at domtubliving.com/slash community and tell me which role you've broken or which one you'd never touch. I read every single comment and message. And if you want to go deeper on all of this, every week I send out a BDSM inspired email totally free to over 50,000 people all over the world. If you want to take your Dom Sub journey to the next level, I'd love for you to subscribe. It's completely free, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Just go to Domsubliving.com slash sign up. The link is in the description too. I'd love to see you there. And until next time, keep embracing your power and pleasure through Dom Sub Living.