Limits fascinate me. (This is not a difficult feat. I can be fascinated by sewing kits. Those mini scissors are OMG, SO SMALL.)

What are some of my limits? Well, I will have a huge (and somewhat hilarious, being as it was written way back in the day) post about this, so I won’t go into them deeply at the moment. But, I’ll pick one to illustrate my point. Let’s use bestiality since I’ve gone into more depth with it before.

I ain’t doing it. Nope. Not happening. Ever. I’ll never have sex with any living or previously living thing that cannot give informed consent.

(Errrm… Except produce.  I don’t get consent from produce.  And that shit is definitely alive in some capacity.  But once that comes off the vine, isn’t it dead anyway? But wait, does that make me some kind of vegetarian necrophiliac?  *headdesk*)

Anyway, the reason it’s okay for me to have limits, and still be considered a slave, is because…

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Wow, I just realized this whole post could end there.    Because the reason I can have the limits AND be a slave?  It’s ’cause HE thinks it’s okay.  Nothing else ANY other human has to say about it matters.  If he says so?  Then it is so. 

But, it’s me, so I have a WAY longer post in mind.  So, the OTHER reason I can have limits is because Antonio and I share the same core limits.

I knew his limits going into this… I have to assume I’m not the only slave who met her Master and didn’t just say, “You know what, let’s not talk about anything or get to know each other whatsoever. Let’s just be Master and slave. Sound good? Good. What’s your name again?”

In the beginning we slapped names and titles on our lifestyle.  We said “Dominant” and “submissive” to describe ourselves.  I was, at that time, caught up in semantic definitions. I was scared if I so much as thought to myself I wanted to be a “slave,” I’d live in a hell-world of licking poopy toilets and never seeing another living soul or something.

I was, as it happens, a bit of a moron.

And yes, eventually, we started just thinking of each other in terms of Master and slave. (Okay, that’s a lie.   He just growled out “SLAVE” one day,  and I was dumbfounded for a while, but it sounds way better if I say we came to some magical, mutual, mental agreement in our deeply connected subconscious minds.) I guess it made more sense to call ourselves that, in a way.  Kinda?  It also is slightly pointless, because no title change in the world will change my dynamic with him. But it works for him, so it works for me.

We spent a long time exploring, verbally before physically, our kinks and desires and goals and histories. I got a LOT of assignments that included everything from describing fantasies to playing a sort of word association game with dozens of terms. I had to discuss things I felt I was unwilling to explore no matter what, and things I didn’t want to do, but I knew wouldn’t harm me or go against any of my ethics, etc.

I see now that these were mental exercises designed so he could see what I was ready for, and see how much of a struggle I might put up over certain things, not for me to establish ground rules.  There were things I said “Nooooo” to that he just kind of nodded and was like “Okay, I understand YOU don’t want that. Next?” But there were some things, the important things – like bestiality, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, infidelity – that he said “Agreed. Absolutely not going to happen, discussion over about that” to.

Those are HIS limits, if you can call them that. He doesn’t need limits, because something he doesn’t feel like doing will never be explored in the first place.  So they are not that important for HIM to know or talk about.  But I needed to know he had them and what they were, before I could truly give myself to him as his slave.

If he’d been into certain things, bent on, I don’t know… Loaning out my services to a million random people or making me give dogs blow jobs… He would not have been the Master for me. I would still have been a submissive woman and he would have still been a dominant man (and he would have made another slave a very happy girl I’m sure) but we would not have been right for each other.

Does that make me not a “true” slave? I dunno and, more importantly, I don’t care. I’ve always felt deeply submissive, and while I might not be A slave, my only goal is to be HIS slave. He says I am, I say I am. Problem solved and discussion over as far as I’m concerned.

I think I’m not being clear. Or at least, I could be clearer. I’m saying everyone is like this, I think. If you’re fundamentally against infidelity (as I am) you would not gravitate toward a Master who was into loaning out his property. And if you did, or entered into something before figuring out the foundations, you’d probably be miserable. If you simply didn’t LIKE it, didn’t WANT to do it, you might end up happy, if being made do to things you don’t like is a kink.

But if the action burned your soul and made you loathe who you are?  That’s different. You would not be a happy person, never mind a happy slave. You can’t loathe something on a soul-deep level and still be happy with yourself and life. You can’t loathe who you are as a human being and be happy. I think a relationship that made you feel that would fail. Not because someone was a bad slave or a bad Master, but because two people with different CORE limits who are involved in a power exchange dynamic cannot be truly happy with one another.  Not in The World According to Chloe.

So I think no matter who you are, you have limits that would end a relationship. Most people would say things like… “It’s insane to think about what I would do if he asked me to kill our children; he would never do that!” Well, yes, my point exactly. Your limits are okay, and it IS insane to think about those things, because you are with someone who shares those kinds of limits.

It’s not that you don’t have the limits, it’s that they match your partner’s limits.  So you feel safe they will never be explored. Don’t pretend there aren’t people (and couples!) who are murderers, who rape children, who destroy their own families. There are.  So imagine trying to be a slave to one of them? Or imagine your Master got a disease that addled his brain, and he suddenly thought those were good things to do, and ordered you to do them.  You wouldn’t. Because your core human limits wouldn’t match anymore.

(Btw, if you want to swear up and down that your core limits do NOT include things like murder and pedophilia? I think you’re either delightfully self-deluded, or you need to Go. Away. And. Get. Help. Right. Fucking. Now.)

I have two more things I want to talk about in relation to limits… But I’m going to post them later, I think. I told myself I’d write a short post today, so I’m going to see if I can cut this sucker off while it’s still only semi-long and not colossal.

(EDITED TO ADD:  Excuse me while I edit this a billion times. I make WAY too many typos.)