In the past few months so much has changed. A poly relationship ended, and I have taken on much more active role as a Dominant. My girl tamile and I have been actively working our contract. The negotiations and discussions have gone very well. Over all the contract has evolved a lot and I think so have both of us as we have discussed it.
In the time that we have been discussing it we have gone from a very informal 24/7 concept for our relationship. Of course with some guidelines and hard limits but very little else. Looking back on some of the notes we had made I think it was more a sexual contract then anything. The focus had been on sexual limitations and the limits we both have for BDSM play. There was little in the contract that had anything to do submission, training, or respect. I think we both realized that we were on the wrong track with it.
We took a few of the things from our original attempts and carried them into a new contract. The concept we had in mind as we worked on it was a simple one. What we wanted was contract that wouldn't be 24/7 but would instead be something that we could chose to activate. So for example if we were going to a play party or some other event we could decide that the contract would be in full effect. In principle it felt like it was going to be a good system for my girl. One that would allow us both to build up a comfort level as we worked towards a goal of a 24/7 lifestyle, like so many it didn't last.
As we started to write out the aspects and the protocol we wanted in the contract it gradually became more and more apparent to both of us that we wanted some aspects of 24/7 and didn't want to wait. The problem we faced in going 24/7 was our home life. While everyone (other then the 1 year old granddaughter) in our household is involved in the lifestyle on one level or another we still didn't feel right about forcing our life style on them. In a lot of ways it felt like we were going to be stuck with a contact that we could activate but weren't going to be able to go 24/7.
The solution came from looking at the contract of a friend's Household. They had broken their protocols into three separate categories; High protocol(this was their at home standard), Middle Protocol, and a Vanilla Protocol. Of course the obvious solution didn't come right away, those almost never do. Our plan now is simple our contract will be 24/7; what we are doing different is making the Vanilla protocol level the default. Which gives us the lifestyle we want, without forcing it on our housemates.
It is funny how much our initial ideas came and went along the way. How we both evolved along the way and how we were able to sort out the concepts that were important to us. Is this the perfect contract for us? I don't know, what I do know is that it is the perfect contract for us right now.
It is funny how blogging goes sometimes. I had absolutely no intention of writing about this yet, and was sitting down at the laptop with the intent of doing something about rope and knots. But that will have to continue to wait for another day.
