What's fair when pushing limits?

[Ozme52]

But sometimes, the hard limit isn't so much hard as misunderstood.

My girl had a limit against animal play... Didn't want to be a pet dog or cat. Told me leashes were a hard limit.

When I snapped the leash on her and told her she was now mine... she suddenly understood that her limit wasn't the leash at all... just being treated as an animal... and that I understood her better than she did. She loves the leash.

Now... I was very sure of the real issue... and of her reaction based on conversations we had... but until she heard the click, in context, she didn't really believe what I was telling her.

A difficult but appropriate push of her limit... to dissassociate the leash from her perception of it.

[icey]

But sometimes, the hard limit isn't so much hard as misunderstood.

My girl had a limit against animal play... Didn't want to be a pet dog or cat. Told me leashes were a hard limit.
.

i can agree with this and have been in many similar situations myself and all has gone well, but there can also be other unknown problems, what if another sub in those exact same circumstances had stated this was a hard limit but had very painful and personal reasons as to why? its all very well to say communicate well which i agree with totally but sometimes there are things that can take a long time to communicate fully.
for eg, for a long time i had a hard limit of any form of strangulation IH was aware of that but not why, when we first met i filled in the c/list we'd talked/played much etc that i told him why, when i was younger id been strangled, he knew id been assaulted etc but didnt know the full details and i hadnt wanted to tell him when i barely knew him, eventually in my own time (which is very important for anyone) i did, now had he pushed as you did i would probably have really freaked out on him something terrible and the outcome would have been very very different and possibly even dangerous.

sometimes there are maybe things that a sub needs to approach the Dom/me with? any hard limits i had i gradually approached IH with ..soft limits he would 'push' but even then very carefully..now maybe that sounds like i was topping from the bottom but i think that's very often the safest way to call it.
even soft limits can cause dilemmas, i mean there are things that to begin with especially for anyone inexperienced we may feel are soft limits UNTIL it comes to it we are pushed then we suddenly find that they're not so soft after all, after all if you've never tried it than how can you be sure? it's better in my book to play carefully.

and despite any discussions and agreements i still believe that regardless of anything, nothing should be pushed if the sub is spaced out..there has been occasions and im sure im not the only one when play has had to stop for me immediately because ive been so 'far gone' that although my body has responded i hadnt actually had a clue of what was being done to it and because of the things we'd been doing i dread to think of the outcome if IH hadnt recognised that.
im not saying for 1 minute thats what happened with SirRussels girl...but what if it was?

[jeanne]

I have a lot to say about this topic - and will try to keep it short.

First of all - when discussing hard limits...giving a reason for why something is a hard limit is imperative to me. For the most common hard limits I think we all understand why - they are either morally repugnant (children) or commonly disgusting and a disease issue (scat). But each person's individual, personal hard limits - you owe it to yourself and your Dom to talk about why. For example, one of my hard limits is fire play. It is an absolute, always, NO. Why? Because my twin daughters died in a fire. I'm not afraid of it...I simply do not and will not go there. The degree of openess that I must feel in my submission...the level to which I open my heart and mind to my Dom...tells me that I cannot know how I'd react to fire during play, and frankly, adding something to play that reminds of their death - how they died - and reminds me of the years it took me to learn to live with the loss would not be healthy mentally or emotionally for me. This is a hard limit that I have no fear he will ever, ever push.

The leash incident? Yes, he knew what I meant by the limit and knew that the leash was not the actual issue. Thank goodness! Because I do adore the leash.

As for Sir Russell's post...I believe that when we tell our Dom "I don't know if I would like that or if I could do that" - that's NOT a hard limit. It is simply expressing reservation or doubt. Isn't that one of the rewards of submission...to go beyond what we think we can do? To trust our Dom to know when to push, to know that we can do what we ourselves aren't sure of? I've read Sir Russell's posts for almost 2 years now, both here and on other forums, have talked with him as a friend...and if he were my Dom, I would trust him implicitly. I have never read anything he has written that has changed my mind on that.

[Ozme52]

i can agree with this and have been in many similar situations myself and all has gone well, but there can also be other unknown problems, what if another sub in those exact same circumstances had stated this was a hard limit but had very painful and personal reasons as to why? its all very well to say communicate well which i agree with totally but sometimes there are things that can take a long time to communicate fully.
for eg, for a long time i had a hard limit of any form of strangulation IH was aware of that but not why, when we first met i filled in the c/list we'd talked/played much etc that i told him why, when i was younger id been strangled, he knew id been assaulted etc but didnt know the full details and i hadnt wanted to tell him when i barely knew him, eventually in my own time (which is very important for anyone) i did, now had he pushed as you did i would probably have really freaked out on him something terrible and the outcome would have been very very different and possibly even dangerous.

sometimes there are maybe things that a sub needs to approach the Dom/me with? any hard limits i had i gradually approached IH with ..soft limits he would 'push' but even then very carefully..now maybe that sounds like i was topping from the bottom but i think that's very often the safest way to call it.
even soft limits can cause dilemmas, i mean there are things that to begin with especially for anyone inexperienced we may feel are soft limits UNTIL it comes to it we are pushed then we suddenly find that they're not so soft after all, after all if you've never tried it than how can you be sure? it's better in my book to play carefully.

and despite any discussions and agreements i still believe that regardless of anything, nothing should be pushed if the sub is spaced out..there has been occasions and im sure im not the only one when play has had to stop for me immediately because ive been so 'far gone' that although my body has responded i hadnt actually had a clue of what was being done to it and because of the things we'd been doing i dread to think of the outcome if IH hadnt recognised that.
im not saying for 1 minute thats what happened with SirRussels girl...but what if it was?

Absolutely right icey. I wouldn't take it upon myself to push "because I'm the Dom and I know best..." It has to be born of understanding all your partner's motivations. And of course, if you feel something is being held back, then you talk more.

Now, just as an example, under the right circumstances, if you hadn't shared the crucial information with me... might it all come spilling out if I put my hands to your neck and (without squeezing in the slightest) just talked to you? Not violating the limit per se... but definitely playing around the edges of the limit.

BTW, I would not call it 'topping from the bottom' because such conversations are usually held outside of the scene. We all profess communication, and if we put a perjorative label on discussing limits, we put inpediments to making that communication useful.

[leah06]

I want to thank everyone for their thoughts on what is clearly an important issue to me, and I'm glad to see that others feel strongly too. I also want to apologize for posting the quote with a name on it, because my question was raised by the quote but I did not intend to question anyone's actual behavior in that situation, which I obviously don't know anything about. It raised more of a hypothetical question for me.

I'm still at the thinking stage about hard and soft limits, and to the extent that I've interacted with anyone I've had occasion to learn that I have issues and limits that I never would have guessed at, so obviously you can't predict everything in advance, including what you might enjoy that you are too timid to try. I still see part of the issue as being under what circumstances the Dom/me chooses to push.

One of the things that happened to me recently was that in the throes of some kind of submissive haze I allowed some things that hadn't been previously discussed at all, but that I have to say no one in their right mind would have thought of as limits at all. There was no way my partner could have predicted that these would be issues for me, so I place no responsibility on him, but in fact I was extremely freaked out afterwards and still am. And I guess that's why I react to strongly to the idea of really being in subspace or whatever and having someone push something that I actually knew would be a problem for me. I think I would do it, I think the more challenging it was for me that more I would be willing to do it, and I think I would be a basket case afterward. So maybe I'm not cut out to cede this kind of control to someone.

[icey]

to answer your eg Ozme yes, i would probably not to put too fine a point on it have totally freaked out and gone f****g mental lol in fact i think i still would if someone did it to me other than in play, now strangulation is one of my favourite things but it was done when I felt ready for it.

i can see what you're getting at (i think) and can appreciate what you're saying and agree re communication but for some people there are somethings that no matter how intimate you may be with a person no matter how important you know communication should be that are too painful and personal to disclose for a long time if ever and very often those things are of a sexual nature which is why i believe that the pushing of hard limits should be done with extreme caution and when all concerned are in a very clear frame of mind.

ok in that particular instance why i didnt tell him about it i dont know, it wasnt exactly a major thing to hide, but i couldnt until much later in our r/ship im human and human beings very often put emotion before communication and logic.