BDSM for beginners

If you’re reading this guide, chances are you have already thought a fair bit about BDSM for beginners already. You may have fantasies you’re nurturing or have read/seen some scenarios that piqued your interest. One of the most common questions BDSM beginners have is ‘how do I put the ideas into practice?’. It can be intimidating to make the first move, especially if you’re exploring with a partner with whom you have never discussed kink before. In this section of the guide, we’re going to help you take the step from fantasy to reality.

We’ll be covering how to have those BDSM beginners’ conversations in a positive, consensual way, as well as key safety practices that you should be aware of and discuss with your partner. We will also look at a few core activities, such as bondage, toys and punishment, to give you some ideas on where to begin.

How to introduce BDSM into your relationship

As a general rule, when you’re introducing light BDSM or any other new kink into your sex life, you need to take an open approach rather than dealing with absolutes. Think ‘can we try?’ rather than ‘we must try’. See it as an exploration rather than a journey to a fixed endpoint. Having a goal such as ‘getting my wife to try light BDSM bondage’ is not as helpful as a goal like ‘explaining to my wife what I find arousing about light BDSM bondage’. The latter is a more useful basis for a back-and-forth discussion, as it takes the pressure off the other person to automatically accept your suggestion. It’s a much more consensual approach.

Consent, as with all sex, is also key in BDSM, so you should never aim to spring anything on your partner by surprise. Gifts of whips and rope are great if you know they’re wanted, but if given out of the blue, they can put a lot of undue stress on your partner. One of the best ways to introduce this conversation is by highlighting some of the positive things about your sex life and using those to transition into a broader discussion about trying new things.

  • “I loved it the other night when you asked me to go down on you. I’ve been fantasising lately about you taking on a more dominant role and issuing me instructions. How do you feel about that?”
  • “I really enjoy it when we watch porn together. I’ve found a few videos that have a bit of light BDSM in them too. What do you think about trying some of those?”
  • “Are there any fantasies you want us to try in the bedroom? There’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately…”

Notice that the questions here are all ‘open’ ones (which invite longer answers) as opposed to ‘closed’ ones (which prompt a yes/no response). If you’re looking to explore new things, asking your partner truly open questions and listening in detail to their responses will usually give you a much better picture of how they feel and what they want than if you simply say, “I like X—are you up for trying it?” You never know. You may discover that they have some light BDSM fantasies of their own that you can try out as well!

Many people find that having prompts and examples can be helpful when explaining what they want. Especially with a kink that can encompass anything from ‘light BDSM’ to ‘leather-clad caning sessions’, it’s important to give your partner a good idea of where you want to begin. If there is some porn—video, audio porn, or erotica—that reflects your desires, you may want to offer to show this to your partner if you’re struggling to articulate exactly what you want.

Timing

Timing is important here too. Don’t spring these discussions on your partner when you’re in the middle of sex. Not only can we fall into ‘people-pleasing’ modes in bed, but when you’re horny, you’re often not going to be the best listener, focused instead on the goal of pleasure rather than mutual learning! Light BDSM discussions after sex can work well if you and your partner enjoy afterglow pillow talk, but if you’re nervous about chatting, then try to find a time when you’re both feeling relaxed and comfortable. After a nice dinner together, when you know you’re free from interruptions when neither of you is stressed out after a long day or worried about an early meeting the next. Pick your moment and introduce the chat in a way that allows your partner plenty of space for asking questions, offering suggestions of their own, or stepping back if they need more time to think about what you’re proposing.

Once you’ve had these exploratory discussions with your partner, there’s one more important step before you start putting your BDSM fantasies into practice.

BDSM safety

The most important thing with BDSM is to ensure the emotional and physical wellbeing of everyone in the scene. It is commonly said in sex education circles that ‘there is no such thing as safe sex, only safer sex’, and the same is true of BDSM. Any adult sex games—including BDSM sex games—come with an element of risk, and it’s up to the adults involved to make themselves (and their partners) aware of those risks and take practical measures to minimise them to ensure the comfort of everyone involved. In penetrative sex, this might mean wearing a condom to lower the risk of unplanned pregnancy or STIs. It’s not perfectly ‘safe’ sex because condoms can still sometimes fail, but safer sex because you’ve taken reasonable precautions to try and prevent unwanted outcomes.

For BDSM beginners, often ‘safer sex’ means having agreed ways to stop a scene if it becomes too much for one of the participants. The most common example of this is the ‘safeword’.

What is a safeword?

The idea of a safeword is so often discussed that many BDSM beginners may have heard of it already: a safeword is a pre-agreed word (or phrase) that someone can say in the middle of the scene to stop the action.

Some people choose traffic lights for their safewords, where ‘amber’ means ‘I am getting close to my limit/I am struggling, ease up’ or similar, and ‘red’ means ‘stop immediately’. Sometimes people will choose a funny word or something that’s cute or a deliberate turn-off (‘Margaret Thatcher!’ ‘Puppies!’ ‘Teletubby!’). As long as it’s something you both know, can identify in the middle of a play scene, and which is entirely unambiguous, you and your partner(s) can agree on whatever safeword works for you. If you’re playing using a gag, where someone is unable to say a verbal safeword, there are physical alternatives that can work instead: putting a bottle of lube in someone’s hand and instructing them to drop it if they want things to stop, for instance.

Safewords are just one part of a broader BDSM risk-management strategy. In kink, there are a number of different ways to think about managing risks, each one with its own acronym. As BDSM beginners, you don’t need to know all the details of these acronyms—there won’t be a test!—but it is helpful to read through them so you understand the basics of managing risk and what to be aware of when you’re planning a scene.

  • SSC—stands for Safe, Sane, Consensual. This is a long-standing kink term, broadly designed to encourage people to consider basic physical safety precautions (such as having scissors on standby if you’re about to do some bondage) to emotional ones too (discussing fantasies in detail in advance so everyone understands what is about to happen during these BDSM sex games). ‘Consensual’ also means you should have a method for someone to withdraw consent if they need to, such as a safeword explained above. However, over the years, SSC has fallen out of favour in kink circles as a way to guide people on managing risk—the word ‘sane’ is unhelpful to those with mental health issues, and the word ‘safe’ is often seen as a bit misleading for the reasons detailed above: no activity can ever be 100% ‘safe’, only ‘safer.’ An alternative is…
  • RACK—stands for Risk-Aware Consensual Kink. This is a more recent acronym that aims to convey both that sex cannot be ‘safe’, only ‘risk-aware’ and also to get rid of the uncomfortable connotations of the word ‘sane’.
  • PRICK—a newer acronym that stands for Personal Responsibility, Informed, Consensual Kink. The slight adaptation in the acronym here is designed to make it clear that all participants in a kink scene have a personal responsibility to ensure they are aware of the risks.

Whichever approach you want to take, the most important thing to remember when partaking in any BDSM sex games is that you should inform yourself about the potential risks and discuss these (along with any mitigation strategies) with your partner(s). That’s the best way to make sure that everyone playing, from BDSM beginners to more experienced kinksters, is doing so in an informed and consensual way.

Practical BDSM safety

Above, we covered the more emotional/intellectual aspects of consent and safety, but it’s also important to give an overview of practical considerations for your BDSM sex games.

Sobriety

Far be it from us to preach to anyone about what they should consume, but it is worth noting that the more complex and potentially risky an activity you’re engaging in, the more you need your wits about you. Some BDSM beginners and experts will refuse to play if they have had a drink or imbibed any other potentially mind-altering substance. Others may be happy to play but have limits such as ‘only one glass of wine before a spanking scene’. Not only do substances affect your mental state and judgment, they can also have effects on your body too—certain drugs may numb you so it’s harder to know when you’re reaching your physical limit on a spanking, for instance, or make it more difficult for you to recognise when someone has tied a bondage rope too tightly. So when it comes to physical safety, be extremely aware of the ways in which your sobriety (or otherwise) can impact sensations and judgment, and if in any doubt, put your BDSM sex games on hold until you’ve sobered up.

Spanking

When spanking someone—especially for the first time, BDSM beginners—you need to first calibrate how hard or how gently they like to be hit. Some people like to do a check-in at the start of a scene, initiating with gentle taps and asking their submissive to grade these on a scale of 1-10 (1 being ‘very soft’ and 10 being ‘the hardest I can take’, or similar). This is a great idea every time you introduce a new spanking implement too: whips, paddles, floggers, canes. All of these implements land differently and produce a variety of different sensations. Doing this kind of check-in can help the submissive guide the dominant on how hard they can hit, as well as give the dominant some useful target practice at the low levels to make sure the sting lands in the right place. If you’re using a whip or a flogger, sometimes the tails will flick around the body and produce a painful sensation somewhere that isn’t wanted—around the front of the hips instead of on the bottom, for instance. Starting off gently and building up allows more opportunities to practice.

There are some areas of the body which should never be hit hard or with implements such as paddles. These include the lower back (where the kidneys are) and the stomach (because there’s little protection for the soft internal parts). For delicate areas, it’s best to stick to gentle, massage-style strokes with a flogger or avoid them altogether.

Rope and restraints

When you’re tying someone up, it’s always important to have a plan for emergencies should you need to release them quickly. This might be because they suddenly realise one of their hands has gone numb because they use their safeword, or even because the fire alarm goes off and you need to evacuate the building! When using rope, always make sure that you have scissors on hand to cut through it in an emergency, and when using locked restraints, make sure you know exactly where the key is before you click them shut. Ideally—especially for BDSM beginners—the key should be placed somewhere that the submissive could reach it if they needed to release themselves. Remember, these are BDSM sex games, not actual imprisonment, so keeping the key within reach of the play scene can help to give both of you peace of mind and allow you to relax into the fun.

When tying, be sure to check in with your submissive to make sure that the restraints aren’t too tight. If they feel numb or tingly, or their hands/feet start to get pins and needles or change colour, adjust the rope or restraint so that it’s looser. Try not to put too much weight or pressure on the restraints, and avoid any ties that may cut off circulation or air flow—especially in the neck.

Now that you’ve got a good idea of what safety considerations to watch out for, it’s time to dive into the fun stuff—the following section will take you through a few different types of BDSM sex games (including bondage, punishment BDSM, sex toy games and more) with ideas and examples that you might like to discuss with your partner.

Bondage

Bondage refers to any practice that sees somebody (or more than one person!) being restrained. It can range from simple ties, such as using a scarf to lash your partner’s wrists to the bed, through specially-purchased kit like wrist and ankle cuffs or rope to tie up submissive BDSM enthusiasts. Sometimes people are tied for sex. Other times, the bondage is the goal in itself—practitioners of ‘shibari’, for instance, see bondage as an art form, and the pleasure stems mainly from the beauty of the tie rather than what is done to the person tied up. 

For BDSM beginners, rope is not recommended unless you already know your knots. Leather restraints or even bondage tape (a type of sticky tape that only sticks to itself rather than the skin, so much safer than something like gaffer tape) tend to be better when you’re starting out. However, if you’ve experimented a little and you’d like to start with some rope play, one of the simplest knots to begin with is the single-column tie.

A single-column tie is a great knot to learn because it looks pretty, is fairly straightforward and, most importantly, is quick-release if you need to get someone out in a hurry. 

1. Begin with a doubled-up rope, and pass the loop at the middle of the rope around the limb you want to tie. Do this a few times until you have a few loops of doubled-up rope around the limb.

2. Now, in one hand, you should have the original loop at the middle of the rope (hereafter ‘the short end’) and the longer section of doubled rope in your other hand.

3. Pass the short end over the loops of rope around the limb and then bring it underneath (making sure the rope is not too tight on the person you’re tying).

4. Now, make a loop in the longer section of rope, and feed the short end through your loop.

5. You should now be able to pull both ends until they are secure.

6. Your knot should be secure enough that you can pull against the main section but easy to release simply by tugging on one of the leftover loops.

Don’t forget to check in with your submissive BDSM play partner to make sure that the rope is firm but not too tight.

Once you have practised with some basic knots, you might like to try out some bondage positions: 

  • Spreadeagle is perhaps the most common bondage position, and it can be achieved with rope, cuffs or bondage tape depending on what you have available. This position simply involves taking your submissive BDSM partner and having them lie spreadeagled on the bed—arms and legs open, hands and wrists secured to the bedframe. This is a great position for teasing play, as well as for penetrative sex.
  • Chair bondage involves tying someone to a chair, usually with their arms and wrists secured behind their back and ankles tied to the legs of the chair. Sometimes their wrists and forearms may be tied to the arms of the chair instead. This is a great position in which to tease someone with your hands, mouth or a sex toy.
  • Reverse prayer involves tying someone’s wrists and arms behind their back in a ‘reverse praying’ position. How well you can achieve this will depend on the flexibility of your submissive BDSM partner. They may be able to reach both hands behind their back and touch their palms together, so you can secure them with rope that way. However, a simpler variation on this would involve them grasping opposite elbows with each hand and allowing you to tie their wrists and forearms. This position opens up a world of possibilities for receiving oral from a tied-up submissive, where you are in control of their movements.
  • Hogtie is also an extremely popular bondage position, though a little trickier to achieve. It involves the submissive BDSM partner lying on their front, with their arms behind their back and wrists secured to their ankles. Some people also like to incorporate gags into this or use the rope to secure someone’s head (by the hair or via a rope gag in the mouth) into the hogtie position.

Once someone is secured in their favourite bondage position, there are many ways to tease and play with them:

  • Nipple clamps, gags, blindfolds and other items can be added to enhance their sensation—giving sensory deprivation or pain in certain areas.
  • Pleasure/pain play, which may involve using hands or sex toys to stimulate them, then stop before they reach climax (known as ‘edging’), or alternating smacks/spanks with pleasurable touch to drive them wild.
  • Tasks/instructions can often be a great addition to bondage play. Tying someone up so that it’s hard for them to do something (like perform oral sex) and then instructing them to do it anyway highlights their vulnerability and submission towards the dominant. And perhaps if they don’t manage it quite right, it’s time for punishment.

Punishment BDSM

Punishment BDSM is all about tasks or challenges coupled with punishments (and usually rewards too). Sometimes called ‘training’, if it’s designed to teach a submissive to perform certain behaviours around the dominant, punishment BDSM can range from light-hearted play, such as getting your submissive to bring you a cup of tea when you ring a bell, to more intense and emotional scenes. Some dominants use punishment BDSM as a way to get their submissive to think more positively about themselves and their self-image, issuing spankings as punishment if the submissive says something negative about themselves.

In order to be a consensual and positive experience for everyone involved, punishment BDSM usually involves a list of punishments agreed in advance for infractions that are also pre-agreed. After all, someone can’t really be punished for something ‘bad’ if they didn’t know what the ‘bad’ thing was to begin with. Examples of things for which a submissive might be punished include:

  • forgetting to use the correct title (‘Miss’ or ‘Ma’am’ for a BDSM female dom or ‘Daddy’/’Sir’ for a guy, gender-neutral honorifics include ‘boss’ or sometimes ‘sensei’—feel free to play with terms to find what works for you)
  • wearing underwear when they have been instructed not to
  • orgasming without asking for the prior permission of their dominant
  • talking negatively about themselves or treating themselves with a lack of care
  • taking on a task but not completing it to the desired standard—for instance, cleaning the dominant’s shoes but neglecting to clean the soles
  • speaking when they have been told not to

As you can see, there are lots of different infractions for which a submissive can be punished, and these should be tailored towards you and your partner(s)—encouraging the kind of behaviour that you find sexy and positive or discouraging behaviour that your submissive would like to stop. Where punishment BDSM touches on psychological issues, consent and checking in is even more important than ever, so if you do decide to come up with a list of agreed behaviours, then make sure to schedule regular check-ins with your submissive to see how they are working for both of you.

Some people choose to play with these rules during a set time period (such as ‘Friday night date nights’ or ‘when we’re having a kinky scene’), and some BDSM practitioners choose to have a more involved, ongoing agreement that runs throughout the rest of their lives outside the bedroom too. Whether you’re a BDSM female dom or a male dom or anyone choosing this, you need to make sure that your submissive knows the boundaries and how they can opt-out if the dynamic is not working for them at that time.

As for punishments, these too can be as varied as the reasons for getting punished. Some BDSM female doms use chastity to punish their submissives, but there are plenty of options no matter what kind of dom you identify as. Punishment might include:

  • being banned from having orgasms
  • being whipped/spanked/flogged/caned a certain number of times
  • being refused permission to wear underwear/speak/masturbate
  • being made to do something that fits within the role play, such as write lines, clean the kitchen, or perform oral sex
  • being made to kneel and apologise/beg for forgiveness
  • being made to wear something like a sign saying ‘bad girl’, a butt plug for a certain period of time, or a sexy outfit for the rest of the evening

Naturally, for many people, the idea of punishment is also tied up with the idea of reward. As part of an agreement, perhaps you want to think about rewards for your submissive too.

  • being gifted a particular toy or piece of underwear if they stick to the rules for a set period of time
  • being given a new name/title/honorific that they can feel like they have earned
  • being offered a certain type of orgasm, or number of orgasms, if they achieve something in particular

Many of these punishments and rewards can be incorporated into BDSM sex games.

BDSM games

For beginners, BDSM sex games can be a great way to get started as they allow you to be a little playful while exploring your kinks. The following examples of BDSM sex games are intended to introduce you to the concept with some light BDSM that you can develop further if you and your partner enjoy them.

Temperature/sensation play

Taking an ice cube, the dominant trails it over the submissive’s body—stimulating their nipples, mouth, genitals and any other sensitive areas. You can turn this into a game by blindfolding and tying your submissive and trying to get them to guess where you’ll stimulate them next. If you want to include warm sensations too, a glass sex toy (such as a butt plug or dildo) submerged in warm (not boiling) water can then be swapped with the ice cube to give a delicious alternating sensation.

Remote toys

 Using a sex toy that has a remote control function, the dominant can control the speed and intensity of vibration. In BDSM sex games, this can be used to try and distract the submissive from an important task (such as reading a book aloud or playing a video game), with punishments issued for losing focus.

Keeping count/learning lines

It’s common in punishment BDSM to ask the submissive to count off the number of strokes they are being given. Saying ‘one’ for the first cane stroke, up to ‘twelve’ for the last one, for example. To turn this into a fun BDSM sex game, how about setting your submissive the task of learning a short poem, then reciting one line for each stroke. If they mess up the line? They earn an extra stroke as punishment.

Honour bondage challenges

‘Honour’ bondage is a type of bondage that involves no restraints whatsoever—the key is that the submissive needs to stay extremely still in the exact position specified and will receive a punishment if they fail. Turning this into a BDSM sex game can be as simple as placing a book on someone’s head and telling them they’ll be punished if the book falls. Or balancing a full shot glass of water on their back, ready to issue a spanking if they spill a single drop.

Sadism and masochism

So far, we’ve talked a lot about bondage, domination and submission, but not so much about the final two letters in the ‘BDSM’ acronym: sadism and masochism. That’s because, while it’s generally accepted that BDSM encompasses many different forms of power imbalance, sadism and masochism is far more focused on the pain element: giving and receiving.

A ‘sadist’ is somebody who enjoys dispensing pain, and a ‘masochist’ is someone who enjoys receiving it. You do not need to be either a sadist or a masochist to enjoy consensual power exchange—for some people, the pain is part and parcel of the experience, but for others, the pain is there only to reinforce the dynamic. In punishment BDSM, for example, a submissive might agree to painful punishment purely because they want a genuine disincentive for making a particular mistake.

Sometimes sadism and masochism are seen as a ‘more advanced’ type of punishment BDSM, and it is certainly true that you shouldn’t engage in more extreme forms of pain play if you’ve never practised gently before. However, in reality, these are just useful terms to describe someone’s kinks, and can be a great jumping-off point for discussions with your partner. What do they get off on in a scene? Is it causing/receiving pain, or the challenge of taking it? Or is it the overall tone of power imbalance itself? Talking these things through will help you to gain a deeper understanding of your own and your partner’s kinks and how they fit together.

BDSM aftercare

The final section of this BDSM beginners guide is one of the most important: aftercare. Aftercare is the practice of winding down after a kink scene. During BDSM play, particularly punishment BDSM or anything which involves pain, humiliation, or other potentially ‘scary’ things, the body can release a lot of adrenaline. The happy endorphins provided by fun and orgasms, combined with adrenaline, can often lead to a bit of a post-scene crash, where you feel sad, alone or vulnerable.

BDSM aftercare is the practice of ensuring that your partner’s needs are taken care of once the whips and rope have been put away. This might involve doing something simple like cuddling together and talking about what went down, or it may mean getting snacks/a blanket/a hot chocolate or something comforting to have for the comedown. It may mean rubbing lotion onto a submissive ’skin where they’ve been spanked or giving reassurance to a dominant that they no longer scare you now the game has ended.

Aftercare isn’t just for submissives—everyone involved in a play scene can experience emotional rollercoasters, especially when you’re a BDSM beginner trying something new. So as you embark on your adventures, don’t forget to make time for each other after your kinky play. Check in, chat, attend to each other’s needs, and make sure that you both end up in a positive and happy place.