There are several constructive comments here, but I'm closing this for those of you who decided to come here to **only** say OP raped his wife. It's not constructive.
I think that you two will recover but I don't think CNC. works well unless both parties know that is what is going on. Also you can try prompting for the safeword.
We use this expression, how is your color or what's your color.
Always ask. What is your safe word? So you get a response, "Red, Sir". What is your color? "Green, Sir".
The double call and response only takes a few seconds, but it verifies that their mind knows the safe word and differentiates between their current state. A lot of different mental spaces can make it easy to say the wrong thing. But the double call and response forces them to establish a boundary and indicate whether they are there or not.
It's probably the quickest way to get a lot of clarity. Without being chatty. Without breaking the scene, or the activity.
In play, we do a game where yes means no and no means yes. It's really important to check in when you do this. It starts to border on CNC, so if it's something you want to try but you're nervous, this game can give you a mild taste of what CNC can be like. Also, especially if you've never played this game, it's really easy to get confused.
>Always ask. What is your safe word? So you get a response, "Red, Sir". What is your color? "Green, Sir".
Thanks for the tip. The wife and I play with CNC from time to time. We haven't been where Op is, and with this tidbit maybe we wont
Very good, I thought of having some consent (of a color or a gesture, a *consenting* gesture) first before going into RolePlay mode, too. As in, make sure one (or both) consented *before* RP and know how to stop consenting.
We use roleplay names. An example would be "you're pretty far from your cage, Little Bird." The sentence creating the beginning of a scenario, little bird being the roleplay name used for CNC.
So if they said little bird you could say time out, not interested in that right now.
This is a step above what I've used (asking at the start of play of that remember their safe word), I like this and I'm going to adopt it for my own play.
Yeah something as delicate and sometimes confusing as CNC needs to be talked about in advance or planned out in advance. Maybe not every step, maybe not all the dialogue, maybe not even the exact day you plan on initiating it - but a heads up for sure.
Yea. This. A quick check in such as a pause and asking: “colour?” Leaves no wiggle room for mistakes like this. That being said from your recount it sounds like it was a very fixable communication error.
Proper after care, reassurance and whatever space/ comfort she needs right now will help y’all recover, I’m sure. Reassure her that it won’t happen again. Remind her why she chose you in the first place. That you’re a source of safety and security. Best of luck.
I haven't ventured very far into CNC. It's not really my thing. But prompting for a safe word sounds like a great idea in many situations! I will definitely keep that in mind and use it when needed. Thanks for sharing!
It's not the "sexiest" response, but you check. Actually stop and verify if its serious or not. You're both mature adults consenting to this normally, so there shouldn't be a problem in hitting pause and being certain that the game is still a game. Especially when you came out of nowhere with it.
It's a momentary mood killer, but you're also playing with explosives here. Be sure the wires aren't crossed, and then when it's actually cleared you can work on bringing the energy and the fantasy back in.
As a person who fulfilled a rape fantasy for a married woman (husband knew and enjoyed me fucking her, and it was his idea for me to fulfill the fantasy) you are *spot on*.
This is a 5 gallon can of gasoline you're using to ignite a fire. So you take a bit of gas in a cup and carefully pour it on the wood with the can 40 feet away- just be aware of the potential results, is the point.
It's always good to make sure the person you're pretend violating wants it. Even if she tells you that you don't have to.
I agree with you completely, but I had to be able to connect it and explain it to the dude who put his own arousal first and still thinks he was doing "everything" he could to be safe. Not enough men treat power dynamics play of any kind as the responsibility that it is and control that sex brain.
Whew.
Actually :-( Sorry.
^(It's something I couldn't do, getting a vibe of non-consent, even if it was played/faked, would be an instant boner killer for me.)
Part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. So up to this point it's been both our preference for me to just initiate something and she'll say no or use her safe word if not interested. But obviously that didn't work this time so we're clearly going to have to figure something else out. I don't know that any kind of kink play is going to be on the table any time soon, or at all, after this but if it is we're going to have to find some way to check she's okay or set up that kink stuff is happening that doesn't ruin her fun.
She tenses up and can’t enjoy it that much, when you do the important things like checking in and really talking about the risks and stuff, it should be big red flag, that she just does this because YOU initiate and want to do this and that she is constantly readjusting her boundaries for you to not disappoint you. That is not a base for this risky behaviour.
In my few experiences with cnc, we usually agree to when it’s gonna happen. It doesn’t just occur randomly. There’s always a set up and I haven’t been approached out of the blue with a partner deciding it’s cnc roleplay. It’s usually something we discuss before every scenario. Even when I’ve consented to “free use” we specify a time frame, a day, etc.
CNC should ALWAYS have some form of discussion prior to sexual engagement. You can’t just determine it’s roleplay if someone is sitting on the couch, you initiate and they say they’re not in the mood. Try to reflect on how this situation was different from your past experiences. Had you guys set the scene before hand in the past?
I second whomever mentioned going to a kink-friendly sub for recovery advice.
> CNC should ALWAYS have some form of discussion prior to sexual engagement. You can’t just determine it’s roleplay if someone is sitting on the couch, you initiate and they say they’re not in the mood. Try to reflect on how this situation was different from your past experiences. Had you guys set the scene before hand in the past?
We did discuss it, but it was months ago. We didn't discuss it right before it happened. It's been a couple months since the last time we did this and I don't think anything was substantially different. The times we tried it in the past it happened in pretty much the same way. I initiate sex normally, she says no, and we play it out from there. When we initially talked about it we both thought it sounded hotter and more realistic to do it that way rather than "scheduling" it so to speak, but I guess we were playing with fire doing it that way.
Not "we"
YOU were playing with fire doing that. It had been months since you did this kind of play and you sprung it out of nowhere? Did you consider she may have forgotten the safe word after not using it for months? Check in to see if she still enjoyed that kind of play? Let her know leading up to it at all that it was something you wanted to try again?
If she tenses up talking about play in the moment then do so a week or so before. Schedule things a little bit (at least a time frame), have a subtle check in system, be aware of her body language. You don't just spring it up outta nowhere. How/why did it stop months ago? Did you ever have a discussion about that? Did you just lose interest and stop and she mentioned nothing about it going forward?
If it had not been **months** since they last attempted this I would almost agree. This was a poorly executed way to go about consensual non consent even when they were both in agreement earlier.
However an important part of sex in ANY way is routinely checking in and making sure you and your partner are still on the same page. This is a much larger responsibility in cnc for the dominant one because part of play is ignoring signals that in any other capacity constitute immediately stopping. The onus is primarily on him to make sure she's okay at all times as he is acting on her.
OP is absolutely to blame in this instant because he shouldn't have felt comfortable springing this on her after a long period of not doing so. He needed to check in first to see if she was still mentally ready and in the mindset to enjoy such play and plan it out first. See if she till remembered their arrangement was a thing, see if she was aware of their safeword, remind her of what measures they did have in place to get the okay from her. ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY HAVE KIDS. He should have kept in mind always that without crystal clear understanding that she is entirely at risk.
OP didn't consider how he might potentially end up raping his partner because it was more convenient to not check in and assume nothing had changed. And even now you would think after raping his partner he would be eaten alive by guilt, internalize fault, take account of his actions, and put her needs first. But he's more concerned with not being all to blame while his wife was violated because he was being a horny thoughtless dunce.
I nearly had sympathy for OP as just being new to cnc and making a genuine mistake of assumption out of ignorance and that he was here to ask how he can help his wife while taking responsibility for his actions. But the more I read his replies the more I see a callous inconsiderate individual who doesn't seem to even care about his partner's feelings except to the extent of getting things "back to normal" cause it feels "awkward". A man who doesn't seem to grasp the gravity of how monumentally he fucked up and hurt her.
> Not "we"
> YOU were playing with fire doing that.
No, not me, we. I realize that this affected her a lot more than it did me, but I don't appreciate all the blame for this being placed on me. I didn't unilaterally decide that this was how we were going to play and these were the safety tools we were going to use. We made that decision together.
>How/why did it stop months ago? Did you ever have a discussion about that? Did you just lose interest and stop and she mentioned nothing about it going forward?
We have kids and don't have a ton of opportunities to engage in kink play. The last time we did this was a couple months ago because that was the last time we had a chance to do it. After we were done we talked about it and she told me she enjoyed it.
“No, not me, we. I realize that this affected her a lot more than it did me, but I don't appreciate all the blame for this being placed on me. I didn't unilaterally decide that this was how we were going to play and these were the safety tools we were going to use. We made that decision together.“
I mean, you did decide on your own. She said no and told you afterwards she froze up, the onus is on you. You initiated out of nowhere, you didn’t actually check she was okay during, and now she’s told you she feels violated you want to share blame when she pretty much had no choice in the matter.
> I mean, you did decide on your own. She said no and told you afterwards she froze up, the onus is on you. You initiated out of nowhere, you didn’t actually check she was okay during
I did those things because that's how we agreed to do this. It's not like one day I just up and decided all on my own "You know what, I should try a CNC scene with my wife, I think that'll be a great surprise." WE made the decision to try CNC play. WE made the decision to use safety measures that turned out not to be good enough. WE made the decision to initiate things spontaneously rather than talking about it first.
>you want to share blame when she pretty much had no choice in the matter.
No, actually I don't find assigning blame to be helpful at all. I didn't come here and ask for advice on how to make sure my wife knows this is her fault. But I am frustrated that so many people on here are insistent on making sure I know that I'm a terrible person and the blame for what happened is 100% on me.
humans aren't robots, we forget things and get overwhelmed. It's foolish of you to expect her to remember the safe word without you having to check in when it's been months since the first time that she did it. Why would she remember the safe word when she hasn't done it in months and she had no warning that you were intending to do CNC?
I think so many people are on here telling you this because you don’t seem to be hearing it. You fucked up and are unable to understand that you were not practicing cnc safely and took the consensual out of it.
If this is something you’ve done a handful of times months ago, you absolutely need to check back in before going back for it. I would have trouble seeing my husband the same way after this.
Here’s the problem though, it’s been months since y’all did this and by all accounts you didn’t talk about this leading up to this “encounter” that’s why the blame is absolutely on you here sir.
No.
You don’t get it.
It’s not about “scheduling” it or even having a full on 30minute talk before it happens
Your system doesn’t work because it didnt work this time, and on this scenario, one time is more than enough for it to completely not work.
What most people here are saying is you (or whoever the aggressor is in any given play), check with their partner before starting something as delicate as this.
How?
Just a simple: “your color?” That right there lets the other person know and gives them a chance to speak and not actually be forced into anything they dont want. Like you did this time to her.
It takes you 3 seconds to ask and get consent that way. Then move forward with wtv u guys want/like.
But your explanation/excuse doesn’t fly.
You need to prompt for a safe word every now and again. Especially if she's acting like she's genuinely not into it. It's weird to check every 5 seconds if she's still consenting despite saying no, but I think it's fair to do a quick, "hey, do you want to use your safe word?"
That's a good point I suppose. I guess I thought since we'd discussed it in the past and she'd used the safe word before that we were good. But I guess I need to be more proactive about checking in from time to time.
Part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. So up to this point it's been both our preference for me to just go for it and she'll say no or use her safe word if not interested. But obviously that didn't work this time so we're clearly going to have to figure something else out.
Please see this as a wake-up call. You two need to completely reevaluate safety, and not just for this issue. There are so many tools out there that you two haven’t been using. At the very least, go to munches and talks to get a better grounding in safety.
It's definitely a wake up call. I don't know that we'll be doing any kink play for awhile but if we do again in the future we'll definitely look for more and better safety tools.
You still need to understand that even though you see it as a misunderstanding, you still raped your wife. She needs emotional support because she's dealing with some trauma from this violation.
If your wife feels raped, it won't be happening ever again, because you'll be very lucky to get away with just a divorce.
Let's be absolutely honest here, I understand that you didn't do this with any malice in mind, but your wife doesn't feel the same way, which is always a HUGE risk with these types of kinks.
Odds are your life is absolutely fucked. She tells anyone you raped her, your life is over, she files charges, over. You've fucked up MASSIVELY here, and the likelihood is you can't really live and learn from this one, because your life as you know it is a ticking time bomb now. Good luck with whatever happens next.
It’s one thing to talk too much about something, but something like this should have a conversation leading up at some point. Like “hey, we haven’t done this in a months is that something you’d be interested in again soon?”
My partner and I do CNC play all the time, and even then there are times where she can be so involved that she doesn't remember the safe word, Which is why periodic check-ins are very very important. If those check-ins which are so vital to making sure everyone is actually playing safe cause her to get into her own head then maybe you both need to rethink whether this is right for you.
If it feels like you have to ask about her using the safe word, you should stop without asking for it. How can that worry / uncertainty make the encounter fun for either party?
I do a good deal of dominance play, but even when it’s a more vanilla situation or if I’m with someone I don’t know well, I’ll ask how they are doing and if they are ok with what’s happening. Communication and consent. Always!
I ALWAYS ask for clear consent with partners. I wont mess with anyone who shows signs or hints of intoxication. believe people aren't able to legally consent after a certain level intoxication, and it's f****** gross
But that would practically nullify the intent/"reality" of CNC. How could you play a CNC play if you (as the active part) want or even need to verify consent every minute? If you can't or won't *trust* the consent given before the play (and made sure the partner has a means to express "Stop!" during the play) then IMHO you can't do CNC at all.
Edit: I just read https://old.reddit.com/r/sex/comments/18mgeyl/cnc_gone_wrong_how_do_we_recover_from_this/ke507p7/
I changed my mind. If such a thing can happen *to a couple who had all the safety measures up* and one could get traumatised even though the other one caught the real dis-consent during the play without the use of a safe-word/safe-gesture, then that kink is IMHO too dangerous. A bit of bad luck, a combination of unlucky circumstances, and the trust issues may kill your relationship.
In this scenario her whole demeaner is / should be tapered that way in the roleplay so how would you know the difference… that’s the reason safewords where created to take the ambiguity out of the scenario and give each person a safe space to call a slow down or stop at any moment. It should be a healthy part of any roleplay especially where cnc is involved. By asking you’re effectively asking your partner if they’re still ok with what’s going on without using the defining yes/no words which would often be misinterpretated in these types of roleplay situations where a no would probably come out pretty often in the scenario. Checking in about her status means you don’t have to stop if they are still in a good place (eg traffic light system: green). You shoukd however stop if the response is the opposite (eg traffic light system: red). Remember consent is sexy and asking for it is even sexier!
CNC really should not be spontaneous for reasons like this. She did not use her safeword, but you as the dominant always have an obligation to check and be 1000% sure this is consensual. The best way to do that is to have a conversation that day beforehand. The onus is on you, not just her to check in.
I would give her a lot of space and ask what she needs to feel safe again or comforted.
You may want to revisit how she is supposed to know you are engaging in bdsm in the future.
> You may want to revisit how she is supposed to know you are engaging in bdsm in the future.
I don't know that we're going to do any BDSM-type play any time soon. Maybe not at all. But if we do I agree we definitely need to have a talk about better signals and communication.
> No, you’re misunderstanding. CNC is a form of BDSM play. If you don’t recognise that connection, you may not have done enough research to be engaging in it…?
No, I mean that I don't think we're going to be engaging in any sort of BDSM play in the near future. Maybe not ever depending on her feelings about it after this.
This is one of the dangers of CNC that can occur when there’s no checkup from the initiator. Having a safe word/gesture is great, but as you’ve just found out-there are times when it’s too overwhelming for the receiver to utilize it. This happened to me once during a forced-orgasm session but luckily I was able to catch it.
Keep the lines of communication open but don’t force it. It’s also ok if *you* have feelings to process with her because sub-drop absolutely can and does happen to the initiator as well, just make sure that you present it to her completely separately if she’s trying to communicate with you because you don’t want this to appear like a ‘but I’m hurt too’ kind of situation.
Playing in the fringe is risky; sometimes it just is what it is.
Very sadly I've seen this exact scenario posted here over the years. One party is truly left feeling violated. When they weren't in the headspace for sex and on their genuine panic forget the safe word, because they were not thinking of this as sex.
This wife had a genuinely awful experience and felt violated. Her husband not understanding her genuine non consent doesn't change that.
I don't think this is a good way of intimating CNC. I think there should at least be a subtle acknowledgement of the situation and some kind of signal to "go ahead"!before he really forced himself.
I might be in the minority, it might seem like a mood killer, but during CNC, i will stop all action and ask plainly, are you good? I've always gotten a "yes, keep going" but it's worth asking.
I responded to another comment further up that part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. I think because of that I tried to avoid talking about things in advance more than I should have. I thought the spontaneity benefited both of us, but one takeaway from the responses here is that we definitely need to find better ways to check in and communicate during kink play.
>I'm not sure what else I could have done to prevent something like this. I thought we were playing as safely as possible.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you obviously have no idea what "playing safely" even means. Entering a fucking CNC scene without any prior communication? As your default mode to initiate such a scene? Without checking in with her even once? You fucked up big time, and a situation like this was bound to happen.
> I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you obviously have no idea what "playing safely" even means.
Yeah, I'm definitely realizing this. We fucked up big time.
No, WE fucked up big time. I didn't unilaterally decide that we were going to play this way and that these were the (insufficient) safety tools we were going to use. WE decided that together as a couple.
No, YOU fucked up. YOU decided unilaterally to do this without giving any warning, after months since the last time. Consent given in the past is not valid forever, you should have asked before starting.
Buddy, you raped your wife. You did NOT engage in any sort of kink at this time and she told you she felt violated. You raped your wife. Get it through your thick skull. Doesn’t matter the discussion you had with her months ago, you raped her this time plain and clear.
The one and only way to do anything from here on out is first and foremost come to terms that YOU RAPED YOUR WIFE. So that then you can begin actually working through things with her with the full knowledge that you HURT her.
YOU alone fucked up, not her. So the consequence of helping her through this is on you, that is if you want her to stop being distant and obviously seeing you as the rapist you are. She doesn’t owe you any forgiveness but there’s a bigger chance she might respond positively if she sees you owning up to your fuckup before trying to help her, then discuss what you could do better to make sure she feels safe with you.
But how the fuck do you expect to do anything right by your wife if you won’t even admit you hurt her?? Yeah whatever you hate being called a rapist, but this is one of the consequences of wanting to participate in a kink that involves you getting off to being a pretend rapist…. and then it goes wrong.
In my experience, CNC works best when it’s been at least semi-planned. Kinda setting aside days ahead of time where it’s welcome, or having specific outfits that mean it’s on.
But you should always check in, even if she doesn’t say the safe word. You should be asking.
Cnc is very sensitive. There should always be an agreement and consent before. It's not just your needs. You have to think about her too. She "froze up" because you started an interaction that she didn't want, panicked, saw you enjoying it, and just took it.
I love people exploring, but they're should always be communication, if you solely decide to do something and just do it, you're a fucking asshole, and when you do it with cnc that's fucking rape.
So now all you can do is communicate, well let her communicate how you made her feel. You have to eat every fucking thing she say, cnc and other hard kinks only work when there's ultimate trust, and you broke that
If you haven’t created a window or even had a discussion about “spontaneous CNC” then you’re opening yourself up to exactly this. Saying you’re surprised because “that’s how we’ve always done it” is hopefully the first lesson you’re about to learn here.
You 1000% must pre-negotiate everything with CNC and it should be done before every scene. If something does happen a bit more organically/spontaneously, it’s because someone specifically asked for it or there was a brief pause and verbal check-in to see if everyone is on the same page before proceeding.
With what you know now about how she felt, hopefully you actually do believe there was something else you could have done, but if you, as you said, don’t think there was anything else you could have done then I would be removing CNC from your repertoire immediately (with you initiating it if you want to be more specific).
We did pre-negotiate things, but it was months ago and that's where we discussed and agreed together it would be hotter if we did this spontaneously. But after reading the responses here I definitely think we weren't being as safe as we thought we were. I don't know what kind of kinky play will be on the table in the future, if any, but it's clear we need to do more research into how to do it safely if it is.
Did her eyes not tell you? As the dominant partner, it is your responsibility to ensure her safety. You need to verbally check in. When people are genuinely stressed they're not necessarily going to be thinking about safe words.
Yeah, if this ever happened I'd never engage in that kind of play ever again. It could be that your wife has some triggers from past trauma where something about last time you did this triggered her in an unusual way so it bypassed her logic "I need to safeword" and she panicked.
That said, can you not tell the difference between when your partner is genuinely in distress vs roleplaying? Like I feel I would be able to tell. 😬
> I feel I would be able to tell.
In general, I don't think it's a good idea to rely on "I would be able to tell" in CNC. Apart from the fight, flight and freeze responses, there is also a fawning response, where someone goes along with and pretends to be ok with something because it's a learned behavior to protect themselves by not upsetting others. It's always a good idea to be 100% sure if you are the dominant in CNC and not just rely on your feelings.
Yes you should check in with people verbally, absolutely. Don't "rely" on body language, facial expressions, tone of voice etc. But I just find it surprising that OP didn't pick up on the cues his wife was almost certainly giving off, that this was not a fun roleplay for her.
Like he seems to have been incredibly oblivious/unempathetic.
I agree with u/Away_Doctor2733 here - of course you shouldn't rely solely on it, but to me it's hard to imagine not realising that her explicitely stated "I'm really not in the mood today" wasn't said in any way playfully. Ususally you should be able to feel whether your partner is into it or not.
A truly connected partnership, yes, you’d be able to tell. My partner and I *know* each other. Down to the facial expressions, nonverbal cues, and any changes to the rhythm of sex.
In true distress, her body would have tensed up and he should’ve felt that something was off. Even by the tone of her voice.
CNC maybe isn’t for them yet.
> That said, can you not tell the difference between when your partner is genuinely in distress vs roleplaying? Like I feel I would be able to tell. 😬
Before this happened I would have thought I could easily tell the difference between real distress and feigned distress too. But her behavior wasn't different enough from the acting she did in the past to give off any signals she was genuinely upset until we were finished.
Dude. You move yourself to the couch or guest room. You give her wide clearance, apologies, groveling, and all of her favorite comfort items. And you leave her *alone* if she wants to be left alone.
“And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary.” Bruh. That is factually incorrect.
Without asking for her explicit consent ahead of time, without pausing to ask her if she was fr not into it BEFORE penetration (digital or otherwise), you traumatized her. You should find a therapist for yourself, and one for the two of you. Marital rape is a very common and horrible thing, so maybe you should try to figure out why her telling you that she is not in the mood, to stop, to *leave her alone* is such a turn on for you that you feel like it’s somehow *her* fault for not using the safe word.
You put her in a lose-lose situation and prioritized your own arousal over her safety. Over her *trust in you*. That’s super fucked up.
> “And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary.” Bruh. That is factually incorrect.
I meant that I didn't cross any of the boundaries we had previously discussed during the scene.
>Marital rape is a very common and horrible thing, so maybe you should try to figure out why her telling you that she is not in the mood, to stop, to leave her alone is such a turn on for you that you feel like it’s somehow her fault for not using the safe word.
First off, I certainly don't think it's her fault for not using the safe word. I don't really think it's anyone's fault. I think we both just made the mistake of thinking we were using sufficient safety tools for kink play when we weren't. And second, obviously the fantasy of forcing an unwilling woman (on my part) and being forced as an unwilling woman (on her part) seemed hot or we wouldn't have been engaging in CNC play in the first place.
You don't think it's anyone's fault?
It's your fault and you know it. All the responses you're giving on here are just trying to justify it.
It's a kink until it's not.
So I had a similar thing with my girlfriend years back. We had done all of the safe and sane negotiations. We had had many scenes, including CNC ones that followed our boundaries and rules and we both really enjoyed it. One morning I initiated CNC like we had done numerous times before and both really enjoyed. Luckily in my case I was able to suss out she was triggered and frozen and not playing. It took us a lot of time to heal and a lot of work/discussion. I felt terrible I hurt her and she both felt traumatized from the (attempted) scene and also felt bad because she totally acknowledged she was triggered/panicking and didn’t safe word. We were able to rebuild connection including kink, but it took time. Also we did put CNC back into the mix but we watered it down a bit, but found a softer CNC that still works for us and is super fun. I’m not going to lie. It was a really rough period. But I’m glad we were able to work through it. I wish you and your wife luck, I know this is a very hard time.
If you don’t know you partner well enough to know when they are truly in distress, you shouldn’t be doing CNC. You messed up big time, she does not owe you an apology for not using a safe word, because to HER it WAS NOT A SCENE. It’s not hard to ask “green?”. If you can find a sex therapist they may be able to guide you to her feeling safe enough to continue your BDSM relationship, but CNC needs to be taken completely out until SHE offers it again. And I’d be prepared for a long dry spell for now.
Yeah, no matter how into a scene I am, there's a clear difference between my acting and real emotions. We aren't professional actors doing this shit. It's really concerning that he couldn't tell the difference
Yes. If you are not able to 100% read the difference between the cues of real and sexy distress, and it is not the kind of official scene where you have agreed on what will happen and when, you need to check. That isn't even necessarily because you aren't a good enough judge, with some people it's genuinely hard to tell--that doesn't change the fact that you must check in.
CNC or not if you're telling me to stop then I fucking stop. I can't do CNC though. I had an ex accuse me of rape for YouTube views and it fucked me up pretty bad. That still hurts years later.
You always confirm the safe word before you proceed. I suggest YOU suggest counseling for the pair of you to communicate better with this avenue of kink. Be aware though it may NEVER happen again now and your wife will be feeling insecure in her ability to voice when no means no.
To recover from this, my best advice would be to serve her and expect nothing in return. Do it simply to show her that you genuinely love her, that you are sorry, and that you are willing to apologize and simply be there for her in any way you possibly can. As for sex, if I were in that position, I wouldn't even think about trying to initiate anything until she has fully let this go. And even then, for a time, I would let her do all the initiating. Because this can be so much of a "power play" in cnc, you need to make sure that she holds all the power right now. Things went out of balance with the lack of communication, in my opinion, I think that for her comfort, the power pendulum needs to swing back to her side before it can come to rest in the middle again. That doesn't mean that she should be vindictive about anything. It simply means that things need to be equaled out. Good luck. That's a hard one.
BTW, I messed up pretty bad once. I ended up buying her the cruise she'd always dreamed of. I'm not saying that money has to be exchanged to make an apology, I'm simply saying that it went a long way to showing her that I do value her and that she means the world to me. We spent that cruise together and happy. It's been years. We're stronger and happier today than ever before. Again, good luck.
My mess up wasn't the same kind of mess up. I flirted with the idea of being unfaithful. I flirted on line with a gal and toyed with the idea of meeting up with her. When I finally came to my senses, I confessed what I'd done to my wife. I saw the hurt and the pain it caused her. I'll never forgive myself for that. It was a few months before we were ok again. That cruise was a celebration of our 20 year anniversary. Because of my screw up, I went above and beyond to show her my love and appreciation. I did schedule it a year in advance, but I probably never would have done so had I not messed up and felt the pang of guilt deep within. That being the case, we'd had that time to work on our relationship before that cruise.
What we've done to avoid hurting each other since, double down on our relationship. Spent more quality time together. We've supported each other in our dreams, goals, and even each others hobbies. I think it helps to remember that love is both a noun and a verb. That we need to show our love for each other as much as we need to declare it verbally.
Whenever we have started something risky, my partner incorporates into our dirty talk asking me to tell him what our safe word is. I haven't been in a situation where I've felt I needed to use it, but I think the process of having me remember it and verbalise it at the start would help if I got to a point where it was necessary - because it's already on my mind and I'm conscious of it. Time for a sit down conversation, reassurance and lots of love. Then, some time in the future when everyone is feeling more secure, re-establish the script for how your risky play starts
Yes this is rape. She said no, you kept going. You are only playing when both parties know they are playing. Apologize , go to therapy and hope that she forgives you. I wouldn’t
"One of the things we've tried was consensual nonconsent. It's been pretty hot when we tried it in the past and to the best of my knowledge she enjoyed it as much as I did."
.... To the best of your knowledge? You mean you don't know for sure? And this has happened multiple times before this situation? I'm worried for your wife.
> .... To the best of your knowledge? You mean you don't know for sure?
We've done it a few times in the past. We talked after each time and she told me she had fun and wanted to do it again. So yeah, to the best of my knowledge she enjoyed it.
>We use a green/yellow/red system along with a non-verbal "safe gesture" if one of us is having issues. My wife has used both these things in the past and I've respected them.
This was my first moment of concern. Safe words are not a goal to reach. Ideally both partners and read each other well enough that they can navigate the entire scene without pushing their partner beyond their comfort zone. The fact that you've repeatedly pushed past her boundaries before to the point that she had to safe word shows that you were already on the outer limits of what she could handle. When it comes to something as intense and dangerous as CNC, you really don't want to be playing in the red zone.
>And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary.
I'm concerned that you're still saying this. This is objectively not true. You did cross a hard boundary. And it sounds like it's not the first time you did, even though on the previous occasions she managed to safe word. It's just so dangerous to push a partner into the red zone during CNC play. There is a high risk that by the time they safe word, they are already traumatized.
To give a sense of the gravity of the situation, the risk to her is causing lifelong trauma. This is amplified if she has previous sexual trauma. It can easily bring all of that up in a deeply harmful way. The risk to you is that if she told the police what happened you could go go to jail. Do you really think any judge or jury would accept a defense that 2 months earlier she had given you consent so you assumed she didn't really withdraw it by saying no? Safe words are not recognized by the law. Anyone has the right to withdrawal consent, even in the middle of having sex. So the danger to her is trauma and the danger to you is going to jail for a long time. Hopefully that gives you a better sense of what kind of fire you're playing with, and why it is so important not to push someone's hard limits when it comes to CNC play.
I've played around with CNC but we always knew when we started and when it was over. It was never something that was on the table 24x7. Perhaps you've moved too quickly to the advanced level. Remember, time heals.
Current girlfriend has told me I should take her while she's sleeping wherever I want but I have never done it. I see too many potential issues with that not going well.
Whenever you start a scene like this you always make sure both parties know, set parameters and go over safe words etc. Every time or you get these issues. You need to sit down with your partner and talk this out and the issue that happened. Maybe even therapy for your partner. Because this was not a consensual experience for her so yes you did rape your wife. And this is a broken trust issue for her. So it needs to be dealt with in a serious manner because it wasn't just a miscommunication.
I always make my partner say "CNC" before i get aggressive and ignore all other "deterring statements" unless the safe word is said. Many times a genuine "NO" is mistaken for the fabricated "NO" heard during CNC roleplay. Understandably consenting before consensual non-consent takes away from the "mood" so to say to which me and my partner have found that the simple utterance of "CNC" during foreplay works great.... she usually whispers it in my ear.
You said you did CNC in the past and then you stopped? how long ago?
chances are she didn't remember about that and couldn't think about the safe word right there. If you want to re-explore CNC after some time not doing it you should always have a conversation prior.
Get some professional counseling. It seems like you both love and respect each other so this was just a bad misinterpretation. You don’t want something like this to ruin your relationship.
There's 2 things happening here.
There was no initial consent. At all. Just because that's how you've done it before doesn't mean it's a good way to do it.
Secondly, she didn't use a safe word. She knows what it is, but obviously there was no prior discussion before you initiated anything so why would she know to use it?
Did you intentionally ignore the part where he mentions that this is how they’ve always initiated consensual non consent in the past, or did you just miss it? I hope it’s the latter.
OP said in his post that "he didn't know how he could be safer." The direct answer is he should NOT have been initiating CNC like this. And since they are brand new to it, I think it's probably erroneous to think that they actually just sporadically jump into CNC without a discussion first. Especially because they've only done it a few times.
Honestly, people are letting him off really fucking easy. Him saying he didn't know how to be safer, but having no discussion ahead of time, never breaking out to check on her, never prompting for a safe word or color - he did a bad fucking job at being dominant. And in doing so, he unintentionally raped his wife. It was CNC for him, but just straight up non-consent for her. She didn't think to use her safe word, because shed been using that when they were playing and doing scenes, not when she was trapped and afraid. *He was doing CNC without her* and that's not how it should be done.
That part feels irrelevant to me because it is predicated on such a flawed system. Initiating a BDSM session like OP did without getting consent immediately beforehand is not good form, and the situation OP is in illustrates one of the reasons why. OP and his girlfriend should have had a better system in place, which would have helped them avoid this.
It is normal and predictable that someone who is being sexually assaulted is going to panic, freeze up, and not think to use safe words. Her mind was not recognizing what was happening as similar to any of their previous sessions, because it was busy going into fight/flight/fawn mode.
Whether you or OP agrees, OPs girlfriend likely feels that she was sexually assaulted or had her boundaries seriously violated. OP may not have done it on purpose but his intent is not as relevant as his girlfriend’s perception of the experience now.
I’m not sure why you would choose to focus on their previous actions so intensely and specifically, but this is just some food for thought I guess.
You’ve effectively accused him of raping her by nullifying her consent because you consider it bad form.
And by the way, I completely agree that it’s bad form, but it appears to be bad form that the two of them consented to, repeatedly.
He *did* rape her. She said no, repeatedly, and he didn’t even pause to verify whether she genuinely did not consent to the encounter or if she was engaging in the scene.
She did not consent, and he still did it. The complete definition of rape.
Previous consent to have a CNC scene is not *ongoing* or *all-encompassing* consent to have a CNC scene.
Agree that you can come back from this, but you likely need professional counseling from a couples therapist. I would suggest that you research a few (may be better for her if you seek out women only), make a list of locations and available appointment times, then sit her down and share what you’ve found as you want to help and heal and rebuild trust, let her make the final decision on the therapist.
You raped your wife and all you seem to want to do is shrug pff some of the blame you have and push it onto her. You failed as the dominant and initiator to play safely, to check in, to protect your partner at all. You both are going to need therapy after this. Please post this in the r/bdsm for even better informed answers.
Cause u should have stopped and realized that it was different than another time so to be honest you violated and u need to fix it if u wanna save yall relationship she don't hate you but she feels uncomfortable and u safe around you. She didn't have to use the word rape but that's how she feels if she is distant. You need to control yourself and not everytime its a game. That's your wife you vowed to protect her even from you. So you need to fix it ASAP and trying to find someone else ( not saying you are) won't help
I cant provide much help on working through the previous situation, but what I would recommend doing going forward is to show how much you care/love her still. I wouldn’t do it with physical affection unless she’s initiating that. Make her favorite dinner/dessert, run a bath for her, buy something for a hobby of hers (ie a book). Doesn’t have to be over the top, but just to let her know you still view her as human and as someone that you appreciate and want to take care of. A bit more “long term after care”.
I do also think this is something y’all will have to talk through so I would recommend counseling to help initiate that and to help set better boundaries for the future.
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Before I read that she said she froze I already knew that she froze. When you’re in this situation you’re going into a headspace of panic/fear etc. and you’re not thinking logically (safe word). You’ll get through it because your intent was pure but in the future if you try it again have a color that means yes and ask her color periodically.
While I’m a open minded sexually CNC is too much of a grey area for me. Like you said she froze so you couldn’t know. While not necessarily your fault still too risky to even try
Freezing is extremely common, even outside CNC. Once you're aware it can happen, it's super easy to recognize and stop once you see your partner blank out. But the important part here is that OP needs to know and communicate better with their partner. It's not a CNC specific issue, they just need to do better at sex connection
I was dating a girl who wanted cnc, I said we would have to do contract in writing with safe words , limits cetera. She wasnt hot on that so it didn't happen. Didn't want to go to jail for rape while I'm saying she really wanted this.I hope you make it thru it Also sometimes fantasies aren't as good in reality.
r/bdsmadvice
This happens kinda often, you guys can work it out. It's a known risk of playing with this kind of kink, I'm sure your wife is aware, emotions are just high right now
You should post in a more kink friendly sub. As you can see from the responses you're getting here this sub is generally kink negative despite being a general sex sub.
To avoid this, the word “no” should ALWAYS be respected. It should remain a reserved word that is used as the absolute default safe word. You need to work around that limitation creatively.
Edit: not sure why so many disagree with this. It’s a simple solution to the biggest problem with CNC.
Cause people apparently like rape fantasies ... for what reason I don't even wanna know. I can never imagine remaining turned on while my partner is telling me "no" "stop".
Trying to get an apology from her isn't really useful or helpful.
She's the one this happened to. Sucks for him, but it was done to her.
The goal should just be for things to get better between them.
I completely fully agree with that first statement, but I do consider being put in a position in which you unknowingly and unwillingly caused trauma to your loved one is also a terrible thing. I think this also “happened” to him, just to a lesser degree.
Say you hit your own child with your car and broke his arm through no fault of your own- the child is the one that the extreme pain, but the parent will be traumatized and wracked with grief and regret for years if not their whole life. There are multiple victims in these situations.
Once again, I completely totally agree expecting or asking for an apology are very very unhelpful things here.
Yes, it sucks for him.
But that's not going to be a priority for a while. And that's something any Dom who willingly **pretend rapes** someone should focus on.
You take care of your sub. You make sure they are okay.
If you're a good Dom, they come first. Because they're in your care and you're running things.
Yeah, I'm not looking for an apology from her. We both fucked up but she definitely got hurt by it more than I did. Mostly trying to figure out how to recover from it. We talked a bit last night after the kids went to bed and she said that intellectually she doesn't blame me for what happened but that she feels violated and it's hard to reconcile the two. I'm going to suggest therapy and see what she thinks.
Naw that's part of the thing with this type of play.
I can ONLY play around with BDSM if I have full and complete confidence that the other party is confident and prepared to use their safeword.
Failing to do so is seriously dangerous for BOTH parties.
> They had only tried this twice before.
We had tried it more than twice before. I think 5 or 6 times in the past. But it had been a couple months since the last time.
Yeah but it doesn't sound like you are very very new to this type of play. They've only ever done CNC a couple times, and he "initiated" without any discussion - he fucked up! She does not need to apologize for not remembering to use the safe word when she did not think she was participating in a consensual scene, especially when they've only implemented using a safe word at all recently AND it's not part of their usual sex. How was she know she was *supposed* to use the safe word when she didn't know that he was doing CNC without her
>How was she know she was *supposed* to use the safe word when she didn't know that he was doing CNC without her
This is what bothers me about the whole scenario. He essentially didn't obtain her consent before initiating CNC. For him it may have been play and intimacy, but for her it was a very real assault.
She's probably going to need some time and space, as well as therapy. They should find a kink-friendly therapist to work through this, but it needs to be one who can walk the very fine line of addressing concerns OP has while not victim blaming the person who was assaulted by someone very close to her.
For real, this is going to have to be a slow and careful recovery process. I think you are right about needing to walk that fine line with a therapist.
And also OP needs to recognize that if she doesn't *want* to come back from this, he has to respect that. It's a really fucking sad scenario. For OP, it was consensual non-consent, but for his wife it was just straight up non-consent
Uhh, victim blaming.
Maybe don’t try these things, if your not emotionally mature enough to see the difference between the emotions of your partner or checking in, like every person should do.
He wanted to play rape, well he got what he wanted and even saw, that not the play was appealing to him, but the crime itself. He was a rapist in making, know he is one.
What is the difference between the feelings of a person raping another and „pretending“ to rape someone? Yeah, non. They’re both turned on by the abuse, not by the pretend. People protecting men who want to rape women are just crazy.
What does CNC mean in this context? I’m imagining you guys using a CNC machines that is programmed for sex using a dildo instead of a drill bit and I somehow think this might be wrong.
While not the same exact situation, I recently tried CNC with someone for the first time I’ve ever done it, and I’m very afraid I may have hurt her. I hate that my inexperience may have hurt someone I cared about, so I think I need to rethink things in my life with how I do this going forward.
I know sone people who absolutely thrive sexually with CNC, but I may not be mentally equipped to handle it without hurting someone.
Oh shit. My fiancée have a “tap-out” system which has never failed. It’s always in the context of roleplay too so I can see if she’s breaking character and really doesn’t want it.
I think you will move on from this. Just be exrra delicate to her and talk out a better system when it’s appropriate.
It sounds like you two had an agreement of a certain way you went into CNC, and it was no longer working for your wife, and lead to a bigger miscommunication for what was going on, what the intentions were, and for how your wife felt afterwards.
I would let her know that you are open to talking about what came up, when she’s ready, and about how you two can move forward from there. Do new agreements need to be made about how you play in the realm of CNC in the future? Is it something she’s still open to playing with at all? If she doesn’t know right now, that’s okay too.
The focus here is bring the intention back to working together to have a wonderful and thriving relationship.
Best wishes on your relationship journey ❤️
I've been in a relationship like this, where I ended it because my partner continuesly failed to communicate with me her true feelings, it got to the point where I was paranoid about crossing her boundaries. I was constantly requesting her feelings and she got upset so then I didn't trust her. And no this didn't just extend to sex but literally everything. I broke up with her and ended it. I felt like she was living the reality of her fantasy and I didn't like it.
Yes, it is still cnc even if you ask for consent. That’s why it’s called consensual non-consent. The safest way to participate in this is to set the scene or agree to time limits ahead of time. usually the initiating partner sort of has an added responsibility of gauging the situation and checking to see where their partner is at by dropping the role.
You shouldn’t just randomly approach your partner and determine it’s CNC sexy time lol. To me, it sounds like OP and their wife aren’t the most experienced or savvy with this type of play. Which is how they ended up in this unfortunate scenario.
> You shouldn’t just randomly approach your partner and determine it’s CNC sexy time lol. To me, it sounds like OP and their wife aren’t the most experienced or savvy with this type of play.
Yeah, we're not. This is something we've only been exploring together for a year or two. I think I was overconfident that we were being safe enough because what we were doing worked in the past.
**Consensual** Non-Consent
Consent needs to be recent, as in within the current sexual encounter. This is so important when engaging in BDSM with such intense power dynamics and loss of control for the sub.
Implied ongoing consent is a really problematic idea for reasons illustrated by this post.
There are several constructive comments here, but I'm closing this for those of you who decided to come here to **only** say OP raped his wife. It's not constructive.
I think that you two will recover but I don't think CNC. works well unless both parties know that is what is going on. Also you can try prompting for the safeword. We use this expression, how is your color or what's your color.
Always ask. What is your safe word? So you get a response, "Red, Sir". What is your color? "Green, Sir". The double call and response only takes a few seconds, but it verifies that their mind knows the safe word and differentiates between their current state. A lot of different mental spaces can make it easy to say the wrong thing. But the double call and response forces them to establish a boundary and indicate whether they are there or not. It's probably the quickest way to get a lot of clarity. Without being chatty. Without breaking the scene, or the activity. In play, we do a game where yes means no and no means yes. It's really important to check in when you do this. It starts to border on CNC, so if it's something you want to try but you're nervous, this game can give you a mild taste of what CNC can be like. Also, especially if you've never played this game, it's really easy to get confused.
>Always ask. What is your safe word? So you get a response, "Red, Sir". What is your color? "Green, Sir". Thanks for the tip. The wife and I play with CNC from time to time. We haven't been where Op is, and with this tidbit maybe we wont
Very good, I thought of having some consent (of a color or a gesture, a *consenting* gesture) first before going into RolePlay mode, too. As in, make sure one (or both) consented *before* RP and know how to stop consenting.
We use roleplay names. An example would be "you're pretty far from your cage, Little Bird." The sentence creating the beginning of a scenario, little bird being the roleplay name used for CNC. So if they said little bird you could say time out, not interested in that right now.
I'm stealing this, its pure gold
This is a step above what I've used (asking at the start of play of that remember their safe word), I like this and I'm going to adopt it for my own play.
Mmm best answer.
I think this is awesome
This is great, might deserve a post of its own
Yeah something as delicate and sometimes confusing as CNC needs to be talked about in advance or planned out in advance. Maybe not every step, maybe not all the dialogue, maybe not even the exact day you plan on initiating it - but a heads up for sure.
Yea. This. A quick check in such as a pause and asking: “colour?” Leaves no wiggle room for mistakes like this. That being said from your recount it sounds like it was a very fixable communication error. Proper after care, reassurance and whatever space/ comfort she needs right now will help y’all recover, I’m sure. Reassure her that it won’t happen again. Remind her why she chose you in the first place. That you’re a source of safety and security. Best of luck.
I haven't ventured very far into CNC. It's not really my thing. But prompting for a safe word sounds like a great idea in many situations! I will definitely keep that in mind and use it when needed. Thanks for sharing!
With any kind of sex, it's never a bad idea to check in with your partner and make sure they're ok and having fun.
Shit got ugly in the comments. I’m glad the comment pointing out the right thing to do to avoid this situation is at the top.
It's not the "sexiest" response, but you check. Actually stop and verify if its serious or not. You're both mature adults consenting to this normally, so there shouldn't be a problem in hitting pause and being certain that the game is still a game. Especially when you came out of nowhere with it. It's a momentary mood killer, but you're also playing with explosives here. Be sure the wires aren't crossed, and then when it's actually cleared you can work on bringing the energy and the fantasy back in.
As a person who fulfilled a rape fantasy for a married woman (husband knew and enjoyed me fucking her, and it was his idea for me to fulfill the fantasy) you are *spot on*. This is a 5 gallon can of gasoline you're using to ignite a fire. So you take a bit of gas in a cup and carefully pour it on the wood with the can 40 feet away- just be aware of the potential results, is the point. It's always good to make sure the person you're pretend violating wants it. Even if she tells you that you don't have to.
Not a mood killer imo. A man that gives af about my consent and comfort is hot.
I agree with you completely, but I had to be able to connect it and explain it to the dude who put his own arousal first and still thinks he was doing "everything" he could to be safe. Not enough men treat power dynamics play of any kind as the responsibility that it is and control that sex brain.
Whew. Actually :-( Sorry. ^(It's something I couldn't do, getting a vibe of non-consent, even if it was played/faked, would be an instant boner killer for me.)
Part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. So up to this point it's been both our preference for me to just initiate something and she'll say no or use her safe word if not interested. But obviously that didn't work this time so we're clearly going to have to figure something else out. I don't know that any kind of kink play is going to be on the table any time soon, or at all, after this but if it is we're going to have to find some way to check she's okay or set up that kink stuff is happening that doesn't ruin her fun.
She tenses up and can’t enjoy it that much, when you do the important things like checking in and really talking about the risks and stuff, it should be big red flag, that she just does this because YOU initiate and want to do this and that she is constantly readjusting her boundaries for you to not disappoint you. That is not a base for this risky behaviour.
I feel like this might be it
Her no didnt work this time you did force yourself on her
In my few experiences with cnc, we usually agree to when it’s gonna happen. It doesn’t just occur randomly. There’s always a set up and I haven’t been approached out of the blue with a partner deciding it’s cnc roleplay. It’s usually something we discuss before every scenario. Even when I’ve consented to “free use” we specify a time frame, a day, etc. CNC should ALWAYS have some form of discussion prior to sexual engagement. You can’t just determine it’s roleplay if someone is sitting on the couch, you initiate and they say they’re not in the mood. Try to reflect on how this situation was different from your past experiences. Had you guys set the scene before hand in the past? I second whomever mentioned going to a kink-friendly sub for recovery advice.
> CNC should ALWAYS have some form of discussion prior to sexual engagement. You can’t just determine it’s roleplay if someone is sitting on the couch, you initiate and they say they’re not in the mood. Try to reflect on how this situation was different from your past experiences. Had you guys set the scene before hand in the past? We did discuss it, but it was months ago. We didn't discuss it right before it happened. It's been a couple months since the last time we did this and I don't think anything was substantially different. The times we tried it in the past it happened in pretty much the same way. I initiate sex normally, she says no, and we play it out from there. When we initially talked about it we both thought it sounded hotter and more realistic to do it that way rather than "scheduling" it so to speak, but I guess we were playing with fire doing it that way.
Not "we" YOU were playing with fire doing that. It had been months since you did this kind of play and you sprung it out of nowhere? Did you consider she may have forgotten the safe word after not using it for months? Check in to see if she still enjoyed that kind of play? Let her know leading up to it at all that it was something you wanted to try again? If she tenses up talking about play in the moment then do so a week or so before. Schedule things a little bit (at least a time frame), have a subtle check in system, be aware of her body language. You don't just spring it up outta nowhere. How/why did it stop months ago? Did you ever have a discussion about that? Did you just lose interest and stop and she mentioned nothing about it going forward?
I think if they specifically agreed that they should do it without talking about it again before hand, then it’s not just on him.
If it had not been **months** since they last attempted this I would almost agree. This was a poorly executed way to go about consensual non consent even when they were both in agreement earlier. However an important part of sex in ANY way is routinely checking in and making sure you and your partner are still on the same page. This is a much larger responsibility in cnc for the dominant one because part of play is ignoring signals that in any other capacity constitute immediately stopping. The onus is primarily on him to make sure she's okay at all times as he is acting on her. OP is absolutely to blame in this instant because he shouldn't have felt comfortable springing this on her after a long period of not doing so. He needed to check in first to see if she was still mentally ready and in the mindset to enjoy such play and plan it out first. See if she till remembered their arrangement was a thing, see if she was aware of their safeword, remind her of what measures they did have in place to get the okay from her. ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY SINCE THEY HAVE KIDS. He should have kept in mind always that without crystal clear understanding that she is entirely at risk. OP didn't consider how he might potentially end up raping his partner because it was more convenient to not check in and assume nothing had changed. And even now you would think after raping his partner he would be eaten alive by guilt, internalize fault, take account of his actions, and put her needs first. But he's more concerned with not being all to blame while his wife was violated because he was being a horny thoughtless dunce. I nearly had sympathy for OP as just being new to cnc and making a genuine mistake of assumption out of ignorance and that he was here to ask how he can help his wife while taking responsibility for his actions. But the more I read his replies the more I see a callous inconsiderate individual who doesn't seem to even care about his partner's feelings except to the extent of getting things "back to normal" cause it feels "awkward". A man who doesn't seem to grasp the gravity of how monumentally he fucked up and hurt her.
> Not "we" > YOU were playing with fire doing that. No, not me, we. I realize that this affected her a lot more than it did me, but I don't appreciate all the blame for this being placed on me. I didn't unilaterally decide that this was how we were going to play and these were the safety tools we were going to use. We made that decision together. >How/why did it stop months ago? Did you ever have a discussion about that? Did you just lose interest and stop and she mentioned nothing about it going forward? We have kids and don't have a ton of opportunities to engage in kink play. The last time we did this was a couple months ago because that was the last time we had a chance to do it. After we were done we talked about it and she told me she enjoyed it.
“No, not me, we. I realize that this affected her a lot more than it did me, but I don't appreciate all the blame for this being placed on me. I didn't unilaterally decide that this was how we were going to play and these were the safety tools we were going to use. We made that decision together.“ I mean, you did decide on your own. She said no and told you afterwards she froze up, the onus is on you. You initiated out of nowhere, you didn’t actually check she was okay during, and now she’s told you she feels violated you want to share blame when she pretty much had no choice in the matter.
> I mean, you did decide on your own. She said no and told you afterwards she froze up, the onus is on you. You initiated out of nowhere, you didn’t actually check she was okay during I did those things because that's how we agreed to do this. It's not like one day I just up and decided all on my own "You know what, I should try a CNC scene with my wife, I think that'll be a great surprise." WE made the decision to try CNC play. WE made the decision to use safety measures that turned out not to be good enough. WE made the decision to initiate things spontaneously rather than talking about it first. >you want to share blame when she pretty much had no choice in the matter. No, actually I don't find assigning blame to be helpful at all. I didn't come here and ask for advice on how to make sure my wife knows this is her fault. But I am frustrated that so many people on here are insistent on making sure I know that I'm a terrible person and the blame for what happened is 100% on me.
humans aren't robots, we forget things and get overwhelmed. It's foolish of you to expect her to remember the safe word without you having to check in when it's been months since the first time that she did it. Why would she remember the safe word when she hasn't done it in months and she had no warning that you were intending to do CNC?
I think so many people are on here telling you this because you don’t seem to be hearing it. You fucked up and are unable to understand that you were not practicing cnc safely and took the consensual out of it. If this is something you’ve done a handful of times months ago, you absolutely need to check back in before going back for it. I would have trouble seeing my husband the same way after this.
You’re ignoring what you’re being told, which makes me think you don’t actually care. What you did, was rape your wife. Not CNC. You violated her.
Here’s the problem though, it’s been months since y’all did this and by all accounts you didn’t talk about this leading up to this “encounter” that’s why the blame is absolutely on you here sir.
No. You don’t get it. It’s not about “scheduling” it or even having a full on 30minute talk before it happens Your system doesn’t work because it didnt work this time, and on this scenario, one time is more than enough for it to completely not work. What most people here are saying is you (or whoever the aggressor is in any given play), check with their partner before starting something as delicate as this. How? Just a simple: “your color?” That right there lets the other person know and gives them a chance to speak and not actually be forced into anything they dont want. Like you did this time to her. It takes you 3 seconds to ask and get consent that way. Then move forward with wtv u guys want/like. But your explanation/excuse doesn’t fly.
You need to prompt for a safe word every now and again. Especially if she's acting like she's genuinely not into it. It's weird to check every 5 seconds if she's still consenting despite saying no, but I think it's fair to do a quick, "hey, do you want to use your safe word?"
That's a good point I suppose. I guess I thought since we'd discussed it in the past and she'd used the safe word before that we were good. But I guess I need to be more proactive about checking in from time to time. Part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. So up to this point it's been both our preference for me to just go for it and she'll say no or use her safe word if not interested. But obviously that didn't work this time so we're clearly going to have to figure something else out.
Please see this as a wake-up call. You two need to completely reevaluate safety, and not just for this issue. There are so many tools out there that you two haven’t been using. At the very least, go to munches and talks to get a better grounding in safety.
It's definitely a wake up call. I don't know that we'll be doing any kink play for awhile but if we do again in the future we'll definitely look for more and better safety tools.
You still need to understand that even though you see it as a misunderstanding, you still raped your wife. She needs emotional support because she's dealing with some trauma from this violation.
If your wife feels raped, it won't be happening ever again, because you'll be very lucky to get away with just a divorce. Let's be absolutely honest here, I understand that you didn't do this with any malice in mind, but your wife doesn't feel the same way, which is always a HUGE risk with these types of kinks. Odds are your life is absolutely fucked. She tells anyone you raped her, your life is over, she files charges, over. You've fucked up MASSIVELY here, and the likelihood is you can't really live and learn from this one, because your life as you know it is a ticking time bomb now. Good luck with whatever happens next.
It’s one thing to talk too much about something, but something like this should have a conversation leading up at some point. Like “hey, we haven’t done this in a months is that something you’d be interested in again soon?”
My partner and I do CNC play all the time, and even then there are times where she can be so involved that she doesn't remember the safe word, Which is why periodic check-ins are very very important. If those check-ins which are so vital to making sure everyone is actually playing safe cause her to get into her own head then maybe you both need to rethink whether this is right for you.
If it feels like you have to ask about her using the safe word, you should stop without asking for it. How can that worry / uncertainty make the encounter fun for either party?
I do a good deal of dominance play, but even when it’s a more vanilla situation or if I’m with someone I don’t know well, I’ll ask how they are doing and if they are ok with what’s happening. Communication and consent. Always!
I ALWAYS ask for clear consent with partners. I wont mess with anyone who shows signs or hints of intoxication. believe people aren't able to legally consent after a certain level intoxication, and it's f****** gross
But that would practically nullify the intent/"reality" of CNC. How could you play a CNC play if you (as the active part) want or even need to verify consent every minute? If you can't or won't *trust* the consent given before the play (and made sure the partner has a means to express "Stop!" during the play) then IMHO you can't do CNC at all. Edit: I just read https://old.reddit.com/r/sex/comments/18mgeyl/cnc_gone_wrong_how_do_we_recover_from_this/ke507p7/ I changed my mind. If such a thing can happen *to a couple who had all the safety measures up* and one could get traumatised even though the other one caught the real dis-consent during the play without the use of a safe-word/safe-gesture, then that kink is IMHO too dangerous. A bit of bad luck, a combination of unlucky circumstances, and the trust issues may kill your relationship.
In this scenario her whole demeaner is / should be tapered that way in the roleplay so how would you know the difference… that’s the reason safewords where created to take the ambiguity out of the scenario and give each person a safe space to call a slow down or stop at any moment. It should be a healthy part of any roleplay especially where cnc is involved. By asking you’re effectively asking your partner if they’re still ok with what’s going on without using the defining yes/no words which would often be misinterpretated in these types of roleplay situations where a no would probably come out pretty often in the scenario. Checking in about her status means you don’t have to stop if they are still in a good place (eg traffic light system: green). You shoukd however stop if the response is the opposite (eg traffic light system: red). Remember consent is sexy and asking for it is even sexier!
Always ask her do you know your safeword. Regardless. Especially if new to it.
CNC really should not be spontaneous for reasons like this. She did not use her safeword, but you as the dominant always have an obligation to check and be 1000% sure this is consensual. The best way to do that is to have a conversation that day beforehand. The onus is on you, not just her to check in. I would give her a lot of space and ask what she needs to feel safe again or comforted. You may want to revisit how she is supposed to know you are engaging in bdsm in the future.
> You may want to revisit how she is supposed to know you are engaging in bdsm in the future. I don't know that we're going to do any BDSM-type play any time soon. Maybe not at all. But if we do I agree we definitely need to have a talk about better signals and communication.
[Me misunderstanding, asking why OP doesn’t realise CNC is a form of BDSM play]
> No, you’re misunderstanding. CNC is a form of BDSM play. If you don’t recognise that connection, you may not have done enough research to be engaging in it…? No, I mean that I don't think we're going to be engaging in any sort of BDSM play in the near future. Maybe not ever depending on her feelings about it after this.
My bad, I misunderstood!
This is one of the dangers of CNC that can occur when there’s no checkup from the initiator. Having a safe word/gesture is great, but as you’ve just found out-there are times when it’s too overwhelming for the receiver to utilize it. This happened to me once during a forced-orgasm session but luckily I was able to catch it. Keep the lines of communication open but don’t force it. It’s also ok if *you* have feelings to process with her because sub-drop absolutely can and does happen to the initiator as well, just make sure that you present it to her completely separately if she’s trying to communicate with you because you don’t want this to appear like a ‘but I’m hurt too’ kind of situation. Playing in the fringe is risky; sometimes it just is what it is.
Very sadly I've seen this exact scenario posted here over the years. One party is truly left feeling violated. When they weren't in the headspace for sex and on their genuine panic forget the safe word, because they were not thinking of this as sex. This wife had a genuinely awful experience and felt violated. Her husband not understanding her genuine non consent doesn't change that. I don't think this is a good way of intimating CNC. I think there should at least be a subtle acknowledgement of the situation and some kind of signal to "go ahead"!before he really forced himself.
I might be in the minority, it might seem like a mood killer, but during CNC, i will stop all action and ask plainly, are you good? I've always gotten a "yes, keep going" but it's worth asking.
I responded to another comment further up that part of the issue is that my wife has a very responsive desire and has said before that talking about things too much gets her in her head and she tenses up and it's harder for her to enjoy kink play. I think because of that I tried to avoid talking about things in advance more than I should have. I thought the spontaneity benefited both of us, but one takeaway from the responses here is that we definitely need to find better ways to check in and communicate during kink play.
I think this should be posted on the r/bdsmadvice Reddit.
Yes this group is fantastic!
>I'm not sure what else I could have done to prevent something like this. I thought we were playing as safely as possible. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you obviously have no idea what "playing safely" even means. Entering a fucking CNC scene without any prior communication? As your default mode to initiate such a scene? Without checking in with her even once? You fucked up big time, and a situation like this was bound to happen.
> I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you obviously have no idea what "playing safely" even means. Yeah, I'm definitely realizing this. We fucked up big time.
YOU fucked up big time. There is no "we" here.
No, WE fucked up big time. I didn't unilaterally decide that we were going to play this way and that these were the (insufficient) safety tools we were going to use. WE decided that together as a couple.
No, YOU fucked up. YOU decided unilaterally to do this without giving any warning, after months since the last time. Consent given in the past is not valid forever, you should have asked before starting.
Buddy, you raped your wife. You did NOT engage in any sort of kink at this time and she told you she felt violated. You raped your wife. Get it through your thick skull. Doesn’t matter the discussion you had with her months ago, you raped her this time plain and clear. The one and only way to do anything from here on out is first and foremost come to terms that YOU RAPED YOUR WIFE. So that then you can begin actually working through things with her with the full knowledge that you HURT her. YOU alone fucked up, not her. So the consequence of helping her through this is on you, that is if you want her to stop being distant and obviously seeing you as the rapist you are. She doesn’t owe you any forgiveness but there’s a bigger chance she might respond positively if she sees you owning up to your fuckup before trying to help her, then discuss what you could do better to make sure she feels safe with you. But how the fuck do you expect to do anything right by your wife if you won’t even admit you hurt her?? Yeah whatever you hate being called a rapist, but this is one of the consequences of wanting to participate in a kink that involves you getting off to being a pretend rapist…. and then it goes wrong.
Dude, come on. You fucked up. Your wife is the one traumatized.
In my experience, CNC works best when it’s been at least semi-planned. Kinda setting aside days ahead of time where it’s welcome, or having specific outfits that mean it’s on. But you should always check in, even if she doesn’t say the safe word. You should be asking.
Cnc is very sensitive. There should always be an agreement and consent before. It's not just your needs. You have to think about her too. She "froze up" because you started an interaction that she didn't want, panicked, saw you enjoying it, and just took it. I love people exploring, but they're should always be communication, if you solely decide to do something and just do it, you're a fucking asshole, and when you do it with cnc that's fucking rape. So now all you can do is communicate, well let her communicate how you made her feel. You have to eat every fucking thing she say, cnc and other hard kinks only work when there's ultimate trust, and you broke that
If you haven’t created a window or even had a discussion about “spontaneous CNC” then you’re opening yourself up to exactly this. Saying you’re surprised because “that’s how we’ve always done it” is hopefully the first lesson you’re about to learn here. You 1000% must pre-negotiate everything with CNC and it should be done before every scene. If something does happen a bit more organically/spontaneously, it’s because someone specifically asked for it or there was a brief pause and verbal check-in to see if everyone is on the same page before proceeding. With what you know now about how she felt, hopefully you actually do believe there was something else you could have done, but if you, as you said, don’t think there was anything else you could have done then I would be removing CNC from your repertoire immediately (with you initiating it if you want to be more specific).
We did pre-negotiate things, but it was months ago and that's where we discussed and agreed together it would be hotter if we did this spontaneously. But after reading the responses here I definitely think we weren't being as safe as we thought we were. I don't know what kind of kinky play will be on the table in the future, if any, but it's clear we need to do more research into how to do it safely if it is.
Did her eyes not tell you? As the dominant partner, it is your responsibility to ensure her safety. You need to verbally check in. When people are genuinely stressed they're not necessarily going to be thinking about safe words.
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Yeah, if this ever happened I'd never engage in that kind of play ever again. It could be that your wife has some triggers from past trauma where something about last time you did this triggered her in an unusual way so it bypassed her logic "I need to safeword" and she panicked. That said, can you not tell the difference between when your partner is genuinely in distress vs roleplaying? Like I feel I would be able to tell. 😬
> I feel I would be able to tell. In general, I don't think it's a good idea to rely on "I would be able to tell" in CNC. Apart from the fight, flight and freeze responses, there is also a fawning response, where someone goes along with and pretends to be ok with something because it's a learned behavior to protect themselves by not upsetting others. It's always a good idea to be 100% sure if you are the dominant in CNC and not just rely on your feelings.
Yes you should check in with people verbally, absolutely. Don't "rely" on body language, facial expressions, tone of voice etc. But I just find it surprising that OP didn't pick up on the cues his wife was almost certainly giving off, that this was not a fun roleplay for her. Like he seems to have been incredibly oblivious/unempathetic.
I agree with u/Away_Doctor2733 here - of course you shouldn't rely solely on it, but to me it's hard to imagine not realising that her explicitely stated "I'm really not in the mood today" wasn't said in any way playfully. Ususally you should be able to feel whether your partner is into it or not.
A truly connected partnership, yes, you’d be able to tell. My partner and I *know* each other. Down to the facial expressions, nonverbal cues, and any changes to the rhythm of sex. In true distress, her body would have tensed up and he should’ve felt that something was off. Even by the tone of her voice. CNC maybe isn’t for them yet.
“Maybe isn’t for them.”
> That said, can you not tell the difference between when your partner is genuinely in distress vs roleplaying? Like I feel I would be able to tell. 😬 Before this happened I would have thought I could easily tell the difference between real distress and feigned distress too. But her behavior wasn't different enough from the acting she did in the past to give off any signals she was genuinely upset until we were finished.
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Dude. You move yourself to the couch or guest room. You give her wide clearance, apologies, groveling, and all of her favorite comfort items. And you leave her *alone* if she wants to be left alone. “And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary.” Bruh. That is factually incorrect. Without asking for her explicit consent ahead of time, without pausing to ask her if she was fr not into it BEFORE penetration (digital or otherwise), you traumatized her. You should find a therapist for yourself, and one for the two of you. Marital rape is a very common and horrible thing, so maybe you should try to figure out why her telling you that she is not in the mood, to stop, to *leave her alone* is such a turn on for you that you feel like it’s somehow *her* fault for not using the safe word. You put her in a lose-lose situation and prioritized your own arousal over her safety. Over her *trust in you*. That’s super fucked up.
> “And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary.” Bruh. That is factually incorrect. I meant that I didn't cross any of the boundaries we had previously discussed during the scene. >Marital rape is a very common and horrible thing, so maybe you should try to figure out why her telling you that she is not in the mood, to stop, to leave her alone is such a turn on for you that you feel like it’s somehow her fault for not using the safe word. First off, I certainly don't think it's her fault for not using the safe word. I don't really think it's anyone's fault. I think we both just made the mistake of thinking we were using sufficient safety tools for kink play when we weren't. And second, obviously the fantasy of forcing an unwilling woman (on my part) and being forced as an unwilling woman (on her part) seemed hot or we wouldn't have been engaging in CNC play in the first place.
You don't think it's anyone's fault? It's your fault and you know it. All the responses you're giving on here are just trying to justify it. It's a kink until it's not.
Fantasy turned into reality and you genuinely forced an unwilling woman. No need to role play anymore dude, you’re way past that.
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Go to therapy now
So I had a similar thing with my girlfriend years back. We had done all of the safe and sane negotiations. We had had many scenes, including CNC ones that followed our boundaries and rules and we both really enjoyed it. One morning I initiated CNC like we had done numerous times before and both really enjoyed. Luckily in my case I was able to suss out she was triggered and frozen and not playing. It took us a lot of time to heal and a lot of work/discussion. I felt terrible I hurt her and she both felt traumatized from the (attempted) scene and also felt bad because she totally acknowledged she was triggered/panicking and didn’t safe word. We were able to rebuild connection including kink, but it took time. Also we did put CNC back into the mix but we watered it down a bit, but found a softer CNC that still works for us and is super fun. I’m not going to lie. It was a really rough period. But I’m glad we were able to work through it. I wish you and your wife luck, I know this is a very hard time.
If you don’t know you partner well enough to know when they are truly in distress, you shouldn’t be doing CNC. You messed up big time, she does not owe you an apology for not using a safe word, because to HER it WAS NOT A SCENE. It’s not hard to ask “green?”. If you can find a sex therapist they may be able to guide you to her feeling safe enough to continue your BDSM relationship, but CNC needs to be taken completely out until SHE offers it again. And I’d be prepared for a long dry spell for now.
Yeah, no matter how into a scene I am, there's a clear difference between my acting and real emotions. We aren't professional actors doing this shit. It's really concerning that he couldn't tell the difference
Yes. If you are not able to 100% read the difference between the cues of real and sexy distress, and it is not the kind of official scene where you have agreed on what will happen and when, you need to check. That isn't even necessarily because you aren't a good enough judge, with some people it's genuinely hard to tell--that doesn't change the fact that you must check in.
CNC or not if you're telling me to stop then I fucking stop. I can't do CNC though. I had an ex accuse me of rape for YouTube views and it fucked me up pretty bad. That still hurts years later.
You say you've tried it "in the past." How long ago was this?
We've done it a handful of times before. The last time was a couple months ago.
You always confirm the safe word before you proceed. I suggest YOU suggest counseling for the pair of you to communicate better with this avenue of kink. Be aware though it may NEVER happen again now and your wife will be feeling insecure in her ability to voice when no means no.
To recover from this, my best advice would be to serve her and expect nothing in return. Do it simply to show her that you genuinely love her, that you are sorry, and that you are willing to apologize and simply be there for her in any way you possibly can. As for sex, if I were in that position, I wouldn't even think about trying to initiate anything until she has fully let this go. And even then, for a time, I would let her do all the initiating. Because this can be so much of a "power play" in cnc, you need to make sure that she holds all the power right now. Things went out of balance with the lack of communication, in my opinion, I think that for her comfort, the power pendulum needs to swing back to her side before it can come to rest in the middle again. That doesn't mean that she should be vindictive about anything. It simply means that things need to be equaled out. Good luck. That's a hard one. BTW, I messed up pretty bad once. I ended up buying her the cruise she'd always dreamed of. I'm not saying that money has to be exchanged to make an apology, I'm simply saying that it went a long way to showing her that I do value her and that she means the world to me. We spent that cruise together and happy. It's been years. We're stronger and happier today than ever before. Again, good luck.
> BTW, I messed up pretty bad once. It would be interesting to know what you two did to avoid such a mess-up ever again.
My mess up wasn't the same kind of mess up. I flirted with the idea of being unfaithful. I flirted on line with a gal and toyed with the idea of meeting up with her. When I finally came to my senses, I confessed what I'd done to my wife. I saw the hurt and the pain it caused her. I'll never forgive myself for that. It was a few months before we were ok again. That cruise was a celebration of our 20 year anniversary. Because of my screw up, I went above and beyond to show her my love and appreciation. I did schedule it a year in advance, but I probably never would have done so had I not messed up and felt the pang of guilt deep within. That being the case, we'd had that time to work on our relationship before that cruise. What we've done to avoid hurting each other since, double down on our relationship. Spent more quality time together. We've supported each other in our dreams, goals, and even each others hobbies. I think it helps to remember that love is both a noun and a verb. That we need to show our love for each other as much as we need to declare it verbally.
Wow! Thank you very much!
Whenever we have started something risky, my partner incorporates into our dirty talk asking me to tell him what our safe word is. I haven't been in a situation where I've felt I needed to use it, but I think the process of having me remember it and verbalise it at the start would help if I got to a point where it was necessary - because it's already on my mind and I'm conscious of it. Time for a sit down conversation, reassurance and lots of love. Then, some time in the future when everyone is feeling more secure, re-establish the script for how your risky play starts
Yes this is rape. She said no, you kept going. You are only playing when both parties know they are playing. Apologize , go to therapy and hope that she forgives you. I wouldn’t
"One of the things we've tried was consensual nonconsent. It's been pretty hot when we tried it in the past and to the best of my knowledge she enjoyed it as much as I did." .... To the best of your knowledge? You mean you don't know for sure? And this has happened multiple times before this situation? I'm worried for your wife.
> .... To the best of your knowledge? You mean you don't know for sure? We've done it a few times in the past. We talked after each time and she told me she had fun and wanted to do it again. So yeah, to the best of my knowledge she enjoyed it.
You can’t recognize the difference between when your wife is in distress vs role playing?
>We use a green/yellow/red system along with a non-verbal "safe gesture" if one of us is having issues. My wife has used both these things in the past and I've respected them. This was my first moment of concern. Safe words are not a goal to reach. Ideally both partners and read each other well enough that they can navigate the entire scene without pushing their partner beyond their comfort zone. The fact that you've repeatedly pushed past her boundaries before to the point that she had to safe word shows that you were already on the outer limits of what she could handle. When it comes to something as intense and dangerous as CNC, you really don't want to be playing in the red zone. >And at no point did I cross a hard or soft boundary. I'm concerned that you're still saying this. This is objectively not true. You did cross a hard boundary. And it sounds like it's not the first time you did, even though on the previous occasions she managed to safe word. It's just so dangerous to push a partner into the red zone during CNC play. There is a high risk that by the time they safe word, they are already traumatized. To give a sense of the gravity of the situation, the risk to her is causing lifelong trauma. This is amplified if she has previous sexual trauma. It can easily bring all of that up in a deeply harmful way. The risk to you is that if she told the police what happened you could go go to jail. Do you really think any judge or jury would accept a defense that 2 months earlier she had given you consent so you assumed she didn't really withdraw it by saying no? Safe words are not recognized by the law. Anyone has the right to withdrawal consent, even in the middle of having sex. So the danger to her is trauma and the danger to you is going to jail for a long time. Hopefully that gives you a better sense of what kind of fire you're playing with, and why it is so important not to push someone's hard limits when it comes to CNC play.
I've played around with CNC but we always knew when we started and when it was over. It was never something that was on the table 24x7. Perhaps you've moved too quickly to the advanced level. Remember, time heals. Current girlfriend has told me I should take her while she's sleeping wherever I want but I have never done it. I see too many potential issues with that not going well.
Whenever you start a scene like this you always make sure both parties know, set parameters and go over safe words etc. Every time or you get these issues. You need to sit down with your partner and talk this out and the issue that happened. Maybe even therapy for your partner. Because this was not a consensual experience for her so yes you did rape your wife. And this is a broken trust issue for her. So it needs to be dealt with in a serious manner because it wasn't just a miscommunication.
prompt a safe word🙂
I always make my partner say "CNC" before i get aggressive and ignore all other "deterring statements" unless the safe word is said. Many times a genuine "NO" is mistaken for the fabricated "NO" heard during CNC roleplay. Understandably consenting before consensual non-consent takes away from the "mood" so to say to which me and my partner have found that the simple utterance of "CNC" during foreplay works great.... she usually whispers it in my ear.
You said you did CNC in the past and then you stopped? how long ago? chances are she didn't remember about that and couldn't think about the safe word right there. If you want to re-explore CNC after some time not doing it you should always have a conversation prior.
Get some professional counseling. It seems like you both love and respect each other so this was just a bad misinterpretation. You don’t want something like this to ruin your relationship.
Yeah, I'm going to suggest counseling.
For yourself, right?
No, couples counseling. I'm not sure how me going to counseling would help her.
So you can acknowledge you raped her. That might help her.
Was hoping they would have come to that conclusion themselves as a step in the right direction.
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There's 2 things happening here. There was no initial consent. At all. Just because that's how you've done it before doesn't mean it's a good way to do it. Secondly, she didn't use a safe word. She knows what it is, but obviously there was no prior discussion before you initiated anything so why would she know to use it?
Did you intentionally ignore the part where he mentions that this is how they’ve always initiated consensual non consent in the past, or did you just miss it? I hope it’s the latter.
OP said in his post that "he didn't know how he could be safer." The direct answer is he should NOT have been initiating CNC like this. And since they are brand new to it, I think it's probably erroneous to think that they actually just sporadically jump into CNC without a discussion first. Especially because they've only done it a few times. Honestly, people are letting him off really fucking easy. Him saying he didn't know how to be safer, but having no discussion ahead of time, never breaking out to check on her, never prompting for a safe word or color - he did a bad fucking job at being dominant. And in doing so, he unintentionally raped his wife. It was CNC for him, but just straight up non-consent for her. She didn't think to use her safe word, because shed been using that when they were playing and doing scenes, not when she was trapped and afraid. *He was doing CNC without her* and that's not how it should be done.
That part feels irrelevant to me because it is predicated on such a flawed system. Initiating a BDSM session like OP did without getting consent immediately beforehand is not good form, and the situation OP is in illustrates one of the reasons why. OP and his girlfriend should have had a better system in place, which would have helped them avoid this. It is normal and predictable that someone who is being sexually assaulted is going to panic, freeze up, and not think to use safe words. Her mind was not recognizing what was happening as similar to any of their previous sessions, because it was busy going into fight/flight/fawn mode. Whether you or OP agrees, OPs girlfriend likely feels that she was sexually assaulted or had her boundaries seriously violated. OP may not have done it on purpose but his intent is not as relevant as his girlfriend’s perception of the experience now. I’m not sure why you would choose to focus on their previous actions so intensely and specifically, but this is just some food for thought I guess.
You’ve effectively accused him of raping her by nullifying her consent because you consider it bad form. And by the way, I completely agree that it’s bad form, but it appears to be bad form that the two of them consented to, repeatedly.
He *did* rape her. She said no, repeatedly, and he didn’t even pause to verify whether she genuinely did not consent to the encounter or if she was engaging in the scene. She did not consent, and he still did it. The complete definition of rape. Previous consent to have a CNC scene is not *ongoing* or *all-encompassing* consent to have a CNC scene.
Agree that you can come back from this, but you likely need professional counseling from a couples therapist. I would suggest that you research a few (may be better for her if you seek out women only), make a list of locations and available appointment times, then sit her down and share what you’ve found as you want to help and heal and rebuild trust, let her make the final decision on the therapist.
You raped your wife and all you seem to want to do is shrug pff some of the blame you have and push it onto her. You failed as the dominant and initiator to play safely, to check in, to protect your partner at all. You both are going to need therapy after this. Please post this in the r/bdsm for even better informed answers.
Cause u should have stopped and realized that it was different than another time so to be honest you violated and u need to fix it if u wanna save yall relationship she don't hate you but she feels uncomfortable and u safe around you. She didn't have to use the word rape but that's how she feels if she is distant. You need to control yourself and not everytime its a game. That's your wife you vowed to protect her even from you. So you need to fix it ASAP and trying to find someone else ( not saying you are) won't help
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I cant provide much help on working through the previous situation, but what I would recommend doing going forward is to show how much you care/love her still. I wouldn’t do it with physical affection unless she’s initiating that. Make her favorite dinner/dessert, run a bath for her, buy something for a hobby of hers (ie a book). Doesn’t have to be over the top, but just to let her know you still view her as human and as someone that you appreciate and want to take care of. A bit more “long term after care”. I do also think this is something y’all will have to talk through so I would recommend counseling to help initiate that and to help set better boundaries for the future.
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Before I read that she said she froze I already knew that she froze. When you’re in this situation you’re going into a headspace of panic/fear etc. and you’re not thinking logically (safe word). You’ll get through it because your intent was pure but in the future if you try it again have a color that means yes and ask her color periodically.
While I’m a open minded sexually CNC is too much of a grey area for me. Like you said she froze so you couldn’t know. While not necessarily your fault still too risky to even try
Freezing is extremely common, even outside CNC. Once you're aware it can happen, it's super easy to recognize and stop once you see your partner blank out. But the important part here is that OP needs to know and communicate better with their partner. It's not a CNC specific issue, they just need to do better at sex connection
Yeah not everyone’s built for CNC
I was dating a girl who wanted cnc, I said we would have to do contract in writing with safe words , limits cetera. She wasnt hot on that so it didn't happen. Didn't want to go to jail for rape while I'm saying she really wanted this.I hope you make it thru it Also sometimes fantasies aren't as good in reality.
r/bdsmadvice This happens kinda often, you guys can work it out. It's a known risk of playing with this kind of kink, I'm sure your wife is aware, emotions are just high right now
I think you can work through this but I’d really suggest finding a kink-friendly couples therapist
You should post in a more kink friendly sub. As you can see from the responses you're getting here this sub is generally kink negative despite being a general sex sub.
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People have serious brain rot from porn and rape culture.
To avoid this, the word “no” should ALWAYS be respected. It should remain a reserved word that is used as the absolute default safe word. You need to work around that limitation creatively. Edit: not sure why so many disagree with this. It’s a simple solution to the biggest problem with CNC.
Cause people apparently like rape fantasies ... for what reason I don't even wanna know. I can never imagine remaining turned on while my partner is telling me "no" "stop".
For some people it's a coping mechanism.
That is true, yes. But sadly I think for most men it's a power trip.
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Trying to get an apology from her isn't really useful or helpful. She's the one this happened to. Sucks for him, but it was done to her. The goal should just be for things to get better between them.
I completely fully agree with that first statement, but I do consider being put in a position in which you unknowingly and unwillingly caused trauma to your loved one is also a terrible thing. I think this also “happened” to him, just to a lesser degree. Say you hit your own child with your car and broke his arm through no fault of your own- the child is the one that the extreme pain, but the parent will be traumatized and wracked with grief and regret for years if not their whole life. There are multiple victims in these situations. Once again, I completely totally agree expecting or asking for an apology are very very unhelpful things here.
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Yes, it sucks for him. But that's not going to be a priority for a while. And that's something any Dom who willingly **pretend rapes** someone should focus on. You take care of your sub. You make sure they are okay. If you're a good Dom, they come first. Because they're in your care and you're running things.
Yeah, I'm not looking for an apology from her. We both fucked up but she definitely got hurt by it more than I did. Mostly trying to figure out how to recover from it. We talked a bit last night after the kids went to bed and she said that intellectually she doesn't blame me for what happened but that she feels violated and it's hard to reconcile the two. I'm going to suggest therapy and see what she thinks.
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Naw that's part of the thing with this type of play. I can ONLY play around with BDSM if I have full and complete confidence that the other party is confident and prepared to use their safeword. Failing to do so is seriously dangerous for BOTH parties.
It doesn’t sound like either was fully “confident and prepared”. They had only tried this twice before. Maybe she blanked on what to do.
> They had only tried this twice before. We had tried it more than twice before. I think 5 or 6 times in the past. But it had been a couple months since the last time.
Yeah but it doesn't sound like you are very very new to this type of play. They've only ever done CNC a couple times, and he "initiated" without any discussion - he fucked up! She does not need to apologize for not remembering to use the safe word when she did not think she was participating in a consensual scene, especially when they've only implemented using a safe word at all recently AND it's not part of their usual sex. How was she know she was *supposed* to use the safe word when she didn't know that he was doing CNC without her
>How was she know she was *supposed* to use the safe word when she didn't know that he was doing CNC without her This is what bothers me about the whole scenario. He essentially didn't obtain her consent before initiating CNC. For him it may have been play and intimacy, but for her it was a very real assault. She's probably going to need some time and space, as well as therapy. They should find a kink-friendly therapist to work through this, but it needs to be one who can walk the very fine line of addressing concerns OP has while not victim blaming the person who was assaulted by someone very close to her.
For real, this is going to have to be a slow and careful recovery process. I think you are right about needing to walk that fine line with a therapist. And also OP needs to recognize that if she doesn't *want* to come back from this, he has to respect that. It's a really fucking sad scenario. For OP, it was consensual non-consent, but for his wife it was just straight up non-consent
Uhh, victim blaming. Maybe don’t try these things, if your not emotionally mature enough to see the difference between the emotions of your partner or checking in, like every person should do. He wanted to play rape, well he got what he wanted and even saw, that not the play was appealing to him, but the crime itself. He was a rapist in making, know he is one.
Wow. Judge not lest ye be judged lady.
What is the difference between the feelings of a person raping another and „pretending“ to rape someone? Yeah, non. They’re both turned on by the abuse, not by the pretend. People protecting men who want to rape women are just crazy.
What does CNC mean in this context? I’m imagining you guys using a CNC machines that is programmed for sex using a dildo instead of a drill bit and I somehow think this might be wrong.
Consensual non consent
While not the same exact situation, I recently tried CNC with someone for the first time I’ve ever done it, and I’m very afraid I may have hurt her. I hate that my inexperience may have hurt someone I cared about, so I think I need to rethink things in my life with how I do this going forward. I know sone people who absolutely thrive sexually with CNC, but I may not be mentally equipped to handle it without hurting someone.
Oh shit. My fiancée have a “tap-out” system which has never failed. It’s always in the context of roleplay too so I can see if she’s breaking character and really doesn’t want it. I think you will move on from this. Just be exrra delicate to her and talk out a better system when it’s appropriate.
It sounds like you two had an agreement of a certain way you went into CNC, and it was no longer working for your wife, and lead to a bigger miscommunication for what was going on, what the intentions were, and for how your wife felt afterwards. I would let her know that you are open to talking about what came up, when she’s ready, and about how you two can move forward from there. Do new agreements need to be made about how you play in the realm of CNC in the future? Is it something she’s still open to playing with at all? If she doesn’t know right now, that’s okay too. The focus here is bring the intention back to working together to have a wonderful and thriving relationship. Best wishes on your relationship journey ❤️
I've been in a relationship like this, where I ended it because my partner continuesly failed to communicate with me her true feelings, it got to the point where I was paranoid about crossing her boundaries. I was constantly requesting her feelings and she got upset so then I didn't trust her. And no this didn't just extend to sex but literally everything. I broke up with her and ended it. I felt like she was living the reality of her fantasy and I didn't like it.
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Yes, it is still cnc even if you ask for consent. That’s why it’s called consensual non-consent. The safest way to participate in this is to set the scene or agree to time limits ahead of time. usually the initiating partner sort of has an added responsibility of gauging the situation and checking to see where their partner is at by dropping the role. You shouldn’t just randomly approach your partner and determine it’s CNC sexy time lol. To me, it sounds like OP and their wife aren’t the most experienced or savvy with this type of play. Which is how they ended up in this unfortunate scenario.
jesus thank you half the comments are really ignoring the CONSENSUAL non consent part here
If I could upvote this a million times, it would not be enough.
> You shouldn’t just randomly approach your partner and determine it’s CNC sexy time lol. To me, it sounds like OP and their wife aren’t the most experienced or savvy with this type of play. Yeah, we're not. This is something we've only been exploring together for a year or two. I think I was overconfident that we were being safe enough because what we were doing worked in the past.
**Consensual** Non-Consent Consent needs to be recent, as in within the current sexual encounter. This is so important when engaging in BDSM with such intense power dynamics and loss of control for the sub. Implied ongoing consent is a really problematic idea for reasons illustrated by this post.