The RBDSM Conversation: A Guide to Talking Before Intimacy

When you are considering being intimate with someone, it is helpful to have this conversation first.

RBDSM is a framework for having it. Five letters, five areas: Relationship, Boundaries, Desires, Sexual Health, Meaning.

I teach it with two more attached. Aftercare and Trauma awareness. RBDSM+AT. Both are usually presented as optional extras, and both are where I see the actual injury happen. What someone needs afterwards, and what their body already carries, shape how an encounter lands more than any of the logistics agreed at the start.

Despite what the letters look like, it has nothing to do with kink. It is a communication tool for any two or more people considering sex or intimacy of any kind, in any relationship structure, on a first date or in the twelfth year of a marriage.

Whether the two of you can have this conversation tells you something useful on its own. People who can talk about their other relationships, their last STI screen and what tonight would mean to them are generally people who can also handle what happens afterwards. If someone will not stay in the conversation, you have found that out before anything happened rather than after.

Where it comes from

The acronym came out of the ISTA community (International School of Temple Arts) and spread from there into tantra, conscious sexuality, polyamory and ordinary dating. You will find variations with extra letters depending on who taught it.

ISTA as an organisation has had huge public safeguarding difficulties. If you are moving in those spaces, that history is worth knowing. However, the questions themselves are sound and they belong to nobody in particular now.

When to have it

Before. Clothed, or at least before anyone is undressed. Not while kissing, not while touching, and not in the ten minutes after arousal has already taken over the decision-making.

It does not have to be a formal sit-down, and for many people it works better spread out. Over voice notes across a week. On a walk. In three separate conversations, one about health, one about other partners, one about desires. Christine Marie Mason describes going through all the letters with a lover over ten days before anything happened.

The opening line can be simple:

"Would you like to do an RBDSM conversation before we go further? It's a set of questions that helps both of us be clear."

If you are the one being asked, take time with your answer. A maybe is a no until it becomes a clear yes.

Relationship

What relationship structures are you each in right now, and what agreements come with them.

• Are you single, dating, married, separated, monogamous, open, polyamorous, practising relationship anarchy, in a don't-ask-don't-tell arrangement.

• What agreements do you hold with other people that touch this. Do you need to tell someone before, after, or at all. Is there a veto. Is there a check-in.

• Does anyone else's consent belong in this decision.

• Is there anyone who would be hurt by this and does not know it is happening.

Then the second half, which people skip and then get injured by:

What relationship are you available for with each other.

Get granular. Sleeping over. Sharing a bed versus sharing a night. Texting between meetings, and how often. Meeting friends. Meeting children. Holding hands in public. Being posted about. Being told about to other partners. Calling each other anything in particular. Repeating this at all.

Two people can want each other exactly the same amount and be available for entirely different things. Saying that out loud in advance is the whole point of the letter.

Boundaries

What is a no.

Cover the physical, the emotional and the practical, because all three cause trouble:

• Body areas that are off, either always or today. Anywhere with a history you would rather not open tonight.

• Acts that are off.

• Substances. Whether either of you drinks or uses anything before or during, and whether that changes what is available.

• Phones, photos, recording. Where any of it lives afterwards.

• Marks. Whether they are welcome and where they can be seen.

• Who gets told, and in what detail. Friends, other partners, group chats.

• Time. Whether you stay, whether you leave, when.

• Sleep. Some people cannot sleep next to a new person and would rather say so now than manufacture a reason at midnight.

A boundary describes what you will and will not do, and what you will do if a line is crossed. A request about someone else's behaviour is still a fair thing to ask for, it just gets a different word, and it needs their agreement rather than your announcement.

Include the ones with a time stamp. "Not tonight" is a complete answer and it does not need a reason attached to be respected.

Desires

What is a yes.

Most people answer this with a list of acts and stop there. Go underneath it. Name the state you want, then the acts that get you there:

• What do you want to feel. Wanted, taken, adored, playful, slow, undone, held, useful, at ease.

• What do you want emotionally as well as physically. Eye contact. Laughing. Silence. Being talked to.

• What is your pace. Some people need forty minutes of nothing much before anything else is available to them.

• How do you like to be initiated with, and how do you initiate.

• What are you curious about and have not done.

• What do you already know does not work for you.

Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent is a good companion to this letter. It splits any touch by two questions: who is doing it, and who is it for. Which gives four positions. Serving, taking, allowing, accepting. Most people discover they habitually live in one or two of them and go their whole lives without asking for touch that is purely for their own pleasure. Working out which quadrant you are actually in, in a given moment, resolves an enormous amount of confusion about why something that looked generous felt hollow.

A desire named is not a desire owed. Both of you keep the right to decline anything on the list, including things you said yes to an hour ago.

Sexual Health

What each of you knows about your body and what you do about it.

• When were you last screened, and what did the panel actually test for. Standard clinic screening in South Africa usually covers HIV, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea. It generally does not include herpes unless you ask, and throat and rectal swabs are usually only done on request even though infections sit there regularly.

• What were the results.

• Window periods, so the date means something. Chlamydia and gonorrhoea show up within one to two weeks. A fourth generation HIV test picks up most infections by 45 days and is treated as conclusive at 90. Syphilis can take up to 90 days.

• How many partners since that test, and what protocols were used.

• Any positive status. HIV, HSV, HPV, hepatitis. Someone on effective HIV treatment with a sustained undetectable viral load does not transmit HIV sexually. Herpes is carried by a very large share of the adult population and is managed, not catastrophic.

• PrEP, and whether either of you is on it. It is available in South Africa through public clinics and private providers.

• Contraception, whose it is, and what the plan would be if it failed. Answer that one before you need it.

• Barriers. For which activities. Including oral, including toys, including hands if either of you has cuts.

• Fluid bonding agreements with other partners, which belong here as much as under R.

• Where you are in your cycle, if that is relevant to you.

This is the letter people apologise for raising. There is no need. Someone who is put off by being asked when you last tested has told you something you needed to know.

Meaning

What would this mean to you.

Ask it that plainly. "If we sleep together, what would that mean to you?" The answers people give are startlingly varied and almost never the one you assumed:

• The start of a relationship.

• A one-off with someone I like.

• Something I need for my own healing.

• A friendship that includes this sometimes.

• I do not know yet and I am willing to find out with you.

Then the follow-ups:

• What are you hoping happens tomorrow.

• What would it mean to you if we never did this again.

• What would you not want it to mean.

• Is there anything you are hoping this will fix.

• 
  

Almost all the harm in casual and early intimacy comes from mismatched meaning rather than from mismatched desire. Two people both said yes, and one of them was saying yes to a different thing entirely. This letter is the one that catches it.

There is also a layer under the psychological one. Sex is an energetic exchange. You take on something of each other and it stays for a while, in the body and in the field around you. Some encounters leave you clearer and some leave you carrying something that is not yours. Knowing what you are opening to, and with whom, and what they are bringing, is part of what makes an encounter clean. This is not a reason for fear. It is a reason to be awake about who you let in.

Aftercare

What each of you needs in the hour after, and in the days after.

Most people have never been asked this and have never asked themselves. The answers tend to be small, specific and easy to provide once somebody knows them.

The first hour

Settle these beforehand, so that nobody is working them out while undressed:

• Stay or go, and roughly when.

• Touch or no touch. Some people want to be held for twenty minutes. Some need their skin left alone and would rather sit up with a blanket on.

• Talking or silence. You can agree in advance that nothing gets analysed tonight.

• Water, and something to eat. Blood sugar drops. Bodies get cold.

• Light on or off.

• A shower alone, a shower together, or neither.

• Sleeping in the same bed. Wanting your own bed is not a review of the encounter.

Why the comedown is physical

During and just after sex, oxytocin and prolactin rise, dopamine falls away from its peak, and adrenaline and cortisol come down from wherever they got to. A body that has been very open and very activated has to travel back to baseline, and that journey has a shape. Cold, hunger, tearfulness, sudden flatness and a strong wish to be alone are ordinary parts of the return.

Drop, and its timing

Emotional drop arrives anywhere from a few hours to three days afterwards, and it usually disguises itself as an unrelated bad mood on a Tuesday. Knowing the timing in advance is most of what makes it manageable. Say it now: "If I go flat on Wednesday it is probably this, and here is what I would like you to do or not do about it."

Drop is not only for whoever was more open or more receptive. The person who was holding the container, tracking the other one, watching for safety, also comes down, often with a particular flavour of self-doubt about whether they did it well. Ask what they need too. A dynamic with no language for the more active partner needing care afterwards has a hole in it.

Contact afterwards

Agree whether there will be a message, roughly when, and who sends it. This one item prevents more distress than almost anything else on the list. Someone who has been told "I'll message you tomorrow evening" has a completely different Wednesday from someone who was told nothing at all.

Agree too who each of you tells, and in what detail.

Feelings that were not in the plan

Decide now what you will do if one of you develops feelings the agreement did not include. Not whether it could happen. What you will each do. Working it out in the moment, three weeks in, with one person already attached, goes badly nearly every time.

Closing the field

There is an energetic side to this. You have been open to another person and something of them stays with you for a while. Some people need a wash, a change of clothes, twenty minutes alone, a walk, salt in a bath, their own bed. Some are worse off leaving and need to sleep beside the person. Work out which you are and say so before rather than after.

If you are with someone you will not see again, plan your own aftercare in advance. Who you will speak to, where you will sleep, what you will eat, whether you have to work in the morning. Arrange that beforehand and Sunday goes considerably better.

Trauma Awareness

What your body already carries, and what happens if it arrives.

You do not owe anyone your history. What helps is the shape of it, and the shape can be given without the story.

What is useful to share

• Anything that could land as triggering, physically, emotionally or sexually. You can name a position, a phrase, a kind of touch or a pace without explaining where it comes from. "Not from behind" and "don't hold my wrists" are complete sentences.

• Words that are off entirely. Particular names, particular insults, particular endearments that belong to someone else.

• Whether smells, sounds, weight or a specific kind of pressure do something to you.

• What you are generally like in the days after intimacy.

Sex is a common place for old material to surface, and the reason is structural. Position, weight, restricted movement, smell, breath at the neck, pace, being looked at, being unable to see. These are the same channels the original experience came in through. When something arrives mid-encounter, your body has usually found an old file. It is rarely a comment on the person in front of you.

Knowing your own freeze

Any agreement that depends on you being able to speak up in the moment has a gap in it, because speech is the first thing to go.

Tonic immobility, the involuntary freeze, is extremely common under threat. In Möller and colleagues' 2017 study of sexual assault survivors, around 70% reported significant immobility during the assault. It is not a decision and intention does not override it.

Fawn is the quieter version, and in bed it shows up more often than freeze. It looks like agreement. Enthusiasm, sometimes. The body carries on performing while the person inside has gone somewhere else, and afterwards there is confusion about why something they said yes to feels like it happened to them.

So answer these out loud, in advance:

• What do you look like when you go quiet inside. Very still, very compliant, very agreeable, suddenly very funny.

• Does your breathing change. Do your eyes change. Do you stop making sound.

• Do you know while it is happening, or do you only find out the next day.

• What would you want the other person to do. Stop and hold you. Stop and move away. Turn the light on. Say your name. Ask you a specific question.

• What brings you back. Weight, cold water, sitting up, your own clothes, being asked to describe the room out loud.

Build a second channel

• A word that stops everything, chosen for being easy to say.

• A physical signal for when words have gone. Two taps. A hand opening. An object held that gets dropped.

• Check-ins from whoever is more active. "Where are you?" gets better information than "are you okay", which has a reflexive yes attached to it.

• A standing agreement that either of you can stop at any point for no stated reason, with no follow-up questions that night.

If something surfaces

For the person it is happening to: stopping is always available and you will not ruin anything.

For the person with them:

• Stop, and say out loud that you are stopping.

• Turn the light on. Get them covered or dressed if that is what they want.

• Take your hands off unless you have asked.

• Orient them to the present. Name the room, the day, your name, the fact that they are here and it is now.

• Ask rather than decide. "Do you want me closer or further away."

• Keep your job small. Be steady and make the room safe. Processing belongs to another day and probably to someone else.

• Water, warmth, food, something ordinary.

• Do not interview them afterwards. If they want to tell you what it was, they will.

The next day

Check in briefly, once. One question rather than five. "How are you today" is enough. If this is an ongoing relationship, agree together at some point whether that kind of contact is available again and what would need to be different.

If something got crossed

Boundary crossings happen. Sometimes through vague description, sometimes through misreading a state, sometimes deliberately. Naming which of those it was is part of sorting it out.

If you were the one crossed, you do not need to build a case. "Something happened on Friday that I'm still carrying, and I want to tell you what happened in my body" is enough to start with.

If you are the one being told, your first ten minutes have a single rule: do not lead with your intentions. "I didn't mean to" is usually true, and it also asks the other person to look after your distress ahead of their own. Ask questions. Say back what you have understood. Intentions can come later if they are still needed.

Repeated crossings after being named are a different situation, and one worth taking outside the relationship for support.

How to receive what you hear

Half of this framework is listening.

• Do not negotiate someone's no. Not with charm, not with reasons, not with a story about how it went fine with someone else.

• Do not fix, reassure, or explain away what they have told you. Let it be as big as it is for them.

• Do not treat a disclosure about health or history as a reveal that requires a verdict. Ask questions.

• Notice your own body while they talk. A yes that arrives from your chest and a yes that arrives from wanting to be liked feel different, and you can tell them apart if you slow down enough to check.

• You can take time. "I want to think about what you've said, can we talk tomorrow" is a complete and respectful answer.

If the conversation surfaces a mismatch, the framework is doing its job. The most common outcomes are: not tonight, not this act, not this configuration, not at all, or yes and here are the adjustments. All five are good outcomes compared with finding out afterwards.

During, and after that

Consent is live. Something available at the start of an encounter can stop being available twenty minutes in, and that is information rather than failure. A quiet "how are you doing" or "still good" during keeps the channel open without breaking anything.

And this is not a contract. Bodies change, agreements change, desires move. In an ongoing relationship, revisit the letters every six months or so, and after anything significant: a new medication, a new partner, a birth, a bereavement, an illness, a change in what your body can do. Renegotiating is a sign that you are paying attention.

Questions I hear in sessions

Doesn't this kill the spontaneity?

The opposite happens for most people. When you have handled the unknowns, your head stops running background calculations about disease, expectations and whether they will text, and your body gets to be fully present. What most people call spontaneity is often just an agreement to leave things unsaid, which puts one person in the position of hoping.

It feels clinical.

It can be warm. It can be flirtatious. Asking someone what they want and watching them tell you is not a medical intake. The tone is yours to set, and the questions do not require a solemn voice.

We have been together for years. Is this for us?

Especially. Long relationships accumulate assumptions, and a lot of them stopped being accurate years ago. Couples who run the letters after a decade routinely find at least one thing they had both been quietly tolerating and one thing neither had ever asked for.

What if I don't know my own answers?

Then that is your answer and it is worth saying out loud. Sit with the questions on your own first, with a pen. Most of them take twenty minutes and reward the second attempt more than the first.

What if they say no to the conversation?

Then you have your information. Some people will say they are not ready or would rather do it differently, and that is workable. Someone who mocks the idea, or agrees and then keeps steering away from it, is showing you how they will handle your boundaries later.

Can I do this if my English is not the language I feel in?

Do it in whichever language your body speaks. These questions land differently in a first language, and translating desire is much harder than translating logistics.

Working with this

I use RBDSM+AT with individuals and with partners. Reach out if this conversation feels too daunting to try alone.

Sessions run at Fruition House in Woodstock, online, or as home visits. There is a free fifteen-minute call if you want to see whether I am the right fit.