Even Light Power Play Needs a Negotiation (Here's How to Make It Sexy)

Most people who are experimenting with power play and BDSM aren't doing anything extreme. They're just two people who trust each other, trying to "spice it up." But skipping the negotiation conversation because it feels like it has to be a mood killer is a rookie move that can lead to real problems. 

I'm not talking bruises here, I'm talking about emotional distance, shut down, and loss of libido. 

This episode is built around a real couple — smart, communicative, good at relationships — who did years of power play without ever having a proper negotiation conversation, because they both assumed that trusting each other was enough. It wasn't. The fallout was a sexless relationship, nervous system shutdown, and a lot of hurt that took real work to untangle. 

I want to help you avoid that entirely.

Whether you're using restraints, doing impact, or just soft-topping: the negotiation is the first scene. Done right, it's not a clipboard and a liability waiver — it's where the anticipation starts, where you find out what your partner actually wants, where you start co-creating something that's going to be really, really good. This episode is about how to do that.

In this episode:

• Why smart, aware people keep skipping BDSM negotiation — and what it actually costs them
• What subspace is, why your prefrontal cortex goes offline in it, and why that means the bottom has to be an architect of the negotiation, not a passenger
• The real difference between topping/bottoming and dom/sub dynamics (and why accidentally agreeing to the wrong one causes relationship problems)
• How to make the negotiation desire-forward, not just limit-focused — starting with how you want to feel, who you want to be, and what energy from a partner opens you up
• Why aftercare isn't an afterthought, and how to talk about it before you play
• Where to find real community and credible resources if you want to go deeper

Whether you're kink-curious or have been playing for years, this one's worth your time.

Resources mentioned: 
Yes, No, Maybe Lists from various sources (pick your favorite): 
Babeland: https://www.babeland.com/babe-blog/how-tos/yes-no-maybe/
Bex Caputo: https://www.bextalkssex.com/yes-no-maybe/
Sunny Megatron: https://sunnymegatron.com/consent-sexual-boundaries-yesnomaybe/

Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

More links:
Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/

Pleasure Path Diagnostic here: https://laurajurgens.com/diagnostic/

About me, testimonials, blog, bookings: https://laurajurgens.com/

Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited. 

Transcript

Welcome to Pleasure Uprising. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens, intimacy coach, somatic practitioner, and your guide to getting out of your head and into your body, your desire and your real capacity for connection. This show is for people who are done performing and ready to actually feel it. Let's go.

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode. We're going to talk about power play and BDSM, and what happens when things kind of go off the rails — what you need to know in order to make it hot, and in particular, what you need to know about negotiations for any sort of power play. A lot of people want to avoid this stuff and just sort of, oh, I trust this person, it'll be fine, without actually doing the negotiation, and we're going to talk about why that's so tempting, and also why it's really problematic and can get you into some trouble and some danger.

I'm going to start by telling you a little story. I had a couple — we're going to call them Sam and Tina. She's in her mid-40s, she's a therapist, he's early 50s, really cerebral. They've been doing a lot of power play, bondage, degradation, really high-intensity stuff for years, and then it went to shit. The reason they came to me is because she'd completely stopped wanting sex, and he couldn't get turned on without BDSM, without feeling dominant. They started massively triggering each other — on one hand he's feeling super rejected, on the other she's feeling triggered by pressure. They had a sexless relationship at this point, with lots of hurt and resentment. And when we dug just a tiny bit under the surface, what we found was — these are really smart people. Both of them are very smart, very competent, they care about each other, they actually have really good communication. But they had never done an actual proper power or BDSM negotiation, because both of them felt like it was quote unquote hotter to skip it, and that they quote unquote trusted each other. This is what caused all of the problems. Skipping the BDSM negotiation led to the slippery slope of a sexless relationship with lots of hurt and resentment, massively triggering each other, and her not being able to find her libido anymore.

I want to talk about how that happened and why it happened, but I also want to talk about why it's so tempting to skip it — and it's really understandable for even very smart, thoughtful, aware people to be really tempted to skip it. I want to talk about whose job it is to make sure it happens, and how to make the negotiation itself hot, so that you actually want to do it. And I also want to talk about how not to ruin your libido and traumatize yourself or your partner.

So we're going to do a little roadmap here today. This is a little different from other BDSM episodes, because I think a lot of BDSM and kink resources out there assume a level of advanced play that isn't necessarily appropriate for everybody, and sometimes just assume that you're going to do this negotiation, and so many people don't. I've consulted with other therapists who come to me because they want to know how to help clients on the other side of this. What I described with Sam and Tina is not uncommon. People frequently skip BDSM or power play negotiation, suffer serious consequences in their relationship or in their sexuality for it, and then go to therapy or counseling trying to fix it after the fact. I want to help you avoid this pitfall.

I'm going to give you some standard BDSM resources in the show notes, but today I want to make sure you understand why at any level of kinky business or any level of power play — whether you think you're doing anything hardcore or not — the negotiation matters. It's actually usually the really amateur, early-stage stuff that can get you into a lot of trouble. It's like people who do the most extreme sports are the ones who wear the helmets. The people who just try it out for the weekend get traumatic brain injuries because they don't wear a helmet, because they don't think they're that hardcore. This kind of thing happens with kink and BDSM too.

So here's what's coming today: we're going to talk about why people actually want to do power play and kink in the first place — what it's actually doing for us. We're going to talk a little bit about terminology, just to make sure everybody's on the same page. We're going to talk about what negotiation really is, and it's often not what people expect it to be. We're going to talk about what happens when you skip it — I know I just gave you a little horror story, but we're going to talk about why what happens when you skip it does happen, so you understand it. And we'll talk about how to make negotiations fun and erotic instead of clinical, what your takeaways should be, and what you can actually do. And then I'm going to give you some resources, because there's no need for anyone to reinvent the wheel here — there are great resources out there. My purpose is just to make sure you use them.

Okay. Number one: why do we crave this stuff in the first place?

A lot of people think they crave power play when actually what they're really wanting is attention and attunement. They don't really want power play per se — but a lot of people do want power play, and that's all good. And if you want both attention, attunement, and power play, that's also fun. I want to say something about this that I think is really missing from a lot of mainstream conversations about power dynamics in the bedroom: a lot of people think they want power, but what they really crave is a partner who's resourced and grounded in themselves, so that they don't have to caretake. I've said this on this podcast before, and I'm going to keep beating this drum, because I don't think enough people are saying it.

If you want to play with the idea of being dominated or dominating someone else, it's really important to realize that that's not about aggression. It's really about stepping out of our everyday identity. Most of us walk around in our everyday identities kind of on autopilot — we're a professional, we're a parent, we're a partner, we're a quote unquote responsible adult. If you can think about all the possible identities of humans on this large spectrum, we all sort of give ourselves a particular slot, and we've decided, okay, this is me now. Sometimes the world has defined some of that for us, but we've also often done some of it ourselves. Regardless of where it came from, we're walking around in this subset of all the possible identities.

Power play and kink in particular are a chance to step out into different aspects of ourselves and really explore different identities. And this is really play in the truest mammalian sense — the animal sense of play. It's not frivolous, it's not immature. Play is a fundamental human need, and this type of sexy play for adults is a way to play with our partners where we can expand our identities, explore our deep emotional needs, and really allow ourselves to step into different identities than we walk around in day to day.

Specifically for power dynamics, some of the things that draw people to them are: the freedom of surrender — putting down the weight of being in charge, which is so appealing to many of us, especially if we spend a lot of time having to be the leader. The freedom of actually being able to give that up is intoxicating. There's also the aliveness of authority — we inhabit power consciously and intentionally, and step into a powerful part of ourselves that maybe we don't feel safe or comfortable inhabiting a lot of the time. There's also the erotic charge of transgression — doing something that feels forbidden in a really fun way, or role play, this identity exploration: who else am I underneath who I have to be every day?

None of this is pathological. In fact, there's research — one study in particular — showing that BDSM practitioners were psychologically healthier on average, according to the metrics they were scoring, than the general population. The whole point is that it's play, and play requires a container to be safe enough to actually let go inside. When we were kids and we played, we would have rules, and we would set out those rules and negotiate them with each other — that's what allowed us to have fun without everything devolving into a whole bunch of fighting. Rules are important in play.

So, a little digression into terminology before we come back to what we need to do to make that play safe and create that container. Words people use matter — not because there's one right way, but because knowing the distinctions helps you have better conversations. There's a ton of jargon in power play and BDSM — I encourage you to learn it if you want, it does make conversations easier, especially if you're in the community. But some real basics today.

Top and bottom. Top and bottom refers to in-scene roles only — you are going to be a top or a bottom in this particular setting for the time agreed upon. The top is the person who's giving structure, taking a more dominant or powerful role, oftentimes also the person giving sensation or direction during a scene. The bottom is the person who is following during the scene — a lot of times also the person receiving or surrendering. But you don't have to be passive to bottom. You can top from the bottom, where you're giving direction while receiving. There are nuances here, but the key thing to remember is: when the scene ends, when that agreed-upon time to play ends, the power dynamic ends.

When people talk about domming and subbing, in official BDSM land that is an ongoing relational dynamic — a power exchange extending beyond the scene into how you communicate, make decisions, and relate day to day in your relationship. That is a much bigger container, requires a much bigger conversation, often a written contract. It is a serious relationship commitment. So if someone asks you about a dom/sub dynamic, make sure to clarify whether they're actually just talking about topping and bottoming in scene roles only.

In practice, people outside of the BDSM community tend to use these interchangeably, and that's fine — language evolves. But it's worth knowing, because if you start playing with more experienced people in the community, you could be inadvertently agreeing to a longer dynamic where, for example, the scene ends and you think, okay, I'm going to go make some decisions now, I'm going to decide what I want for dinner — and the other person is not open to you deciding what you want for dinner, because that is not what they think you agreed to.

A note on finding community and learning: if you want to go deep into BDSM, I really encourage you to find local community. This is a craft. There are people who have spent years learning it. One of the best places to start is informal public meetups — usually at restaurants, street clothes, no play, just people. They're called munches. You can find them on FetLife, which is like Facebook for kinksters. Not all teachers or mentors are created equal, so do your homework, ask for references, trust your gut, and be very discerning. Apprenticeship and community are how this knowledge gets passed on responsibly. I do work with clients directly on this — not just on the repair side after something's gone wrong. I'm not a professional trainer of doms and subs by any means, but I do soft topping and bottoming training and help people begin to play with kinks. There are also great professional trainers in kink out there — people like Sunny Megatron, Midori, Bex Caputo. They all have great resources, and I'll link them in the show notes.

But none of the resources matter if you don't use them, don't think you need to, or don't bother. So often people think they don't need to look at the formal resources because they're just dipping a toe in — and then months or years down the road, it has escalated, you've never had negotiations, and shit has hit the fan like it did for Sam and Tina.

Okay, so let's look at what negotiation actually is. How do we set the container well without making it a bummer? People generally avoid it because they're imagining a liability waiver, a clipboard, some sort of mood killer. But done well, the container negotiation, the safety discussion, is actually the sexiest first act of the play scene. Jack Morin, one of the early psychological researchers in sexuality — he has a book called The Erotic Mind — found that desire is usually intensified by anticipation, by moving towards something with intention and attention. A well-held negotiation conversation does that. You're not just filling out forms — you are co-creating the space and starting to set the whole mood of the encounter.

You can do it in a clipboard, form-filling way, which I don't recommend, because it is a bummer. But you do not need to do it that way, and the best way is not to do it that way, because you're going to want to do it again if it's fun — and if it's not fun, it's going to feel awkward, it's not going to turn you on, and you won't have as much anticipation for the actual event. So let's make everything fun from the beginning. And you know who brings the fun? You do. You and your partner decide on purpose: this is going to be flirty, this is going to be fun, we're going to set the mood, we're going to enjoy ourselves by having a really wonderful in-depth conversation about what we want and what we don't want. This is actually where you find that out. This is where you start learning what your partner wants — and learning what your partner wants is hot. You get to picture it, you get to think about it, you get to anticipate. Don't deny yourself that joy.

Sam and Tina went into power play assuming that having a safety conversation about what the boundaries were, what they really wanted, what the aftercare plan was going to be — they assumed all of that was too much of a bummer, and that it wasn't required if they trusted each other. But they never actually talked about what they really needed and where the limits were ahead of time, and there's a really big problem with that.

I also want to say: this sexy conversation is not a one-time thing. Desires change, bodies change, relationships change — they change daily. Negotiation is ongoing for every time you're going to play with power dynamics or kinky things, especially if they carry any risk of harm, psychological, emotional, or physical.

What Sam and Tina didn't understand is that when you decide to skip this conversation, that is actually the rookie move. People who are playing with extreme edge play and really intense, potentially harmful kinky stuff are not skipping these negotiations. The pros are not skipping it — it's the rookies who are skipping it, and the most common harms happen when you do. The really seasoned pros who are highly respected in the community are doing the negotiations always — hardcore scene or light scene, they are doing it. It's amateurs who are playing with fire by skipping it and getting hurt.

One of the important things the pros understand is the neuroscience of subspace. Subspace is the emotional and sensory place you get to when you are bottoming in a scene, when you have given over your power, when you have truly surrendered. What happens is that the prefrontal cortex — the thinking part of your brain that can assess new information, access consequences, do planning — it measurably down-regulates in subspace. That's a good thing. That's the whole point. It's what people want. But it also means that in that place, your capacity to actually track your own limits is massively reduced. If you are experienced, you know this — you know that in the moment when you're in subspace, you can easily override your own boundaries without even registering it. Your body will register it and hold on to it for later, sometimes for much later, and you can have major traumas that happen. But your mind isn't monitoring that in the moment, because it's literally lost the capacity to do that. Experienced practitioners have built the negotiation protocols and safety architecture around BDSM to be in place before anyone gets into subspace.

I want to explain what subspace feels like. I've felt it in rare times when I've encountered someone skilled enough and who I trust enough to truly top me. One really easy example: I was in a training on BDSM practices with my friend Wayne, who is a very attractive gay man — very gay, no interest in having sex with me. His energy is so good, I felt so safe, that when we were role playing, I was just overcome with this wave of yes. His energy was so grounded, so good, that I felt like I was totally down for anything. And in that moment, I was so turned on and so willing to relinquish all power that he could have literally done anything, and I would have been into it in the moment — and then I would have had a problem later. We were playing with that specifically so we could see how it would feel and why we need to contain negotiation. It really landed for me hard, because I was even in that space way longer than I expected to be. That space stuck with me for a good 24 hours.

This is why it's really important for the person in the bottoming role — whoever is going to be submitting or surrendering responsibility — to be an architect in the negotiation, not a passenger. Sometimes new subs, or overly trusting bottoms, will want to skip this work precisely because they crave the subspace so hard they want to jump into it too fast. And here's the thing: you cannot do that and be safe. You cannot give up your responsibility to set up the container for your future self. It's not fair to your top, and it's not fair to future you, who has to live with the consequences. You can't leave it to your partner to figure out where your limits are — that gives them an impossible task. You're saying, lead without a map, carry full responsibility if anything goes wrong. That is not fair. So even if you are tempted because you want to surrender, you want to play with power stuff, you're just like, just take charge, I'll be fine — no. That is how you get into trouble. You have to take responsibility to have the conversation, decide in advance, and decide conservatively, because you can always play again if it goes well.

A lot of real BDSM in the world doesn't even have any sex in it — it's just the power dynamic. Sometimes they're going to bring something sexy in, but it's not going to be penetrative sex. I highly recommend not starting with penetrative sex in your first power play sessions. Start light, make sure the dynamic is feeling good, err on the side of conservative limits, let yourself feel good, have a good experience, and then say, hey, why don't we try this other thing next time.

So back to Sam and Tina. Her limits were crossed repeatedly — not maliciously. Sam genuinely didn't know where Tina's limits were. She hadn't even fully registered the crossings in the moment. Her body only registered them later, and in fact it was really slow and cumulative. Her nervous system just started drawing the conclusion that this isn't safe, and it shut down her desire for sex. She was experiencing pain with penetration, she could not bear the idea of bottoming, and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with sex. And her partner felt like BDSM was his only way into arousal, and thought he couldn't get turned on without dominance — but it turned out, in our work together, that subbing was great for him. He did want BDSM, but what he was really craving was subbing. He'd been getting it vicariously through her when he was topping her. What he really needed was help being in his body, and subbing gave him that. So we were able to wiggle the dynamics so that she could be in the dominant role and still feel safe. But they were not able to go back to the previous dynamic, because her nervous system would not let them.

Damage can really look like your body just starting to tell you, over time, I have no desire anymore, or I don't trust this person — or just losing capacity for being even in relationship with someone. So it's worth it to err on the side of caution. And one of the best ways you can give that to yourself is by making the safety conversation fun and erotic.

So here's what we do.

Number one: make it a desire-forward negotiation, not just limit-focused. We don't just talk about what you won't do — that matters, but you actually want to start with what you want. Name what you want to feel, your actual erotic emotions, how you want to feel in your body, how you want to feel emotionally. Not just what am I willing to do, what am I not willing to do. Start with the desires first. Does that sound vulnerable? Yeah, it is. But if you're not willing to get vulnerable, then why are you doing this? A big piece of this is about vulnerability — about stepping into the ability to be vulnerable with someone and allowing both of you to have safety to do that. You do have to ask for what you want.

Number two: the identity dimension. Who do you want to be? What characters, archetypes, or energies do you want to inhabit? Tell your partner that. Can you imagine how hot that is? This is where role plays can get really interesting — not just what do you want to do, but who do you want to become. And who does your partner want to be in relation to that? You can co-create this whole thing together, where you get to step into these energies and archetypes together.

Number three: the energy question. What energy from a partner helps you open up? What just helps you melt? What energy shuts you down? These are very different conversations than talking about activities. Someone can do the same thing with a completely different energy, and your body will respond completely differently — that is facts. Somebody can walk by you with a flogger in their hand with the energy of I'm trying to do it right and don't you find me sexy, and your body might not respond at all. Somebody can walk by you with a flogger in their hand with deep attention and intention, feeling incredibly confident in themselves, feeling like I am magnetic and you are going to wait for me and you are going to feel me walking slowly by you — just holding this in my hand, not even doing anything with it — and your body can respond completely differently. So you need to talk about energy. What energy do you want? What opens you up? What shuts you down?

Number four: aftercare is part of the discussion. You'll see that in every credible BDSM negotiation guidance document — it is not an afterthought. How do you want to land after this experience? What do you need from your partner after intensity? Think in advance about what's going to make you feel comforted and safe after this experience. What's going to reassure you that it's okay if you went into a top or dominant role? What's going to help you switch gears back to normal life? What's it going to take for you to come out of subspace? What do you need your partner to do to help you ground yourself? What do you need to know, and how do you need to be reassured that it's not going to carry over into regular life?

Note: yes, there are all kinds of details about negotiation discussions, including safe words — that is absolutely something you should have, that is absolutely part of the negotiation. I'm not giving you the step-by-step here, I'm going to link to resources for that in the show notes. What I'm trying to do is help you expand it, so you can see how to make it sexy. A lot of those resources don't really focus on making it sexy — they focus on the bare bones and the how-to. I want you to make sure you know what you need to make it sexy, so that you actually do it, you have fun with it, and you don't skip it.

Number five: let the conversation be intimate. Set up the scene for you to have the conversation. Don't do it over a greasy plate of French fries at a diner, unless that really floats your boat. Have it be intimate. Let yourself be turned on. Let yourself talk slowly. Let yourself be in your body. Allow the negotiation and play to kind of blur — allow it to be playful when you're talking about it.

Number six: context matters. Know what you're trying to build. As I mentioned, you can play with power dynamics without sex — and I definitely recommend that in the beginning. Know that a Saturday night play scene is really different from a dynamic that is meant to structure your whole relationship. Be really clear about: what are we doing here, when is this, and when does it end? Is this something we want to explore on an ongoing basis, or are we just dipping our toes in?

So let me just wrap up with a little recap. We've talked about why we crave power dynamics — play, identity, freedom, stepping outside our everyday selves. We talked a little bit about terminology, top/bottom, dom/sub, how to find community that can teach you more. We've talked about what negotiation actually is — it's not about doing paperwork, it's about setting the whole sexy container and creating safety. We talked about what's at stake when you skip it, and why it's so important for the bottom or the sub to take ownership as well as the top. And we talked about how to make it hot — desire-forward, identity-forward, energy, aftercare.

I want to invite you, as you go off into the rest of your lives today, to ask yourself: what do I actually want from power play, if I'm curious about that? What is the experience? How do I want to feel? And have I ever said that out loud to my partner, or any partner I've played with or considered playing with? Just start there. Start with how do I actually want to feel, who do I want to be, what do I really want from this? That's the first place to start with yourself.

All right, my dears, I will see you here next week.

Hey, before you go, if you enjoyed this show, I want to invite you to check out one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's a free guide called Get Out of Your Head, a starter guide to releasing the pressure, shame, and shoulds around intimacy. It has four reflection exercises that go deeper than anything you'll find in a typical freebie, and most people feel a shift just after part one. So go grab it at laurajurgens.com/guide — the link is in the show notes. And if you're ready to find out what your specific path looks like, I'd love to talk to you. Booking info is also in the show notes, and I will see you here next week.