Pushing Limits Is Not The Only “True” Submission.

A lot of people, especially s-types, get coerced into the idea that the way to be a good, worthwhile submissive is to push their limits for their dominant partners, but there are lots of ways to express yourself that don’t involve putting your boundaries up for audit. In this post, I explore the idea of pushing limits and the various forms it takes.

Written by Ancilla L.

I’m going to tell you three stories.

The first story is about a person named Blanket. Blanket wanted to put a leash on me and take me for a walk, and I can totally do that, but they wanted to do it as part of a larger pet-play scene and I don’t do pet-play. It’s not a hard limit but I don’t like it, especially the part that involves eating and drinking from bowls (and food-involvement of any kind within play really is a hard limit for me). I just don’t like the idea of being degraded as a pet (cannot emotionally separate it from my pets and how people treat pets) and I cannot do the kind of play where you’re nice to your pet-bottom (cannot physically be turned on by affection and scritches). I totally get that people don’t need to approach it the way I do, but it’s not my thing. I told Blanket all of that. Blanket said,

How will you ever grow as a submissive if you don’t push your limits?

The second story is about a man named Petit Paura. I negotiated some fairly intense play with PP. It involved a significant amount of heavy impact and with regard to the impact only we had a sort of safeword-as-suggestion agreement. In that, if said it, he wouldn’t necessarily stop immediately, but he would slow down a bit or switch implements. A few hours into play, I used the safeword. He didn’t stop but he did slow down and use it as an indication to wrap things up soon after. After we finished playing and were sitting together and talking. Petit Paura said,

I was really disappointed when you used the safeword, I thought you were into pushing your limits.

The third story is about a man named Refraction. I met Refraction at a party and we were participants in a kinky dating game in which people ask questions or something, eventually pairing off and then negotiate a tiny scene with each other and do a two-minute play. Kinda of like a sample platter. They provided some implements. When Refraction and I were negotiating, I told him I was cool with all the implements except for the tickler because tickling is my hardest limit. He grumbled about my limit but respected it and we did the two-minute play as the game suggested and it was fine, and then we bid one another, adieu. Refraction said,

That was fun but it would have been most fun if I had been able to use the tickler too, that was what I was most interested in but your limit is your limit, I guess.

I don’t know when it happened but something about submission has become ubiquitous with the idea of pushing limits and as always, I am here to list the million problems I have with that as a concept. Maybe I need a better hobby but I am very unlikely to actually stop doing this even if I do find one (just based on the fact that in the last year I have started painting, studying Italian, gardening and translating music and I still seem to want to continue doing this). Before anything else, let me just say, I don’t, fundamentally, have a problem with the concept of pushing limits, outside of the semantic issue I have with it being extremely nebulous as a phrase and concept. I like pushing my own limits in some ways. For instance, I like the idea of going past a certain level of endurance and placing myself in circumstances where I have no choice but to do that. I think there are lots of ways in which different people genuinely enjoy pushing their own or (consensually) pushing the limits of their partners and I am assuming that process involves thoughtful, nuanced and rigorous communication and awareness. I am not talking about that, okay? If you love pushing limits and want to push them and that is at the heart of submission to you, go forth and be you, I am not criticising you.

I am, quite specifically, talking about the idea that good subs/bottoms/slaves push their limits. I am talking about the trend where some tops are fixated on getting from their bottoms the one thing they have stated as a limit as a way of proving their devotion or sometimes because this pedantic form of sadism is just a cover for the fact that what they really enjoy and want is to violate you. The idea that the growth of a submissive is hinged upon their willingness to push their limits and without it they cannot grow. The idea that a scene cannot be intense or extreme unless it involves some degree of limit-pushing. And finally, the idea that limits really are some vague, mouldable concept that only ever moves in the direction of one developing fewer limits over time. I’ll just start by doing a very quick review of some of my opinions about limits:

• I understand and agree with the need to qualify limits by hard and soft but I think sometimes binary classifications like that make us think that is the extent of the conversation or comprehension needed. I like to think of limits as more expansive than that. For instance, I do have a hard limit about food within play, but I also have limits with every single type of play in which I engage. Like, I love needles, but needles in my genitals? Limit. I love whips, but being whipped on skin that has already seen impact from other implements? Limit. I like emotional sadism but being made to feel a particular type of neglected? Limit.
• Obviously, my limits are different with different people depending on the parameters of the relationship. I have a CNC-ish relationship with my spouse which means that some of the limits I present to him are suggestive and he mostly adheres but sometimes he doesn’t, that came from the relationship and does not apply to everyone. On the other hand, there are things that are not limits with relative strangers, like a scene where you use me and then abandon me, that I couldn’t actually handle with my spouse, I think.
• In my experience, the more you do with your body, sexuality and kink, the more limits you discover about yourself. I don’t mean you become inhibited, I mean you become informed, not just about the play itself but also about yourself and your body. Most people I know start with a general set of limits and over time, as they gain experience, they may lose or push some of those, but they usually, also, develop or discover more. As a result, I think it’s unwise to think of limits as restraints to experience, it gives rise to the idea that people who have a lot of limits are not wild and free, whereas people who do are the ones who are actually growing.

Anyhow, that was just some general information about limits I use to operate and I mention it because it influences how I (or you) may view pushing limits and the less-than-noble trends associated with it. First of all, because I am feeling generous, I think some of these trends may arise from the confusion of the fact that the word limit does a lot of heavy lifting. It tends to include things:

• I don’t want to do.
• I fear.
• I dislike.
• I am traumatized by.
• I find boring/uninteresting or just, beige.

That’s fine, really, I think it’s fine to put any of those under limits but I do think, for me, it creates a lot of confusion about what I am and am not open to pushing, and what is and is not related to my devotion in a dynamic or relationship. Sometimes, that may give rise to not ill-intended but not thoroughly considered communication about pushing these limits. For instance, the idea that pushing limits is growth (as a submissive) may sometimes just be arising from not closely thinking about what kind of limit you are pushing.

Let’s take fear, for starters. The limits I do push or want to push usually relate to things of which I am fearful in some way. Like, I am scared of needles in my genital-area and getting over that fear, taking myself out of that comfort zone could, potentially, feel like growth or even devotion/service to someone. It could, also, backfire and feel like trauma, but that’s the risk of pushing any limit, really. Some things are scary simply because you don’t know what to expect of yourself in them, because you haven’t done them before, because they represent something that frightens you or because you view them, fundamentally, as a challenge. I see how that could represent or feel like growth. However, then there are things that make me uncomfortable and/or things I dislike, and pushing those limits doesn’t feel like growth. It just makes me feel undermined as an individual. Like, pet-play. I’m not scared of it, if I did do it, I would probably survive it but it gives me the ick and I just don’t like it. Pushing that limit wouldn’t be growth for me, it would just make me dislike the person who made me do it.

I think sometimes, in fetish, sort of similar to in parenting, we think of dislike or just not wanting to do something as the central location of where all growth really lies and honestly, I wonder, you know? My kid fucking hates broccoli (because apparently, he loves being a stereotype) and broccoli is nutritious and all that, and I could use that to make him eat it, but also, there are other foods that could offer the same nutrition which he readily eats, and if he just doesn’t like one thing, that doesn’t have to be the only food-teachable moment of his life. He can just not eat something because he doesn’t like it and it doesn’t mean he will never grow as a person. I get teaching your children that life doesn’t always, only give you exactly what you want, but I also think it’s good to teach them that they can dislike something and choose not to engage with it. In submission (or other kink), I feel like the virtue-responsibility is even more absent, to be honest. Do I have to grow as a submissive, really? Does submission only have validity if it takes me out of my comfort zone and makes me eat the broccoli? I get that for some people the negotiated and explicit purpose of it is to achieve some kind of personal goal or growth, but that’s a specific case, in general, must a sub only sub to grow as a sub? Is growing as a sub the same thing as growing as a person? Are both only achievable if you do things you don’t like? Do I have to bring the need of desire to grow to my kink?

Honestly, the fixation on proof of submission by doing things you don’t like for your dominant fucking bugs me. Again, I get that sometimes it’s what you actually want, and it falls under a category of pushing limits that is desirable to you, but when it becomes a pattern to define submission as such, a lot of people never get to know that there are other options, and some tops use it to undermine limits altogether. Like Petit Paura who made my use of a safe-word seem like it was contradictory to my own desire somehow and it shouldn’t have been because it got in his way. Or like Refraction, who wasn’t happy to do four things because my limits made it so he could not do the fifth and he could really only focus on that. Or like, Blanket who questioned my ability to grow as a submissive if I didn’t do the thing that got them off but I dislike. Honestly, I get wanting to (negotiated) push limits of fear and trauma a lot more than I get wanted to “push” people by way of things they dislike, don’t want or find boring. It’s fucking infantilizing.

You know how sometimes people will say to you that they don’t like bungee jumping and there is always that smartass in the group who will chime in to say you cannot know you don’t like something if you haven’t tried it yet. It feels a lot like that and fun fact, actually, there are lots of things I haven’t done that I can tell you I don’t like. I don’t like eating papaya because it smells weird. I don’t like racing cars, because even though I haven’t done it, I know I don’t want to die in a fiery car-crash even by accident. I don’t like playing most board-games, and I know this new one you bought is one I haven’t played before but my life is limited and I will be using my experiences to inform what I do and do not want to do, and they suggest I do not want to play your game. Besides, if I don’t want to do something, I don’t have to justify it to you and that is where my generosity for limit-pushers ends. It’s when they make me feel like I must justify my limit, make it feel rational to them, reconcile it with my position as a bottom and whether that even allows me my limits, accept that my limit interferes with their fun and apologise for it or just believe that every limit I push gains me more sub XP points.

I can push exactly zero limits and be the most submissive sub that ever was. I can push every limit and learn absolutely fucking nothing. I can push five limits and realise that made me need eighteen new limits. I can push a limit and grow. I can also push a limit and get traumatized. I can push limits simply for my entertainment and absolutely refuse to push any that don’t serve me. I can be open to pushing a certain type of limit but not at all open to pushing another. I don’t have to want to push my limits in order to be a true or real sub. If the entirety of your fun is in pushing, you should stick to people who entirely want to be pushed. Having limits does not make me weak, not having them does not make me strong, badass or cool. I can totally be the kind of sub who does not wish to grow as one, I just want to be bad and unfixable, maybe. I don’t owe you discomfort for your satisfaction and one the other hand not all discomfort is equal to a limit.

Limits are a system of information that allow us to play well with one another as people, I don’t fucking want any value judgement in mine. There is no such thing as true submission but there is such a thing as a real limit, and if you cannot learn to respect them, you should probably learn to be alone.