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When we talk about kink, a lot of the time people treat safe words as if they are exclusively an expression of an absolute limit. A firm proclamation that the scene is too rough, the pain too much, the situation too extreme, and that the entire thing needs to stop. Safeword use in such situations is obviously essential and mandatory in order to bring the scene or sensation to an end and ensure the safety of all participants. This is not, however, the only time a safeword should be used.

They can be used to express when someone is at their limit. They can mean the scene needs to end completely because the sub can't take it anymore at all. But they don't have to mean that. Safewords should be used to pause or stop the scene and break character for any reason. You can also use your safeword to pause and discuss a limit, communicate that something is or isn't working for you, ensure that everything is going to plan, take a water break, go get a toy from the other room, check with your partner about something, pause to change your laundry, or do absolutely anything else out of character related to your scene.

This is why a lot of people use green/yellow/red.

Green - continue

Yellow - pause and make a change (this can be anything from "slow down a little bit" to "I need something different but want to keep going")

Red - I need this situation to be over and for us to get right into aftercare.

What a lot of people seem to miss is that in this framework yellow is also a safeword.

All of this is ignoring the additional dimension that Dominants also need to safeword!! It's completely normal and if you're doing a lot of BDSM it should happen in your daily kink life often. Real life is not a romance novel.

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