Contract

What is a contract?

A contract in BDSM is the written record of roles, rules, limits and expectations between the people involved. It is not a legal document but a conversation document: it enforces nothing and sets down what you have discussed. The value is in making it, not in the signature.

What is in it

A contract can run from half a page to dozens of pages. The encyclopedic description lists as usual parts: which activities are and are not allowed, clothing, food, speech rules, household chores, time schedule and agreements about exclusivity.

On top of that, almost every one contains two things that carry the rest. The hard limits: what happens under no condition. And the soft limits, which Dunkley and Brotto describe as what is not on the table right now but can be discussed again later. That stays a no: in a contract the condition under which it becomes a yes should be written alongside it, and who is allowed to withdraw that condition. The same authors describe the distinction as a fixed part of every serious negotiation.

The form varies widely. The same authors sketch a scale that begins with a short talk before the session and ends with weeks of conversations and email exchanges with extensive lists of personal limits. A contract is the top end of that scale.

What it is worth legally

The short answer: nothing. The cited description puts it bluntly. Such contracts “are not enforceable in the way that legal contracts are”, but they can be useful for recording the limits of the agreement in writing and for documenting the consensual character of the relationship.

For the Netherlands there is also the Sexual Offenses Act, in force since 1 July 2024. It states that sex must always be voluntary and equal, and proof of coercion is no longer needed for criminal liability. No document in the world changes that. What was put on paper yesterday says nothing about what is wanted tonight.

That is exactly why almost every good contract has a withdrawal clause. In a consensual master-slave relationship either party can withdraw consent at any moment, which ends the relationship. A contract that does not mention this is not stricter. It is worse.

Why people draw one up anyway

If it is legally worth nothing, why the effort? Because the document is not the goal but the means.

• For whoever takes the lead, writing it down forces precision. Staying vague about what you want works fine in a conversation and not on paper.
• For whoever surrenders, the contract is something to hold on to. What was agreed is there, even on an evening when you lose track of it for a moment.
• For the two of you together, it is mainly an agenda. It marches you through topics that otherwise never come up: money, time, other people, what happens if one of you gets sick.

There is one more reason that gets mentioned less often. Drawing up a contract is a ritual. Signing is often followed by a collaring, a ceremony in which a collar is put on, sometimes in the presence of friends. That is not a legal act but a marking, and it works.

How people go about it

Most couples start small rather than big. One page with five agreements, a list of hard limits and an expiry date works better than a thirty-page document that is in a drawer after two months.

What almost always comes back with couples for whom it goes well is a review moment. Cascalheira, Thomson and Wignall found exactly that among people who live in a power exchange day and night: rules that strengthen the sense of role and that at the same time had to stay flexible to handle ordinary life. They called the accompanying attitude dynamic consent: consent that is given again and again, in ordinary conversations.

That lines up with what Tarleton, Mackenzie and Sagarin found among 202 people into BDSM. Consent norms are widely endorsed, but applied more loosely the longer people know each other. A contract sets down where you stand today, not where you stand a year from now.

So the difference between a good and a bad contract is not in the length. It is in whether it says how you step out of it and when you look at it again.

Misconceptions about contracts

“With a contract you hand over your consent.” The other way around. A contract sets down what you have allowed and is therefore the place where what is not allowed is written. Consent stays withdrawable at any moment, with or without paper.

“Once you sign it, you are bound by it.” There is no judge who enforces it and no body that reviews it. The only binding is the willingness of both people to stick to it.

“A contract belongs to heavy BDSM.” It says nothing about intensity. Couples who never touch a whip sometimes draw one up, and people who go all out often do it without one.

What I see of it myself

Fixed rules are fun for some, but I prefer tailoring things. As far as I’m concerned the question is not which rules should come, but which rules enrich our play. That differs per person, and it differs per month.

So my advice is not: write a contract. It is: write down what never happens. That list is shorter, more honest and far more useful than a document full of roles and titles. And add the date, so that six months from now you see what has changed. For an evening with me that is exactly what we go over beforehand. How that goes is on the page about the BDSM date.

What you can do yourself

• Start with the hard limits. What absolutely does not happen is the only part that really has to be on paper.
• Put an end date in it. A contract for three months forces a conversation that a contract for life never produces.
• Describe how you step out. A word, a moment, a conversation that stands outside the roles.
• Be concrete about ordinary things: money, time, other people, illness. That is where it breaks down in practice, not on the play.
• Do not confuse it with a free pass. What is written is what was discussed, not what is automatically allowed from now on.

More reading about contracts

On this site, the article on consent as the backbone shows what the conversation looks like that a contract is the record of, and the piece on discipline and positions is about the rules that people put in such a document.

Beyond this site, the research by Cascalheira, Thomson and Wignall is the most interesting, because it lets people speak who apply their agreements day and night and explain why those have to stay flexible.

Sources

• Master/slave (BDSM). Wikipedia. Provides the contents of a slave contract, the finding that such contracts are not enforceable in the way legal contracts are but do document the agreement and the consensual character, the collaring ceremony, and the fact that both parties can withdraw their consent at any moment.
• The Role of Consent in the Context of BDSM. Cara R. Dunkley & Lori A. Brotto, Sexual Abuse 32(6), 657–678, 2020. Provides the distinction between hard and soft limits, and the scale of negotiation that runs from a short talk beforehand to weeks of correspondence with extensive limit lists.
• “A certain evolution”: a phenomenological study of 24/7 BDSM and negotiating consent. Cascalheira, Thomson & Wignall, Psychology & Sexuality 13(3), 628–639, 2021. Flexible rules and the concept of dynamic consent among people who apply their agreements full-time.
• Consent Norms in the BDSM Community: Strong But Not Inflexible. Tarleton, Mackenzie & Sagarin, Archives of Sexual Behavior 54(2), 549–559, 2025. Among 202 people into BDSM, strict consent norms are widely endorsed and applied more loosely in existing relationships than with new contacts.
• Wet seksuele misdrijven. Rijksoverheid, in force since 1 July 2024. Sex must be voluntary and equal and proof of coercion is no longer needed; a written agreement changes nothing about that.

Related terms

• Consent. The agreement itself, of which a contract is the written record.
• 24/7. The dynamic in which a contract is drawn up most often.
• Check-in. The tool that does what a contract cannot: gauge how things are right now.
• Consent violation. What it is called when the agreement is crossed.
• 3 V’s. The three questions that come before any contract.
• Collaring. The ritual that often follows the signing.
• Dom list. The lightest form of the same idea: a filled-in list instead of a contract.
• Master. The title of the one to whom the contract grants authority.
• M/s. The relationship such a contract sets down, with the articles of law for which it is legally void.
• Slave contract. The heaviest variant of this document, with the oldest known text from 1870 and the two articles of law that go against it.
• Total power exchange. The agreement form in which the most falls under the contract, with the same legal floor beneath it. The abbreviation is at TPE.
• Duty of silence. The speech rule that most often ends up in black and white in such a document.