Lifestyle

What is lifestyle?

Lifestyle is, in BDSM, the word for a relationship that holds even when no one is playing: the roles stay in place outside the scene, on ordinary days and in ordinary conversations. Whoever says lifestyle sets herself against play only, where everything stops the moment the session is over. The word says nothing about how strict or how sexual it is.

What lifestyle looks like in practice

In a single arrangement that still holds on a weekday morning.

The clearest example is the dating profile. On dating sites and on FetLife, people note after their preferences whether they’re looking for “lifestyle” or “play only”, and that one word filters out more than all the other fields together. Play only is looking for someone for an evening where something happens. Lifestyle is looking for someone whose role also exists on Tuesday morning.

Beyond that there’s little to see. The difference sits in things no one else notices, like a set form of address the moment the front door closes, or a message sent every morning at eight. How much that is varies enormously from couple to couple, and that’s exactly why the word alone doesn’t say enough.

Where the word lifestyle comes from

From psychology, via advertising, and only after that from the scene.

According to the Woordenboek van Neologismen by Marc De Coster, Alfred Adler coined the term in 1929, at first for the main characteristics of a person as formed in early childhood. In the 1950s American journalists and advertisers picked it up, and in the Netherlands it became popular in the early 1980s.

That history explains why the word fit BDSM so well. Adler’s meaning was already this: not what you do, but who you’ve become. The scene needed a term for the difference between a preference you act out for an evening and a relationship you live inside, and borrowed a word that already had that difference in it.

Why people call their BDSM a lifestyle

Because it saves on switching, and because it says something about what you count yourself part of.

Leisure science has a framework for that. In the Journal of Positive Sexuality, D J Williams and Emily Prior lay out that across several studies BDSM meets sociologist Robert Stebbins’s criteria for serious leisure: it asks for perseverance, it asks for specialized knowledge and skill, it runs like a career, it yields durable rewards, participants identify with it, and it comes with an ethos of its own. That fifth point is the lifestyle point.

• For whoever keeps the role, the switching disappears. There’s no more moment where one version of yourself takes over from the other.
• For the partner it becomes predictable: what held on Saturday holds on Wednesday too, so you don’t have to gauge each time where you stand.
• For both, a shared vocabulary comes with it, plus a group that recognizes it. Williams and Prior name that ethos explicitly as a feature.

In that same piece, Prior and Williams found the opposite in a small exploratory study of female participants: their BDSM had the features of casual leisure, so spontaneous, short-lived, playful and without specialized skill. In other research, participants described their BDSM as pleasure, as escaping the ordinariness of life and as being free of your daily roles. That last one is exactly what lifestyle does not offer.

How people fill in lifestyle

Usually lightly, and almost never the way it’s in the books.

The lightest form is a handful of arrangements that always carry on, like a form of address or a ritual at homecoming. Above that sits a worked-out form with postures, set moments and a high protocol for special occasions. And then there’s the version that also covers the bank account, the calendar and the wardrobe, which usually gets filed under 24/7 or M/s.

One thing separates careful from careless: did someone explain the word before using it? Two people who both say “lifestyle” sometimes mean very different arrangements, and that often only shows when one takes for granted something the other never agreed to.

Misconceptions about lifestyle

“The lifestyle, that’s swinging, right?” In the Netherlands, often yes, and that’s exactly the confusion. The swinging community has used “the lifestyle” as a name for itself for decades, and on Dutch couples-club sites the word means partner swapping by default. In a BDSM conversation someone means something else. So ask which of the two.

“Lifestyle is the same as 24/7.” They sit side by side but measure something different. 24/7 says how much of the time the arrangement covers, lifestyle says what place BDSM takes in your life. Someone can call herself a lifestyler with three arrangements that always hold, and that isn’t 24/7.

“Lifestyle means heavier play.” No. The word says nothing about intensity or pain. A couple can live lifestyle for years and never get further than a form of address; a single scene between two play-only players can be far more intense.

What I see in this myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. The word lifestyle I rarely hear from people who actually do it. I hear it from people wondering whether they should want it.

What lies under that is almost always the same question: is this allowed to stay something small. There’s a quiet ranking in the scene where lifestyle is supposed to be more serious than playing, and it doesn’t hold. I know couples who’ve played on Saturday night for twenty years and nothing else.

And then the side no one mentions: lifestyle means you get caught out somewhere at some point. On a form of address in a restaurant, on a collar under a scarf, on a message your mother-in-law sees. Sketch that scenario out before it arrives.

What you can do yourself

• Always ask further when someone says “lifestyle”. Ask which arrangements carry on and when they don’t hold; the word alone covers too many things.
• Put what you mean in your profile instead of the label. “Form of address and a morning message” is more informative than lifestyle.
• Test your own situation against Stebbins’s criteria. Do you identify with it, or is it something you do?
• Work out the visibility before you let anything carry on. Think about who could notice it at work, with family and online, and what you’d say then.
• Agree on a place where it doesn’t hold. With lifestyle the end of a scene is missing, so you make that moment yourself.

More reading about lifestyle

On this site, 24/7 covers the practical side of an arrangement with no end time, and lifestyler is about the word for the person. The blog category on dominance and surrender shows what that division of roles looks like outside a scene.

Where this fits on my site

If you’re wondering whether this is part of who you are, that question doesn’t have to be answered all at once. The page about the BDSM date shows how a single evening is arranged, after which you notice for yourself whether you want any of it to stay in place.

Sources

• “Wait, Go Back, I Might Miss Something Important!” Applying Leisure 101 to Simplify and Complicate BDSM. D J Williams (Idaho State University and Center for Positive Sexuality) and Emily E. Prior (College of the Canyons and Center for Positive Sexuality), Journal of Positive Sexuality 1(3), 2015 (DOI 10.51681/1.134). Supplies the six criteria for serious leisure by Robert Stebbins as the authors list them: perseverance, the acquisition of specialized knowledge, training and skill, a career-like course, durable outcomes and rewards, identification of the participant with the activity, and an ethos of its own; the finding that research classifies BDSM as serious leisure; the finding by Prior and Williams (2015) in a small exploratory study of female participants that their BDSM in fact had the features of casual leisure, namely spontaneous, short-lived, playful and without specialized skill; and the words with which participants in other research described their BDSM, including pleasure, playfulness, escaping the ordinariness of life and being free of daily roles.
• lifestyle (persoonlijke levensstijl). Collected entry of the Etymologiebank of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, with Marc De Coster, Woordenboek van Neologismen: 25 jaar taalaanwinsten, Amsterdam 1999, and Nicoline van der Sijs, Groot Leenwoordenboek, 2005. Supplies that the term was coined in 1929 by Alfred Adler and at first used in psychology for the main characteristics of a person as formed in early childhood, that the word was promoted by American journalists and advertisers in the 1950s, that it became popular in the Netherlands in the early 1980s, and that it was taken in as an English loanword for personal lifestyle. The same entry notes that lifestyle is on the Woordenlijst Overbodig Engels, with levenswijze, leefgewoonte and leefstijl as Dutch counterparts.

Related terms

• Lifestyler. The word for the person, and why it isn’t a ranking.
• 24/7. The arrangement with no end time, with the practical side of how couples handle it.
• D/s. The relationship itself, which you can set up either per scene or continuously.
• High protocol. The strict code of conduct that often comes with the worked-out form.
• Kinkster. The wider label, which is about belonging and not about the shape of your relationship.
• Scene. The word lifestyle sets itself against: the session that ends, versus roles that stay in place.
• Swinging. The other meaning of “the lifestyle” in the Netherlands, with the word history that explains why the confusion exists.