Play relationship

What is a play relationship?

A play relationship (also called a play partnership) is an ongoing arrangement between people who do BDSM together without having a love relationship. There is a shared history and there are standing agreements, but no dating and often no sex either. The form sits between one-off play and a steady partner.

What a play relationship looks like in practice

Like two calendars and a series of evenings that resemble each other.

The most common pattern: two people meet at a munch or a rope evening, play once, and after that meet about once every six weeks. By now they know which limit shifts for the other, they have their own aftercare habit and text each other the next day. What they do not do is have breakfast together or know each other’s families.

That it is not an exception is there in figures. Bryce Westlake and Isabella Mahan surveyed 810 practitioners from 43 countries and asked with whom they do BDSM. Most named a romantic or sexual partner (84.4%), but 42.3% also named partners with whom they do BDSM only: not romantic, not sexual. Nearly two-thirds ticked more than one kind, an average of 2.5. So a play relationship is rarely someone’s only bond; it usually stands alongside something else.

The same study shows where such bonds arise: those who only play at home and never come to public evenings were, in fact, less likely to have such a partner. The play relationship is a child of the scene.

Why the word speelrelatie is recorded nowhere

Because the scene made it itself and no one wrote it down.

The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal gives zero hits for speelrelatie, while that same dictionary does list speelkamer twice. The Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, which describes Dutch from 1970 on, has no article on it, and none on speelpartner either, while speelkamer is in it. And the Royal Library’s newspaper archive yields zero articles with this word, against sixty with speelpartner.

Three times nothing, then, with two positive controls beside it. The word exists only in conversations, on profiles and in invitations. That has a consequence you notice as soon as you want to talk about it: there is no generally accepted content. What you call a play relationship can be something else to the other, and there is no dictionary that settles it.

Why people choose a play relationship

To be able to play without a whole life attached to it.

• If you have a partner who does not want this, this is often the only form that fits: something that stands beside your relationship and does not compete with it.
• If you are not looking for a relationship yourself, here you still get the built-up trust that one-off play never provides: someone who knows your reactions and does not have to feel their way from scratch each time.
• If you want something specific that few people do, a play relationship widens your reach: you do not have to find one person who is everything, only someone who does this with you.

It solves no loneliness. A play relationship is by definition bounded, and the people who become unhappy from it are almost always the ones who quietly hoped it would turn into something else on its own. And it asks for more conversation than a love relationship, not less. Precisely because there are no self-evident rules.

Which agreements keep a play relationship running

More than people think, and they have to be said out loud.

Lisa van Raalte and colleagues studied the rules in friends with benefits relationships among 109 American students. The boundaries that are fairly self-evident in a love relationship turned out to be unstable and uncertain there. The rules fell into three kinds: about communication, about sex, and about what you call the relationship itself. That last kind gave the most tension, the struggle to keep something going without it sliding into the territory of a love relationship. That is not BDSM research, and I use it as a parallel and not as proof. But it is exactly the place where I see play relationships break down.

The agreements themselves are about four things. What you do and what you don’t. How often, and who proposes. What you say to others, and whether you are exclusive. And what happens if one of you wants something else. That fourth point almost everyone skips.

What a play relationship is not

“It is just a fling.” No. A fling is about sex; in many play relationships sex plays no part at all. What there is, is a built-up repertoire: rope you know from each other, a safeword that has already been used, and a habit of catching up afterward.

“Without a relationship you have less to arrange.” The other way around. In a love relationship the rest of life carries part of the agreements; here nothing carries them. Everything you do not say out loud stays an assumption.

“It is the same as pick-up play.” That is the opposite end of the same axis. Pick-up play is play without a history; a play relationship is history without dating.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo in Amsterdam, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. What I run into most often is not that it goes wrong in the scene, but in the weeks between.

The classic one: nothing is agreed about contact outside the play, one starts texting and the other does not text back, and within two months there is a silence no one intended. One sentence beforehand prevents that.

The second one I see again and again: people do not dare ask whether the other still plays with others, afraid the question claims too much. While it is not a claim but a health question, and usually a reassurance.

What you agree before you start

• Say out loud in the first conversation that this is a play relationship for you and not the beginning of something else, even if it feels awkward.
• Agree how much contact there is between meetings, and who may take the initiative.
• Ask whether the other still plays with others and whether sex is part of that, and tell the same about yourself.
• Set down what happens if one of you gets a steady partner: does it stop, or is it discussed again?
• Make a habit of a debrief a day or two later, because precisely without a shared household that is the only moment when something can be adjusted.

More reading on play relationships

Within this glossary, pick-up play explains what is missing when the history is not there, D/s describes the power form a play relationship can have but does not have to, and 24/7 shows the other extreme. Negotiation is about the conversation itself, and peer rope describes the evenings where this kind of bond arises most often.

Beyond this site, the study by Westlake and Mahan in The Journal of Sex Research is worth reading: the tables on partner choice can be followed even without statistics knowledge.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to try something for which you do not yet have a steady play partner, I am a middle path: no relationship, but someone who does it more often. How such an evening is prepared and arranged is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• An International Survey of BDSM Practitioner Demographics: The Evolution of Purpose for, Participation in, and Engagement with, Kink Activities. Bryce Westlake and Isabella Mahan (San José State University), The Journal of Sex Research 62(3), 341–359 (online 15 November 2023; DOI 10.1080/00224499.2023.2273266, PMID 37967131; authors, volume and pagination checked against Crossref, full text read). Online survey of 810 practitioners from 43 countries. Used are: that 84.4% play with a romantic or sexual partner, that 42.3% also have partners with whom they do BDSM only (not romantic, not sexual), that 23.8% play with strangers and 29.6% with friends, that 63.4% ticked more than one kind of partner with an average of 2.5, and that those who play strictly privately less often have such a BDSM-only partner.
• Examining Rules in Friends with Benefits Relationships. Lisa J. van Raalte, Lauren A. Bednarchik, Mark A. Generous and Paul A. Mongeau, Archives of Sexual Behavior 51(3), April 2022 (PMID 34779977). Qualitative research among 109 American students. Used explicitly as a parallel and not as proof about BDSM: that the behavioral boundaries fairly self-evident in a love relationship are, in an ongoing non-romantic relationship, unstable and uncertain; that the rules named fall into communication rules, sex rules and rules about how the relationship itself is named; and that the tension lies above all in keeping the bond going without sliding into the territory of a love relationship. The publisher releases only the abstract; nothing beyond it was drawn on.
• Geïntegreerde Taalbank, WNT and Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek. Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Give the negative finding: zero entries for speelrelatie in the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal and no article for speelrelatie or speelpartner in the ANW, with speelkamer as a positive control in both (two WNT subentries, one ANW entry).
• Royal Library newspaper archive (Delpher). Searched via the SRU service on the DDD_artikel collection. Gives zero articles with the word speelrelatie, against sixty with speelpartner.

Related terms

• BDSM. The umbrella that a play relationship is one of the relationship forms of.
• Pick-up play. The same play without a history, the end where a play relationship often begins.
• D/s. The power form a play relationship can carry, but does not have to.
• 24/7. The other extreme: an arrangement that instead never stops.
• Negotiation. The conversation in which a play relationship’s agreements are made.
• Peer rope. The evenings without a teacher where many play relationships arise.
• Protector. The role of someone who explicitly does not play with you.