Our DD Agreement

One year in I have written out our ttwd/DD agreement in plain English ... in part for this page here on my blog but also for Frank to read, review and confirm. He has, he agrees and so forward we go ...  

Everyone approaches their ttwd/DD relationship in their own way ... and like any other relationship in life,  it will be as unique as the persons engaged in the relationship. One of the first things Frank said as we began our initial DD investigations was he didn't want to be following along, copying what someone else was doing. If we were going to do this, we'd have to make it 'ours' ... and so we did ...

In our pre reading there was talk about the D's of DD ... a high level categorization of the DD principles with the most common definitions being Dishonesty,  Disrespect and Disobedience. We decided we would rather take a positive view and therefore turned our high level DD relationship principles into Honesty, Respect and Obedience with the additions, as is common, of Health and Safety. For all but 'Obedience', the application of the principles runs both ways, applying to both of us ... the only difference ... I get spanked for my transgressions. Frank does not. 

Honesty - to be actively practiced with open communciation and includes the omission of information. For example, a response of 'I'm fine' to a question such as "Is something bothering you? or Are you ok?" is not acceptable if it is a cover-up for an underlying unspoken issue. 

Respect - Includes self respect - meaning no negative self talk is allowed. It also covers respectful discussion and dialogue with one another.

Obedience - does not mean 'obedience without question'. Discussion is allowed, be that input from me and/or expression of any concerns I might have. However, in the end, Frank has the final say. It also should be stated here that this is one area where Consent comes into play in a big way - whether explicit or implicit by previous discussion, nothing in the BDSM arena of our relationship happens without Consent. 

Health - We both try to keep our health in mind when it comes to diet, drink and exercise. We're not always successful or as diligent as we should be, but we do as best we can as we want to be here for each other for many more years.

Safety - Goes along with Health ... doing what we can to make sure we keep ourselves safe for each other AND we promise to keep each other informed of our whereabouts when we are not together.

Day to Day 

In addition to adherence to the main principles, we have day to day 'rules'. These tend to be rather fluid in that they can change and morph over time. They are usually in support of the general running of our household and our everyday lives. It might be something Frank sees as needing correction or it could be something I've asked him to help me with. Currently, as of this writing, most day to day rules are focused on the time management and procrastination issues I struggle with. 

The 3 C's
We initially adopted our own version of the "3 C's" as another foundation principle. The C's we used were Communicate, Communicate some more and Compromise. Now, as time has gone by, we see the wisdom in the first definition we read about and that is, from the ADDS website, Communicate, Consent and Consistency. We realized in late 2018 that a lack of 'C' for Consistency was something that needed to be addressed. 

... this is our DD agreement ... words we believe we can live by, in our version of 'this thing we do'

Nora Jean & Frank