Domination & submission _ the BDSM relationship handbook ( PDFDrive )

Safety Precautions
Realistically, the odds of your date turning out to be a serial killer are quite low
and for that, we should all be eternally thankful. It is a sobering thing to note,
however, that many of us have gone out and bought lottery tickets with a one-ina-million
chance of being a winner, thinking that those were pretty good odds.
You may not be able to do much to improve your odds of winning the lottery,
but there are some things that you can do to improve your chances of not only
surviving your first meeting, but of enjoying it.
How can taking safety precautions help you to enjoy your first meeting? You
just might be surprised at all the ways! First, it can help to silence those nagging
little voices of doubt in the back of your head that make you wonder if you’re
doing the right thing, or exercising proper judgment. Second, it will help to
reassure your friends and family (assuming anyone has any idea what you’re
about to do) that you are not a complete idiot. While you may not particularly
care what they think, overly concerned friends and family have sometimes been
known to do crazy things to protect you from your own worst instincts. The last
thing you probably need is some sort of whacky family intervention right in the
middle of what might otherwise have been a perfect first meeting! Finally, the
fact that you took safety precautions can make your partner feel better about
you. After all, there are essentially two kinds of people who don’t take safety
precautions: stupid people, and predators. Whenever I meet someone for the
first time, and she tells me that she hasn’t taken any safety precautions, I think,
“Seriously? Maybe she isn’t as smart as I thought she was.”
Here are some simple safety precautions that you can take prior to your first
meeting. For the most part, there isn’t anything terribly complicated or difficult
to accomplish about any of them. You may not be able or willing to do
everything on this list but any one of them could save your life or, at the very
least, ensure that there will be a trail to follow in the event you simply vanish.
Know Who You’re Meeting
The first of our safety precautions probably seems as if it should be absurdly
obvious to anyone with a lick of sense; however, there really is a big difference
between thinking you know someone, and really knowing someone. A harsh
reality that we don’t like to think about is, we rarely ever truly know anyone,
even when we interact with them every day in real life. John Edward Robinson,