This book, taking a neutral approach that attempts to be equally applicable regardless of your preference of D/s role, sets out to tell you how to take a bedroom only kink relationship and shift it into a one where the experience of that extends outside of time boundaried and limited scenes and into one where kink can be enjoyed on a more ongoing basis. The author is a switch, speaking from their experience with both roles, but in practice I find things tend to put a lot more emphasis on struggles from the dominant side.
I also think the title poorly gets across what it is actually doing, because it leaves the impression of a preoccupation on punishments and prescriptive (and very strict) high protocol. It’s actually about communication, negotiation and a much more organic approach to adding additional structure to your life. Lloyd’s philosophy is a matter of romantic intentionality, with the belief that all relationships are already built on (often unspoken) rules and agreements. What she is concerned with is helping you work with what you already have to make your changes sustainable.
She’s also very sensitive that this can be emotionally fraught and load bearing to the long term survival of a relationship. And, as much as it sets out not to be a BDSM 101 book, it still spends a lot of time on the foundations of how you and the other person work as a couple. It’s assumed you know what a dominant or a sub is, and the basics like safewords, but she does not suppose you are starting with more than that. This is not to say at any point the advice is tedious or obvious, rather she assumes that because most vanilla relationships got that way with a lot of help from external scripts that are treated as the human default, your relationship’s seriousness and pre-existing momentum do not preclude you having never seriously talked about what you wanted outside of very basic things.
What I otherwise think makes Llyod’s manual distinct is the emphasis on rules and discipline as romance and reassurance for both parties. Otherwise, I believe this book benefits from its assumption that you have to meet people where they are at and not over emphasizing living up to a fantasy ideal. Inversely, I believe the title and opening premise of the book fail to capture that you will also be thinking about the psychology and intentionality of what you are doing in a long term relationship and how it will bleed back into those so called “bedroom” scenes.
When she does talk about the rules part, she breaks them into three categories: rituals and protocols; standing orders; and things that are actually supposed to cause behaviour modification. Lloyd classifies the former as a matter of aesthetics and mood setting, serving to help hold a head space. For example, you might be familiar with the idea of starting a scene by formally putting on a collar. Standing orders, on the other hand, are the realm of goals that are important to one or both parties in the relationship, but which generally leave it up to the submissive to figure out finer points of execution. Lastly, she makes behaviour modification distinct because this is probably the only place where real change is being expected, with an emphasis in her examples on an almost unilateral benefit for the submissive.
Where I think the book over reaches is that it also tries to define dominants by these three rule types. That much, I think, is a hammer looking for nails problem. It’s good to know that some people care primarily about lots of precise little aesthetic/immersion things while others might get their enjoyment from what is being prioritized by the submissive as a holistic matter, but I don’t think it’s very helpful to try to type yourself as some sort of quiz. The problem of overreach also pops out most broadly when she talks about “behaviour modification” dominants being unusual.
That’s not to say Lloyd is not self aware of aspects of why. She cites a long gone (alas) blogger Dishevelled Domina (formerly of DischevelledDomina.wordpress.com) when going over a major issue of the sub displacing inappropriate levels of helplessness onto the dominant. Still, Lloyd muses about dominants who do behaviour modification as mysterious unicorns as much as they are lavishes with praise of being sweet “geeky” or “a bit nerdy” in the level they will invest in their sub’s psychology. But, ultimately she concludes correctly that over weighting benefit to the sub is what makes these sort of dynamics fail to survive the long haul.
The other book’s weakness, I think, is a common one. That’s that you can still see a ghost of the over valuing of the ”inherently more responsible dominant” mindset where she talks in terms of needing to consider the sub’s well being by default to “deserve” the submission of the sub. While “do no harm” is a good watchword that any reasonable BDSM guide emphasizes, I find it a bit incongruent that Lloyd can notice that hey, unilateral dynamics seem to burn dominants out and give lots of useful insight about subs needing to work on their end… but somehow along the way I find that a lot of writing about BDSM forgets about the equal partnership part underlying things. Lloyd is better than most, but it’s not surprising that the second quarter of the book focuses on the problem of unacknowledged dominant vulnerability without, per say, realizing what it was is doing. Similarly it is telling that at no point does it take subs aside and tell them to really think about what they actually want, but there’s a whole subsection for dominants that assumes it is likely they forgot to do that.
And where she starts talking about the practicals of rules again, I believe Lloyd does a much better job of implicitly centering the work involved. While we opened with an introduction to the writer that mentioned, almost casually, her first marriage failed because the dominant was bad at follow through, in practice she strongly emphasizes rules as being a gift with strings, effort and weighted meaning for both parties. What Lloyd wants always boils down to moving from the pure fantasies of either the benevolent task assigner dominant or the selfishie meanie and victim and figuring out workable, smaller scale compromises.
And in aggregate, that’s probably the best platform to embark on the rest of the book, which gives a lot of granular, easy to follow advice on choosing, testing and sustaining rules that will actually work for you. Lloyd consistently keeps things flexible, but whether your end goal is 24/7 TPE or honestly even just improving the bedroom side of things and never going any further you will still find something useful.
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Where to Buy:
- Shockingly hard to find, may have been delisted recently from online retailers
Author Website:
- Unfortunately Lily Lloyd appears to have scaled down or stopped their online presence.
Liked this review? Check out more titles in my 2026 Femdom Book Review Project!