The Kinky Relationship Review – Keeping Your Relationship On Track

A kinky relationship review is something I’ve been testing in my relationship for the last several months.

And now, I’m really excited to discuss it, because it’s proven to be incredibly successful. You’ll be able to use this in any kind of relationship, kinky or otherwise, and include whatever kind of dynamic you’re currently in. 

Literally everybody already knows that one of the key elements in every relationship is communication. It’s one of the fundamentals. 

But just because it’s fundamental, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Many of the relationship problems that come up do so because something, somewhere, has gone wrong with communication!

Kinky relationships (particularly D/s or dominance and submission, or other kinds of power exchange) have some additional factors which can make communication even trickier.

The power exchange can cause people to feel that they can’t communicate the same way… because it might be disrespectful, because it doesn’t suit their role, or because they just don’t quite know how to bring things up without freaking out the other person. 

I’ve run into a ton of these kinds of communication problems in the past, as have other people I know, so I made a plan to test out a possible solution – both for myself and my relationships, and to share with others, such as yourself. 

Here are all my current notes on the kinky relationship review and how it works, so you can adapt this for yourself.

What A Relationship Review Looks Like 

Introducing The Idea To Your Partner 

The Questions I Use, And Why They Work

Bonus Questions For Your Kinky Dynamics

Outcomes and Calendaring 

A Quick Caution 

Looking For A Sexier Name

What A Relationship Review Looks Like 

Imagine that you and your partner, once a month, go out on a date with a very specific purpose.

You’re sitting down together at a nice little frozen yoghurt place, or maybe enjoying a picnic in a park, or having coffee at a cafe,  and you have a notebook out. You’ve chosen your location so that it’s far enough away from others that they won’t hear you, or you’re talking at a low, pleasant level. 

You’re discussing the things you’ve enjoyed most over the previous month, and what’s going really well. There’s a lot to cover!

Shortly after that, you have a brief chat about any worries the two of you have about your relationship, and what possible solutions there might be. 

Once you’ve identified some solutions, you then both turn your attention to what you’re both excited to do next, and what your priorities are over the next month. You have complicated lives, and there’s a lot to fit in. 

Your partner looks around to make sure no one can hear, leans over and whispers to you “I really liked that scene we did with the cuffs, where you were whispering all those filthy things you wanted to do to me in my ear… I’d be really keen to do some more of that!” 

You nod and smile in response, and murmur back “I really liked when I used pet play commands to play with you in the bedroom, and then tied you up and made you beg… maybe we can combine those things in our next scene?”

Your partner shivers and nods. 

You have a brief chat about how things are with dominance and submission – all’s good, and that misunderstanding you had a couple of weeks back has been ironed out through some talking immediately afterwards. 

Your partner is going really well with that new rule you instituted a couple of weeks ago, and they glowed when you gave them positive compliments about how well they’ve been going with their daily habits  – and then you both get out your phones to have a look on the shared calendar about when you can book in your next scene. 

While you’re at it, you also plan another hike, and because you have that murder mystery party coming up, and the theme is medieval, you’ll need to squeeze in some thrift store shopping somewhere. It’s a busy life, and calendaring is important. 

You take a photo of the pages in the notebook; what’s working well, what you’ve both loved, any concerns or worries, solutions identified, things you’re looking forward to, and outcomes to go in the calendar; and send the photo to your partner so they have a copy for digital storage. 

And then you go back to enjoying your date and having a great time, secure in the knowledge that your relationship is going well, things have been great, and you have mutually thought out and discussed solutions to any problems that have come up, well before they became unmanageable. 

In addition, now you have another hot scene to look forward to. 

Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

This, my friend, is what I currently call “The Kinky Relationship Review”. 

This is exactly what I’ve been experimenting with for the past six months or more, and that is almost exactly what it’s like to do it now that we’ve had some practice. 

The Kinky Relationship Review has proven to be stunningly successful in solving or preventing a number of very common kinky relationship communication problems that myself and others have run into in the past. 

These problems can include, but are not limited to: 

• Finding time in a busy life to organize and plan scenes
• As with a previous post, keeping that kink/life balance 
• Having mistakes and problems always being discussed in a really negative or critical way
• Either party in a D/s relationship feeling unable to communicate openly, assertively or vulnerably due to having to “keep to their role” (this is surprisingly common). 
• Life priorities switching with one person in a dynamic without the other person being aware.
• Not having a defined space to constructively discuss worries – so they fester, get worse, and eventually transform into giant angry making relationship killers
• Being uncertain as to how well the relationship is going from the other person’s point of view 

I’ve encountered a lot of these problems in the past, and observed it happening with others as well. I decided that I really wanted to prevent those same sorts of things from happening again. 

I spent a lot of time thinking, and listening, and eventually decided to take a relationship review practice I heard Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi talking about during one of Tim’s podcasts, and adapt it for kinky relationships.

To be honest; for me, this practice is also supported by leadership thinking; in leadership, one of the principles we like to think about is learning from mistakes, and thinking about how to prevent them in future. Thinking hard and planning to prevent problems is an incredibly useful thing to do, especially with both partners working on it together. 

Introducing The Idea To Your Partner

After I thought about the idea, and worked it through, I made the call to introduce it to my partner. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but basically I indicated that I’d like to have regular talks about our relationship, with the aim of celebrating what’s working well, and preventing any problems from getting out of hand. I also may have mentioned that I’d like too do it as part of a date.

And she froze. 

Cue internal screaming. 

Our culture is conditioned to feel fear, anxiety, and caution, whenever someone begins talking about “the relationship”. Whenever someone “wants to talk” or “wants to talk about the relationship” alarm bells go off. 

This mostly occurs because of TV drama, but also because people generally only want to talk about the relationship  when they think something is wrong. If it’s running well, they reason, there’s nothing to talk about. 

The downside to this approach is that every time you “talk about the relationship” it means something’s wrong. 

So a fairly common conditioned  response is to experience a sharp raise in anxiety when it’s even discussed, and to avoid such talks. 

Which of course turns into a problem, because now you have much less of a chance to communicate proactively and prevent small worries from turning into big issues!

I had anticipated that, and I showed her the list of questions that I wanted to discuss on our date, so that she knew exactly what to expect, and so she had time to think about it. That helped a lot. 

How You Can Do It Better

I highly recommend changing the wording away from “talk about the relationship” to saying something like

“Babe, I’d like to do something a little unusual. I’d like to go out with you for a date, and while on this date, I’d like to talk about all the things that are working well in this relationship, and what we’d like to do next. I’m really enjoying how things are going, and I’d like to keep that trend going. Here’s what I’m thinking about discussing.”

I definitely recommend giving your partner or partners the list of questions you’re thinking about discussing beforehand. This helps to prevent a lot of anxiety, and in this situation, anxiety is very much the enemy. 

Once we’d gotten through the first one, and my partner realized that this was a positive process, and actually a pretty fun little date, she felt a lot better about it. It became anxiety SOOTHING, instead of anxiety provoking.

 Now, she asks me when our next relationship review will be – she likes the reassurance of it, the date, and the opportunity to communicate at length about everything that’s going on. 

I asked her to write a paragraph for this post to show her point of view on the process:

I’m not going to lie to you, when Pete first brought up the Relationship review I was fucking terrified. Partly because every time a guy (or girl) wanted to talk about the relationship it ended with at best one (or both) of us feeling super uncomfortable or at worst… Tears dun dun And partly because we had only recently started officially dating – long story- and I honestly have commitment issues – one of the reasons why it’s a long story. So the fact he wanted to talk about the relationship and that there was a relationship to talk about… Well, I froze… For a good couple of minutes.  Once the internal screaming had subsided and he had explained what the hell a relationship review was. I agreed to try it out. The not so subtle bribery of a date helped Several months after I got roped into this experiment (ha bondage pun) and I now count the days until our next relationship review – 8 if you’re wondering Instead of being awful like I initially imagined the relationship review is a great source of reassurance and positivity for me. It lets me know that we are on the right track and both of our needs are being met within the relationship.It’s also a scheduled safe time – outside of the regular D/s dynamic – to bring up concerns that otherwise, wouldn’t come up because “it’s a bad time” to talk about them. This means that aspects of the relationship can be adjusted before they grow in size – a not so sexy example of this is we increased the amount of scheduled introvert time before my exam week to prevent burn out – which worked So Well! I definitely recommend the relationship review if you’re looking to improve your communication and connections

The dates are super fucking cute. Check out these coffees from our last one!

It may take a a few times before this becomes entirely relaxed, but we’ve found that the results are well worth the initial discomfort. 

The Relationship Review Questions I Use, And Why They Work 

Probably 80% of why this works well has to do with the questions that are chosen for the relationship review. 

Most relationship based talks are focused around problems, often with the unspoken fear that one or the other person IS the problem.

That’s part of why people dread them so much, and are so uncomfortable with the idea of even having that talk. 

You want this process to be different.

This is why it’s really important that the questions you use focus primarily on the GOOD parts of the relationship, and that the one question that addresses “problems” is immediately followed by looking at practical solutions. It helps to make this a really positive, fun, celebratory experience. 

The core questions go like this

• What were our previous outcomes? (not applicable on your first Relationship Review date) 
• What’s working really well? (this creates a list of positive things, and puts your focus on the positive; starting your review on a great note) 
• Do we have any worries at the moment? (this phrasing seems to have the effect of making “problems” much less threatening; take turns at this point to check in with yourselves and each other)
• What are some solutions to those? (solutions are often things like having a chat to clarify miscommunications, figuring out ways to include something specific into daily or weekly routines, etc. This is often when really important communication happens, that help to prevent big problems later). 
• What have been our favorite things lately? (brings things back to the positive, and also helps identify things you probably want to do more of in the near future)
• What are we excited to do next? (moves the focus to more forward planning, and what you’re looking forward to)
• When is our next scene? (I’ve discovered this is a really helpful question for keeping that kink/life balance)
• What are our relationship priorities currently? (this helps both parties to be on the same page about what you’re prioritizing. Ideally, you’re a collaborative team in your relationship  – so creating a shared list of priorities is really important for future planning and shared decision making.) 

An example of relationship priorities from my last review was

• Health (physical and mental, and recovery)
• Kink (need more scenes!) 
• Career, study, writing
• Dance
• Something new – variety and doing something new once a month 

(As you can see, we were both really hungry for some kinky scenes at that stage! We ended up having a scene both that evening, AND the following weekend.

Typically speaking, our priorities list looks a bit different, but we’d left kink towards the bottom of the list for about two months too many )

Bonus Questions For The Kinky 

Additional questions that can be quite useful might include things about specific dynamics. As an example, we also enjoy pet play, and caregiver/little dynamics.

 It’s helpful for us to review to make sure she’s getting a good balance for her pet side, her little side, and her adult side. 

So a bonus question might simply be, “Would you like more little time, or more pet time this month? Or perhaps you might like a nice scene where you get tied up and treated like a thoroughly objectified little whore?”

(Usually she wants all of the above; but in order to make sure we have sufficient time and energy, we’ll end up prioritizing and calendaring the 1-2 we both want most, in order to maintain that life balance). 

There are lots of kinky questions that can be asked in a relationship review; it’s often a good time to have that focused communication, or even to review how things are going after a scene.

This is also a spectacularly good time to review how things might be going in a dominance/submission or other power exchange dynamic, and what can be changed or improved. 

 As I mentioned earlier, often times people feel like they can’t really communicate on that sort of “level playing field” or equal terms in normal life when they’re experiencing a power exchange dynamic, so the relationship review provides an excellent “time out” where both parties are reviewing things at a neutral location, outside of their usual dynamic. 

I can’t express how valuable I’ve found this – it’s provided such an amazing space for communicating and reviewing things. 

It’s also provided some very fun outcomes – since our last review, we’ve made changes so that my pet can sit on a cushion beside my chair and be petted while I enjoy an evening coffee after work – and we both thoroughly enjoy this. 

Sometimes additional questions might involve really individual needs. As an example, I’m a natural introvert; but have a busy, people focused leadership position at work. 

This means in order to function well in my relationship at home, I need to have sufficient time to myself to recharge – and after this, I enjoy my relationship even more.

So a useful thing for me is to regularly review how much introvert time I’m getting, and whether I need to find ways to get more of that, or whether what I’m currently doing is sufficient. This helps to make sure the relationship continues to flow well, and that I have the energy necessary to interact enthusiastically. 

Outcomes and Calendaring

After you’ve gone through most of your review, you’re likely to have filled a page or three of writing in your notebook, and you’ll need to make sure that you have clearly defined outcomes; what you’re going to be doing, who’s going to be doing it, and when it’s going to be done. 

Sometimes your outcomes will simply be calendaring events and scenes – because everything else is working really well. Other times, there will be one or two things that one or the other of you might need to do.

Most importantly, you’ll need to calendar NOW, or those outcomes and that organization probably won’t happen – the reason being, it’s really easy for life to distract people if you don’t have things cemented in place in your calendar.

How do I know? Because it happened to us! One of the outcomes from our SECOND review was to start using a calendar.  

We actually created a shared google calendar in order to make sure we had everything in place, and so we could remind each other about upcoming events when we’re making plans for the weekend or month. 

Frequency of Relationship Reviews

So far, we’ve found it easiest to schedule a relationship review date about once a month – that way we’ve got that very regular check in, we’ve got at least one relationship focused “date”, and it’s just easy not to forget. 

We’ll often try out different locations – it gives us a nice sense of variety, and a great excuse to try out different cafe’s etc, although we will DEFINITELY be returning to the last one we went to. Those kitten coffees… so gosh darn cute. 

If you’re stuck at home, and can’t get out, then I recommend doing what you can to make it a really nice environment during your date. Sweet, sexy music, candles, the works.

After googling how other people do relationship reviews, I also found that some people recommend it for once a week ( too frequent for me) and once a year (not frequent enough). I think once a month is about the sweet spot for my relationship, but needs are likely to differ. 

Another aspect to consider is how your life circumstances affect frequency. As an example, another year or so into my current relationship, we may go bi-monthly with our reviews. And when either one of us have particularly intense times happening with work or study, we may have to post pone for a week or two so that we have the available attention.

That said, I’m inclined to never let the review slide for too long. One-two weeks, sure, but I think this practice works best as a regular one, rather than once in a while.

A Quick Caution

The Relationship Review has been an amazing communication tool for our relationship. There’s no question of that. My next one is happening really shortly, and we’re both looking forward to it.  

But it shouldn’t replace everyday, proactive communication; nor should you “put things off” until the next review. 

Communication needs to be happening all the time – the Relationship Review will simply add to that, so that you and your partners have even better relationships. 

Looking For A Sexy Name 

Whew, that was a long one. I’ve been working on this post for most of a month. I hope you found this to be a useful idea – we certainly have! It’s tested out really well. 

If there’s one thing I could ask, just before you go… 

I’ve been wracking my brains to see if I could come up with a sexier name for this process, or tool, if you like. 

The “ Relationship Review” works all right, but if  you can think of anything that would sound sexier, or even less anxiety provoking, that would be really helpful! 

Would love to see your ideas in the comments 🙂 

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