I have to confess: Bondage is an area of my sex life where my perviness and my laziness are in constant tension. Do I love bondage? Yes. Do I want to get better at it? Also yes. Do I have the time, energy and (frankly) inclination to learn all the elaborate knots and ties I see in my kinkiest fantasies? Alas, fuck no, I do not.
I know enough of the basics to get by, but luckily for me, it’s not a huge issue because I’m usually the one being tied up, not the one doing the tying. But for those rare days when I do want to bind a partner to the bed frame and have my way with them, or constrict their wrists behind their back for a fun power-play, I’m glad to have options available to me that don’t require me to squint at a YouTube tutorial on my phone while I struggle to make rope do my bidding. One of those options is bondage tape.
How Is Bondage Tape Different from Other Bondage Methods?
Cheap: While good bondage rope can run you $30 a bundle or more, and high-quality leather cuffs can exceed $75 per pair, bondage tape is super affordable. Unbound’s Tether tape costs just $12 for 50 feet, so if you try it and discover you’re not that into bondage, you haven’t wasted much cash.
Easy: A lot of bondage techniques are complicated to learn and can be frustrating (especially when your hand-eye coordination is thrown off by horniness — guilty!), but bondage tape is about as simple as it gets. It sticks to itself and nothing else, no knots required. You can start with something straightforward, like wrapping the tape around a partner’s wrists a few times to bind them together, and work your way up to more complex ties if you want to.
Quick to Remove: At the end of your session, you can easily peel off the tape, roll it back up and store it to be reused later. It doesn’t take as long as untying someone from rope, and doesn’t require as much dexterity and hand strength as unbuckling intricate leather cuffs. Of course, this also means that bondage tape is easier for someone to escape from if they wanted to, so if you’re in the mood for truly constrictive bondage, then tape probably isn’t the best route to take. You should also keep safety shears nearby in case of emergency, because you never know when you might need to get someone out of their restraints in a hurry.
Painless: Provided you’re leaving one to two fingers’ worth of slack when you restrain someone with tape (which is a good idea with other types of bondage too), bondage tape shouldn’t cause pain, yank hairs out or leave marks. Unlike regular tape, it only sticks to itself. If you’re prone to allergies or skin sensitivity, though, you might want to patch-test a bit of tape on part of your skin before you commit to being wrapped in it from head to toe.
Versatile: Bondage tape is great to bring when you travel, because it can stand in for various other BDSM implements in a pinch. In addition to using it like rope to bind someone’s limbs together or tie them to a chair or bed, you can wrap bondage tape over their eyes to create a makeshift blindfold, or over their mouth to gag them. (Just make sure you agree on a “safe-signal” — a non-verbal safeword — before doing that last one.)
Unbound Tether Bondage Tape
Contrary to their name, the sex toy company Unbound makes some of the best beginner bondage toys on the market. Their silicone Cuffies make it easier than ever to cuff someone’s wrists quickly and painlessly, and their Orion restraints system makes your bedroom door into a bondage zone in a flash. So it makes sense that their product line also includes bondage tape (which they call Tether), arguably the simplest and swiftest way to bind someone.
The tape is a rich shade of royal blue, and is made of shiny, stretchy PVC. You get 50 feet of tape per roll, enough to do anything from bind someone’s wrists together to put them in an elaborate hog-tie. You can cut the tape into individual lengths for specific applications if you want, or you can use the whole thing to wrap around someone’s body for a mummification-esque effect that can feel thrillingly restrictive.
It’s hard to review something like bondage tape because it’s so simple that it’d be hard to screw it up — but users consistently rave about this product. “If you’re looking for a really simple and effective way to begin playing with bondage, Tether is such a great tool to use,” wrote one reviewer on the Unbound website. “It’s very safe and comfortable — only sticks to itself so you can get creative with its use. A great addition to my collection.”
Another user, who self-identified as a “vanilla beginner,” loved how Tether helped them branch out. “I never thought about buying something like this but… was so thrilled with my first-time experience,” they wrote. “Tether makes bondage approachable and harmless!”
To be clear, bondage tape can still cause harm, especially if you bind someone so tightly as to cut off circulation — but because it’s so stretchy, it would be harder to damage someone with tape than with, say, hemp rope or metal handcuffs.
One user did warn that the stretchiness of the tape can become an issue when you’ve been using it for a while. “It is kinda elastic and does get loose the longer it’s used (more than cotton rope),” they said. But that’s par for the course with a product this flexible and inexpensive, and it doesn’t cost much to replace it if you need to.
Basically, bondage couldn’t be easier than it is with the Unbound Tether tape. So if you’re looking for an intro to this popular kink — or if you’re a bondage enthusiast who, like me, is too lazy or busy to learn all the intricacies of rope — pick up some bondage tape and stash it in your nightstand for the next time you’re craving some quick constriction.
Kate Sloan
Kate Sloan is the author of the books '101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do' and '200 Words to Help You Talk About Sexuality & Gender,' and has reviewed over 300 sex toys on her blog at GirlyJuice.net, to the chagrin of her high school guidance counselor. She also cohosts the podcasts 'The Dildorks' and 'Question Box.'
