On this page
  1. What a Chastity Keyholder Actually Holds
  2. Where the Chastity Key Lives
  3. The Chastity Key Necklace
  4. The Spare Key, and the Seal on It
  5. The Night the Key Will Not Turn
  6. Choosing a Chastity Lock : Built In, Padlock, or Numbered Plastic
  7. Keyholding at a Distance
  8. A Friend, an App, or an Online Keyholder
  9. From Evy : The Key From the Other Side of the Chain
  10. Taking the Key : What to Do the First Night
  11. Frequently Asked Questions

It is smaller than you expected. Chastity keys nearly always are : a brass key no longer than the top joint of your finger, lighter than a house key, and it has already changed the room. Someone you love has put it in your hand, or is working up to asking you to take it, and since then you have been carrying it the way you would carry something that might go off. A pocket. A drawer. The pocket again. You have looked it up late at night, and found a great deal about what holding it means and almost nothing about where it goes.

I have been my Evyโ€™s keyholder for most of five years. Most days it lives on me, on a fine chain long enough that the key rests under whatever I am wearing, against my skin, where not one person I pass in a day has ever seen it. The only one who knows it is there is the one it locks, and she thinks about it a great deal more than I do.

This page is about that key. Not about what holding it asks of you as a woman, which is written elsewhere and which I will point you to, but about the object itself : where it lives, the second one you seal away, the lock it opens, how to hold it from another city, and how to take it properly the first night.

And you, sissy, reading this over her shoulder : stay. It is written to her, and it is about you. By the end of it you will know exactly what she is carrying under her clothes, and why you will never see it.

A word about words before we start. I will call the one in the cage she, and your sissy, because that is who she is when the key is in your hand. If he is still he in your house, read it that way. Nothing on this page depends on the pronoun.

What a Chastity Keyholder Actually Holds

A chastity keyholder is the person who keeps the key to someone elseโ€™s chastity device, and with it the say over when that device comes off. Chastity keyholding is the practice of keeping it well. The definition is short on purpose. Nearly everything people add to it, the strictness, the leather, the cold voice, is decoration, and the part that matters is the plainest part : you have it, and she does not. If the practice itself is new to you, what chastity is, and what it is not will take you twenty minutes and save you a year.

Three things come with the key the moment it lands in your palm, and none of them is yours to bargain with.


Everything else, you will build. What you do with the say, the dates, the permission, the evening you grant and the one you move, is the working half of the practice. What kind of attention the role asks of you is written for the woman being asked to take it. This page stays with the object, because nobody else seems to.

Where the Chastity Key Lives

The first thing everyone does with a chastity key is put it somewhere safe, and the first thing they get wrong is the word. A key can be too safe. Locked in a box at the back of a wardrobe, it is safe from everything and useless at the one hour of the day it is needed, and a key you have to go and fetch every evening turns the most intimate minute of your day into an errand.

A keyโ€™s home has three jobs, and it has to do all three.


That leaves three sensible homes. On you : a chain, a ribbon, a bracelet, an anklet. In a place only you open : the drawer of your bedside table, a jewellery box, a small pouch in the bag you carry everywhere. In a box : a small lockbox with a combination or a timer, for the couple who want an hour enforced by something neither of them can charm. Each one tells her something different. A key on your skin says you are carrying her all day. A key in your drawer says she is kept in your room. A key in a box says a rule is holding her, and that you wrote it.

Mine lives on me. Most days it hangs on a fine chain, long enough that the key sits well below the neckline of anything I own, under the fabric, warm from my skin, and nobody has ever seen it. When the chain does not suit the day, the key goes into a tiny black velvet pouch that was made for a pair of earrings, and the pouch goes into my bag, or into the drawer of my bedside table. On the evenings I want her to see it, it comes out from under my clothes and goes on a ribbon at my throat, which is another thing altogether and belongs to the tease rather than to the logistics. And at night it sleeps with me : on the chain, or in that drawer, a handโ€™s reach from my pillow. The key she asks for has never once been anywhere she could reach without asking. The other one is a different story, and it comes next.

A key she can see is a picture. A key she cannot see is a fact she carries all day, at dinner, in the car, at a table full of people who have no idea, and you will watch it work on her face.

— Mistress Bee

The Chastity Key Necklace

Most keyholders end up here sooner or later, so let me be practical about it.

  1. Length first. An eighteen-inch chain puts the key at the collarbone, which is exactly where every eye in a room lands. Around twenty-four inches, sixty centimetres, drops it to the breastbone, under almost any neckline you wear in daylight. Try it with your lowest top before you commit.
  2. A fine chain, a strong clasp. Fine disappears under fabric and does not print through a thin knit. The clasp is the part that fails, so choose a lobster clasp over a spring ring, and check it the way you check anything you would hate to lose.
  3. The key alone. Take it off its little ring. A key on a split ring clinks against the chain, and a key that clinks is a key that gets asked about.
  4. A second home, decided in advance. Swimming, a massage, a scan, a dress that shows too much : wherever you would take off any other necklace, the key goes straight to the place you chose for it on a calm day. Keys get lost in the ten minutes between one home and the next, loose in a coat pocket because nobody decided.
  5. Unreadable in daylight. A key pendant is a known sign in some circles, and there is jewellery made precisely to be read. Wear that kind in the bedroom if you like it. Out in the world, the kindest thing you can do for her is to be unreadable.

The Spare Key, and the Seal on It

Almost every cage arrives with two keys on a tiny ring. Separate them the first evening. One goes wherever you have decided the key lives. The other goes under seal, somewhere she can reach it without asking you, and that is not a loophole in the practice. It is what makes the practice survivable. It was the first lesson I ever gave my Evy, and she will tell you it was the one she was least pleased to learn.

Here is the whole procedure, because I have never seen it written down in one place.

  1. An envelope, sealed and signed. The spare goes in a plain envelope. Tape the flap, then sign across the tape and the paper together, so that nobody can open it and close it again without it showing. Date the front.
  2. A place she can reach, and you know. Somewhere she could find in the dark, half asleep and frightened, without climbing, searching or waking you. In our house it lives in the drawer on her side of the bed. Not taped behind a radiator, not frozen in a block of ice, which is a timer and not a spare, and not in a box whose code only you know, which is just another key with extra steps.
  3. What it is for, said out loud. Pain, numbness, swelling, a colour that is wrong. A lock that will not turn. An accident, a hospital, a night you cannot be reached and she needs to be out. Say the list to her once, clearly, so that she never has to wonder in the middle of the night whether this counts.
  4. What a broken seal means. A report, owed and given the same day. Not a slip, not a confession. If she opened it for a reason on that list, the right words from you are thank you for telling me, and the wrong ones are anything at all about the practice.
  5. Resealing, together. The key goes into a new envelope, freshly signed and dated, and she watches you do it. That small ceremony is what tells her the spare still means safety and not temptation.

And one thing that is yours alone, darling : never test it. Do not check the seal in front of her with a raised eyebrow, do not count the months since it was last broken, and do not tell her you are proud she has never needed it. The spare only works if opening it costs her nothing. The day it costs something, she will sit with a problem rather than face the conversation, and that is the only outcome in this whole practice that frightens me.

The Night the Key Will Not Turn

It will happen once, if you keep a key long enough. It happened to us on an ordinary evening. Evy had asked, I had lifted the chain over my head, and the key went into the lock and stopped a quarter turn in, as if it had met a wall. I felt the urge everyone feels, to push harder. Do not. A key snapped inside a lock turns an inconvenience into an evening you will not want to explain to anyone.

What had happened was dull. Months of evening washes had left a film of soap inside the lock, and it had dried hard. Warm water run through it, a minute under the cool hairdryer we already use on the cage, and it turned as though nothing had ever been wrong.

So, when it happens to you : stop pushing, warm water, dry it, try again gently. Then the spare, because a key that has worn or bent will sometimes refuse where its twin turns first time. If neither turns and anything at all hurts, it comes off tonight, at an emergency department or with someone whose job it is, and they will have seen stranger things than a cage. If nothing hurts, it can wait for daylight and the makerโ€™s help, as long as she tells you the moment that changes. And from then on, rinse the lock in every wash. Nobody tells you that the lock needs washing too.

Choosing a Chastity Lock : Built In, Padlock, or Numbered Plastic

The cage is hers to wear. The lock is yours, and it deserves the same care, because it decides how discreet the arrangement is, how easy a spare is to keep, and whether you can hold the key from somewhere else at all. There are three kinds.


Which one, then? If you share a bed, a built-in lock and a sealed spare will serve you for years. If you are apart more than you are together, or she travels without you, choose a device with a padlock loop and keep a bag of numbered locks, and check the loop before you buy them, because a built-in lock has nowhere to thread one. And if nothing has been bought yet, the beginner cages are compared lock by lock, including the one that ships with numbered locks in the box.

Keyholding at a Distance

Distance comes in two sizes, and only one of them is new.

The small one is a trip. You are away for a week, or she is, and the key has to live somewhere while you are apart. That is an arrangement inside a practice that already works, and how a long lock survives the keyholderโ€™s absence is written out with the rest of the rhythm. In our house the key goes to her before I leave, with an account owed every evening, and I look properly the day I am home.

The large one is a practice that lives at a distance on purpose : two people on either side of a border, a keyholder who is not a partner at all, a couple who have never shared a roof. There the key cannot do its job, because a key you are not in the room to hand over is either a key she keeps or a key she cannot wash without. So you stop holding a key, and start holding a record.

  1. A device with a padlock loop, and a bag of numbered locks. You send them, or leave them with her, and you keep the list of numbers.
  2. The evening, by message. She asks, the way she would ask you in the room, and you grant it. She cuts the lock, washes, dries, and relocks with the next number on the list.
  3. The proof. A photograph of the new lock with its number legible and nothing else in the frame. You check it against your list.
  4. Your book. The dates, the numbers, what was asked and what was granted. At a distance the book is the key. Keep it the way you would keep the key.

It is still keyholding. For some couples it is the purest kind there is, because nothing is holding her but her word, your list, and the fact that she cannot bear the thought of sending you a number you did not expect.

A Friend, an App, or an Online Keyholder

Not everyone who holds a key is a partner, and all three of these will be offered to you, so here is what each can honestly carry.


Those places are for you to know, sissy, because you are the one who will go looking.


None of those is a judgment on the good ones. It is how you find them. The rest of what a hidden life asks of you applies here twice over, and it is worth reading before the first message, not after.

From Evy : The Key From the Other Side of the Chain

Most days I do not see it at all. That is the part Bee cannot tell you, because she cannot know it from her side : a key you never see takes up more of your day than one you do. I know every neckline she owns by where the chain disappears. I know which jumpers let me see the faint line of it and which do not. When she leans across a table to reach something, I look, every time, and there is nothing there to look at, and I look anyway.

The only time I see it is the evening. She lifts the chain over her head, or takes the little velvet pouch out of her drawer, and puts the key in my palm, and it is warm. It has been against her all day. I hold it for the length of a wash and a dry and a relock, and in that time it cools in my hand, and I give it back cooler than she gave it to me, and she puts it back where it lives. I have never managed to explain to anyone why that is the most intimate quarter of an hour of my day. I am trying now. And on the evenings it comes out on the ribbon instead, I know what kind of evening it is before she has said a word.

The night I would tell you about, if you asked, was a Saturday a few winters ago. She had told me that morning, in the kitchen, in one sentence, that the key would come off after dinner, and not for the wash. I was useless at everything all day. At seven the doorbell rang, and it was a friend of hers from years ago, passing through, delighted with herself for the surprise.

I made dinner for three. Bee sat across the table from her in a grey wool jumper, laughing at stories from before my time, and for five hours the key was under that wool, against her skin, an armโ€™s length from a woman who had no idea it existed. Once, halfway through a long story, Bee touched the neckline of the jumper with one finger, exactly where the chain goes under, and did not look at me. I had to get up and put the kettle on.

Her friend left after midnight. I asked for the key for the wash, and she gave it to me, and took it back, and put it back under the wool. The key did not come off that night for anything else. She moved the evening, the way she moves things, and I did not ask where to.

I have had the evenings she promised, many times, and I remember very few of them one by one. That one, the one I did not get, I remember to the minute. Not because I was denied. Because someone sat across from the key all evening and never saw it, and I saw nothing else, and Bee knew exactly which of us was which. That is what she means when she tells you hidden is stronger than shown. She is right. I am the proof, all day, looking at a neckline.

Taking the Key : What to Do the First Night

You have read a great deal about a very small object. Now take it properly, because the way a key changes hands the first time is the way it will be held for years, and most couples do it standing in a bathroom doorway, embarrassed, with no envelope anywhere in sight.

Before she comes to you, decide where the key will live and have it ready : the chain, the pouch, the drawer, the box. Seal the spare and sign across the flap. Then :

  1. She locks herself, and you watch. Not the first fitting ever, which has its own careful steps, but the lock she will wear tonight. Watch without helping. She should hear the click in a quiet room.
  2. She puts the key in your palm and closes your fingers over it. Both her hands around one of yours. Say nothing yet. Let her feel you take the weight of it.
  3. You tell her where it will live, in one sentence, and then you put it there while she watches. If it is the chain, fasten it yourself and let the key drop out of sight under your clothes. That is the last time she sees it today.
  4. You show her the envelope. Put it in its place together, and tell her, once, the reasons it may be opened, and that opening it will cost her nothing.
  5. You give her the sentence. The one she will say every evening to ask for it. Choose it now, word for word, and have her say it once tonight, so that the first time is not tomorrow.

If you have held her key for years and it lives in a dish by the bed, do this anyway. Take it back tonight, in this order, and wear it hidden for a week. You will both be surprised how new an old key can feel. And the month that follows a first key has its own map, written from both sides.

And you, sissy, when she fastens the chain and the key disappears : thank her, out loud, before anything else is said. Then go to bed knowing exactly where it is, and never once seeing it. Good girl.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a chastity keyholder do?

A chastity keyholder keeps the key to someone else's chastity device and decides when it comes off. In practice that means granting the daily unlock for washing whenever it is asked for, keeping a sealed spare the wearer can reach in an emergency, and holding the decisions that shape the practice : the dates, the evenings, the permission. The key is the small part. Keeping it reliably is the job.

Where should a keyholder keep the chastity key?

Somewhere reachable at the hour of the daily wash, findable fast in an emergency, and invisible to everyone else in the house : on the keyholder's body (a long fine chain under her clothes, a bracelet, an anklet), in a place only she opens (a bedside drawer, a small pouch in her bag), or in a combination or timed lockbox. The spare lives somewhere else, sealed, within the wearer's reach.

Should the keyholder wear the key on a necklace?

Many keyholders do. For daily life, a fine chain of around twenty-four inches, sixty centimetres, drops the key below the neckline where nobody sees it. Take the key off its ring so it does not clink, and decide in advance where it goes whenever the necklace comes off. A hidden key works harder than a visible one : she cannot see it, so she never stops knowing where it is.

Do you need a spare chastity key?

Always. Almost every cage comes with two keys, and the second belongs in a sealed envelope, signed across the flap, somewhere the wearer can reach in the dark without asking. It is for pain, numbness, swelling, a lock that will not turn, or an emergency when the keyholder cannot be reached. A broken seal is a report owed the same day, never a slip.

What is the best lock for chastity keyholding?

For a couple who live together, a built-in lock : flush, silent and discreet, with the spare under seal. For keyholding at a distance, a device with a padlock loop and numbered plastic locks, which are single-use, cut open with scissors in seconds, and carry a printed number the keyholder records. Padlocks are cheap and replaceable, but noisy, and they catch on clothing over long wear.

Can a friend or an online keyholder hold the key?

They can hold the record, never the only way out. A friend can keep the numbers, the dates and the rules, while the key for the daily wash stays within the wearer's reach. With an online keyholder, leave at the first warning sign : payment before any talk of limits and safety, requests for a face, a name or a workplace, any threat of exposure, or any suggestion that the spare should go or that pain can wait.

What should you do if the chastity key will not turn?

Stop pushing : a key snapped inside the lock turns an inconvenience into an emergency. Run warm water through the lock, dry it and try again gently, since dried soap from the daily wash is sometimes all it is. Then try the spare. If neither turns and anything hurts, the device comes off that night, at an emergency department or with someone whose job it is. If nothing hurts, it can wait for daylight.