What is Consent?

Throughout my healing practice and my own experience, I often witness and have personally felt the concept of ‘should’ around sex and intimacy.

"I should be able to feel it by now, to be more open and responsive, other people can just go with the flow, so why can’t I? ” When we feel this way, it is common to question, are we the only ones experiencing this? Or even wonder if something could be different or wrong with our sexuality and the way we feel.

In my experience, there is nothing wrong with anyone! If anything, we are all trying to do our best to find our way and our own authentic expression. When we are bombarded with all kinds of images and ideas about sex and how it should be, it is common to feel off or confused.

For example, the situation of being sexually intimate with someone while feeling off and not saying anything, can be common. 

Have you ever felt this way? If so, you are not alone. 

Sometimes, it is easy to know what this off feeling is about but other times it is not really clear. Maybe you were getting intimate too soon, or not using protection or wondered if your partner is into you the way you are into them. It may be possible that there is a boundary that got crossed and your body froze or shut down and you felt that you couldn't say anything. Overall, in all situations, there is not a clear sense of Yes. If you ever felt this way and didn't say anything, do not blame yourself.

Perhaps, it felt too late to say something, and although it is not quite what you wanted, it is possible that you didn't know what to say or even what you really wanted instead. Maybe you didn’t want to make a scene, rock the boat or to be seen as too high maintenance or even crazy. Besides, they may be trying to please you and you don’t want to upset them. In situations like this it is easy to just brush off those feelings or concerns by saying “well, this is the way it is”... “it is not too bad…”. The option of going along with it and tolerating unwanted touch, sometimes seems like the only option available. Sometimes it seems that there is just no choice.

The situation of bypassing (and not communicating) how we really feel in sex and intimacy is very common. For most of us sex and intimacy can bring this extra sense of vulnerability and powerlessness especially with a body shame culture (where we didn't learn how to listen to our body’s signals and how to communicate about it) It makes sense that we are not clear about how we really feel and what we really want.

 Sometimes it takes a day or a few days, other times it can take years to look back and question things like: “What was that? What happened? I didn’t say no. I didn't say yes. This felt pretty much consensual. Wasn’t it?” In situations like that it is possible to feel a sense of violation or shame, even though we apparently consented. 

When we think about consent violation/ non-consensual sex, we tend to think about the betrayal of trust and the breaking of one's physical or emotional boundaries. This could be any circumstance where a victim has expressed a clear NO yet, they were not heard. This area of consent violation is extremely important and very much needed to be talked about and to educate the new generations that a No means No! And Maybe means No as well.  This is not to be taken lightly. 

In this article, I would like to bring another aspect to consider when we come to talk about consent and consent violation, an aspect that is often being overlooked because it is in such a gray area. This is where we allow our own boundaries to get crossed, silently, sometimes without even knowing that we do it. It is in this gray zone where I find a lot of the confusion and consent accidents happen.

This is not about blaming the victim here. Not at all! It is not anyone's fault for being frozen or for not knowing what to say. Most of us haven't learned how to translate this ‘off feelings’, to understand what it really means and to know the importance of valuing how we feel or what we need.  My intention in this article rather than to blame, is to bring awareness to the subtle level of these patterns that I find so common. It is in the subtle nuances where we need to be present, to be aware of what is really going on inside of us as well as inside of our partner. 

I leave you with these questions to consider until the next article. 

Why is it happening? Why would anyone allow a violation of their own boundaries? And how is it all connected to consent?