Consent - the Art of Letting Go

Consent isn't an optional extra. If you want to explore and experience every part of your life fully, your body, your relationships and your pleasure, it’s the foundation to start from.

At the beginning of every session I remind a client that they don't need to answer any question I ask. Every answer needs their consent. It's the same when we work with the body. Their consent matters and it stays theirs. Why thought? What’s the big deal about consent?

Why Consent Matters

The first reason is the obvious one - the legal one. People own their bodies. It's up to each person if, how, where and by whom they are touched.

The second reason runs deeper. Consent gives agency to both people. Each of them has the power to make their own choices and that creates a felt sense of control. Feeling in control means feeling safe, and safety, as regular readers will know I bang on about, is where we thrive. When we feel uncertain, threatened or ill at ease, our bodies and minds start to close down. We retreat, contract, protect. Not the best thing where pleasure is involved!

Of course the converse is true. When our bodies feel safe they change physically. They open, soften, become more reactive to touch, experience greater sensitivity, the exact things you want when pleasure is happening. Our minds also open to possibilities.

With agency comes the opportunity and freedom to explore and discover, whatever the situation, and this matters even more when physical contact, sensitivity or something uncertain is on the table.

Everything I do is grounded in clear consent.

A Practice, Not a One Off Tick List

Consent isn't a conversation I have once at the start of a session. It's a continuous, on-going practice of listening, communicating, respecting boundaries and honouring one another, moment to moment.

Feedback is a form of consent and it matters before, during and after a session. When I'm using touch, I always check in on where the boundaries are, which areas a client doesn't want touched, or wants me to know about. For some men, that's easy… “avoid my feet, leave my beard alone, my sides are sensitive so keep the pressure firm". That kind of clarity is a gift to me to work with.

As sessions progress and a client's body gets more used to my touch and the intentions behind it, those boundaries often shift. Bodies, mine included, tend to relax and open with familiarity, feeling safer over time with the same person, the same touch.

For other men, the answer is “go anywhere you like.” That's less useful. It may mean they genuinely don't know, or they're trying to make me comfortable, or they're not sure it's safe to say anything, especially if people-pleasing is their usual pattern.

Either way, I always make one thing clear: if something feels uncomfortable, unsafe, or they want it to stop, they tell me immediately and I will stop. Sometimes I even try this out so they know what it feels like. That's not always because we've strayed into a “no go” area. It could be something has simply come up for them, and they need to pause, process, or step back from the experience. Consent and communication go hand in hand.

Yes, No, and the Space Between

What is consent? It is permission, and comes in three forms. A yes is celebrated. A no is celebrated equally. Both are expressions of trust and self-awareness, and both help build a safe, affirming experience. There's a third option too, a maybe, a not-yet-decided, which can move to a yes or a no once there's more clarity.

A safe word works the same way. I know it’s become something of a punchline, a knowing wink in films or conversation, yet underneath the joke sits a genuinely useful tool of an agreed word or signal, decided in advance, that means stop or pause, no explanation needed in the moment. It works precisely because it's agreed before things get underway, when both people can think clearly, so that in the middle of an experience, saying "wait" or "no" doesn't have to compete with rising desire or a fear of spoiling the mood. The word does the work instead.

Consent also comes in other ways than words. It can be a gesture, maybe pushing a hand away, or moving away from a person. Knowing how consent will be shown, like a safe word, needs to be agreed beforehand.

Consent gives you permission to bring your curiosity, your fears and your desires into an experience, and to meet others with kindness, respect, empathy and compassion.

The Myth of Mind-Reading

In daily life, and even more so in sexual encounters, there can be an expectation of wanting the other person to simply know what we want. There’s almost a taboo around saying, plainly, what we want. Embarrassment, awkwardness, fear, the weight of what we've been taught about how these conversations and experiences “ought” to go. All of this stops us and we live in hope.

When we don't say what we want, we leave the other person to guess and to magically divine our desires. A reality check. Whatever some people might have you believe, mind-reading doesn't exist. We assume they'll know, especially with sex, and then feel let down when our needs go unmet. If they cared, really cared, they’d have picked up on the signs, and that assumption is the mother of every mess-up going. So we wait for someone to do what we want, without ever having said what that is! And the longer the silence runs, the harder it becomes to speak up, because by then, they've assumed you're enjoying exactly what's happening.

Societal norms colour this too. Many of us grew up absorbing quiet rules about what's “normal” to want, and what isn't, what a “real man” is meant to want, what's too much to ask for, what should stay unspoken. Those beliefs settle in early in our lives and run deep, long before we're conscious of them. They shape what we think we're allowed to ask for, sometimes years before we've worked out what we actually want in the first place. Unpicking that conditioning is often the real work behind learning to ask.

There's an arrogance on the other side of this too. It's the man who says “I know what I'm doing, I'd know if they didn't like it, I can read the room.” Can he? Really?

Consent Moves

Consent isn't fixed. It shifts the way our mood and tastes shift. A no today can become a yes tomorrow. A maybe can settle into a firm no. None of that is a contradiction. It's being human.

Consent is a two-way street. Both people carry their own boundaries to hold and negotiate. Someone asking for something doesn't mean you're obliged to give it, simply because they asked you. Consent is yours to decide no matter how much coercion there is.

Learning to Ask

Maybe one of the reasons we don't ask for what we want is the fear of rejection, or of looking foolish, or “not normal”, especially where sexual pleasure is concerned, where our desires can get pushed aside, forgotten, or ignored. And so we default to waiting and hoping, a passive, powerless, action-less kind of waiting for someone else to read our minds and change course without ever asking them.

Self worth is another consideration in all this. If you don't feel deserving or worthy of pleasure, of being asked, of taking up space with your own wants, then setting a boundary or voicing a desire can feel like an act of defiance rather than a simple statement of fact. The lower your sense of worth, the harder it becomes to trust that your ‘no’ matters, or that your ‘yes’ is worth asking for in the first place! Rebuilding that sense of worth is often the quiet, unglamorous work that makes consent possible at all. This goes both ways. Each time you ask for something and it's met, or say no and have it respected, that's evidence your wants and boundaries are valid. Practising consent can be part of what builds the worth in the first place, not just something that requires it.

Consent depends on clear, honest communication of wants, desires, boundaries, acceptance and refusal, and it builds in stages:

1. Know what you want. Without that, you've nothing clear to ask for or refuse.

2. Believe you're allowed it. You're worthy of the pleasure you want to receive despite what you've been told, and the pleasure you want to give.

3. Say it plainly, without appeasing, without people-pleasing.

That third step often takes time to build. Start small, with something that feels easier to ask for: a cuddle, maybe. Like any new pattern, consent takes practice before it becomes easy, then natural. Clients are often surprised that I check in on consent during a session, not just before it. It works both ways. Everyone knows exactly where they stand.

Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent offers a beautifully clear framework and progressions on this, with ways of asking for what you want, and of saying no without guilt.

Consent Adds, Not Detracts

Some people avoid talking about consent because they feel it detracts from being in the moment. Consent lets you shape how you want to feel before, during and after an experience, and that's especially true in sexual encounters. It doesn't take anything away from the moment. It adds to it.

I was at a workshop recently, deep in conversation with the facilitator, and I wanted to give her a hug. I asked. She said, “Of course and thank you for asking.” Knowing she'd said yes made that hug natural, warm and easy. That's the difference consent can make.

The Power of No

Remember 'yes' only has power if 'no' is genuinely on the table too.

So, are you asking? Or are you waiting for someone to read your mind?

Until the next time.

Enjoy the day you create.

Martin