Warning: This post deals with consent for sex between adults. Many of the scenarios I describe play with the idea of consent in ways that some people might not be comfortable with or that might be emotional triggers. This includes talk of domination, aggressive sex, and rape/sexual assault fantasies. None of the scenarios I describe between Erin and myself happened without consent. She’ll pop in to add her voice to this discussion; I wouldn’t want to talk about consent in our marriage without her weighing in on the matter!
Consent is a tricky subject. I’ve been working on this for months. The post about opening up about fantasies and desires started as part of this topic, but it needed it’s own post and to be out before I published this one. It’s important to understand that our being so open with each other is what allowed us to tackle the topic of consent in our marriage.
Erin: What we want to convey is that consent can differ by situation and by the relationship of the people involved. Communication is vital no matter the situation, but the type of communication can vary. Long-term sexual partners have their own ways of communicating. They should recognize each other’s cues and have a shared history to fall back on. For new sexual partners, it is best to err on the side of caution and get explicit verbal consent.
This post is based on our own personal experiences within our marriage. It’s worth noting that neither of us have experienced sexual assault or had any traumatic experiences with regards to consent. Everyone is different, and your experiences are going to inform your own views on consent and what is necessary to feel comfortable.
Explicit Consent in Our Marriage
This one is obvious:
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
Or
“You’re so hot; I really want to fuck you!”
“Oh my God, me too! Let’s fuck!”
Though at this point, consent in our marriage looks more like the following:
“Want to go to bed now?”
“That depends. Do you want to actually sleep?”
“Nope!”
Or
“Feel like having sex later tonight?”
“Sure.”
After this long, for us, it’s less about checking on consent and more about sussing out each other’s mood. Or just reminding each other to set aside the time. It’s easy to get into a habit of staying up too late and then just going to sleep rather than going to bed with some energy to burn.
Which brings up my question to you, dear reader: If you are in a long-term relationship, how often do you talk about consent in your relationship with your partner?
Maybe those in the lifestyle are more likely to discuss it, particularly those who play separately or are into the hot-wifing or cuckolding aspects of the lifestyle. But even along those lines, that’s consent based on what one partner is comfortable with the other partner doing with others, outside their own relationship.
I’m talking about the consent I have given Erin for what she can do with me and vice versa.
At this point, I don’t need to seek out verbal consent with every new interaction. By continually communicating openly and honestly with each other, we are both in touch with the others fantasies and desires. We know what we want individually and as a couple.
In that way, we establish what I call preconsent.
Implied Consent
Before I get into preconset, I want to take a moment to differentiate it from implied consent, which is consent not explicitly granted by the person but rather implied by their actions or even their lack of actions or silence. Basically, it’s the idea that consent can be given without explicitly saying so. I’ve seen it argued that consent must always be given verbally or else it’s not consent. That certainly makes things simple, and I think it’s better to err on the side of being sure and getting that consent…but I also agree that implied consent exists and occurs all the time in everyday life.
Spin the Bottle
For instance, let’s look at the good old game of spin the bottle: Everyone who sits in the circle around that bottle is giving consent to be kissed by the person who spins the bottle even though explicit oral consent isn’t usually given when everyone takes their places.
Erin: I think this situation is a good example of where non-verbal consent could come into play. If your spin lands on a person you don’t know well and haven’t interacted with previously, you might proceed slowly, maybe with a quirked eyebrow. A nod and a smile lets you know it’s all good.
Lifestyle Icebreakers
In their podcast about consent, the Joneses talk about a game played at Desire Resort. They didn’t describe it in detail, but I imagine ping pong balls are thrown around with dares written on them, and whoever catches a ball needs to perform the action. If I decided to play the game and some woman I never met got a dare to grab a cock, by virtue of being in the game, she has my implied consent to grab mine. She doesn’t have the implied consent to go grab the cock of some person sitting nearby who isn’t in the game.
I don’t mean that the players in either of these games are locked into them. Everyone playing should understand that anyone can revoke implied consent at any time. But the mere act of joining the game implies consent to be a part of the actions of the game.
Erin: And this implied consent doesn’t mean full-speed ahead. You still need to pay attention to non-verbal cues and give people the opportunity to say no either verbally or with body language.
Yes, agreed. It’s always worth checking in and giving the time for someone to opt out.
Not Implied Consent
Implied consent as a concept gets a bad rap because it gets quoted as a justification for sexual assault. That the way a woman dressed or acted or that she was drunk or how she might have said no but didn’t actually run away means she consented to being pursued or touched or kissed or fucked. Those are absolutely not examples of implied consent.
Even thinking of them that way or labeling them as such puts the onus on the victim by suggesting it was their fault, that something they did or said had sent a signal. That’s bullshit.
That’s inferring consent, but consent shouldn’t be inferred.
No means no.
Safewords are always to be respected, and the use of one immediately removes all consent.
Erin: The lack of a verbal “no” does not mean that the answer is yes. Even though I personally have not experienced sexual aggression, I can imagine myself in a situation with a new partner where I might not give a verbal no but try to convey with body language that I wasn’t into it or needed to slow down.
Women are trained not to hurt men’s feelings. Even those of us who have been lucky enough not to have experienced some form of sexual assault (and unfortunately that percentage of women is way too low) are likely to automatically react with that in mind. Don’t hurt his feelings. Don’t make him mad. Try to diffuse the situation while remaining safe.
When we talk about implied consent or preconsent in this post, we want to be clear that this is NOT the type of situation we are referring to. With a new partner, you should be getting enthusiastic verbal consent before proceeding.
Preconsent
After all that, let’s dive into preconsent: consent given before the action. In this case, I mean well in advance of. If Erin and I are on a date with another couple and I ask the other wife if I can kiss her before I do so, I’m getting consent. If I establish that I can kiss her a week prior to that date via chatting on KiK, that’s preconsent.
Just like implied consent, preconsent can be revoked at any time, which is why it’s still a good idea to check in before making a move. Maybe that check-in isn’t verbal, or at least not a direct question, but it’s still a check-in.
Preconsent in Our Marriage
So how does preconsent apply to a long-time married couple? Shouldn’t I know what I have consent to do?
Well, yeah, that’s exactly the point! After 15 years, I should know what I’m allowed to do and not allowed to do. Some of that I picked up through our interactions. I learned early on that Erin likes to be spanked and have her hair pulled during sex. I learned it by actually doing it. Considering we were each other’s first sex partners, she also learned she enjoyed it through me doing it to her.
However, other things we discussed explicitly. They were not things either of us would just try on the other without checking first.
Drunk Sex
Can drunk sex ever be consensual? The ability of someone who is intoxicated to give consent is a huge issue, and it’s certainly a murky topic.
But the answer is yes, drunk sex can be consensual. In my case, sober Erin has given me explicit consent to fuck her even when she is drunk. This conversation came about after reading this account of a guy who describes having a very drunk woman he’s on a date with come onto him really strongly. She’s drunk enough that she might not even remember having sex with him, but he does it anyway.
He then caps the tale with a cheeky “Does it matter that this woman is my wife of 25 years?” [Erin: When I read that I thought, “Dude, of course it matters!” How can that be in question?] Obviously he crafted the story to make himself look like a predator, and then he switches it at the end to try to show he was in the right. I’m not exactly sure what point he was trying to make, but he got us talking.
So does it matter that it was his wife?
Only because after 25 years, he should know if it’s OK to have sex with her when she’s drunk. And because he did have sex with her, I like to think it was OK with her, and he knew that before doing so.
However, if he knew she didn’t want to have sex when she’s drunk—by this I mean that she had previously told him while sober that no matter how aggressive she gets while drunk, she doesn’t want to have sex—then what he did was sexual assault because she was too intoxicated to change her previously set level of preconsent (by which I mean no consent).
Drunk Sex at the Fringe Household
Erin said it would feel condescending if she was drunk and wanted sex but I stopped her by saying, “Honey, you are too drunk to consent to having sex right now. Just go to sleep.”
Erin: Yeah, that would feel incredibly condescending if that were the reason given. Shane knows me well enough to know that while drinking may lower my inhibitions, it doesn’t cause me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise do. It might just allow me to act on or verbalize things that might be more difficult when sober. So if he were to turn down drunk Erin, he would probably be missing out on some pretty great sex! [Truth! And this is known.]
We recently attended a wedding during which we both got pretty drunk, but she much more so than I. We had some awesome sex in the hotel room after. Hotel sex is always better than normal sex.
It was so good she didn’t even remember it the next day!
No, wait, she was so drunk she didn’t remember it the next day. Which was a little disappointing, because it was damn good. And hot. And steamy. I was a little miffed she couldn’t remember how good a job I did.
It slowly came back to her as she woke up more, but there were definitely parts of the evening, both before and during the epic sexing, that she just does not recall.
The Sleeping Partner
A sleeping or unconscious partner certainly cannot give consent in the moment, which can put a damper on waking your partner up with oral sex. The rundown on this example: A guy is woken up with a blowjob from his friend-with-benefits (FWB) sex partner. He notes that she never got consent to go down on him (he was asleep after all). But he also says he didn’t mind that she didn’t get consent. Only that he thought she should have.
Had they really never discussed it? Had neither one of them woke the other in the middle of the night with groping and foreplay?
I was surprised that he thought it was such a major issue. Even if I had never explicitly stated that Erin had my consent to wake me with a blowjob, I know I would have implied it with other, less explicit statements to the point that she’d know without a shadow of a doubt that I’d approve.
The advice seeker then asks if he needs consent to do the same to her or, if because she already opened the floodgates, it was OK for him to reciprocate in kind. He wants it to be a surprise as it was for him, so he doesn’t want to have to wake her to check if he can go down on her.
It’s like he doesn’t realize they could talk about it ahead of time and establish if this is something she’d want at some point in the future. If he gets preconsent to wake her with oral, he doesn’t need to wake her before diving in.
Wake-Up Sex at the Fringe Household
Erin loves to sleep. I’m up early. I sometimes wake up horny. Early on in our relationship, I would aggressively cuddle, grope, and dry-hump her until she woke up enough for us to have sex. And then she’d go back to sleep.
In a way, this was my attempt to get consent each time before having sex with her.
As we got better at opening up with one another, Erin revealed that rather than that slow wake-up, she’d prefer I just lube up and fuck her. That’s not something I would have done without her go-ahead. Now I have preconsent and the knowledge that this is better for her. Which makes it awesome for me. It’s how I typically wake her up. I probably don’t even need the lube. She knows what’s coming when the sheet gets pulled off and she feels me climb on her side of the bed and is usually ready.
This new wake-up routine resulted in one of Erin’s favorite sex experiences. One week-day morning before work, I came up to the bedroom after working out in my basement gym. I pulled the sheets off and started fucking her. I then said, “This is for me. If you can cum before I’m done, fine, but I’m fucking you because I’m horny.”
She LOVED it.
As I recall, I finished and walked out of the room to take a shower. She spent the day super horny and attacked me that night.
Erin: Oh yeah, that was incredibly hot. He made it clear that he didn’t care what I wanted and was fucking me because he wanted to. Major turn-on for me! I was horny all day, and that memory comes up a lot in fantasies.
Preconsent Is Not Blanket Consent
Talking about consent helped us explore our kinks and be open to new experiences. It’s also helped us establish boundaries, not that we needed to establish these in order to not cross them. We’re both play-it-safe people. We’re more likely to tread too safely than to go too far.
Rather, establishing these boundaries gave us a better idea of how far both of us were willing to go. By giving each other consent, we were acknowledging each other’s desires and welcoming exploration.
These conversations helped us take the step we didn’t take after our first conversation about kinks.
I have preconsent to be dominant during sex, to hold Erin down or spank her or pull her hair. I don’t have her consent to aggressively overpower her and force her to have sex.
Erin: Part of the reason that this idea is so comfortable for me is that Shane knows when and when not to do it. He can read the mood enough to know if this is a good time to get dominant. I have total trust that this isn’t going to happen when I am not feeling it.
Erin has a rape fantasy that she would like to act out. She wants me to physically overpower her as she resists. I think I get extra points if I actually haul her up to the bedroom. However, I am not allowed to spring this “attack” on her whenever I want. I have to let her know it’s coming.
I wouldn’t tell her right before starting it. I’d let her know that I’m going to try it, make sure that she’s comfortable with our safewords, and then later that day make my move and start the scene. She has complete veto power at any time before or during the scene.
What Works For Us Might Not Work For Everyone
Every relationship has certain levels of preconsent. Most spouses can freely hug or kiss each other because preconsent for showing affection is assumed in long-term relationships. In fact, when one person requires consent to be discussed to an extreme degree, it raises concerns about the relationship.
However, even these assumed areas of preconsent can be revoked at any point. Reading signs and understanding your partners will help you know when you are close to or actually crossing a line.
Not everyone is going to be OK with their partner having sex with them when they are fall-down drunk or to spank them and pull their hair during sex. And that’s fine! But it’s good to know what is and what isn’t allowed in a relationship.
No one in a 25-year marriage should be asking an advice columnist if he sexually assaulted his wife. First off, he should know what’s OK with his wife. Second, if he’s not sure, he should love her enough to not cross the line without getting appropriate consent. Third, he sure as hell should be talking to his wife about it, not an advice columnist who shouldn’t have any say in his relationship.
This is why we advocate for open and honest communication. Find out what works for your relationship. And run with it! It’s worth it.
Erin: Exactly! These conversations should be happening all the time, outside of a sexual context. You take what your partner says and store it away for an appropriate time. I loved that Shane listened to my fantasies about domination and then acted on them later.