He Asked Twice

In my last post, I made some people mad — most of them men.

It wasn’t unexpected or a surprise. The only surprise was how insistent one of them was to tell me that I don’t understand the principles of consent - apparently, either you say yes or you say no, and there’s no point arguing anything in between.

Which is … humorous. And proved exactly the point I was making.

It got me thinking about a recent experience where the consent was muddy, and I didn’t clock it until after the fact. I’m walking you step-by-step through the experience: the things he said and the decisions (or lack of decisions) I made, so we can look at where consent broke down in a situation where one person (him) had a clear goal in mind, and the other person (me) didn’t work hard enough to maintain their boundaries.

Fair warning - I made a lot of mistakes and ignored a lot of red flags. I don’t come out of this looking like a master of consent. That’s the point - even when we intellectually and logically understand all the principles, we can quickly be overwhelmed by behavioral patterns and trauma responses.

Also, you don’t need to worry - this is about muddy consent, not consent violations. Nothing happened in this encounter that I would categorize as a consent violation.

To be clear: in the United States, a coerced yes is considered to be an actual yes in most legal cases.

Before Roman (not his real name) came over, we had agreed to play with power-exchange dynamics. I told him that I wanted us to have a full pre-sex conversation using the STARS framework (learn more here: https://www.goodgirlstalk.com/posts/podcast/improve-your-sex-life-with-the-stars-talk/). He said he was familiar with it, so I assumed we shared a common language around consent, negotiation, safety, and boundaries.

We started with S (STI status), and all was going well.

Then he immediately prompted us to move on to the “fun stuff.” I figured that he meant the T (turn-ons) portion of the conversation. As a rule, I prefer to leave this to last. I’ve had experiences where, once turn-ons are discussed (generally with a cis/het man), they stop listening to the rest of the conversation because they want to get moving.

So I suggested we do the R (relationship expectations), S (safety protocols), and A (avoids / boundaries) first. While he agreed, he hand-waved away any particulars. He claimed to have no avoids, and he was surprised that I DID have a list of avoids.

He kept driving us toward “the fun stuff”: what kinds of kink I liked, what dynamics I was into, what he wanted to do to me.

Nothing he was doing was overtly forceful. He wasn’t threatening me, or yelling, or using any force.

But he had a kind of single-minded momentum that gradually took control of the interaction. In my gut, I had a sense: We’re moving too fast. We’re skipping important things. Instead of holding my ground, I found myself trying to keep up with him. The drive forward was so insistent that I couldn’t get my feet under me to say, “We need to slow down, important things are getting missed.”

And because I was trying to keep up, I didn’t fully clock how big the gaps were in what we were covering.

I didn’t realize until after the fact that our safety protocols discussion didn’t include anything about power-exchange play — which was explicitly the thing we had agreed to explore together.

Normally, with a new partner, I have a very clear boundary: no PIV (penis-in-vagina) penetration during the first play session. It’s important to me that I be able to set a boundary and see a new partner respect it without whining, bargaining, or coercion.

But this time I worded it differently. PIV sex has never been my first choice; historically it’s often been uncomfortable or painful for me. After a couple of intense surgeries three years ago, I became even more cautious about it. So instead of saying “I don’t do PIV on the first encounter,” I said that PIV can be physically difficult for me and that it would probably take me a while to get there.

I didn’t specifically say “not the first session” because in my mind, I meant “a few play sessions.” But I didn’t vocalize that.

There was something I said (I no longer remember what) that he asked, “Do you think that will ever change?”

Later, while we were playing, he started paddling me — without telling me he was going to do it beforehand. After a minute I stopped him and said, “That’s my limit.” He immediately stopped, but a few minutes later, he asked, “Do you think your limit will ever get higher?”

Stunned, I asked, “Why? Are you hoping it will?”

He sputtered, “I don’t know, I was just asking.”

Looking back, it feels like the entire conversation operated on his assumption that my boundaries were temporary obstacles, not information that deserved to be respected.

And because I never fully regained control of the conversation, we entered the actual play session without having properly negotiated some of the most important things — including power exchange dynamics, safe words, trauma responses, or what would happen if I became overwhelmed or dissociated.

Once we moved into the bedroom, he pulled out a blindfold and wrist restraints.

To be clear — this can be a big turn on with the right person, in the right situation. But the first time I’m playing with someone, without negotiation about safe words, trauma triggers, and boundaries? Fuck that.

But by that point, I was already sliding into a pattern of accommodation.

Roman was already several steps into the used car salesman’s handbook. A technique taught to salespeople is to get the first “yes.” Because once you say yes to something small, your brain starts categorizing the interaction as one where your role is to keep saying yes. Each additional yes becomes easier than the last, and pivoting to no starts to feel psychologically uncomfortable.

In retrospect, that’s exactly what this experience felt like.

Once the restraints and blindfold were on, I don’t remember him asking me a single question about what I wanted, whether I liked what he was doing, or whether I wanted anything different. It was like once the play started, being “in charge” meant that his desires took primacy.

At one point, he put his hand on my throat. He didn’t squeeze. But putting your hand on someone’s throat is a power move. And if there’s no prior negotiation about that, you have NO idea what kind of buttons you might be pushing or trauma triggers you might be setting off.

I want to pause here and be clear: I don’t think Roman is a bad guy.

I think he believes he understands consent. If you asked him, he’d almost certainly tell you that consent is an ongoing process, and it’s important to be careful.

But when it comes to real-life play, his dick got ahead of his brain. Once he got the first “yes,” his dick told him that everything else was fair game.

And unfortunately, there are millions and millions of guys just like him.

There’s nothing here that’s a blatant violation of consent. There are just a whole lot of red flags that I missed in the moment.

After we’d been playing for about 20 minutes, he asked me, “Are you ready for my dick?”

I know that I sputtered … I might actually have laughed. Even with something as vague as “It might take me some time to work up to it,” 20 minutes was a laughably short amount of time.

I’m proud of myself for saying, “No.”

Soon after, he put me on my stomach and pulled my head to the edge of the bed (still restrained and blindfolded) so that I was in something akin to the cobra position. He stepped in front of me and stuffed his dick in my mouth. He grabbed my hair so he was controlling the movements of my head.

I was in a distinctly vulnerable position with no defenses (I couldn’t call a safe word, and I couldn’t effectively push him away because my hands were tied together and my elbows were holding me up).

After a moment, he started thrusting into my mouth. I have a highly-developed gag reflex, so I quickly started choking.

That’s when he reached down and started stroking my throat - sort of like you would do to a cat who needs to take a medication.

It felt like he was trying to relax my throat so he could go deeper, and he started thrusting.

While I had agreed to blow jobs during our negotiation, I had definitely NOT agreed to any of this.

Finally I managed to turn my head away and he stopped.

Later, when I told him deep-throating was a hard no for me, he sounded confused. “Wait - you don’t think I tried to do that, do you?” Weaponized ignorance.

Once I turned my head, he flipped me on my back again, leaned over me, and asked, “Do you want me inside you now?”

This is why consent isn’t a pure “yes or no.” A “yes” obtained through repeated pressure, escalation, and nervous system activation is not the same thing as consent.

He got his yes.

After a few minutes of PIV, I realized that I had totally dissociated.

To his credit, when I said that, he immediately got off me and we were done.

We cuddled for a few minutes. He asked me if there was anything he could have done differently.

It is a clear testament to how disconnected I was that I said, “Nope. It was all great.”

As I went through the rest of my day, I could smell him on me. Even though it wasn’t an unpleasant smell, it made me vaguely nauseous every time I caught a whiff.

I decided not to reach out to him. If he got in touch with me, I’d respond. But if the whole thing faded away into nothingness, that would be good too.

Eight days later, I got this text from him:

My “aversion to PIV sex”.
Because “it’s very natural to me.”
That he can’t “help me” through trauma that conflicts with his desires.

This is why I get frustrated when people insist consent is simple.

In theory? Sure.

In real life, consent is a process complicated by our nervous systems, conditioning, socialization, trauma responses, power dynamics, and our basic need to preserve our safety.

Coercion isn’t about forcing the door open. It just keeps pushing against the door until it opens “on its own.”

It is asking, “Are you sure?” one more time after your defenses have started to crumble.

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