by Emma Atkinson and Rachel Drake
Hello wonderful readers! Welcome back to Consent Corner- we hope that we’re in at least your top three corners, even if we’re not at the tippy top. We’re so glad to have you with us as we ponder the many-faceted jewel of consent.
Shout out to a reader who sent us a lovely note asking us to write more about creating and maintaining boundaries. We’ve been thinking long and hard (ooh, is it getting hot in here?) about your question and we’ll be talking more about boundaries in upcoming episodes. It’s *such* an important topic for all of us and it affects *every* part of our lives. Stay tuned.
A key part of creating boundaries is creating agreements, and our previous episode considered creating agreements with new partners. Once you’ve made these agreements, you’ll want to revisit them from time to time, and that’s our topic today.
Revisiting your agreements means talking about them, so the first thing to do is create a space in which everyone feels comfortable to express their likes and dislikes. It means openness and honesty. It means making sure you’re understanding what’s said. And, it means listening without judging.
It’s a lot to ask, we know, and we know that you can do it! When you see how well it can work for you, you can lavish praise upon us later.
If we’ve learned nothing else in the past two years, as COVID has been smacking us upside the head, it’s that things change. We’re all getting older, our bodies change, our needs and wants change - who can keep up? You can.
We suggest revisiting your agreements at least once a year, though a quarterly conversation might work better for you. How about at the Solstice and Equinox times? How about monthly, at the ides? It didn’t work out so well for Caesar, but it just might work for you. Just knowing that there’s a scheduled time to talk can help even the most reticent of us open up in conversation.
There’s a great tool for a relationship check-in at multiamory.com called RADAR. That means: 1) Review, 2) Agree on the agenda, 3) Discuss, 4) Action points, and 5) Re-connect. Please check them out for the details, and you’ll find lots of other potentially useful information there, too.
Homework: review the RADAR model at the multiamory site and revise it for your own purposes. And, check-in with us at: info@thecspc.org.
“Be excellent to each other” - Bill and Ted
“Be sexcellent to each other” - Emma and Rachel