book review: the art of receiving and giving: the wheel of consent
29 Jan 2024
The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent by Betty Martin
What are the main ideas?
- we have lots of confusion as a culture in this country (america) about how touch and sensuality and pleasure work.
- a fundamental framework for clarifying all of this is to make a clear distinction between giving and receiving. define “giving” as giving a gift and “receiving” as receiving a gift
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once you define giving and receiving like that, you can disentangle “doing” and “done-to” from giving and receiving. most of us are conditioned to believe that “done-to” is the same as receiving but it is not. when you cross “done-to” and “doing” with “giving” and “receiving” you end up with 4 different areas or quadrant that define what is happening at any (well, most) moments during a moment of touch. the quadrants you get are:
- doing + receiving
- doing + giving
- done-to + receiving
- done-to + giving
- each of those 4 quadrants has a particular magic to unlock
- everyone has a pleasure ceiling and one the other side of it are (often surprising) big feelings. it is finding your pleasure ceiling, learning what’s under the feelings there, and integrating what’s needed from there to expand your pleasure capacity that makes pleasure a tool for healing.
- each of the quadrants has a shadow and sometimes we are so afraid of the shadow of one or more quadrants that it keeps us wanting or being able to inhabit that/those quadrants at all.
- when you combine the quadrants with the boundary of consent you get the wheel of consent (which is a strangely confusing visual until you understand all the inner workings of the quadrants)
If I implemented one idea from this book right now, which one would it be?
How would I describe the book to a friend?
this book was an earth-shatterer for me. as i was reading it, i could feel like tectonic plates of my several of my most important relationships shift. even though it is technically about touch, it illuminates things about the dynamics of giving and receiving in so many (all?) parts of life. even though it’s a long one, i felt like every page was economical and useful. even the repetition felt economical (and there is a lot of it!) because she’s really tryna make sure you can’t forget the main points. this book will has transformed my relationship to touch, pleasure, consent, and play.
reminder: book review structure
words / writing / post-processing
379w / 12min / 14min