Asking the Right Questions

An excerpt from the House Wayward class Listen for Consent.

This is a tiny excerpt from a 3-hour class. Maybe it will inspire you to dust off your communications toolbox.

Human negotiation, whether about sex, kink, a job offer, or anything else really comes down to asking the right questions to manage expectations and assumptions.

There are a broad range of engaged listening skills that can help here.

Handout
At a minimum you have to:

• Balance power, the negotiation is not the time for power exchange.

• Say back to the person what you think you heard.

• Clarify that you’re on the same page.

• Take notes, it helps!

If you're trying to have an interaction with someone, consent seeking is what you have to do, you accomplish it through negotiation. Understanding motivation is what makes you a better play partner.

Aim to negotiate and understand motivations around the sexual, emotional, social, and health and wellness aspects of a given interaction.

Listen for Motivation

Listening helps you understand the person’s motivations behind what they want to do. Important always, but especially when negotiating for pickup play when you have less time to co-construct a potential scene.

Understanding motivations comes down to:

• how do you want to feel?

• how do your prospective partners want to feel?

• compromise or collaborate?

This framework helps with seeking and granting consent, negotiating specific scenes, and understanding motivations.

• who - yes the people you are negotiating with, but what about their other partners? Yours? Cute people who come along and want to play with you all?

• what - nouns and verbs, limits, explicit consent, sex, aftercare, what if failure

• when - now, tonight, next Tuesday? but how do I treat you at the grocery store?

• where - in the dungeon, in a hotel room, in your house with the kids in the next room?

• why - motivation writ large

• how - adjectives and adverbs, which toys/tools (stingy, thuddy, stabby, buzzy), which furniture (bent over, stretched up, laid out), what flavor of role (Daddy? Daddy dominant, sugar Daddy, Daddy to a little?) - is the role contained to the scene?

Preparing to Ask the Right Questions

Negotiation is communication skills and expectation setting.

• sexual topics to discuss

  • desires

  • make lists together (yes/no/maybe or black/white/gray)

  • write them down! date them, update them

  • when you’re in learning mode it’s okay not to know

  • you can change your mind in the middle

  • safer sex practices

  • fluid contact

• health and wellness topics to discuss

  • STIs and risk factors

  • allergies

  • physical impairments

  • PTSD

  • body image

  • ensuring everyone has the ability to consent

• emotional topics to discuss

  • language

    • dirty talk/praise/humiliation

    • endearments

    • respecting identities

  • styles of intimacy

    • example: the daily texter vs the weekly emailer

  • emotional expectations

    • catching feelings

    • strictly for the fucks

• social topics to discuss

  • defining status: fwb, play partners, relationship, spouses, etc.

  • monogamy/non­monogamy

  • many models, be specific

  • the grocery store - do you know that person? how? what's the name you know them by? are they with someone?

    • use therapy rules - each only engage as much as the other does - hello receives hello. a wave receives a wave. a nod receives a nod. a blank face receives a blank face.

To Recap

Make sure that you talked about what you needed to in order to do the things you both/all want to do. Sexual desires and safer sex practices, allergies, physical limitations, PTSD, body image, ability to consent; dirty talk, endearments, respecting identities, styles of intimacy, emotional expectations, etc. Get into all of it.

Don't forget to talk about HOW DOES IT END? WHAT, IF ANYTHING, DID IT MEAN?
Remember to talk about defining your status. Just because you don't think one exists doesn't mean they think that. Was this "a scene"? Are you now "play partners"? What do those words mean to you both?

June 22, 2024