How can you have the passionate sex you’ve dreamed of?
Only consent — informed and fully respected — can make it possible to fully open up to sex with another person. That openness makes it possible to surrender to passion.
But what does that mean? What actually happens in the body?
The Physiology of Consent
The old axiom that “sex is in the brain” is true — but what happens during sex involves the vast network of blood vessels and veins and organs within you. Sex is not just in your head and groin, it’s a full-on psycho-biological phenomenon that temporarily changes your insides.
The biology of consent is pretty easy to understand. Think of the body as a Rube Goldberg contraption where every gear and trigger does its little job to reach the final goal. In order for your body to produce great pleasure during sex, a number of biological processes must work in harmony.
That harmony only exists during informed, mutually consensual sex.
Sex With Enthusiastic Consent Can Give You a Full Body High
Enthusiastic consent makes you juicy. It allows the body and brain’s natural lubricants to flow. This makes for sexual experiences which are uplifting, satisfying, even ecstatic.
When you consent because you want to do that sex thing (the specific thing is your choice), your brain sees that you feel good all over about what’s going to happen. You may feel tingly in your groin, for example. That’s because blood cells are dilating and blood flow is increasing in your genitals, while dopamine (the feel-good brain chemical) is making you receptive to and eager for sex.
Things are in motion inside and out to intensify pleasure. Some are visible (nipples getting taut, genitals getting puffy and moist) but there’s much more going on under the skin.
Arousal triggers dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and serotonin. The more these feel-good chemicals flow, the more eager you are to do the deed. The more they circulate in your bloodstream, the more they stimulate the heart, lungs, genitals. Your organs and vascular system signal back to the brain that things are going right! You want this sex! You feel good about it! You are ready to fully let go and be vulnerable.
Non-Consent Hurts the Brain
The readier you are for sex, the less stress you’ll feel. The less stress you feel, the more you’ll feel the emotional high of sex chemicals at work.
But when consent is lacking — even if there seems to be consent, but it’s not enthusiastic — it creates stress. Instead of healthy energy that leaves a person feeling better after sex, there are new causes of stress and upset.
That’s how people who don’t respect boundaries, safewords, or simple phrases like “no I don’t want to” or “don’t touch me like that” cause trauma.
Biologically, everything changes for the worse without consent. Stress chemicals caused by fear, desperation, and shame break the chain of positive triggers, and can leave a person feeling damaged. Even if they “seemed” ok with what happened at first.
Why? The brain has defense mechanisms that emotionally protect people when they’re in a profoundly traumatic situation. A victim may disassociate from their body, for example. They may go into denial. They may tell themselves it isn’t that bad.
But the brain holds onto the authentic emotional impact of their experience. That trauma may never heal on its own.
Understand Physiology, Have Great Sex
Now that we understand the importance of enthusiastic, informed consent in priming the body for great sex, it puts us in a better place to lay the groundwork for the kind of amazing sex we all want.
Of course, knowing the importance of consent and having great skills for discussing consent are two different things. Want to learn how to have those consent conversations with a partner? Tune in next week!
All Photos: Ketut Subiyanto https://www.pexels.com/@ketut-subiyanto
