Do any of these sound familiar?
You agree to things you don't really want. Not because someone forces you, but because it's easier than saying no. In bed, at work, with family. You go along, and afterwards you feel drained or resentful, and you're not always sure why. You might not even realise you had a choice. As one of my clients put it: "It didn't occur to me that it didn't actually have to happen."
Or you're asked what you want and you genuinely don't know. The question might even feel overwhelming. You've spent so long attending to what everyone else needs that your own desires have gone quiet.
Or you feel guilty when something feels good. Pleasure comes with a sting of shame. You've learned, somehow, that wanting things for yourself is selfish or wrong.
Or you give and give. You look after everyone. You're the reliable one. And somewhere underneath all that, you're exhausted and wondering when it gets to be your turn.
These patterns might look different on the surface, but they come from the same place: losing contact with what you want and what's OK with you. When that contact breaks down, it doesn't just affect one part of your life. It runs through everything.
Recognising that can be empowering, but it can also be unsettling: seeing how these patterns weave through your life, and what might be needed to start making a change. Both reactions make sense. And either way, it can help to understand where these patterns come from.
Two questions that change everything
The Wheel of Consent is a framework created by Dr Betty Martin that maps out the dynamics of giving and receiving. At its heart are two questions you can ask about any interaction:
Who is doing? And who is it for?
That's it. But try applying them honestly to your daily life and watch what happens.
When you agree to cook dinner even though you're exhausted: who is doing? You. Who is it for? Them. And is that OK with you right now, or are you just going along with it?
When your partner touches you and you're not really feeling it but you don't say anything: who is doing? Them. Who is it for? They might say "it's for you". You might say "it's for me." But is it? Or is it really for them, and you're tolerating it?
When you spend your weekend helping a friend move house and feel good about it: who is doing? You. Who is it for? Them. And this time it's fine, because you chose it freely.
Same action, different answers. The questions don't tell you what to do. They help you see what's actually happening.
The difference between willing and wanting
Once you start asking those questions, something else comes into focus: there's a difference between wanting to do something and being willing to do it.
Wanting comes from inside you. It wells up for your own reasons. It might be a burning desire or a mild preference, but it's yours. The question to ask yourself is: what sounds wonderful to me? What's my first choice?
Willing is different. It's something you wouldn't choose for yourself, but you're prepared to do it because someone else wants it and it's OK with you. Willingness can range from a wholehearted "of course!" through to a barely-there "only for you." The question to ask yourself is: am I genuinely OK with this?
Both are valid. Both are needed. The problem is when you can't tell the difference.
And the gap between them is sneakier than you'd think. You can be enthusiastic about doing something for someone and still not notice that it's willingness, not desire. Enthusiasm feels like wanting, but the test is always: who is it for? If it's for them, it's willingness, no matter how good it feels to give.
One of my clients described having sex with men when she didn't really want to, "not enjoying it but going along with it anyway." She wasn't being forced. She just didn't have access to the difference between what she was willing to tolerate and what she actually wanted. Once she could see that gap, things started to shift. Not all at once. But she began setting boundaries, saying no to things she didn't want, and for the first time feeling like a sexual woman on her own terms.
There's a related trap for women who have lost contact with their desires entirely. If you genuinely can't remember what you want, it can look like generosity: "I don't mind, whatever you'd like." But not having desires because you've forgotten how to have them is not the same as generously setting them aside. Betty Martin is direct about this: being completely disconnected from what you want is not generosity. It's a loss.
Next time someone asks you to do something, try pausing before you answer. Just for a moment. Notice what's there. Is there a yes, a no, a "not sure"? How does your body feel about it? You don't have to change what you do. Just notice that there's something to notice. That's where it starts. That's where you start to have a choice.
When your no has gone quiet
For some women, the issue isn't telling the difference between want and willing. It's that their no has stopped working entirely.
This starts earlier than you'd think. Every one of us was touched without our consent before we could talk. Even in the kindest circumstances, we were picked up, bathed, dressed, moved. We learned, very young, that what is happening is more important than how we feel about it. For most of us, that lesson went deep.
If your no was then ignored, punished, or overridden, your body might have learned something else: it's not safe to feel it. You stop noticing, stop trusting. And eventually you stop having a no at all. When you say yes to everything, that yes doesn't mean much.
Sometimes what's left is numbness. A disconnection from your body that can feel like there's just not much there any more. That's not something wrong with you. It's your body's way of protecting itself. But it doesn't have to be permanent.
Kira, who came to me after a sexual assault, describes it clearly: "I found it very difficult to say 'no' as my 'no' had been ignored in the past." Through the Wheel of Consent work, she started rebuilding that signal, not just in her head but in her body. She describes it as "life-changing. It's helped me notice where I need stronger boundaries in my life, especially with family. This tool has aided me in regaining my voice and realising there's no shame in asking for what I need."
The boundaries she rebuilt weren't just for sessions. They were for her whole life.
Safiya, who kept my website open for eight months before finding the courage to reach out, had a similar pattern: "It was very hard for me to say 'no', even when I wanted to." So we practised. I would ask her something, and her job was simply to say no and notice what that was like in her body. It was difficult at first, but it got easier. She started noticing the difference in her daily life too, becoming more conscious of when she was going along with things and starting to push back.
Learning to ask for what you want
Saying no is one side of it. The other is knowing what you actually want. For a lot of the women I work with, that can be just as hard.
This makes sense. If you've spent years attending to what everyone else needs, or if wanting things for yourself has been met with punishment or shame, your desires go underground. They're still there, but you've lost contact with them. So when someone asks "what do you want?", you might draw a blank.
Betty Martin describes desire as a spring whose source is deep underground. You can't demand that it show up. But you can make room for it. You can protect it from your judgements, your habit of rushing, your urge to just get on with things. And if you give it time, it naturally rises to the surface.
That's a lot of what I do in sessions: create the conditions for someone to discover what they want. We don't start with the answer. We start with the patience to wait for it.
One client and I spent over 90 minutes in a session, and the actual touch lasted about two minutes. A lot of that time was spent noticing what she was feeling in her body. We tried her asking herself if there was something her body would like, and then waiting to find out if an answer came. We tried a few suggestions of types of touch and just noticed how her body reacted, with no particular need to do anything, just to notice the reactions. I explained that we didn't have to do anything at all, and that was fine. The noticing, the exploring what comes up, the paying attention to her body's reactions. That is the work. Even noticing if there's a pressure to "do something" is useful information.
That internal process — noticing what you want, trusting that it's real, valuing it enough to say it out loud — is more transformative than any technique. Because in that old pattern, touch happens first and then you figure out how to feel about it. In this work, you choose first. And that's an entirely different experience. It's a skill you can use in every part of your life.
What it looks like in practice
When someone comes to see me, we don't start by explaining the framework. We start wherever they are.
Some people need a lot of structure and control to feel safe, and for them the simplest version of the Wheel of Consent exercises can be transformative. One client started with three minutes of touch on her arm. She chose what happened: where, how much pressure, when to stop. Three minutes, then we'd stop. We'd notice the effects. And then she'd decide if she wanted more, something different, or to stop altogether and we'd use the same 3-minute structure again.
Over many monthly sessions, that gradually expanded. A bit more body. A bit longer. She'd choose a little more each session, building on what she'd discovered the time before. She explored "neglected parts" of her body and found she had tensions she didn't know about. She tried touching herself, including with her elbows and her toes, which she said was a lot of fun. She noticed she could be directive in life but found it much harder with touch.
Along the way, old memories surfaced. Things she hadn't thought about in years. In one session, a memory came up of boys touching her at school. But this touch was different. Chosen by her, respectful, and could be stopped at any moment. She called it a "profound shift."
Eventually, after many months, she asked for a full-body massage with no timeboxes at all, just following her pleasure. Not because I suggested it, but because she'd built enough trust in herself — in her ability to direct, to say stop, to know what she wanted — that the structure wasn't needed any more. The structure was never a limitation. It was what made everything possible.
I had another client who was so used to doing things for other people that she couldn't settle into receiving anything for herself. So we started the other way round: she did something for me for a couple of minutes. That was her comfort zone, and starting there helped her regulate. It's counterintuitive. You'd think someone who over-gives needs to learn to receive. But her nervous system needed to start where it felt safe, not where it "should" be. Once she'd settled, she was able to start trying things for herself in the rest of the session. The framework flexes to the person, not the other way round.
Something to try
You don't need to be in a session to start exploring this. Here are a few things you can try on your own.
- Practice your no
- Ask someone you trust to make a small request, like "Can I borrow your pen?", and say no. Not because you mean it, just to feel what no feels like in your body. Notice what happens: relief, guilt, tension, nothing at all. Try it a few times. Many of the women I work with are surprised by how hard this is, and how different it feels once they've practised it.
- Waking Up the Hands.
- This is a practice created by Betty Martin that I use with clients, and it's worth understanding why. Most of us experience pleasure indirectly: you do something for someone, they respond positively, and their response is what feels good to you. There's nothing wrong with that. But if it's the only route to pleasure you have, you depend on someone else's reaction to feel anything.
There's a more direct route: your body finding enjoyment through sensation alone, without needing anyone else's response. Most of us had this as children and lost it along the way, because the feelings that shut it down — shame, guilt, the message that pleasure is suspect — are still sitting there. Reopening it can bring those feelings back up, which is why it takes patience. It's not that the exercise is complicated. It's that allowing yourself to feel pleasure, on purpose, without excuse, can be quietly brave.
Betty Martin has a guided video that walks you through the practice.
- Discover what you want.
- If the "not knowing what I want" pattern resonates, I've written a practical exercise for discovering what you really want that you can do at home. It takes a couple of hours and it's something I sometimes give to clients as a starting point.
Going deeper
If you want to explore the full framework — the four quadrants, the dynamics between giving and receiving — Betty Martin explains it clearly in her videos and her book The Art of Receiving and Giving. What I've described here is how I use the Wheel of Consent with clients, often working with difficult past experiences. But there's a rich, detailed model underneath that rewards exploration, and it's for anyone who wants to understand how they give and receive.
And if any of this resonates and you'd like to explore it with support, I'd love to have a conversation. I offer a free 60-minute Zoom chat. Just a conversation, entirely at your own pace. Many of the women I work with took weeks or months before they felt ready to reach out, and that's completely fine. There's no rush.
— Paul
