The Art of Receiving and Giving Quotes

“The traditional meaning of consent means agreeing to something someone else wants: “I consent to X.” In this meaning, you “give consent” or “get consent”. I’d like to expand the definition and think of consent as being an agreement that two or more people come up with together. You don’t give consent, you arrive at consent—together.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“Along the way, I learned some things. One thing I learned was that even though most people thought their problem was about sex, it rarely was. More often it was a problem with knowing how to relax, how to attend to their sensation, or how to respect and accept their desires.
They had trouble knowing how to be vulnerable, playful, or generous, or how to set limits. They had trouble receiving, or even knowing what it meant, and trouble giving and knowing what that meant. These things are much more fundamental, but because difficulty with them feels so normal, people often didn’t notice them until sex was involved, so they thought it was about the sex. Far more often it was a challenge with these more basic skills.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“Lack of awareness and precision about consent, obfuscation of vectors of privilege and oppression, and a dearth of embodied experiences of respectful relationship all combine to create confusion. Blame, shame, dissociative compliance, ineffective complaints, and misplaced resentments all are signals of unsafety”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“Your ability to give what is real and effective is directly proportional to your ability to receive what is real and meaningful to you.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“As we learn we have limits, we learn “This far and no farther.” We learn to stand up for ourselves and others. We stop going along with the usual social expectations that allow entire groups of people to be mistreated. We stand against racism, sexism, and unfair conditions for workers. We stand up for the earth. In other words, as we experience the quadrants, we find that their shadows become visible and loathsome.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“where vulnerabilities and limits are honored and courage and freedom can flourish.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“I began to see that when we are worried about having to give too much, we become afraid to give anything at all.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“The world also needs connection.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“I learned a lot by simply asking, including how tender and vulnerable it is to ask for what we want, how much fear and doubt we have about receiving it, and mainly how out of practice we are.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“We are hungry to connect with others in ways that are real and satisfying, that feed our hearts and inspire us. We need to be with others in ways that help us to be who we really are, complex beings who need each other and bring joy to each other. We need to be able to receive and to give—and to tell the difference.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“We live in a world in which many of us act as if some other person’s body or labor belong to us, or as if some other nation’s oil belongs to us, and we inflict pain on the people getting in our way. We act as if the future itself belongs to us, as we use up the slack in our planetary climate-generating systems, ocean fisheries, and the soil itself, upon which depend the food supply for our grandchildren.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“consent as being an agreement that two or more people come up with together. You don’t give consent, you arrive at consent—together.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“There is always a risk in increasing your awareness. You risk seeing things you might rather not notice. You risk feelings you might rather avoid. You risk having to change what you think and worse—having to change what you do.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“we stay trapped in a fear-based world, hurting ourselves and each other. Wheel of Consent practices empower us to notice the difference between real dangers we must courageously face and potentially loving relationships we can carefully cultivate.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“It is so easy to think we are being victimized when we are not. It is also so easy not to recognize that we are being victimized when we are.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“As we learn to notice what we want, to trust it, value it, and communicate it, the experience of receiving opens up into a rich, deep, gorgeous landscape.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“Having choice is a neurological and relational capacity that can only be built with practice. With all our deeply wired neural grooves, we will keep on going into habits of enduring. We won’t know what we authentically want. We will be afraid to change our minds. We will act out cultural scripts and unconscious entitlements.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“What you learn here is that you have limits around how you are willing to be touched, that your limits matter, and that you have a choice about what is done to you. You also learn that the more responsibility you take for your limits (what they are and how to communicate them), the more relaxed and generous you become.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“You cannot meet your need to receive by giving more, no matter how much you enjoy it.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent

“Then there is this one: doing to get a response we want to see. This is so easy to do! I’ve done this, and I imagine you have too. We want to see the person relax, or moan and sigh, or be impressed with our skill, or have a mind-blowing breakthrough. This trap is especially common with sexual touch. I’ve found that mostly we don’t know we’re doing this until we don’t get the response we want; then we say, “It didn’t work.” We blame ourselves for not having the right technique or blame the receiver for not being liberated enough or not being able to surrender. There are many problems with this, and we’ll be looking at them.”
― Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent