Extra notes about Chapter 20 – The Taking Quadrant
in the book, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent.
Other notes are found here.
Extra Section: A Cascade of Effects
Learning the Taking Quadrant creates a cascade of effects, each built on the one before.
Opening the inflow. The fundamental shift that everything else is built on is opening the inflow: the ability to take in sensation and experience it as pleasure. When we do that, several things happen.
1) Almost immediately, our hands relax. They are no longer “on a mission,” so they soften and slow down. They become curious and sensual; they curve, drape, and wrap. This has a profound effect on the quality of our touch.
2) As we open up our hands to sensation, we start to notice sensation in the rest of our bodies. We develop the ability to notice our gut feelings, which are guides to our “yes” or “no.” We become more aware of our impulses, which we need to express ourselves and play.
3) With our inflow open, we better notice the state of our partner. We notice their skin and muscle tone, whether they are relaxing under our hands or have become tense. As we become better at noticing with our hands, we expand to noticing their words, facial expression, and tone of voice. This is important for developing confidence.
4) Attending to sensation naturally pulls us into the present moment. People often talk about stopping the mind chatter, but no one tells you how. When you bring all your attention to your sensation, other brain areas—chattering, worrying, strategizing—quiet down. Perhaps you noticed this in Waking Up the Hands.
5) This lets you drop the “goal.” If you are trying to get anywhere you are not already, that is a goal. You probably don’t think you have one. Most people don’t until it isn’t met. For most people, the assumed goal of touch is sex, the goal of sex is intercourse, and the goal of intercourse is orgasm. You’ve undoubtedly heard that it’s good to drop your goal, advice often offered by the same people telling you how to get to orgasm.
Attending to the sensation doesn’t just let you drop the goal; it makes the goal pointless, because it feels good where you already are. As your experience of pleasure expands, the goal drops away because you don’t need it.
6) Opening the inflow helps you locate your experience in yourself instead of in another person so you top using another person’s pleasure as a substitute for your own (the Indirect Route, page 99 in the book). This is a profound shift in how you approach Doing and lets you clean up your Serving. You no longer try to get your partner to feel the way you want them to feel.
Learning to respect limits and boundaries. You might worry that Taking teaches you to grab everything you want, but it actually teaches you to respect other people’s limits and boundaries. The process of acknowledging what you want, humbling yourself enough to request it, listening to the answer, and experiencing it as a gift to you creates respect and appreciation for other people’s boundaries.
The capacity for self-expression. We talked about this in the Doing chapter. Because you respect your partner’s limit and boundaries, you learn to trust yourself, and that gives you permission to move in ways that express yourself. You learn that your hands can be trusted to seek their own pleasure, and you learn to follow them. That expands to your arms, your face, and the rest of your body. You find that there is some way that you want to move, and you develop the inner permission to move your body in ways you may not be used to based on what you feel instead of what you plan. You find that the ways you move and express yourself are less predictable and arise naturally in the moment. That leads to being able to stop compulsive “giving,” which cleans up your Serving and opens up the ability to play.
Stopping your compulsive Giving. If you don’t believe you are worthy of receiving, “giving” is the only way you know how to connect. It becomes compulsive. When you learn Taking, that breaks open. You discover that you get to be here just as you are.
Cleaning up your Serving. As Taking becomes possible, you no longer have to use “Serving” as an excuse to get your hands on someone, so your Serving becomes real.
Play. The Lab on play includes a full discussion. Play is related to developing the capacity for self-expression. Play is responding to change, so to play, you have to notice the change. Your inflow must be accurate and immediate. A blind outfielder can’t catch the ball. A lover who doesn’t notice their partner’s changes is not only ineffective but dangerous.
The capacity for play is built on everything else on this list: opening the inflow, noticing your partner, dropping the goal, accessing your impulses, respecting limits, stopping your efforts to “give,” and of course, accessing your self-expression. We are back to consent skills and noticing skills. This is why Taking so often naturally becomes a playful experience.
Confidence. The secret to confidence is not knowing the “right” thing to do; it’s being able to respond. Being able to notice and respond creates a deep and real confidence that cannot be faked; it’s different from bravado. Getting the technique right can give you a certain kind of confidence, but it’s shaky, like sitting on a fence. If it’s not the right technique, you fall off.
Another factor underlying a lack of confidence is the question “Is it okay for me be here?” Taking answers the question with a resounding “yes”—it is okay to be here, to be curious, to take in all the sensation available to you. It is right to want to touch, and it does not require technique.
Another factor is becoming trustworthy. In Taking, you learn how to stay within the agreement you have made, so you are not afraid of going too far or pushing too hard, which comes from, again, your ability to notice and respond. If you do make a mistake, you can notice it and respond accordingly.
Extra section: Core Competencies
For the sex geeks and therapists among us, the Taking Quadrant reveals certain core competencies (or their lack) and at the same time develops them:
- Experience pleasure with the skin (direct route)
- Notice the desire to take action
- Value, trust and communicate that
- Ability to put yourself first
- Ask for permission and wait for the answer
- Ability to experience the direct route to pleasure while engaging the muscles of movement
- Respect limits and continuing to do so while taking action
- Continue to do so as action gets more complex or more intense
- Comfortable with conflicting or confusing emotions
- Ability to locate your experience within yourself instead of identifying with partner’s experience
What Remains?
My editor thought this was a bit too snarky for the book, but I like it, as it captures something. It’s under the general theme of why the Taking Quadrant is so emotionally challenging.
“Let’s see, you can’t be passive, can’t be a victim, can’t make something happen, can’t please anyone else, and can’t use anyone else’s experience to substitute for your own. Now, what remains?”
The Shadow of the Taking Quadrant – Quotes
I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.
– Anaiis Nin
When do you manipulate others for your own advantage? When I notice myself doing it, usually it is when I am feeling insecure.
– Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
In order to enter the path of forgiveness, we have to lose our feelings of both superiority and inferiority. Each of us has hurt another, each of us has been hurt.
– Jean Vanier, in The Sun Magazine
Is this person’s pleasure a priority for me or am I just using them for my pleasure? Have they ceased to be a human being, however nicely I’ve treated them 5 minutes ago or half an hour ago? Have they suddenly, at some point, become an object for my pleasure?
– Nina Millns, in an interview, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bj79fq
It’s my sense that we human beings have broken trust with life. It is we who have brought this terror upon us all. We just keep on with the manic and insane acquisitive accumulation of more, more. We must have it all. And then we toss it all off, throw it away, ever hungry for the never enough.
– Mary Shackelford, in her blog
The harm that you do to others is the harm that you do to yourself and you cannot think then that you can cause wars in other parts of the world and destroy people and drone them without this having a terrible impact on your own soul and your own consciousness.
– Alice Walker, on Democracy Now!
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law can’t change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that’s pretty important also.
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., December 7, 1964
Rape Culture
Named by feminists in the 1970’s, rape culture is the pernicious discourse that normalizes violence against women through everything from jokes, advertisements, and film to national laws and criminal procedures. Rape culture is teaching women how to avoid rape instead of teaching men not to rape. It’s the song that glamorizes coercive sex. It the narrative that says most reports of sexual assault are false. It’s the light sentence given to the young male rapist because the judge believes he has a promising future. It’s the rape joke and the audience that laughs along.
– Kristen J Sollee, in Witches, Sluts, Feminists
My male classmates openly competed to see how many butts they could slap at recess. Only the Latinas and black girls were the targets. Sometimes, I would see girls looking over their shoulders and subsequently running away, smiling before boys caught up with them to smack their butts and then run in the opposite direction. If a girl was slapped, she rarely got upset because at least she was considered attractive enough to slap. She was being watched, a guy just had to slap her, and who didn’t want that?
– Morgan Jerkins, in This Will Be My Undoing
Stalking
At its core, stalking consists of repeated attempts to gain control over or terrorize someone. Stalking exists on a continuum. On the lower end, it might involve repeated phone calls, letters, or email contacts. In its more extreme manifestations, however, stalking might involve repeatedly going to a person’s house, making threats against a person, harming pets, stealing possessions, or interfering with a person’s relationships with friends, family, or coworkers. Stalkers may alternate between patterns of domestic violence and stalking.
Stalking is a crime of control. Stalkers see their victims as possessions who are rightfully theirs, and stalking behavior is frequently activated by a breakup or an ex-partner’s new relationship.
If you’re being stalked, don’t make excuses for the stalker or tell yourself you are overreacting. Tell a friend or family member what’s happening so you have a support person and a witness. If you are in immediate danger or are being followed, dial 911. There’s no price for overreacting, but underreacting to stalking can, in extreme cases, be fatal.
– Zawn Villines, Why Stalker Stalk – and What To Do if You’re a Victim, http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/stalking-behavior-victims-seeking-help-040513
Kate Taylor: I did not ask to be stalked.
Social Implications
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
– Howard Zinn, Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice
I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
– George McGovern
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
– Lord Acton, 1887