“Consent is almost a fetish in the BDSM community.” – Margie Nichols

Sexual consent is all about having solid communication with your partner(s). However, many of us aren’t very good communicators in general when it comes to sex and, further, many of us don’t have a good model for how consent communication should actually go—when should it happen and what are the key things that should be discussed?

In the video below, two therapists (Esther Perel and Margie Nichols) have an important conversation about what all of us can learn about consent from the BDSM community, a group for whom consent is seen as especially serious. This discussion challenges some conventional beliefs about consent, like the idea that all consent communication should happen during the act itself. Instead, as Nichols describes, consent should come with “a mutual understanding and agreement ahead of time.”

Check out the video to learn more and weigh in with your comments below.