Wheel of Consent

What is Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent?

Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent. With the four quadrants, serve, take, allow, accept.

The Wheel of Consent is a educational tool that teaches us how to recognize our desires and communicate them. It also helps us recognize our limitation and boundaries and stay within those. This is foundational for sex therapy but it is also super helpful for everyone—especially in somatic therapy. The Wheel of Consent teaches us how to track our wants, desires and limitations internally—inside your own body.

Us humans have a hard time asking for what we want—we also have a hard time being able to recognize what we want or desire. When someone asks us to do something, we may go along with it. If we check in with ourselves and our body—we can ask ourselves: Is this something I want to do? If the answer is not HELL YES! —then it may fall in a different place on the ‘Want Scale.’

What happens if we are always agreeing to doing things we don’t want to do? We may begin to feel resentment towards others or even ourselves.

What happens when we want something but don’t ask for it? We find other ways of getting it or we repress/suppress the want.

We may…

Just do it ourselves.

Do it for others.

Hint at it.

Get angry when other people don’t guess our needs.

Settle for something that is less than what we want.

Project our needs onto others.

Get jealous when it seems someone else has something we want.

Or even manipulate, tantrum, cheat, steal or get violent.

We may deny our needs or distract away from them, numb out or even dissociate.

We may endure unmet needs or secretly yearn for them.

What do you do when you feel a want but don’t express it?

If someone else asks for want—we can pause and check in with ourselves:

Am I willing?

The Willingness scale above can help a person identify their level of willingness and then express that: It could feel like a maybe—but I would like to know more? It could be a NO and you do not need a reason to have a NO. No is always No.

Want-to—you WANT it for your own reasons.

Willing-to— you would not choose it for yourself, but you are WILLING to because someone else wants it.

Doing— you are the one taking action.

Done-to— you are the one being acted upon.

Receive— it’s what you WANT and it’s for you (and the other person is WILLING to give you that).

Give— it’s what the other person WANTS and you are WILLING to do or allow it. It’s for them.

Martin, Betty ; Dalzen, Robyn . The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent.