If a girl tells me to stop, should I?

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I’m going to answer the question you want to be answered, not the question you actually asked, because consent is an extremely difficult thing to write about and I value the challenge more than I value my reputation.

Eroticism is a very weird part of the brain. Our daily experiences form imprints on our brain and erotic thought is our mind’s way of escaping restrictions, real or imagined. Fetishes are essentially a learned response to a certain kind of long-term trauma.

What this means is that yes, sometimes girls tell you no when they really might have preferred you to just adjust your approach a bit and keep going. The problem is that you don’t understand the trauma that’s causing this mismatch in responses and if you can’t read it, which you won’t be able to unless you have spent a lot of time with her, you’re going to retrigger the trauma rather than alleviate it.

The way to fix trauma is to softly trigger the trauma in safe contexts. When the brain sees that there’s no danger of the thing it’s worried about to come back, it relaxes its defenses a little bit. You keep triggering it a little more each time until it doesn’t provoke a trauma response any more.

If you keep this in mind, then you can approach the situation where you aren’t quite sure if a girl really wants you to stop or not with an eye towards healing and not just getting your rocks off.

A sexual situation is not a normal situation, particularly for women who pretty much all have some kind of past trauma. You must default to the safe path of stopping if you can’t trust yourself to edge the boundary without going over.

If you do not know the girl very well, if it’s the first time you’re getting sexual, if she tells you to stop, then stop. Immediately. A good way to play this off is to say something like, “well, that was fun. Hungry?” Do not place any expectation on her to continue the interaction and let her initiate if she does want to.

This is the key to getting a girl to trust you, to hand her the keys and let her choose how she wants to do it. Once she trusts you, you can edge a little closer to the line. Don’t move your hand away immediately or withdraw it just a little bit but not completely. Ask her playfully if she’s really sure she wants you to stop. Move back to a ‘safe’ spot and pretend to move in again, but don’t. Be playful.

Realize when you do this that you’re entering into a dangerous zone. The territory between ‘no’ and assault is extremely thin, trust is what makes that zone wider. Crossing the line will, if it doesn’t remove you from all future sexual contact, move the ‘no’ zone way way up.

It’s just the same method to fix trauma carried over into an erotic context. Create a safe place and repeatedly but safely trigger the response until the brain doesn’t object. Not the same way every time, otherwise the brain just programs a new defensive response. Switch it up. Provide different sorts of stimuli. Ask about it, use your words.

You’ll know when she’s no longer traumatic about it when she starts begging you to do it. Until then be very careful.

Developing this kind of self-control is difficult. It’s easy to cross the line and re-traumatize someone. The male mind treats sex as some kind of holy grail that’s worth braving hell and high water to get, and it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that “really she wants it.”

If you cross the line and actually act outside of her consent, even if you she doesn’t press charges against you for sexual assault, you have hurt someone very badly in a way that you’ll probably never really see. That line can be very very thin, and in the sexual heat of the moment, you’ll never even know you crossed it. And she will probably be too uncomfortable about it to tell you.

The best thing to keep in mind when trying to build a sexual connection with someone is that it’s not a race. There will be another chance. Gather information. Don’t push. Be fluid. Ask her what she likes and just do that. Don’t let yourself get too heated. If you’re having a one night stand and you know you won’t get another chance, then stop doing that and find someone to play with that you want as a girlfriend. One night stands are just too much for you if you can’t read the body language of consent.

My girl absolutely loves being massaged. Every time I grab her legs, she instantly melts. I can wander all over her body, except her belly and her boobs. Sad for me, because those are the areas of a lady’s body that I like touching the most. I notice that if I go straight for the belly, she’ll push my hand away. But if I melt her down first by working over her calves and the back of her head, she gets so relaxed that she’ll let me touch her a little bit on the ‘forbidden’ areas. But I know my seconds are numbered the moment I move in. My goal is to linger a little longer each time before she finally pushes me away. Eventually I hope that when I touch her in those places, she’ll get just as much pleasure as when I touch her butt or her neck.

Touch is a language that you can get more and more fluent in. If you start safely and stay safe, then you’ll soon find someone who will let you have all the freaky fun you want to have.

I welcome any and all comments, it’s important to me to get my thinking on this issue perfect.