Consent is the minimum requirement for any relationship, not the goal. Treating it as the finish line lets couples ignore deeper problems and call mediocre marriages acceptable.
Consent is not a standard of excellence. Consent is a bare minimum requirement. Imagine if I said to you, my marriage is so amazing, it's consensual. How many agree that actually sounds creepy? Because that's a horrifically low bar. But in our country, in much of the world, people act like consent's everything. All it is is the starting point. That's all it is. If you have it, you can begin. That's all it means. If you don't have it, you got trouble if anything's happening.
