Reclaiming Desire: How the Wheel of Consent Transformed Juliette’s Marriage

This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And today I'm with a fellow Substacker, which is always nice because I always feel like we're in this little bubble, this little community where we all get to read each other, we all get to kind kind of get to know each other even though we very rarely meet in real life. Although actually, I'm going to the East Coast in October, so who knows, maybe you'll be there again. Her name is Juliette Lamontagne, and her Substack is called Touch Me There: Reclaiming Desire, Power, and Purpose in Midlife. And we've got so much in common and so much to talk about. But I wanted to start by saying hello and thank you so much for coming on Sex Advice for Seniors. Really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you, Suzanne Noble. I'm so pleased to be here. Indeed, we have much in common. And I honestly, it's so nice to be in conversation across generations. Like, we just don't have enough intergenerational dialogue going. And what I love about Substack is precisely this, the opportunity to hear from people like yourselves who are a little bit ahead of me in this journey. And, and I love reading some of the sex-forward, sex-positive, um, younger women and their points of view and the kinds of questions and concerns that are, that are present for them. I just think it's a great place and one of the few in our cultures where we can have that intergenerational conversation. So thank you.

Yeah, and let's hope it doesn't get completely destroyed as a result of raising a hundred gazillion dollars. Yes, I was really liking it, it back in the olden days when it felt like I was in a small town, and I knew everybody, and now it feels like I'm in a bigger town where I don't really know that many people. But anyway, one of the reasons I want to talk to you is because we— I get— I receive a lot of emails and questions from people over the years, a lot of men especially, but not always, that have been in long-term relationships. The sex is gone. They want to know how they can bring it back. And I, I'm, I'm not the best person to answer that, if I'm really honest, because I was married for a decade, and that happened in my marriage. I was celibate for the last 4 years of it. And I couldn't, you know, I just couldn't do that. So you, you have been more successful than me. And part of the reason for that is is that I read that you use something that I do know a little bit about called the Wheel of Consent. And I'd really love to talk to you about that, and about what it is, and how you used it. So yeah, I mean, what is the Wheel of Consent?

Well, the Wheel of Consent was developed by a somatic sex practitioner named Dr. Betty Martin, whose work I highly respect and recommend that people seek out. There's a book in particular called The Art of Receiving and Giving. And it talks about the wheel of consent and the four dimensions of it. Those are serving, taking, allowing, and accepting. But before getting into what can sound like a kind of clinical academic conversation about the wheel of consent, I think it makes sense to contextualize it with my journey to arrive at, at something that I have found quite transformative. And, and I, I talk about because I'm so passionate about exposing it to more people. It just— people are— seem to be familiar with the language of consent in the context of protecting themselves from sexual assault and harassment, and perhaps in the context of kink, in the community of kink, which does a great job at communicating consent and boundaries. This is something similar but different, and I think provides perhaps a more accessible entry point for people who may be averse to the notion of kink and some of the connotations that kink brings up. But just to backtrack a little bit, you raised this, this point that a lot of your listeners and your readers are talking about this feeling of a lack of intimacy, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy. We fall into these estrangements, whether it's the nature of a long-term relationship, kind of mourning the loss of the honeymoon phase, or those early passionate years of our relationships. A lot of people have trouble transcending that stage. Um, a lot of people struggle to perhaps heal from infidelity. I mean, there are, there are lots of reasons that we fall into these estrangements and find ourselves in relationships that we are trying to reconnect to, to plug back in. And of course, it always starts with plugging back into yourself. Um, for me, that meant— so I'm 53 years old, and I spent at least half of my life. I was raised Catholic in a conservative community. And really, sex and sexuality was a way to attract, secure, and serve a mate, full stop. There was no discussion of pleasure. There was no pleasure for pleasure's sake. And I found myself in a, in a marriage. I've been married now for 26 years, but found myself down that pathway. And this is particular to our situation because I was married to a man— or sorry, am married to a man who was in long-term sobriety and recovery but relapsed about, I guess it was maybe 15 years into our marriage. So we were— he was struggling, we were struggling as a family, we were struggling as a couple, and I found myself not just without pleasure, not just without sex, but really without a sense, sense of myself and my own pleasure core. So again, I really had to go back to myself to figure out what my own sense of pleasure was. It was really through— as most things do come to us, most enlightenment and awakenings come to us by way of crisis. It was in that period of crisis where he had relapsed. We had separated, he had moved to the other side of the country. So we were fully living apart, when I started to really seek out my own self, my own core, my sense of purpose, my sense of self, and address the frustration, the lack of vitality, the diminishment that I was feeling. I sought out Al-Anon, so I kind of got my radical accountability into place, but I didn't stop there. I did all kinds of different somatic work. I really was on a journey to feel better in myself, psychically, spiritually, emotionally, physically, in every way. About that time, COVID happened. And my husband called and said— we have two teenage daughters— and said, everybody come to California. We need to circle the wagons. This is, this is a a global pandemic, the, the game has changed. And, uh, he convinced me. And so despite the fact that we were separated at that period of time, we did in fact end up co-living together under the same roof in quite a strange situation for a period of time. Um, and it was really the constraint of that COVID, uh, quarantine that gave us the opportunity to start healing. Initially, that for me was a journey through psychedelic-assisted therapy. I really wanted to— I had never done any of those healing modalities, so that was again another layer, peeling back the layers, the shell, the armor of what I had experienced in my life up until then. Um, continued down that path because the psychedelics seemed to shake up some erotic energy for me. I started feeling myself alive and vibrant in a way that I hadn't in years. And it was a sexual impulse. And so I started to think, what does this mean? And how do I follow this? To make a long story short, I found my way to Sexological Bodywork, which I'd never even heard of before. And maybe your, your listeners may or may not be familiar with, but somatic sex practitioners are people who work with the life force energy. They— you could think of them as sex workers. I don't think of them as sex workers, but they do work with bodies and meet you wherever you are and what you're trying— what longings you're trying to express. Transformation for me, this was a game changer. But to take it to the wheel of consent, which I'll explain in a minute, a sexological bodyworker is really only serving you. You are accepting the gift of their touch, but you are not permitted to touch them back. So you're really not working the full wheel of consent. You are accepting their touch, they are serving you, they are not taking anything from you. And so it's a— and you, of course, are not taking anything from them or serving them in any way. So my, my trusted practitioner said to me at a certain point, there's only so far this can get you. If you really want to deepen the work, you're going to have to find a play partner. So I did not think of my husband. At all. We were living under the same roof as friends and co-parents, but we were not in any way sensual or sexual.

Yeah.

And I initially started exploring play parties and, you know, touch, asexual touch, just sensuous touch, but not sexual touch with, with anonymous strangers, which was interesting. But eventually, I did begin to entertain the idea that my husband being a willing participant, he was, he kept saying like, if you want to explore this, if you need a partner, I'm game. And he really did want to reconcile the marriage. And I knew that. And I felt like there was room for me to grow. And so I decided to start to play with these four quadrants of the wheel of consent, specifically with my husband after a period of estrangement. And again, just to remind people, after a period of crisis and relapse and a terrible stretch that has to do with codependency.

And was he sober at this point when he made this suggestion to you?

Sorry, very important qualifying detail. Yes, when he moved to California, he really cleaned up his act.

Oh, he cleaned up his act.

He went deep into 12 steps and has been clean and sober, deeply committed to the program, really fully vibrant and a man living in his integrity in a way that— and this is a man I've known for 30 years. I know him anew by way of the 12 steps.

So amazing.

Game changer. So I was seeing him anew. I was seeing him in his integrity. I was working my program and doing all of these, these you know, healing modalities myself. And, you know, he was wanting to meet along the road, along the journey. And so this tool, this framework, the Wheel of Consent, became one way for us to access each other when— and I know people will relate to this— when you've done a lot of talk therapy, couples therapy, you're talked out. You just don't want to talk about it anymore.

And I read that in one of your posts, you'd said something when you were talking about the The Wheel of Consent, you were saying, like, no more talking. I've done like a decade of talking.

I'm so over talking, you know, I just know words sometimes are just not enough, and touch can convey what words cannot. And so we began quite modestly with he offering to serve, in which case, so there are two dynamics in the wheel. Someone is serving, meaning the other person is accepting. Or, and this is a different dynamic and I'll talk about it in a minute, someone is taking and the other person is allowing. That's a little spicier. The work gets a little deeper there, but initially it just starts with a simple, will you do this thing? Will you touch me in this way? And the other person, the server, says, yes, I will. And you negotiate what that will look like. You ask for specificity because the better and clearer you are about what you ask for, of course, the better you will be served the thing that you want. Yeah. And but, but of course, it triggers all of our shadow side, right? So as a person in the accepting— so let's be concrete here. So our very, very first exercise was I asked my husband, which was the only thing I could come up with that didn't make me cringe, was, will you place your hands on my feet? Like, not a massage, not a caress. No, I didn't even take off my socks. About as tame as it gets. And I really, I had to work to breathe through how uncomfortable it was for him, for me rather, to welcome him into my body, my intimacy. After everything we had been through and all the struggles and all the years and all the resentments and all the therapy, it was like crossing that divide with the simple laying on of hands was a radical step. And, and that's where it really started, as modest as that, and as formal and as awkward and silly as that simple act was. It was the beginning of a journey. Yeah.

And in, in response to that was, because I really don't know the intricacies of the Wheel of Consent, in response to that, is, is it then his turn to do that, or is there no prescriptive method around any of this?

Do you mean, is it his turn to return that very same gesture? No, not at all. But it—

or ask for something from you.

Exactly. So then the next turn might be the reverse where I say, or he says rather, will you do this thing? And I say, yes, I will. Now, I don't have to say yes, I will. That's where the negotiation comes in. I can say yes, this, but I'd like to modify it because of this or whatever. We have a conversation about what and why and how. It may also be, and it was actually in the case of the laying on of hands on my socked feet, that was the whole, that was the whole thing. There was no reciprocity. There was no second turn. We did it with a timer. It was 3 minutes long. I mean, yeah. That was it. I was tapped out. I was like, okay, we'll do your serve another day.

Right, right. And the other— what I'm also curious to know about is if you— it's hard sometimes around all of this stuff not to feel rejected when, for instance, someone asks something of you and you don't want to give it. So what happens in those circumstances? Is there a way of negotiating so that the other person doesn't feel rejected?

Absolutely, yes. I think you always meet them in whatever small modified way you can so that there isn't an outright rejection. It's just a modification. And usually there's some— let's assume that people understand that this is going to be a continuum of experience and you're going to maybe start one place and ladder up to what you might want to be asked, what you might want to ask for at a later date. That, that would be my advice to people if they know they do have some, something that's going to make them feel very exposed in the ask. You would slowly want to ladder up and get your partner acclimated to your wants and needs prior to that.

Right. And you spoke about the difference in these quadrants between receiving and then taking. Can you describe what, how that works.

Sure, yeah. So when you think about touch as a gift, okay, there's one person who's giving the gift and one person who's receiving the gift. And the distinction, if you think about it, when I serve you, I'm giving you the gift, you're accepting it. It is a different type of gift when I, when I'm taking It's still a gift to me. I'm saying, "May I do this thing to you?" Or, "May I take this thing from your body, this pleasure from your body?" It is a gift to me, but notice how different it is energetically. It is a taking energy, but it's still the gift is mine, and it's the allow-er who's allowing that gift. Yes, you may. Yes, you may take that pleasure from me. In that way.

Right, right, right. And how long, you know, you said you did the thing with the feet, hands on the feet, then you're like, right, I've done my 3 minutes, that's enough of that then. And, and then what was the process? How did the process unfold? Over what kind of period? How did you keep negotiating? Was there like a schedule for this? Or how did you implement this to get to ultimately, you know, to being intimate again, to being open, to being receptive to all of this?

Yes. Well, it's been a— through almost a 3-year journey. But to be clear, I was doing a lot of this work in advance of him. So not to say I was more advanced, but I was more knowledgeable. I'd been working with, with a sexological bodyworker. I'd read Betty Martin's work. So I was kind of handing it off to him saying like, can you read this book? Would you like to enter into some of this play with me? And so he was open and receptive to learning. But it is an ongoing process. And I will tell you that it just, it's like a fractal that continues to unfold. The dimensions of each of these quadrants are infinite, really, because as I mentioned before, there's a shadow side in each of these. As a codependent, we love to serve, we love to serve, but don't try to give anything back to us because we'll block, we'll block and act on it.

Right?

So—

People pleaser, man.

Yes.

Yes.

So you really, you have to explore your shadow when you are both the server and the acceptor. And there's all kinds of interestingness that comes out of that. That has been a tremendous journey. And the take and the allow came later. It is, it does take a different level of trust. Like it was once we were into the flow of feeling each other's touch, feeling the generosity of the serve and accept dynamic that we started to play with the take and allow. And I'll tell you, it really reframed how I saw my husband, who for years had struggled with addiction, which had really stripped him of his integrity, robbed him in many ways of his masculinity, infantilizes a person, and as does codependency. And so when I saw him in his taking energy, when he, from a place of presence and groundedness, was able to ask for what he wanted to take pleasure from me, I was in, I was in the allowing, it really changed the energy between us, changed the dynamic and changed the way I really saw him, and perhaps for the first time in our entire relationship. So that's been a really fun dynamic to play with for us in particular.

Yeah, and I think Esther Perel talks about seeing your partner in a new way. And how sexy that can be. And I think that often because we don't know how to articulate our desire, we, we are either ashamed sometimes of the things that we want to ask for, right? Or we just don't know how to ask for them. And when you know how to ask for them in the way that you're describing where there's a, you know, there's a bit of a structure around it, it's lib— it must be incredibly liberating. To be able to do that and then go, wow, okay, I didn't know that's where we were here.

Exactly. It's a permissioning of our desires, our needs, things that we didn't even know we wanted.

Absolutely. 100%.

And, and, and, you know, at the risk of sounding like the Take and Allow is about chains and ropes and blindfolds, it doesn't need to be like, great, if that's I think great, ask for what you want, absolutely. But the, the, the, the gift of taking pleasure from another person's body is just that it is solely for you, that you don't have to worry about tending to their needs or their experience because they have granted you the allowance, the permission. You can take it for yourself and deepen into everything that that offers you. I sometimes talk about one of the most powerful stances I ever saw from my husband was just him asking, "Wait." Just the strength of a wait time, a moment of pause, is an incredibly powerful request, assertion. You know, like it's outright dominant. And so you don't need a chain or a whip.

I mean, I'm, I'm not— I enjoy that dynamic. But for me, it's all psychological. It's like, it's a, it's a story. That's it. It's a story. If someone, if someone starts bringing out the equipment, okay, that's fine. But for me, it starts with the story that we're building. And then, you know, that kind of tension. That things like weight, just the simple word of weight creates. It's so— yeah, it's incredibly hot. Well, not ever. It's not hot for everybody. It is for me. And clearly for you as well. I mean, I think the thing is that, you know, people might struggle with articulating their desires after years of suppressing them. I think that's one of the biggest challenges with all of this, right, is you've never expressed your desire. You've— so how would you suggest that they, you know, that they start?

Yeah, I actually, I just posted this morning about following your desire. And I would ask, what's the ache? Ask yourself, what's the ache? And tune into the ache, tune into longing, whatever that is. What is it trying to teach you? Follow that. I talk about following beauty as a way to tap into your desires. These are ways that are opening us to our deeper self, our own intimacy with our own core self. Call it spirit, call it whatever you want, but that's the path to your own desire is understanding your own longings. And if you wanna take it even further, for me, I personally, understanding Jungian archetypes, understanding shadow work, if you can tap your shadow, you are tapping your hidden desires.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So even something like, if people are familiar with personality systems like the Enneagram, um, these are frameworks that may or may not be familiar to you, but they have each of them these archetypes and each a shadow side. And it's in the shadow that our longings and our desires really live. So it's a, I would suggest it as a pathway to better understanding your own.

Yeah, and also what I'm hearing is that your husband was really open to this idea. He clearly had let you go on your own journey. And it sounds like you, you know, as you said, you did quite a bit of that before you came to him with this framework and said, look, should we give this a shot? Should we, should we try this out? And he was receptive to that. And I think that's also very brave from his side because he knew that you'd done all this work and he was kind of, I suspect, feeling maybe a little bit behind of what you know, I haven't done all of this. Like, how, how did you, how did you engage with him to make him feel safe and make him feel like this was something that he could do, you wanted to do? Because I think that's also very difficult, is having those conversations. My ex, for instance, I don't think he would have been on board with this. I'll be honest with you, like, if I'd come to him with something like this, he would have been, Suzanne, come on, man, Suzanne Noble, this is, you know, it's not me.

Like, honestly, I think that's one of the beautiful things about people in recovery who've gone through the 12-step program, who live in recovery, who are living those steps, is they have a kind of radical accountability, a willingness to grow, a curiosity about themselves that lends itself to other work. So I think given the, the, the journey of recovery that he'd been on, he was quite receptive to really anything that was going to offer us a path back to each other. But it could have been any number of frameworks. It just happened to be that this is, this is one that was feeling so enlivening to me. So I brought it to him. But yes, he was open. And I think it was really by way of his own discovery and journey of healing.

Yeah, I mean, I've been with, you know, two people no longer on this planet, sadly. But one, one of them was not— he wasn't a spirit. I wouldn't say he was a spiritual person at all. And I know that this would not have been— if I'd have tried this with him, he would have just laughed at me. And the second one was a person that wanted to really, you know, confront his shadow dive into his— he had more of a food addiction with food, which was also just made things difficult in other ways because of the fact he just couldn't control himself when it came to food. But I think, you know, we tried some exercises, some Esther Perel exercises and things, which were actually really revealing. So My own feeling is that it's kind of like finding— you have to find the thing that works for you, right? You have to. There are loads of these tools out there, and the Wheel of Consent is one of them. And it clearly worked in your situation and you really gravitated towards it. But there are lots of tools, as you said, there's lots of tools out there. And often people just don't know they exist. You know, they, they don't know what's out there. So you found the Wheel of Consent, and, and that has delivered you into this fantastic place in your relationship. But, you know, I think there's also other— there's other frameworks that work for some people and not others. And I think for me, it's about find the one that works for you, you know, find something that just, that just speaks to you. Right?

Absolutely. It's really what is going to start that conversation with partner. This, I think of these 4 quadrants of the wheel of consent as 4 types of conversations to have with your own body and another body. So whatever that is for you, what is going to introduce new ideas, new conversations, and really new curiosities. It, it really all starts with curiosity.

Yeah.

Has to be curious in order to grow.

Yeah, 100%. And would you say that So was your starting point buying the book and delving into the book, and that's what got you there? Or did you work with someone specifically around this?

Oh, I did work with someone specifically who introduced it to me. So my pathway was through sexological bodywork, which I, which I found accidentally when I was kind of trying to figure out what all this zhuzh was moving around in my body after I started the psychedelic journey. I just thought, What is this? And I was like Googling, um, sex therapists, or I, I just didn't know. And somehow I stumbled into this whole world of somatic sex practitioners that I never knew existed. And I want everyone to know that they're out there and they are doing God's work to bring healing to trauma— sexually traumatized people and to awaken the body for for everyone, whether you've had trauma or not. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we— I've spoken to a few of them, and they're amazing. And what they do is amazing. And yeah, fantastic, the fantastic work that they do. So I totally recommend that to anyone. And yeah, I mean, I just want to see with an ending question. Yeah, I think it's— I think we've sort of covered a lot of the groundwork. Is there anything that you want to add?

I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Yeah, I can't either. So yeah, okay, here's a, here's a nice summing up question. For those who feel that they might have missed the boat on exploring deeper intimacy or desire, What would you say to reassure them that it's never too late to begin?

It's never too late. Start with yourself. If it seems like a daunting proposition to introduce a framework like this or any framework of intimacy with your partner, do the inventory with and in yourself to ask yourself, how intimately do I know myself, my desires, the shadows lurking in my subconscious? Really get honest with yourself and do that inventory, and that's going to be one small step in the right direction.

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic tip. Thank you so much. Just as a reminder to everybody, you must follow Juliette if you're on Substack, and even if you're not on Substack, what are you doing? You should be on it. Her Substack is called Touch Me There: Reclaiming Desire, Power, and Purpose in Midlife. Thank you so much. It's been so delightful to speak with you.

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Suzanne Noble.