Swipe Left On Perfection

I spend a lot of time in spaces where people say things like “I care so much about consent” and “boundaries are so important” and “I would never want to make anyone uncomfortable.” Rave culture, sex‑positive spaces, attachment‑Nerd corners of the internet. The language is everywhere. And yet, when you zoom in on what actually happens in people’s bodies, in the moment, the story is way messier. There’s a giant gap between how good we all sound talking about consent, and how we actually move when there’s attraction, ego, rejection, or shame in the room.

Part of that gap comes from the fact that most people only understand two responses: yes and no. Maybe they’ve added “freeze” if they’ve done a little trauma‑reading. But they leave out one of the most common, confusing survival responses: faun. Faun is the “yes” that shows up when your body actually wants to say no, but it doesn’t feel safe enough to risk disappointing, upsetting, or losing the other person. Faun is the part of you that smiles and goes along with it while your stomach drops and your brain is screaming, “I don’t like this.” From the outside, faun can look like consent. On the inside, it feels like betrayal.

One of the simplest places this shows up is with touch at shows. I wear a lot of fun outfits when I go out—bodysuits, harnesses, makeup, things that are loud and a little extra, because I like feeling like a walking art piece on the dance floor. And without fail, if I’m in a bodysuit, someone will come up and put their hands on my waist or my hips “to feel the material,” or slide their palm across my butt because “it looks so soft,” or grab my sides from behind to “compliment” my body. Sometimes they ask first, but a lot of the time they don’t. My brain does this instant calculation: I’m in a packed crowd, the bass is pounding, I don’t know this person, I don’t know how they’ll react if I pull away hard or say, “Do not touch me.” So my mouth smiles. Maybe I laugh. Maybe I move their hand a little but still stay “nice.” That’s faun. That’s not a real yes. That’s me managing someone else’s feelings and potential reaction instead of honoring my own boundary, because in that environment, my nervous system decided that keeping things smooth was safer than making it awkward.

The rave scene loves to call itself “consent‑based” and “all about good vibes,” but vibes don’t mean anything if people can’t actually say no and have it land. If my body is telling me, “This touch is not okay,” and the only options I feel like I have are: 1) let it happen and keep the mood light, or 2) risk being seen as rude, cold, or “killing the vibe,” that’s not a consent culture. That’s a performance.

“There’s an even more intense version of this from a relationship I had with someone I’ll call Ski Jesus. When we first started seeing each other, he told me he had herpes. He framed it in this very casual, educational way. ‘one in four people have this,’ ‘it’s super common,’ ‘I’m really responsible about it,’ that kind of thing. And th last part about being super responsible in telling me about it once we started a relationship…he would share what it looked like so I knew what to spot, and I think that was one of the things I did really like about him. I wanted to be the cool, informed, non‑judgmental partner who could handle it. I also have a history of being terrified of STIs and childbirth since I was a teenager and had already had chlamydia once in my early 30s even though I’d been pretty careful. So inside, my nervous system was on high alert even as my mouth said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay with that.’

There’s an extra layer to this that I need to name clearly. Ski Jesus did not tell me he had herpes before we first slept together. We were both super into each other and caught up in the night, but I know how intense my fear of STDs has always been; if he had disclosed beforehand, my entire body and brain would remember that moment. What actually happened is we had sex, and then while we were lying in bed afterward, he told me. I went home, it hit me like a truck, I wrote about it in my journal, and I brought it to my counselor the next day because I was so shaken.

Later, when we tried to talk about it, he insisted he’d told me before and acted like I just didn’t remember, because he’d ‘practiced that speech “his whole life.’ Which was an exaggeration of time BUT I understood why it was said like that. It was important.

The more I tried to describe my memory, the more he leaned on his story and my supposed forgetfulness. The only thing that was blurry for me at first was how long after; I initially thought it was days later because the fear and a later outbreak all blurred together. When I really sat with it, I realized it was the same day, just after we’d already had sex. On his side, the story kept shifting to protect his self‑image as someone who always discloses. On my side, I was gaslighting myself, trying to override my own memory to make his version fit.

At some point, we stopped using condoms consistently. We were in a relationship, he was assuring me he was careful and would tell me if anything felt off, and I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe I wasn’t the kind of person who would ‘punish’ someone for having herpes. Then one day, after we’d been sleeping together without protection, he told me he thought he might be starting an outbreak. That moment broke my brain. Suddenly I was sprinting to get tested, paying out of pocket, sitting in waiting rooms alone, refreshing results, spiraling about what it would mean for my body and my future if I now had herpes too. There had been two people in that bed, but I was the only one in those appointments, in that panic, in that ‘what if my life is different forever now’ tunnel. And here’s the thing: I would have been okay with it had I had a partner who could have supported me. But I didn’t. That experience made something really clear to me: consent isn’t just about what you technically disclosed. It’s also about whether you actually stand next to the other person in the consequences, or whether you leave them to carry it alone while you retreat into, ‘Well, I told you, so it’s on you.’ On paper, he’d done the ‘right’ things. In practice, when it really counted, I did not feel protected or partnered with at all.”

There was also a time I got it wrong in the other direction. Early on, I told him I’d had partners who liked being woken up with oral and I was trying to feel out whether that was something he’d be into. He said it sounded “hot”, like it would “feel good” (and I heard the implied part I was talking about answered: to wake up that way.) So one morning I tried it. He freaked out. And that’s valid. And was my confusion as I don’t understand. After all, we had talked about it.

We had to sit down and talk about the difference between “that sounds hot in theory” and “I actually want you to do this to me while I’m asleep.”

To me, that’s also consent. Talking about a fantasy once though does not equal a blank check for real-life access to someone’s body. I wasn’t owed his body just because we’d discussed it, and once I knew it was a no, I adjusted. That’s what it’s supposed to look like: you check in, you realize the line is somewhere different than you thought, and you move with that new information instead of using it later as a weapon.

At the same time, he was fresh out of a marriage with a whole crowd around him pushing him to “move on” and prove he was okay. Our relationship started to feel less like two people carefully building something, and more like I’d been folded into his rush to not feel his divorce anymore. I stopped feeling like a person he was choosing and more like a phase he needed to get through. And when someone is using you to outrun their own pain, your boundaries and your version of what happened are never going to be centered, no matter how many times they say the word “consent.”

There’s another flavor of this that shows up at raves that people love to dress up as “sex positive,” but honestly just feels predatory. I’m talking about the couples who come up to you at shows trying to quietly recruit you as their unicorn. And listen, I don’t care what your dynamic is. Be kinky, be open, be into group stuff, live your life. But being into that does not give you permission to unload your fantasy onto random unsuspecting strangers on the dance floor. Not everyone is into your lifestyle, and you don’t get to try to corral a person at a show like they’re a prize horse you’re taking home.

I had a guy do this to me at a show once. He comes up, starts straight‑up hitting on me, telling me how sexy I am, totally flirting. Then, out of nowhere, he keeps pointing out this other girl on the dance floor, talking about how pretty she is. I agree once, like, “yeah, she’s pretty,” and just try to move on, but he keeps bringing her up, over and over. Finally I’m like, “If you’re that into her, go talk to her. I’m not really interested, but she seems your type.” That’s when he drops, “Oh yeah, that’s my wife.”

Sir. Go hang out with your wife.

If you’re in a couple and you’re trying to bring someone in, your partner should be the one leading that conversation, clearly and honestly. “Hey, we’re married, we’re into this, is that something you’d ever be into?” Not this weird bait‑and‑switch where you pretend you’re just hitting on someone solo and then suddenly reveal there’s a wife in the wings. His wife had a way better shot of talking to me like a human than he did running this sneaky little script.

At the end of the day, this isn’t an essay about why monogamy is “right” or polyamory is “wrong,” or the other way around. I actually do not care what structure people choose. I care whether everyone involved is operating with real consent instead of vibes, projections, and technicalities. You can be happily monogamous, you can be joyfully poly, you can have a whole constellation of partners or just one person you curl up with on the couch. All of that can be beautiful when everyone actually knows what story they’re in and has room to say yes or no without being punished.

“Where it stops being sex‑positive is when people use their relationship style as a shield. When ‘we’re open’ becomes an excuse to treat strangers like props, when ‘we’re monogamous’ becomes a way to shame anyone who doesn’t fit, when ‘I’m so good about disclosure’ becomes a script you hide behind instead of something you actually did in the moment. Consent isn’t a branding exercise. It’s how you move. It’s whether you tell the truth up front, whether you listen the first time someone says they’re not into it, whether you can handle another adult’s disappointment without flipping the story to save face.

Consent isn’t just about where your hands are. It’s also about emotional, mental, and even spiritual boundaries. Emotional consent sounds like: are we actually both available for this level of intensity, or are you trauma‑dumping on someone you just met at three in the morning? Mental consent is about whether someone has opted into being your therapist, your fixer, your processing container, or whether you decided that for them because they seemed ‘good at listening.’ Spiritual consent can look like checking if someone even wants to be pulled into your plant‑medicine journey, your manifestation rituals, your kink dynamics, your ‘twin flame’ storyline, before you start treating them like they’re already signed up.

In all of those areas, the pattern is the same: you don’t get to decide what role another person is playing in your life without their actual agreement. You ask. You tell the truth about what you’re looking for. You give them real options to say yes, no, or ‘not like that.’ That’s consent too, even if nobody takes their clothes off.

“At some point, consent and boundaries also mean being honest about who is actually in the room when harm happens. It’s really easy to talk like you’re the safest person ever, or like everybody else is ‘toxic’ or ‘unhealed,’ while quietly skipping over the ways you yourself crossed a line, ignored a no, or stayed silent instead of being honest about your limits. Real consent culture needs more people who can say, ‘Yeah, I messed that up. I didn’t listen. I was selfish there,’ instead of twisting the story so they’re always the enlightened one and everyone else is the problem. Being authentic about your own impact is its own kind of boundary: you stop using other people as props in your healing narrative and start taking responsibility for the choices you actually made.

Xoxo 💋