Consent and boundaries shaped by experience

How experience helps recognize and shape one’s own boundaries.

29/07/2026 · 7 min read

In con­nec­tion with con­sent, the need to know one’s own bound­aries and com­mu­ni­cate them to an­oth­er per­son be­fore­hand is fre­quent­ly em­pha­sized. This re­quire­ment is im­por­tant. It makes it pos­si­ble to clar­i­fy what a per­son does not want, un­der what con­di­tions they are will­ing to en­ter an ex­pe­ri­ence, and which val­ues or needs are non-ne­go­tiable for them.

At the same time, how­ev­er, this can cre­ate the in­ac­cu­rate im­pres­sion that all bound­aries ex­ist pri­or to an ex­pe­ri­ence in a fin­ished and im­mutable form, and that it is enough to sim­ply rec­og­nize and name them cor­rect­ly. Some bound­aries are in­deed like this. A per­son may know long-term that they do not want a spe­cif­ic type of ac­tion or that a par­tic­u­lar re­la­tion­al dy­nam­ic is un­ac­cept­able to them. These bound­aries can re­main rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble across sit­u­a­tions and re­la­tion­ships.

Oth­er bound­aries, how­ev­er, are con­di­tion­al. They do not re­late sole­ly to the ac­tiv­i­ty it­self, but also to with whom, in what man­ner, and in what state of mind it takes place. A per­son may not re­ject in­ten­si­ty as such, but may want it only with a cer­tain style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They may not re­ject be­ing led, but may need suf­fi­cient time to build trust. A cer­tain touch may be pleas­ant in one re­la­tion­ship and un­ac­cept­able in an­oth­er. The ex­act same tone of voice can act as safe guid­ance one time and as pres­sure the next.

A bound­ary is there­fore not al­ways a prop­er­ty of a spe­cif­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. It fre­quent­ly emerges in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the ac­tion, the per­son, the cur­rent state, and the mean­ing that the sit­u­a­tion ac­quires.

More ac­cu­rate than the ques­tion “Is this my bound­ary?” can there­fore some­times be the ques­tion, “Un­der what cir­cum­stances is this ac­cept­able to me, and when does the mean­ing of a cer­tain ac­tion change?”

Fur­ther­more, bound­aries do not mere­ly ex­press pro­hi­bi­tions. They can also de­scribe the con­di­tions un­der which a cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ence is pos­si­ble. A bound­ary can mean “I do not want this,” but also “I want this only more slow­ly,” “I need a dif­fer­ent kind of con­tact dur­ing this,” or “I do not have the ca­pac­i­ty for this ex­pe­ri­ence to­day.”

They are there­fore rem­i­nis­cent of a mu­ta­ble map rather than a sin­gle in­sur­mount­able bar­ri­er. This map cap­tures not only the places a per­son wants to avoid, but also the paths they can nav­i­gate and the con­di­tions they need in or­der to do so.

What Experience Reveals and What It Creates

We of­ten say that a per­son dis­cov­ered a bound­ary dur­ing a ses­sion that they did not know be­fore. This phras­ing as­sumes that the bound­ary al­ready ex­ist­ed and the ex­pe­ri­ence mere­ly made it vis­i­ble.

In some cas­es, this is an ac­cu­rate de­scrip­tion. A per­son may have a cer­tain sen­si­tiv­i­ty, need, or vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that they have not yet en­coun­tered in a sit­u­a­tion that would ac­ti­vate it. Only a spe­cif­ic ex­pe­ri­ence al­lows them to rec­og­nize some­thing that was part of their lived ex­pe­ri­ence but did not yet have a clear form for them.

How­ev­er, not every bound­ary needs to be present pri­or to the ex­pe­ri­ence as a hid­den trait of the per­son. Some­times, it is cre­at­ed pre­cise­ly as a re­sult of spe­cif­ic events. An ac­tiv­i­ty may be ac­cept­able in it­self, but be­comes a bound­ary be­cause of the man­ner in which it was car­ried out. A cer­tain ges­ture can ac­quire an un­ex­pect­ed mean­ing with­in the con­text of a spe­cif­ic re­la­tion­ship. Some­thing that was pleas­ant in the past may cease to be ac­cept­able af­ter trust, a life sit­u­a­tion, or the way a per­son un­der­stands their pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ences has changed. In such a case, the ex­pe­ri­ence does not mere­ly re­veal a bound­ary. It par­tic­i­pates in its cre­ation.

This dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant be­cause bound­aries are some­times judged as proof of a fixed iden­ti­ty. It is as­sumed that a per­son ei­ther wants some­thing or does not, and that a tru­ly au­then­tic de­ci­sion should re­main the same over time. Hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, how­ev­er, does not work this way. The same ac­tiv­i­ty is not a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in all sit­u­a­tions. Its mean­ing changes ac­cord­ing to the re­la­tion­ship, ex­pec­ta­tions, the style of guid­ance, and the cur­rent bod­i­ly and emo­tion­al state. There­fore, if a per­son eval­u­ates the same ac­tion dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean in­de­ci­sive­ness or an in­abil­i­ty to know one­self. They may sim­ply be re­act­ing to the fact that the con­di­tions have changed, and with them, the mean­ing of the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a change in a bound­ary does not in­val­i­date a pre­vi­ous de­ci­sion. A per­son may have au­then­ti­cal­ly want­ed some­thing in the past and lat­er dis­cov­ered that they no longer want it, that they want it dif­fer­ent­ly, or that the giv­en ex­pe­ri­ence is pos­si­ble for them only un­der dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. Au­ton­o­my does not con­sist in a per­son al­ways re­main­ing con­sis­tent. It con­sists in the abil­i­ty to make de­ci­sions based on what they now know, ex­pe­ri­ence, and need.

What This Implies for Consent

Qual­i­ty con­sent can­not be based on the re­quire­ment that a per­son know and ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribe all their fu­ture bound­aries in ad­vance. It can, how­ev­er, cre­ate con­di­tions in which a pre­vi­ous­ly un­known bound­ary can be rec­og­nized and al­lowed to in­flu­ence the sub­se­quent course of the sit­u­a­tion. A new­ly rec­og­nized bound­ary does not in it­self prove that the orig­i­nal con­sent was poor­ly ne­go­ti­at­ed. A per­son can en­counter a pre­vi­ous­ly un­known lim­it even with­in a re­spect­ful ex­pe­ri­ence. Some as­pects of one’s own in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence can only be known through ex­pe­ri­ence.

What is de­ci­sive is what hap­pens af­ter new in­for­ma­tion emerges. A per­son may not be able to im­me­di­ate­ly name their bound­ary pre­cise­ly. They may first no­tice only a vague ten­sion, a change in the feel­ing of safe­ty, or a need to slow down. A more pre­cise un­der­stand­ing of what took place may ar­rive only lat­er. Such un­cer­tain­ty, how­ev­er, is no rea­son for their ex­pe­ri­ence to be over­looked. A bound­ary does not need to be per­fect­ly for­mu­lat­ed in or­der to be wor­thy of at­ten­tion. Nor does it need to be pos­si­ble to prove that it ex­ist­ed be­fore the ses­sion be­gan. Its sig­nif­i­cance stems from the fact that it has be­come part of the cur­rent lived ex­pe­ri­ence and fur­ther de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

The per­son lead­ing the ses­sion there­fore does not need to an­tic­i­pate all pos­si­ble bound­aries of the oth­er per­son. Such a re­quire­ment would not be re­al­is­tic. How­ev­er, they bear the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing that the orig­i­nal plan and pri­or agree­ment do not ac­quire greater weight than the new in­for­ma­tion that emerges dur­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence. Ini­tial con­sent al­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence to be­gin in the first place. It does not guar­an­tee that all its sub­se­quent parts will re­main ac­cept­able un­der the same con­di­tions.

If the bound per­son can com­mu­ni­cate their state, in­flu­ence sub­se­quent events, and lat­er name their ex­pe­ri­ence with­out be­ing ques­tioned, en­coun­ter­ing a new bound­ary can be­come part of safe self-dis­cov­ery. If, on the con­trary, they are forced to de­fend their bound­ary, mea­sure it against the orig­i­nal agree­ment, or ac­cept the ex­pla­na­tion that their re­ac­tion is not suf­fi­cient­ly jus­ti­fied, con­sent ceas­es to pro­tect the abil­i­ty to re­spond to ac­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

This also ap­plies to bound­aries that only be­come ap­par­ent in ret­ro­spect. Lat­er un­der­stand­ing does not mean that the per­son ar­ti­fi­cial­ly cre­at­ed their re­ac­tion af­ter­ward or that their eval­u­a­tion is less trust­wor­thy. It mere­ly means that the mean­ing of cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ences can­not be processed im­me­di­ate­ly.

A new bound­ary does not nec­es­sar­i­ly retroac­tive­ly rule on every­thing that took place dur­ing the ses­sion. How­ev­er, it can change the con­di­tions for fu­ture de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Once a per­son knows some­thing they did not know be­fore, it is no longer pos­si­ble to ex­pect them to con­tin­ue act­ing as if they did not have this in­for­ma­tion.

Con­sent there­fore does not only pro­tect a per­son’s right to com­mu­ni­cate bound­aries they al­ready know. It also pro­tects their op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er, cre­ate, change, and in­te­grate a bound­ary into fur­ther de­ci­sion-mak­ing with­out the re­quire­ment of prov­ing its con­stan­cy or pri­or ex­is­tence.

Bound­aries are not an im­mutable tes­ta­ment to who a per­son is. They ex­press their cur­rent re­la­tion­ship to their own body, a spe­cif­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, and the sit­u­a­tion they find them­selves in. Qual­i­ty con­sent there­fore does not re­quire all bound­aries to be im­mutable. It re­quires that a per­son be able to dis­cov­er that their bound­ary lies else­where than they orig­i­nal­ly thought, and that this re­al­iza­tion has a real im­pact on what fol­lows.