Recently, I had a conversation with a group of friends about the idea that in interactions and specifically requests made by one person towards another, there were various categories of "pressure" felt by the person receiving the request, and influenced at various degrees by the person making the request.
This pressure, mainly, serves to overcome, achieve, or reach consent, meaning it influences someone’s level of readiness, willingness, ability, or information about the nature of the engagement towards the possibility of them consenting to the engagement.
Achieving consent isn't necessarily *bad*: it can look like encouraging/supporting someone who isn't yet a "yes" by giving them what they might need to get there, as a team effort with them in that decision process. And, it can also be one-sided (for the asker who is only focused on/caring for themselves or on the other, or for the person being asked especially if the asker is coming from a place of people pleasing.
And, there's usually multiple forms of pressure at play in any single interaction.
Here's what we found:
- Pressure felt based on perception of languaging
- Pressure felt based on perception of positionally/role/power structure influence (professional relationships or things affecting livelihood and economic stability)
- Pressure felt based on perception of nature of request
- Pressure felt based on agreeableness/disagreeableness of each person
- Pressure felt based on the spontaneous vs arising type of desire of each person, vs momentum of engagement
- Pressure felt based on connection (feel good with each other and want the best for each other) leading to trust and trust leading to easier/clearer/less pressure consent
- Pressure felt based on ask vs guess culture of each person and playing by the same rules of engagement which makes things easier
- Pressure felt based on secure vs insecure attachment and how each person’s attachment style influences it
- Pressure felt based on interpersonal established safety level influencing the dynamic (ex stranger vs acquaintance vs primary relationship)
- Pressure felt based on attachment inclinations (perceptivity to implied vs overt pressure, and other embedded triggers like shame vs abandonment creating somatic responses)
- Pressure felt based on previous interactions acting as a "baseline" for what is expected
- Pressure felt based on the receiver's belief system and moral framework pushing them to act beyond their consent
- Pressure felt based on core wounds, insecurity, wanting to be liked/loved or wanting to belong
- Pressure felt based on relationship depth and commitment/agreements between parties
- Pressure felt based on attractiveness or the halo effect
- Pressure felt based on intoxication
Can you think of any others?
The important piece here is to develop the ability to perceive more of the forms of pressure at play in order to gain clarity about the quality of the consent present between two people. Ideally, consent is based on an overlapping of two domains of desire which then leads to two people engaging in a way that feels good to both people. Unfortunately, all forms of pressure above will serve to shift these domains of desire (at least temporarily) such that later one, one or both people might end up regretting the engagement.