Lately, I’ve been thinking about the value of giving up.
The kind that asks: Is giving up sometimes just surrender, misunderstood?
This question arrived through sex. As many of my most clarifying questions do.
My partner and I were trying to have sex recently. My body wasn’t ready, and my mind had a surprisingly hard time accepting that truth.
Between sickness and my period, it had been about a week since we’d had sex, and suddenly that gap felt enormous. My mind rushed in to fill the space with stories; fast, convincing, catastrophic:
We’re not having sex →
Then we’ll have less and less sex →
Then we’ll lose intimacy →
Then we’ll feel disconnected →
Then our relationship will crumble →
Then I’ll be alone, drowning in regret.
Woof.
I suspect that the places where it feels hardest to tell the truth, especially in the bedroom, are also the places quietly training us for every other hard conversation in our lives.
I’ve learned that when my nervous system starts spinning like this, the most compassionate thing I can do is let the story go all the way to the end. Let it metastasize. Let it show me its worst-case fantasy.
Somewhere in that exaggeration, perspective arrives.
And usually a voice follows, tender but firm:
Okay, Jade. Back it up.
Because when I actually looked at what was happening, the truth was much simpler and kinder. Attraction, intimacy, love were not the issue.
Attunement was.
Once it was clear my body wasn’t a yes, we paused. We talked. And in that slowing down, something unexpected emerged: my partner wasn’t actually that down either. There were parts of both of us that had been subtly forcing it; out of habit, momentum, or a quiet sense of obligation.
Without a foundation of open, loving communication, we wouldn’t have known that. Instead, I had almost handed the wheel to my fears and made assumptions about him, rather than listening to myself.
He said something that landed deeply:
He’d rather we have less sex that’s incredible, like it usually is, than more sex that requires either of us to override ourselves.
Yes. That.
And in agreeing, I felt myself reaching back to a younger part of me; the one who, for a very long time, conflated intimacy with sex. The one who learned that closeness meant sexual availability, that being desired meant being intimate, and that a pause in sex might mean a rupture in love.
I reminded her, gently but clearly, that intimacy is not synonymous with intercourse. That connection doesn’t disappear just because bodies rest. And that listening to myself does not mean my partner will vanish from my life.
I know there’s nuance here. Sometimes I’m not initially that jazzed about diving in simply because I’m tired or lazy, and I can shift once we’re in it. I also know how valuable sex is in relationship, and in our relationship.
But there’s a fine line between
– not wanting to initiate because energy is low, and
– the body offering a clear no and asking us to explore what is a yes in the moment.
Living with a partner adds layers to that line.
So do the stories we carry about what love is supposed to look like, what intimacy should mean, and how relationships are “maintained.” Sometimes those stories quietly ask us to abandon ourselves just a little, in the name of harmony.
This letter is really about how to keep things fresh in relationship.
And here’s the truth that keeps revealing itself, again and again:
The most important thing we can do to maintain, deepen, and evolve intimacy is to develop attunement with ourselves.
Listening to the body is a muscle. Presence is a practice.
A crucial part of this work, one that often gets overlooked, is learning how yes and no actually show up in your body.
There is no universal signal.
No single sensation that means green light or full stop for everyone.
For some, yes feels expansive, warm, or buzzy.
For others, it’s quiet, steady, grounded.
No might feel tight, heavy, foggy, irritated, or it might feel neutral, like a simple absence of desire.
Without familiarity with our own internal language, it’s easy to confuse fear with no, obligation with yes, or numbness with consent.
This is why self-attunement matters. We can’t communicate clearly with others if we don’t yet recognize what’s happening inside ourselves. Learning our personal signals, especially in the body, turns consent from an idea into a lived experience.
Most of us were never taught how to do this.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
But when we begin to recognize our own yeses and nos, we stop outsourcing our truth, and intimacy becomes simpler, cleaner, and far more alive.
As The Art of Giving and Receiving reminds us:
“The practice is to notice what’s true now—not what should be true.”
There is so much distraction in modern life, and so much baggage we bring into every interaction. When we learn to hear our bodies, and to advocate for them clearly and kindly, we don’t just take care of ourselves. We invite our partners to develop their own capacity to attune to us.
I’m technically a consent educator, but what I’m really devoted to is teaching people the tools to listen, to themselves and to the people they love.
Sure, it would be convenient if everyone could read our minds. The closest thing we get to that kind of magic is self-listening. At first, it requires slowing way down. Over time, with practice, it becomes autonomic. Listening can become like breathing; effortless, alive.
And when we repeatedly advocate for ourselves, the people closest to us get the chance to become extraordinary friends, lovers, and family members.
Another line from Betty Martin keeps echoing for me:
“When I honor my own experience, I become more available—not less.”
This has been one of the great re-educations of my life.
A cornerstone of this work, what one of my teachers calls radical self-responsibility, has shown me just how many stories I carry in my body about sex, intimacy, boundaries, and relationship.
It’s endless.
And somehow, that’s the gift.
What a privilege it is to live a life where we get to try, fail, try again, succeed briefly, feel everything, love big, fall hard, fuck up, repair, and begin again.
Add cycles to the mix, hormonal, emotional, seasonal, and it gets even richer. Learning about my physical arousal through the lens of my menstrual cycle has been endlessly fascinating, humbling, and freeing.
There’s so much more to explore.
I’ve been sitting with a theory lately, one that keeps proving itself true in my body.
If we can learn to speak up for ourselves in the bedroom, one of the most charged, vulnerable, taboo, and socially awkward places to tell the truth, then speaking up everywhere else starts to get easier.
Not effortless. But possible.
The bedroom is advanced training.
It’s where stakes feel high, language gets slippery, and old conditioning shows up loud. It’s where many of us learned to be “easy,” “good,” “low-maintenance,” grateful for desire rather than honest about it. It’s where we override, perform, endure, or stay quiet because it feels safer than risking disconnection.
So when we practice naming a no there, articulating a yes with clarity, or pausing when something isn’t aligned, we’re not just learning about sex.
We’re learning self-advocacy.
And that skill travels.
Asking your boss for a raise.
Setting a boundary with a friend.
Naming a need without apologizing for it.
Letting yourself be seen without over-explaining.
Pleasure is not separate from the rest of life. It’s one of the most potent training grounds we have because it lives so close to vulnerability.
When we practice telling the truth with our bodies, our voices follow.
When we stop abandoning ourselves in intimacy, we stop doing it quite so reflexively everywhere else.
And this is exactly why I’m offering The Practice of Giving and Receiving Pleasure.
Not as a performance upgrade or a fix for something broken.
But as a place to slow down enough to hear what’s actually true.
This four-week series is an exploration of attunement:
to your body, your yeses and nos, your desires, your edges, your timing.
It’s about practicing presence instead of pushing, curiosity instead of collapse, honesty instead of endurance.
The series is offered in person in Denver, and the practice itself is one you can carry anywhere. Many of the people reading this are scattered across cities, countries, and time zones, and this work still applies. Attunement travels. Self-trust doesn’t require proximity.
We’ll work with:
noticing what’s true now (not what should be true)
separating obligation from desire
learning how to give without self-erasure
and learning how to receive without bracing
This is not about having more sex.
It’s about having truer experiences of pleasure, connection, and self-trust.
If you’ve ever overridden yourself in the name of intimacy,
if you’ve ever worried that listening to your body might cost you love,
if you’re curious what becomes possible when consent is not a rule but a relationship
this space is for you.
The Practice of Giving and Receiving Pleasure — a 4-Week Series (Denver, CO)
No forcing. No fixing. Just practice.
Listening before the body has to yell.
Not in Denver? Let this be a starting point. Attunement is a portable skill, and I have an online 5 week series offering coming in February! Email me at hello@jadelevinson.com to be the first to hear about it.
