What is the connection between general boundarylessness and consent issues around intimacy? I often ask myself when first seeing the curious faces of around thirty individuals just about to engage in a group weekend exploring the esoteric eros.

“With great power comes also great responsibility.” Content Warning: In this text, I’ll keep reiterating old American thinkers from a few decades ago. This time, it was from the creator of the Marvel comic books, arguably from the birth time and place of the capitalistic hierarchies.

Twenty years ago, I first read economist Steven D. Levitt’s research on the willingness of office workers to pay for bagels when no one was watching. His experiment was deceivingly simple; he placed baskets of bagels next to the coffee machine on each floor in several office buildings along Wall Street, with a handwritten note saying, “Take a bagel and put two dollars in the jar”. The average honesty index was around 80%, if I recall correctly. However, the results varied greatly on the different floors of each building. The higher up the basket was placed, the less honest people were in return. Obviously, the people higher up in the building were also higher in the corporate hierarchy. Hence, they had already succeeded better in the capitalistic game. The less cynical reasoning is that maybe people higher up are used to getting more stuff for free, and two dollars for them might be very little money compared to the janitor in the basement. The more cynical reasoning is that people with sharper elbows succeed better in the capitalistic game, maybe because they are more boundaryless—with how hard they push themselves and maybe also push others.

My basic assumption is that in a capitalistic society, we are taught to push ourselves to compete for power according to cultural norms and law-instituted rules. Whoever is the best at using these agreements to their benefit often comes out as the winner. But where does one draw the line? How much space is there for interpretations, modifications and straight-out violations?

And maybe it’s apparent that one can (try to) cheat in business, but cheating is wholly forbidden in love, right? I could hope so, but is it that straightforward if one has been drilled to be a “winner” directly from the baby crib and then rewarded for that behaviour through a career filled with fame and fortune?

Boundarylessness in workshops often starts in the small actions. “You have two more songs to deescalate your play and slowly start untying.” But the tying person greedily keeps digging their fingers into the sweaty flesh of their horny partner—getting more and more lost in excitement—and further and further away from untying. It’s not like they are massively violating their partner, but they are breaking the group agreement. Everyone else is waiting for them, and maybe their partner is there with their beloved, who agreed to make one short exercise apart, and now this keeps escalating. Of course, as their teacher and the responsible adult in the room, I have no issue tapping them on the shoulder. But then they depend on me so they do not get lost in their boundarylessness. I know how easy it is to be overcome by another wave of deep wet horniness when, after having stated, it’s time to slow down. It’s this sober intoxication that drives many to explore the esoteric eros after all.

Let’s have some more examples. “We start at 10 am”, but two people just had to get the fantastic almond milk coffee from the cafe next door, so they show up seven minutes late. “No talking in the circle of witnesses”, but someone just had to tell their friend how sexy something was. “No body contact yet,” but two people are so fucking mutually attracted to each other, so they have to touch. On one level, they are just letting out some of the steam that we, as a group, are trying to amass. But on another level, they are demonstrating to the group that it’s cool to be slightly boundaryless. And that then opens up for bigger and bigger boundary interpretations, modifications and, ultimately, violations.

New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani used to say “No broken windows” as a vision to fight social erosion. The underlying idea is that if one fixes the small problems, the bigger ones will be much less likely to occur. Something that can be fixed as a minor problem today will become a big problem tomorrow if left unhinged. Everything starts in the minor because it gives permission for the major—this is true for both good and bad. During the same years as reading about the Wall Street bagels, I worked a lot in Pagani, just out of Naples, arguably the most corrupt city in Italy back then. For fun, I asked my Italian coworkers how anyone in their right mind could vote for Berlusconi as the prime minister; they shrugged: the world is corrupt, and he is a world champion of corruption. If everyone else is breaking the rules, why shouldn’t I?

So, when meeting new groups weekend after weekend, I play a game with myself: How early can I spot them? The early adopters of boundarylessness, so to say.

Basically, the idea of workshop rules and culture is allowing us to play with power without being influenced by the hierarchies outside the play. Even if this is never really possible, not trying would be catastrophic. So, people lower down in the group hierarchy usually promote the workshop rules and culture because it protects them (so they don’t feel a need to make a revolution). To generalize, this is people from more marginalized groups with different backgrounds of trauma and abuse, with little resilience, resources and privilege in life, with less life experience, etc.—that means they are not very likely to be early adopters of boundarylessness.

As someone most often seen as a man—a leather daddy kind of man—I usually have few problems with traditional men. They are generally so conditioned to the idea of the alpha male that if I’m the leader and I obey the rules and uphold culture, then they will likely follow. On top of that, if I lead without being very masculine at all, then it leaves less space for childish masculine competition—intimacy workshops are not sports competitions, after all.

So, the likely early adopters of boundarylessness (from what I can see in my work) are usually older, more privileged non-men. Maybe because they are well-versed in the capitalistic world, they are also experts in interpretations, modifications, and violations of rules and culture. They try to mould the system to fit them perfectly. Maybe it is possible, after all, to greedily consume the young, delicious flesh while drinking almond milk coffee and chit-chatting with their bestie at the same time. Maybe that would be their ultimate workshop, but I think it basically comes down to trust in me as the leader—they have to trust that the workshop experience will be better for them (and everyone around them) if they follow the rules and culture. And that trust might be hard to muster if one is used to perfectly manifesting one’s private reality. Gaining that trust might be one of the most important aspects of my work—besides knowing a lot about the esoteric eros and knotting rope.