For most of human history, sex was understood as part of something valuable that it was attached to a marriage covenant. But no more. Marriage is rare and consensual sex is expected. As long as two people consent, then it must be okay and does not need the value of a marriage covenant. There is more to a whole sexual ethic.

I understand why consent became so important. We needed to reject coercion, abuse, and the idea that someone’s body could simply be taken from them. But somewhere along the way, we began treating consent as though it answered the whole question. We moved from asking, “Is this good? Is this loving? Is this faithful? Is this relationship worthy of what sex can create?” to asking primarily, “Did they both say yes?” Consent matters enormously. But I wonder if we’ve made it carry far more moral weight than it was ever meant to carry.

Besides don’t you feel something when you overhear someone say, “I got some ass last night.” Consent was there but this is what a sexual relationship has become?

Here’s the uncomfortable question: Can something be consensual and still be exploitative? Yes.

A person can technically say yes while being manipulated, pressured, deceived, or taken advantage of. Consent tells us that someone agreed to something. It doesn’t necessarily tell us why they agreed, what power dynamics were operating in the relationship, whether they were being treated with dignity, or whether the relationship itself was healthy. If we’re going to talk honestly about sexual ethics, we have to ask more than whether someone said yes. We have to ask what was happening around that yes. Again I believe we need to ask, “Is this good? Is this loving? Is this faithful? Is this relationship worthy of what sex can create?”

Here’s a “short” list of the exploitation that can still happen with consensual sex:

• Power imbalance – one person uses a position of authority, status, influence, or control over the other.

• Emotional manipulation – using guilt, fear of abandonment, jealousy, affection, or emotional pressure to obtain or maintain sexual access.

• Financial exploitation – using money, housing, employment, gifts, or financial dependence to influence someone’s sexual choices.

• Age or maturity differences – particularly when one person has substantially greater life experience or developmental maturity.

• Dependency – taking advantage of someone’s dependence on a partner, caregiver, family member, teacher, employer, or other trusted person.

• Social vulnerability – exploiting loneliness, isolation, grief, insecurity, or a person’s need to belong.

• Unequal ability to say no – technically obtaining agreement while creating circumstances in which refusal feels unsafe or prohibitively costly.

• Deception – obtaining sexual agreement through significant lies about identity, relationship status, intentions, contraception, or other facts that materially affect the person’s decision.

• Substance-related vulnerability – taking advantage of someone whose judgment or ability to freely choose is impaired.

• Using intimacy as leverage – making affection, commitment, reconciliation, or acceptance conditional on sexual participation.

• Exploiting trust – using a person’s confidence in a friend, partner, mentor, religious leader, or other trusted person for sexual advantage.

• Exploiting confidentiality – using someone’s private sexual information, images, or disclosures to pressure or control them.

• Social or reputational pressure – making someone fear humiliation, rejection, exposure, or consequences if they refuse.

• Gradual boundary erosion – repeatedly pushing boundaries until someone agrees to something they initially did not want.

• Transactional expectations – treating sex as something owed in exchange for attention, love, money, status, gifts, or relationship benefits.

• Exploiting unequal relationship goals – deliberately allowing someone to believe a relationship has commitments or intentions that the other person knows are not real in order to obtain sexual access.

• Threats of relationship loss – “If you really loved me, you would.”

• Love-bombing followed by pressure – overwhelming someone with affection or promises and then using that emotional investment to obtain consent.

• Intermittent affection – withdrawing affection or attention until the person agrees to sexual activity.

• Using someone’s secrets against them – knowing something vulnerable and implying it could be revealed if they refuse.

• Blackmail or threatened exposure – threatening to share private conversations, images, or sexual history.

• Exploiting housing insecurity – making sexual access an implicit or explicit condition of having somewhere to live.

• Exploiting religious authority – using spiritual authority, religious guilt, claims about God’s will, or a position of trust to obtain sexual access.

• Exploiting someone’s desire for marriage or commitment – deliberately promising a future relationship or marriage that the person does not genuinely intend to pursue.

• Taking advantage of inexperience – deliberately targeting someone who has little relationship or sexual experience because they are easier to influence.

• Exploiting someone who has difficulty setting boundaries – recognizing that a person struggles to say no and repeatedly taking advantage of that vulnerability.

• Testing boundaries deliberately – starting with small violations to discover how much someone will tolerate.

• Normalizing pressure – repeatedly presenting unwanted sexual activity as ordinary, expected, or something everyone does.

• Making refusal exhausting – asking repeatedly, arguing, bargaining, or continuing to pursue someone until they finally give in.

• Creating a sense of obligation – “After everything I’ve done for you, you owe me.”

• Using jealousy or comparison – suggesting that refusing sex means the person is less attractive, less loving, or inferior to someone else.

• Exploiting body insecurity – using someone’s insecurity about their appearance to make them more compliant.

• Using sexual expertise or confidence as intimidation – making an inexperienced person feel embarrassed or inadequate for questioning what is happening.

• Taking advantage of privacy – choosing circumstances where the person feels unable to leave, speak up, or seek support.

• Exploiting social isolation – becoming someone’s primary or only source of companionship and then using that dependence sexually.

• Using sexual attention as a reward – creating a pattern in which compliance earns affection, approval, gifts, or privileges.

• Using sexual withdrawal as punishment – deliberately withholding affection to punish someone for setting boundaries.

• Exploiting cultural expectations – using beliefs about gender, relationships, marriage, or sexual obligations to pressure someone.

• Exploiting trauma history – learning someone’s past vulnerabilities and using them to manipulate their sexual choices.

• Exploiting cognitive limitations – taking advantage of someone’s difficulty understanding consequences, relationships, or manipulation.

• Creating secrecy – insisting that the sexual relationship must remain secret so the person has fewer opportunities to recognize the unhealthy dynamic or seek advice.

• Isolating someone from people who might question the relationship – discouraging friendships or family relationships that could provide perspective.

• Ignoring expressed boundaries because they eventually agree – treating a reluctant or pressured “yes” as permission to disregard the person’s earlier objections.

• Taking advantage of fear without making an explicit threat – knowing someone is afraid of the consequences of refusal and relying on that fear.

• Using a person’s desire to avoid conflict – knowing they will agree simply because they don’t want an argument, confrontation, or emotional fallout.

When you begin removing all the things that make sexual exploitation possible—the power imbalances, manipulation, secrecy, deception, pressure, dependency, fear, and the possibility of walking away without consequence—you are left with something very different from what we usually call sexual freedom.

When you remove all of those things, what is left is marriage.

So how about holding off on the sexual relationship until you have the kind of covenant that can hold it? Until you can give and receive consent within a commitment that honors both of you, protects both of you, and gives your relationship somewhere to go when the feelings change.

Something to think about.

Read also: Your Body Matters.