Scary Sex Ed Questions on Halloween…Watch This Out! | Facebook Live With Reid And Allison
Reid: Oh right. I think we’re live everyone, we’re live I think I think I think let me just refresh my Facebook page and make sure…let’s see let’s see. Ohhh, we’re live. Perfect…perfect. Alright, hello everyone okay so we are streaming to you live for our scary…ah, this nurse’s outfit is scarily small. Let’s see we’ve got some…some Halloween lighting here, we’ve got a jack-o’-lantern, Allison’s in the kitchen…how’s that? Is that working? There we go…oohhh….This is so silly. I love it. Now I….ah! Now I get why Elvira does this.
So if you’re just joining us this is our hopefully we’re starting an annual tradition. So let me know in the comments which I’ll have on my on my phone in a second let me know that you can hear me okay and let’s…let’s dive in to some of our FAQs and the reason I that I created this fun silly Halloween maybe it’ll be a tradition if people like it is because I want to help people or like encourage people to ask like the scary questions. There’s a lot of fear out there, there’s a lot of anxiety, there’s a lot of confusion and Halloween being a silly time of the year also problematic around like different kinds of costume appropriation and things like that and also for some of my friends who have had a lot of you know scary things happen to them on Halloween, I thought we could make Halloween a little bit more fun and…and I asked people to send in their…their scariest questions about relationships, about sexuality, about…about intimacy, about dating and…and we’ve got a whole bunch of them. I was gonna I was gonna cut them up and then pull them out of the jack-o’-lantern at random but I think it’s more fun to actually have the jack-o’-lantern like actually has a candle in it and we have the lights a little bit low you know so that it’s spooky.
So let me know what your comments are I’ll pull up on my phone and if you want to submit some questions you still can you can go to https://reidaboutsex.com/scarysexed or you can leave them in the comments and I’m doing this on my laptop via the Blue Jeans app for those of you who are nerds about Facebook living so I actually have my phone so that I can follow the thread. And I just want to say thank you to everybody who submitted questions there were some really touching…touching questions and…and some really heartfelt ones; there were some you know scary questions with really silly attributions like who do I attribute it to and we had a lot of anonymous a lot of anonymous postings as it as I thought it would be.
So now let’s see we’ve got comments…Victoria says everything looks okay, we get a Jack o’lantern and a ghost. Okay now, let me just turn that down. Okay that’s working and Haley….hello Haley said yes; Amanda…hi Amanda! Yes, I am I am the Reid…nurse Reid and for those of you who don’t know back when I was an actor before I went into sex education, I actually did play a male nurse an evil male nurse on the soap opera Another World I believe it is or it was All My Kids, All My Children. So I have I had…I didn’t wear a costume quite like this but this is a little bit sexy and it even has a little a little sexy apron and I’m not gonna I’m not gonna stand up any higher than that because this is Facebook and…and that’s what’s going on there. Leslie thank you, yes I will squash that fever; other people are watching Vera, Matthew, it is on the East Coast it will turn midnight in a little while on the West Coast we have ways to go till midnight but I thought that I would do a late-night Facebook live so that we can get all Halloweeny and I just want to say thank you to all my friends who supported me in this kooky idea and for everybody on Facebook who is cheering us on and sharing and getting spreading the word so we can get more questions in. Kate from New Zealand, what time is it? What time is it in New Zealand Kate? Hello Logan, yes hello Matt, Jinx, okay awesome…great so keep leaving questions and comments I’ll scroll through and check them out but why don’t we dive right in and remember the purpose here to have these FAQs is one, to role model that we can talk about scary stuff; try to give people some…some good information, there’s a lot there’s a couple of questions that I actually don’t feel comfortable from an experience perspective answering so I’m gonna….I’ll tell you what the questions are and then I’ll let you know that what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna follow up and get somebody….interview somebody about the actual answers. I’ll give you my….you know what I think might be a Reid answer but there’s some things here that actually would be more appropriate if they were answered by the kinds of people that that are actually experiencing these things and I know a lot of sex educators all over the map from different demographics and different lived experiences so it’ll be fun that we can use we can use these questions as an excuse to reach out to them and get them on Facebook live. And I encourage you to continue sending me questions or reach out to your favorite sex educators and…and ask them questions and if you need to pay them money to get the answers, awesome please do that…support your local and international sex educators. It is a little can be problematic or tricky making a living doing this thing and….and just because I’m answering questions for free doesn’t mean every sex educator out there owes you free answers and then, of course, like if you want to support my work you can come to a workshop or by an online program or something like that.
But without further ado let’s dive in and Kathy from California, hello Kathy from California. She writes in, “How can you let people close when you have sex if you’re afraid to be close to people if sex sometimes feels terrifying?” Well, this it’s a really good question and it’s kind of an interesting dilemma like how…how can you let people in when letting them in pun intended is scary, when it’s actually terrifying? And we have another question that I can’t find right now that’s about vulnerability from…from somebody and it’s like how do you let people in let people in close around sex when you’re scared? And so for me, I’m not a psychologist nor do I play one on television and I never played a psychologist on a soap opera I think one of the things that’s useful and this also if you don’t have this challenge or this dilemma, this can also be useful just kind of understanding the answer because one day you might have a friend or a lover or a loved one who has this situation and you know if these bits of advice work really well for you then maybe you can pass them on to…to the other person and it does also kind of go without saying but I’m gonna say it anyway because I think it’s important that these are just my thoughts and my bits of advice so take what’s useful copy and paste them throw them into your little tool bag and run with those tools and the ones that don’t work for you just chuck them it’s probably not the right advice for you and it’s not if it doesn’t resonate for you don’t worry about it you’re not broken because something that comes out of my mouth doesn’t appeal to you.
That being said, how do you like people close when you have sex if you’re afraid to be close to people. My first question for…for Kathy from California is…is it the sex that’s terrifying or is it the people part that’s terrifying? I think when we can slow things down for a lot of people dating and relationships and intimacy and sex happens really fast and it’s a lot of things happening all at once all stacked on top of each other and if you can slow it down maybe not in in the actual situation when you’re having the sex although that is really good advice as well but if you can slow it down enough to start to kind of parse through what’s going on and ask yourself what is scary, what is terrifying about letting somebody in to your world, to your bedroom, into your body and see if you can start to identify like what are those pieces and look at terrifying kind of reorient terrifying and fear as dashboard lights rather than indications that something’s broken what if they were actually your body or your mind trying to tell you something’s missing, something’s not there that you need that if it was there would change the….the situation dramatically.
The other thing that’s that I think is useful to drop into the beginnings of this answer and I think with all of these questions some of them are just so amazing that that we’re just going to scratch the surface in in answering these questions like it’s really kind of the beginning of a much longer and more awesome journey of self-discovery but if you can start to…to slow things down and parse things out and then ask yourself like what might be missing what might pop up what might start to reveal itself is “Oh if I could ask for this thing or if I did it from if I did it differently or approached a situation differently, if I had a bunch of conversations with somebody and maybe got to know them better or felt more seen and heard by them then things would start to shift.”
Other situations to just kind of take into consideration is when you start to break this stuff down and look at it is the fear coming from a different time in your life like maybe the person that you’re having sex with or considering having sex with maybe the fear is not really coming from this situation but maybe it’s coming from a situation from your past in the same way that you know you might have fear come up from you know maybe around Halloween because something you know really scary or shitty happened to you in a previous Halloween. What is it about sex maybe it’s something traumatic maybe it’s something non-consensual that happened family-oriented or not is it if it’s not this person is it the fear coming up in being kicked up or anchored to something in your past? Now with that kind of an answer and even with this entire answer it can always be good to look and seek out resources maybe it’s therapy, maybe it’s counselor, maybe it’s going to a bunch of workshops maybe it’s you know nerding out with different kinds of coaches or people who specialize in things like EFT or you know hypnosis might be a thing, it might be the work of Byron Katie, it’s really gonna be the beginning of…of all of us seeking solutions to challenges not trying to necessarily heal something that’s broken if you think of yourself as being already been whole and complete then your body and your brain and maybe your spirit or your heart or if you’re super woo-woo you know something else out there is giving you signals and clues for something that you if you could bring it into the present might shift it dramatically.
So again like it’s the beginning of looking at things…when in doubt, I’m gonna say always try to at least find your words and start to talk about things you might have to maybe journaling is a good way to get things out of your head like when you’re feeling afraid and scared like write about it, see what you can get down on paper. Keeping things up here your brain, your mind is a bad neighborhood and you’re gonna get mugged up there as one of my mentors once said. And so how can you start to get things out and kind of capture what things feel like? Writing might not be a thing maybe it’s gonna be more like somatic and working with movement or dance and maybe it’s gonna be something vocally working with a vocal coach or maybe it’s going to be kind of like family constellation therapy or something like that where you’re role-playing situations or you know kind of whatever’s popping up in your head to see where it leads and where it leads you and a lot of this stuff can be heavy and sometimes maybe it’s not this big thing from your past maybe it’s just that it’s frightening because you know you really like this person and you’re worried about getting…getting close to them because you’ve had your heart broken in the past or something like that or maybe it’s because you know physically in the past pain has been or the sex has been painful for you and so like of course you might have a little bit of fear and…and some anxiety around it because you know who’s to say it’s not going to be painful again? We don’t know it, it, it begs more investigation. For painful sex things the checklist of…you know like are you using Lube? Are you going too fast, too hard, too soon? Is your body not fully aroused? Things like that you identify them and you’re like “Oh that happens so many times in my past relationships that I get all clenched up when it comes to having sex with anybody.”
So I feel like I’ve gone on a long enough with that answer and I’m gonna check my phone and of course my phone is telling me that it wants to die. What do we got? Thanks for leaving comments everyone, share this video if you have a group or if you have friends that that you think might enjoy this. I…I posted this in a couple places but…but I didn’t get a chance to because I was flying today which is also why I was a little bit late in starting.
Next question this comes from anonymous from the UK but it’s not really even a question but more of a statement that is a question which is “How to be truly vulnerable?” And this kind of coincidentally dovetails a little bit into Kathy’s situation because let’s say that what’s afraid or frightening or terrifying for Kathy is like being vulnerable letting people in and same thing for…for anonymous from the UK. I think a great place to start with being vulnerable and this is gonna be a big answer that is very simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. And for me, vulnerability really has to do with sharing the things that you are afraid to share and that can be difficult in a couple of ways because one if you grew up in a family like I did my mom and dad loved each other very…very much they shared that special hug four times, my three brothers and I grew up watching two people that we catch when we were kids making out in the kitchen or cuddling on a couch like being really affectionate and loving to each other we would watch them slowly kind of destroy each other and grow distant and just more and more rageful because they didn’t had the ability to talk about what was really going on and I think looking back at my mom and dad if they’d had better communication skills for how to talk about difficult conversations and then also see them through, that would have built a kind of intimacy and closeness and vulnerability that that they lost because not being able to talk about stuff eventually just kind of built up this kind of death by paper cuts and all these little emotional…emotional scar tissue over and over and over again and not being able to ask for what they needed or talk about it turned into resentment and then that resentment turned into a lot of frustration and anger and kind of calcified into a resignation that was kind of like you know like…like candle wax like sealed over the….the canning jar of rage that they had from basically being powerless and even though it was obvious that they were still like really madly in love but more mad on top of it all they still really cared about each other and were committed it really took all the fun out of for us living in the family that we have little bursts of fun but then that was you know we would just hold on to those as tightly as we could until the next fight came. And eventually my mom would become an alcoholic my dad tried to fix that by making more money so he became a workaholic and they were just never able to heal all that that emotional scar tissue that happened and they weren’t able in the end to…to improve their relationship other than lately late in life to…to just kind of give up on the fighting and…and that kind of surrender that allowed for a little uptick in happiness and in closeness I don’t even know if it was closeness but there was like there was less fighting so there was more it wasn’t even happiness there was just there was just less fighting so things got better because there was less fighting.
I don’t advocate that you use exhaustion and giving up as a means of improving your relationships and so if my mom and dad had ways to be vulnerable with each other and share the things that were difficult and had tools for actually finishing a conversation more than just having it blow up into a huge argument, I think they would have been able later in their relationship to be even more vulnerable and more caring for each other because they just would have exercise those muscles over time. And so for Anonymous in the UK I think the truly vulnerable piece is one to start sharing with yourself the things that you’re not saying and also the kind of explore and deepen your own self knowledge about yourself in your own journey and maybe you start that with a therapist because maybe your friends don’t want to hear it or maybe your friends are not the right people to talk to because they’re either gonna gossip about what you’re sharing to other people or they’re just gonna take the wrong they’re gonna give you the wrong advice or the wrong kind of support so it’s just gonna feel worse but how can you start practicing sharing and talking about the things that are really scary for you…you know so this is really appropriate for Halloween like who is somebody if you need to hire them, hire them but if you have want somebody in your life who is somebody you can start to practice that with? And again maybe it’s a journal like journaling is really powerful and then you can kind of read the things you wrote to yourself in the mirror to practice saying things out loud and unblocking all that energy that can get really stuck and, and, and, and, and knot it up in your throat because some of us were we’re taught not to speak up as kids, some of us had our voices taken away from us as kids and as young adults and some of us have just had so many crappy relationships and shitty things happen to us that you know speaking up just doesn’t you know we just developed the life perspective that you know what the fuck it’s not gonna make a difference it’s only gonna bring more havoc so we just remain silent.
So the vulnerability piece I think starts really for me with words and then also allowing yourself to feel. I taught it to workshop this weekend down in in Orange County and one of the things that that we’re talking about was you know if I had to give you two bits of information to improve your life the first thing would be say what you’re not saying and the second bit of advice would be feel what you’re not feeling and what I mean is go find ways for you to be able to cultivate the courage and the…the muscle memory of the that speaking up is a good thing and learn how to navigate your own emotions and also hold space for others if you can and when you can when you’re having a good day to be able to have a difficult conversation all the way to its resolution. And the feeling you’re feels is really like go find practices that allow you to get in your body and have a somatic experience and get comfortable feeling uncomfortable and that’s a really great skill set because your ability to remain present when you’re feeling uncomfortable that ability is really great, one for you because I believe and maybe it’s a simplistic belief but a couple of my psychologist friends psychology friends say that it might this my belief kind of echoes the Sedona Method but I’ve never read that that book so I could be wrong but they’ve said that where your feelings just want to be felt and a lot of us grew up in places you know with anger and sadness and stuff like wasn’t appropriate to feel or to express in in your household and so we learned how to how to stuff it down and then you come to the you know a point of your life where you’re just kind of filled like you’re…you’re an emotions hoarder and you you’re just cluttered with all of these unfelt emotions, go find a somatic practice that allows you to let yourself feel these feelings so that you can do some like emotional function way and make more room and develop the ability to feel and that can be really powerful because your ability to feel and stay present with difficult co difficult feelings also means you’re building up the muscles and exercising the muscles to feel joy and ecstasy and pleasure and fun and your also you’re building the muscles to be able to feel those things too so you’re not quite so numb. This also has the bonus benefit of being able to remain present with others on a good day on a bad day you just you
know you’re just like the rest of us me included when you just…you get surprised, you get angry or upset and then you just spiral out of the ability to be present because you just dumped a bunch of cortisol and adrenaline and other hormones into your bloodstream and you are offended but your ability to be present when feeling uncomfortable is really useful when you have the bandwidth to be able to hold space for other people. So when you can hold space for others while they’re having their feels and leave them feeling seen and heard, what…how that lands on the other people is that you’re vulnerable like you’re allowing them to be vulnerable and so there’s a vulnerable a vulnerability exchange I guess for lack of a better word and your ability to be able to share the scary things for you is you know your way of being able to give somebody else space to hear you, to connect with you in in ways that people feel or that registers to them is vulnerability.
Also, Brené Brown is a frigging genius and has a lot of great writing and content some TED talks and things like that and other videos online about vulnerability so I would also kind of go down the go down those different rabbit holes of vulnerability and also for Kathy from…from California like check out Brené Brown’s work as well. Next question I will look at the things coming in let’s see what we’ve got…Thank you, Katrina, and a bunch of other people are watching thank you, thank you, thank you! People say I must go looking for these clips. If any of the things that I’m saying like drop it you know drop in Brené Brown….if you have links, internets, if you want to fetch them and post them in the comments please do like we can you know crowdsource some of this stuff as well.
Next question on scary Halloween wa-ha-ha-ha! It is now officially ten minutes past midnight on the East Coast I was babbling away and forgot so Happy, Happy Halloween day everyone on the East Coast! Oohhh. This really feels like an Elvira Show I’m really enjoying this maybe this is my future nurse Reid and Elvira also just so you know Girl Sex 101 author Allison Moon is in the kitchen making soup and if you leave a bunch of comments or post on Allison Moon’s Facebook page to come join us might….we might I can’t promise this we might have a guest star appearance from the kitchen Girl Sex 101 author Allison Moon also the author of the Spanish translation this is how I’m gonna get…get sex tonight I’m promoting Allison’s work – Sexo de Mujeres. Del Mujeres? Entre Mujeres. I thought that would get her to come in [Inaudible 00:29:03] but it didn’t work. We’ll keep trying. Alright so enough of that
Next question, “How can I express my desires to my partner clearly and confidently despite my fear of being rejected or judged?” This comes from Lisa from Canada. Thank you, Lisa, from Canada and thank you, everybody, who’s leaving comments and writing in and if you want to leave questions that we will try to get to you tonight it’s https://reidaboutsex.com/scarysexed and….and that’ll give you the submission form. So how can I express my desires to my partner clearly and confidently despite my fear of being rejected and or judged Lisa from Canada is given us this one and oh, oh, oh something’s happening something’s happening ladies and gentlemen this is unprecedented…it’s Allison Moon ladies and gentlemen of http://girlsex101.com/ with her werewolf ears. Hello!
Allison: Hello.
Reid: Are you Allie wolf or is it is there a thing?
Allison: Obviously Allison howl at the moon I mean it right itself.
Reid: Allison howl at the moon with us. Do you want to help me answer Lisa from Canada’s question, how can I express my desires to my partner clearly and competently despite my fear of being rejected and/or judged?
Allison: Yeah word
Reid: What word?
Allison: Alright, so my advice is a little bit no-nonsense and I and I’m not nearly as delicate as Reid about these things so I’ll fan it to him after this but I say like a ninety-nine percent
Reid: Good nurse, bad wolf
Allison: Bad wolf um ninety-nine percent of the issues that I encounter when people have confidence issues in the bedroom come from a fear of being rejected as you mentioned that comes a lot from insecurity around your own sense of self-worth, sense of self-confidence, sense of self-assessment and so it’s easy to feel scared of being rejected when you actually feel like maybe their rejection could be legitimate. I think success in the bedroom in relationships often comes from a belief that even if somebody rejects you it’s not gonna do you long term damage that you know if somebody’s not that into you then that’s their loss, right? It’s kind of this like old-school way of what your mama hopefully taught you about like “Oh it’s their loss” right? I think having that experience in bed is actually really key it doesn’t mean that doesn’t hurt to be rejected but I do think it’s a lot easier to shake it off when you have a core sense of self that is unfuckwithable when no matter how pretty that person is or how sexy that person is if they tell you that “Ew weird that’s gross or ew weird you’re a pervert” that you know they’re wrong and that you actually believe truly in your inner sense of rightness. I think that if…if everybody could do a little bit more work to kind of shore up their reserves around their sense of self-worth and self-value and that also applies with self-care as well. People probably wouldn’t be putting up with this much bullshit in the bedroom as they do. So that is all to say that if you are afraid of being rejected by a lover for sharing your desires, that’s a valid feeling; if they reject you for sharing your desires they’re the asshole.
Reid: Awooooo!
Allison: Awooooo! I mean that’s pretty much it for me
Reid: Like werewolf advice on Halloween. Bye Allie Moon!
Allison: [Laughing]
Reid: Bye! There you go, everyone. Allie howl at the moon with the advice I’m gonna I’m gonna let I’m gonna let that sit. Allie, can I ask you a question…can you give me my phone charger? So like so this doesn’t bad…it’s probably up on my desk. Oh great. Yes so we’re gonna…I’m gonna leave it because there’s some other questions about…about being rejected and…and I can add my question my answer onto Allison’s. Thank you, darling. Alright, so next question this one is from Zach from Texas, oohh Zach zombie Zach from Texas. This is more of a relationship question so maybe it’s not appropriate totally appropriate Zach totally up to you of course whether you answer or not…”How do you ask out somebody who’s been providing you an intimate service somebody like a sex worker or massage therapist or a sexual counselor or pro cuddler without messing up the client-provider relationship?” This is a really good one so I’m gonna read that again. How do you ask out somebody who’s providing you an intimate service without messing up the client-provider relationship? This is Zach from Texas and some examples Zack gives sex worker, massage therapist, sexual…sexual counselor, pro cuddler if you have other ones to add to this list like somebody who’s providing you an intimate service, what are the things can we come up? Let’s generate those on the comments…we got sex worker, massage therapists already a sexual counselor, pro cuddler what else you got out there. Come on! What you got for me? What you for me Internet? So how do you how do you ask somebody out without messing up the client-provider relationship?
So as I plug in my…my phone cord here…and I’ll give you a little bit of a little bit of my man cleavage hang on there we go…This is a really great question because there’s a bunch of different ways you could you could answer this, right? For you as…as you know Zach from Texas I think whether it’s you know “inappropriate” or not, the way I would do it is be like I’m curious if you date your clients ever and just…just you can ask like I’m…I’m curious about whether you’ve ever dated a client or…or if you date clients. If you asked like if you’ve ever dated a client that’s kind of a personal question but you can start the conversation…I mean you’re just asking somebody out I’m assuming it’s for…to see if you want to have an intimate relationship with them and so you know if it’s a sex worker who’s providing like a girlfriend or boyfriend experience then you know then they’re already kind of providing something to that effect there is just getting paid for it. So my advice to my sex worker friends is if you’re providing that experience and somebody asks you out for like you know a non-paid experience, I…I would say no because you know what you’re providing is part of your job and so jokingly you know like why would you why would you give somebody who’s already paying client something for free? And everyone can have their own opinions about this but it’s hard enough to make a living out in the world and sex work is already stigmatized and I realized that you know if you’re a coach, if you’re a therapist, if you’re a client there’s that can be transference, that can be you know romantic and intimate feelings for people because people are people but establishing clear boundaries and sticking to them helps people come and get the things that they’re that they’re paying you for, they’re paying you for a service to get certain kinds of results or experiences.
So from a sex worker perspective or from a therapist’s perspective or coach massage therapist when you start dating your clients you’re…you’re really mucking up those boundaries. Most of the people I know kind of you know have…have done it except for my therapist friends who were really you know tight with their boundaries and Allie howl at the moon wolf is back.
Allison: Bad wolf is back
Reid: Bad wolf is back. You know lots of doctor who knows these things…
Allison: I do.
Reid: Yeah
Allison: Yes so I would add too it’s
Reid: to this to this sentence
Allison: Yes to the answer.
Reid: Okay
Allison: I find this really…really complicated particularly because
Reid: very complicated
Allison: oftentimes the person who has the money is the one who has a power in the relationship so sometimes a person may feel like they need to answer in a happy way for them to make the money that they are expecting from you so you…their livelihood is based on how much they make you feel good about things. So especially with sex workers I mean any sort of staff that is basically at your whim, don’t ask before you’ve paid them for that session
Reid: Oh that’s good. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t come up with that. That’s good.
Allison: I know
Reid: You know I wouldn’t come up with that?
Allison: [Inaudible 00:38:29]
Reid: Or you didn’t hear me going to that one.
Allison: So yes so clear boundaries and also I think one of the issues is and this is a little bit harder to say but like don’t be attached to outcomes that’s creepy so when you’re attached to outcomes as in like I would love to keep this client relationship with you and I really want this to be an intimate relationship without me paying you in the future and if you don’t do that I’m going to either have feelings or I’m gonna leave a bad yelp review or I’m not going to come back like this is a really dangerous position to put for a lot of people
Reid: Yeah
Allison: to be put in.
Reid: And…and understand that for you as the person who’s asking, you’re putting the other person into all these very complex situations.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: And just because you’re innocent or naive or….or kind-hearted about it doesn’t mean it’s not complex, it doesn’t mean that it has an impact for the other person.
Allison: Yeah and so and I would like to make a slight distinction between sex work and other kinds of work here because um and this is…I’m not a sex worker but I have a lot of friends and loved ones who are, I would actually draw a very hard line and say “Don’t ask sex workers for freebies.” Period. Every sex worker gets asked for freebies all the time and even if you are genuinely like a cool person if you met them through client work and they have not suggested initiating anything outside of client work, I would recommend just stay away from that conversation because that’s that the power dynamic is incredibly skewed in that perspective and it’s just not a good idea. Now if you say like “I’m actually interested in ending you know our work sessions and I was you know I would like to stop work seeing you professionally, however, I do actually like you and I would like to date you um and regardless we’re not gonna see each other for…for work anymore.” When you’ve established that boundary I think it’s okay to ask after that boundary has been fairly clearly put but I think it’s
Reid: But don’t dangle you know either date me or I keep paying you like he gets it’s…the other thing that I would recommend to Zach is go…go read some resources, some blog posts, some essays from sex workers, from massage therapists and things like that like get really nerdy nuance on why this is problematic so that so that you’re really coming from because it might change your mind, you might be like “Holy shit like that’s…that’s such a bad idea for me to hit on my…my therapist or for me to you know want to date my massage therapist.” It’s not that you being creepy like my advice is to be honest about it but…but then there’s the naiveté of you’re putting this other person into this very complex situation and none of us are perfect.
Allison: And if it calls…it’s…it might be helpful to do a little bit of cost-benefit analysis here too it’s like if that person gives you ala best massages of your life such that if by asking them out you are putting in at risk the best massages of your life and maybe it’s not worth it to ask them on a date and just keep getting the best massages of your life.
Reid: Yeah, it’s hard…it’s I mean again these are tough questions, they’re good, they’re great questions but it’s like I want to I want a role model and teach people “Hey be honest, be kind you know do your homework.” I don’t want to give people advice that silences them but like it’s…it’s also about court awareness, right? Like Michael Jordan was a great basketball player because he knew where all of his players were on the court even behind him so he could pull off these crazy passes and stuff. If you don’t have a lot of court awareness about you know professions…all professions
Allison: The power dynamics and capitalism
Reid: Yeah especially around
Allison: in service providers
Reid: around service providers who deal with intimacy and touch and/or sex or psychological intimacy and connection then you’re just you just walking on to you know the basketball court and just ripping the…the basketball and it it’s…it’s challenging it’s not like it’s impossible it doesn’t necessarily make you make you a creep because you’re asking a thoughtful question but just know that you’re making things you could be making things really difficult for the other person and…and they don’t owe you anything just because they’re a kick-ass massage therapist doesn’t mean that that they you know owe you a date not that I’m getting it from…from your question but there are a lot of people out there that have a lot of entitlement and think they deserve things and how you know that is when they ask something innocently and it gets complex, they get pissed off really fast and argue about things and…and that’s…that’s a lot of bullshit behavior that’s already happening especially to you know sex workers. You’re the best! Allie Moon ladies and gentlemen, Allison howl at the moon. Alright so again great questions, complex situations, walk slowly do your research, have conversations with people that you’re not paying about their thoughts on these things, people who work in these industries.
Okie-Dokie and now maybe I’ll do that one for…I’ll get some of my sex worker friends and massage therapist pro cuddler friends and we’ll ask this question of them and get their take. Next question, I’m not good at opening myself up to partners in an emotional way this comes from Hawaii by the way not that it’s indicative but this is from somebody from Hawaii. “I’m not good at opening up myself to my partners in an emotional way, are there any resources that would help me display intimacy with my partner?” Oh actually this wasn’t from Hawaii this is this is gonna be…I hope this isn’t too shocking and I don’t want to make I’m not making fun of this person but they left it really funny almost it’s funny to me and it could be offensive to somebody else so I’m not good at opening up myself to my partners in an emotional way are there are there resources that would help me display intimacy with my partner signed anonymous black with a big dick. Allison’s laughing in the kitchen.
So if I didn’t know that like I don’t know this person but I would say well maybe….maybe part of the intimacy problem is your snarky behavior and your…your witty repartee but if we just answer this or maybe you’re just testing me to see if I would actually say that that is who you are anonymous person with the large schlong, one of the easiest ways that I use a lot for me is I just tell people what’s going on with me when I’m with them so like a good way to open yourself up to partners is to talk to them about this like hey you know something I’m struggling with is opening myself up to you like in an emotional way so like I literally will narrate what is actually going on in my head like what I’m actually thinking because the thing I’m struggling with again some situations as we found out with Zach are really you know could be potentially really complex and problematic or challenging um but you know like sharing with people what you’re struggling with is a way to open up emotionally with people and so again like Brené Brown, other people we’ve already and resources and techniques we’ve already talked about my Difficult Conversation Formula which there’s an article and then worksheets you can you can download you go to https://reidaboutsex.com/convo CONVO. The Difficult Conversation Formula can be really useful to get you present with what you are afraid of is going on or might happen if you share something with somebody and then also get present to what it is you’d like to have happened and sharing the things you’re afraid of and the things that you want to create or your intentions, the good things those things can be really powerful simple ways to…to open up to people and give yourself a format and you can your free use download sign up and download the…the worksheets for the Difficult Conversation Formula but use the writing exercise to get clearer for yourself what it is that that you’re…you’re struggling with and we kind of go back to the say what it is that you’re not saying. I’m always….for me it’s always like follow the things that you’re afraid of, follow the things that scare you there lies gold usually or maybe candy corn in this instance.
So yeah I would I would start there and sometimes sharing exactly what’s happening for you and what you’re struggling with is you know in appropriate not appropriate like “appropriate” air quotes but like in kind ways like just don’t throw everything that’s going on in your in your world that you’re struggling with on to the people around you and expect them to have to have to take it but you know saying hey you know I’m trying to practice opening up and being more emotionally vulnerable like do you have bandwidth for me to share some of the stuff that you know I’m struggling with because I watch this dude in a nurse’s hat sitting next to a jack-o-‘lantern give me advice that um that maybe I should just share what’s actually going on for me and if you have bandwidth I’d love to I’d love to practice that and actually share. So thank you anonymous black with the big dick for that question
Now this one comes from Hawaii, “Why…why are men attracted mostly for mostly from” oh okay so it’s kind of a little complicated “Why…why are men attracted mostly to flirty and bitchy types of women? How can I shine amongst other women to get the best guy attention the best guys’ attention for myself?” You know what I feel like…like Allison howl at the moon might come in with this one because you were giggling, you were giggling in the in the kitchen but uh you know why…why are men
Allison: I’m not laughing at the question.
Reid: Huh?
Allison: I wasn’t laughing at the question.
Reid: She wasn’t laughing at the question I don’t know that you can hear her and on this microphone. So the question is why are why are men mostly attracted to the more flirty and bitchy type of women? How can I shine amongst other women to be to get the best guys attention for myself? Okay so this weekend in Orange County I was talking about and this is something I’ve talked about in lots of different places but it bears repeating because I think it’s really useful and I’ll…I’ll give a couple of you know pieces of like Kung-Fu advice here the idea of like most men most women this or that when we talk in these big reductive statements and sometimes I do too I just think my advice is better…a lot of these big…big statements, reductive statements come from like old advice. Now your…your lived experience might actually be “Oh my goodness all the men are getting…are putting all their attention on the flashy flirty women or chasing the bitchy women.” Here’s…here’s my advice, I think those people unless you are a human being who’s really attracted to bitchy women or really attracted to flirty women like…like truly attracted I’m like that’s your jam.
I think most people are playing the games that Cosmo magazine talks about a lot and Cosmo also does some really great stuff but it’s an easy it’s an easy popular example of you know there has been a lot of popular relationship advice out there on how to attract the man or how to attract the woman there’s actually really just bad advice it kind of works because everybody else is following the same bad advice but what it does is it leads to unhealthy relationship dynamics because we’re all trying to be attractive in this old outdated relationship advice formats and that advice is…is outdated and it wasn’t really great advice to begin with like for healthy relationships about happiness and joy and fulfillment so I would say you’re asking the wrong question person from Hawaii…I would say well one thing I would say is…is come hang out you know with me at some events and stuff like that and nerd out on…on the old advice versus the new advice and the piece that I’ll drop in here.
The piece of advice is rather than trying to play the attraction game like the currency of relationships is attraction I have to do this to be attractive, I have to be bitchy or I’ll play hard-to-get or be mean or be flirty or be this or be that, I need to have this job or you know be this thin or live in this neighborhood or like rather than trying to play the attraction game which is the old advice I would say start playing the self-expression game. So are you being the you that makes you the happiest, that makes you most fulfilled, the…the you that nourishes you the most and so rather than being playing the attraction game you want to swap out, you want to exchange your currency for self-expression so you know are you being the you that is just so excited and happy by the life you’re already living? That you’re you catch people’s attention and just because you catch their attention like you’re just so thrilled with your life that you are thrilling whenever you talk about it but rather than than going and dating everyone for whom you’re catching their attention, have you put some thought into the kinds of men you want to have a relationship with and are you finding the watering holes that these men are at? Ladies and gentlemen guest appearance by her wolf her wolfiness.
Allison: Yes. I also noticed that maybe there might be some confirmation bias happening here and just kind of going off your conversation. If you’re attracted to the gregarious outgoing party guys but you’re not one of those people then it might be very easy for you to feel completely overlooked in a large loud gregarious party situation but it also might be a little bit of squeaky wheel situation you might just be noticing a lot of gregarious women with the loud gregarious guys because they’re both loud and gregarious and loudness tends to get attract…attract attention. You’re not necessarily seeing the quiet bookish men who aren’t at the loud party because they’re home
Reid: ‘coz they wouldn’t
Allison: with their bookish girlfriends
Reid: They wouldn’t be at the loud party.
Allison: Right and so you might be just thinking that they’re…all these men are just choosing this specific kind of woman ignoring the fact that there are a lot of kinds of men and women who aren’t in those environments, who don’t do that, who are Netflixing and chilling every night instead so if you’re if you want that kind of guy
Reid: Stranger things
Allison: Yeah if you want that kind of guy then I can see how that could be really problematic I mean I definitely had to learn how to be more like loud and brash because I like theater and I like dating actors and I dated a lot of actors and so I had to learn how to attract that kind of attention
Reid: And you like loud men
Allison: So [Inaudible 00:54:41] is included
Reid: You like loud man who played evil male nurse
Allison: Well I mean I like I like men who
Reid: [Inaudible 00:54:46] too
Allison: I like men who kind of who grab spotlights and so I kind of had to learn how to grab a spotlight too to grab their attention and I did and it wasn’t organic for me. What I ended up doing was starting to be more organic to myself and I attracted a man who could play it both ways so to speak but I do think that there might be a little bit of confirmation bias. I think if you’re looking for men who aren’t in that kind of world then you might need to find the Lexx, find the watering holes that where the guys who are slightly more your type hang out and odds are they’ll be attracted to women who are slightly more like your type.
Reid: Yeah and this is when where we going to like dating your species, one of my workshops you can actually get it on my store I’ll put the link I think if you go to https://reidaboutsex.com/species that’ll…that’ll come up but this is where you like you figure out the kinds of people that you’re into because this isn’t just advice for women dating men like this is dating advice and…and realize like slow things down and notice where you have confirmation biases like Allison said and…and ask yourself like are you asking yourself the right question and have you figured out the kind of person that you want to have relationships with sometimes you don’t know the answers because you haven’t dated enough people or you dated a bunch of the wrong people which is great you know who it’s not but that doesn’t mean you know who it is. I knew you know I had a I had a strong hunch that Allison was somebody I wanted to date when…when and how we met which was at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles and you know and I like to date queer women and like fierce feminists like that’s my jam and so you know when we met and I knew I was attracted I you know very cautiously approached and we had a great conversation about feminism and stuff like that but eventually when…when we started kind of seeing each other like I was I was still this is the beginning of me making sure that I that we fit on a lot of different in a lot of different ways because we were definitely good for dating but you know that didn’t mean we were good for buying a house together or things like that. So again like as you start to figure these things out there’s you know realize that sometimes the answer you have at the watering hole is you’re looking for…for your species who’s thirsty that doesn’t mean you don’t know what…what it’s like yet to find you know the person at the watering hole who’s ready to buy a house like so there’s a lot of other questions but that that’s where I would start my journey.
Allison: Can I ask one more this is a really basic advice but I think it’s often overlooked so you mentioned that again like these kinds of these characteristics of these women were that they were loud and bitchy but is there something else that they that they did or were right like so if you like dancing for instance and you like these men who are like owning the dance floor, are they dating women who are really good dancers, right? And there is a level of like being part of being attractive is getting good at interesting things that excite you and hopefully those interesting things that excite you also excite people that you’re interested in.
Reid: Yeah and this is where we say we from the attraction thing like be aware of it because like “Oh, well I need to get good at dancing but you don’t like dancing.”
Allison: Right.
Reid: Don’t
Allison: Geek out on something that you really want to do and you’ll find people who are into that thing as well.
Reid: like meetups there’s we have the internet now, there’s Facebook groups for everything if you’re kinky there’s FetLife which is kind of the kinky version of Facebook and believe me there are groups for everything…everything things you don’t even want to know exist and then you know as you get good at the things that really thrill you and nourish you go go hang out with those people maybe they’re not the ones you want to date but maybe they have friend.
Allison: Right
Reid: like use your passions and your hobbies as ways to expand your social network as you hone you know and get clear about the things that you’re really looking for in a relationship.
Allison: Yeah, let your World of Warcraft guild know that you’re on the prowl or whatever.
Reid: That’s good. Prowl says the ware wolf.
Allison: Dinner is almost ready.
Reid: Dinner is almost ready? Can I keep doing this?
Allison: Of course, you can do whatever you want.
Reid: Okay but you’re gonna eat dinner. You’re more important than me eating dinner right now so we’re looking at comments we’re looking at comments I I think they refresh I think they refresh on the phone. Oh, there’s a lot um Katrina this reeks of why do nice guys finish last vibe? I think self-confidence and being yourself this most important it isn’t about pretending to be something somebody else wants. Yeah absolutely…absolutely and the idea right like self-confidence can come from you getting really good at something that you really love or just knowing that hey you know what, I’m shitty at this thing but I love it and the confidence of getting to know yourself and again like this is just the beginning of the rest of your lives, right? The rest of our journeys in like geeking out. The other thing I would say is and again I’m super biased right because I’m I am I’m a geek but hanging out with people that you can have these kind of meta conversations with like you can ask people like “Hey, what do you think about you know the idea of thinking about vulnerability” and sharing the things you’re scared of with people as a means of creating vulnerable connection like and, and, and I think it’s really it’s just more exciting for me to hang out with people who will take those conversations seriously and be like well I don’t know I’ve never thought about that but here’s what I think right now and you can have these…these cool maybe nerdy conversations about ideas. People, who are like why are you always talking about stuff like this? That’s okay if you’re trying to watch Game of Thrones or something like that and you need to focus on something else but like dating people and starting your relationships with people who just have lost the curiosity for life, I don’t know like I think that might that could be also part of….of the challenge like…like steer away from people like that like god bless everyone but maybe those aren’t the people that are gonna like squeeze the juice out of life.
Now I’m thinking about Led Zeppelin and lemon juice running down you know like…now there’s a laugh from Allison in the kitchen. There you go, good. We got Allison to laugh, that’s good, that’s good. Hit some emoticons if you can just so I know that this is working at some point Facebook will probably kick us off ‘coz I think that we used to have a an hour and a half limit so we’ll see.
Next question, how do I figure out what my needs are? This is oh look at all the emoticons coming on my phone okay good we’re still good. How do I figure out what my needs are? This is from anonymous. Okay, so the easiest way to answer this question is to invite you to come join me for three days in Southern California in Irvine, California I was gonna say Irvington, it’s not Irvington but in Orange County December 1st, 2nd, and 3rd I’m doing a seminar so come there because we’re actually gonna work on needs and boundaries and agreements and wants and desires. I have exercises and there are like there are writing exercises and talk talk talk talk and write more right more right more, take a break go outside in the sunshine think think think think think maybe journal a little bit. There’s some tools and some tips and some tricks and some ways to start to tease out what your needs are you could also geek out on like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which now apparently also has a couple more added to them one of them is Wi-Fi and I think that’s one of the most important once you agree Wi-Fi but starting to figure out your needs there’s lots of workshops, there’s some great books out there, I’ll try to put some in the in links and in the comments for you but the things I would say a place to start for your needs is asking yourself what do you you don’t deserve followed by the question what do you think no one could love you for these are scary questions and they’re ones that I use all the time because they help me figure out my wants and my desires because I have a lot of shame I have a lot of sexual shame especially and you’ll be like “Reid, how is that possible? You are you’re the queer polyamorous slut.” It’s true I have a lot of shame I just have really great tools for navigating my shame and not letting it stop me and I have recalibrated myself so that when I’m feeling a lot of shame, I know I’m in the right place. Now that might not be your your journey that might not be your the way you want to set your compass to navigate the world but asking yourself what you think no one could love you for something that you want, something that you secretly desire I would do that writing exercise to start digging around at some of the things that you’re not etting yourself maybe even think about it because you’re so worried about what other people think or that you’re a bad person and again like this doesn’t have to be sexual this could be like I want to leave the town I grew up in and move to the city or I want to leave the city and move to the country or I want to leave the United States like sometimes we don’t we don’t think about things because we’ve already crossed that out for reasons of shame and guilt and fear and so we never we never even examine them a little deeper. Again, these are things you can talk about to to a coach or to people in therapy to you know in group workshops and things like that it doesn’t have to be stuff that you you need to do alone but not everybody can hire a therapist or afford joining you know a workshop or something like that so again like start with the writing exercises.
If you are interested about what’s going on December first, second, and third that course that that seminar that workshop for three days is called High-Performance Relationship Mastery and you can check that out by going to https://reidaboutsex.mykajabi.com/store/dqFp4mTN and that’ll walk you through what that whole event is about and there’s tons of bonuses it’s coming up real fast but you can check it out and see if it’s for you and then we will tackle and dig into needs and we’ll also learn about boundaries and agreements and and navigate a whole bunch of nerdy geeky stuff so that you can have your relationships like performing better and if you have a great relationship it’ll take up to the next notch because we’re not gonna be dealing with old advice and and I’m really nerdy and passionate about that stuff.
Another question, How do I get over the scary feeling I have when getting close to or having sex with somebody who has herpes? This comes from BS from Oregon. So how do I get over the scary feeling I have when getting close to or having sex with somebody with herpes? I know the precautions and how it’s transferred but even when there’s no outbreak I worry to the point where it affects me somatically, my head says it’s okay but my body won’t go there and I feel ashamed about this. So BS from Oregon great question. I’ve done a lot of videos on my YouTube channel about herpes. I’ve done a ton of them with Cathy Vartuli from The Intimacy Dojo so if you want to go to https://www.youtube.com/reidaboutsex go to my channel and then type in herpes there’s a bunch there that talks about herpes but it sounds like you’ve done a lot of research about herpes so we’ve got some videos there that talk about the emotional side of it and like the quick answer here is like I get it. You’re not broken like maybe the the quick answer the easy answer is to just not date or have sex with people who have herpes or you know use a lot of barriers gloves, dental dams, condoms things like that which again maybe that’s a bummer for for you but like asking yourself what can you do to make yourself feel physically safe, to feel emotionally safe, and then also to feel like heart safe like you know your your spirit and cue Ally Moon! Ally howl at the moon. I like to keep popping in. This is fun.
Allison: Yeah, it’s a great question because I think that it sounds like you understand herpes and its risks and kind of lack thereof but you’re having like what I would consider maybe you consider it to it kind of an irrational fear response which to me indicates there’s something much deeper going on, it might be some hypochondria stuff, it might be some mortality stuff, it might be some cleanliness stuff fear of being perceived by others as dirty or bad I think there’s probably some really deep old stuff going on under here if you’re aware that like herpes is actually not that big of a deal and if you’re aware that
Reid: Sounds fatal
Allison: you know most of the population has it never has outbreaks so if you’re up here all if you understand all that stuff intellectually and you still have this really intense like whew there’s probably something else much deeper going on it’s like working at like a really a really kind of subconscious level. To get at least a personal example Reid and I have an open relationship
Reid: What?
Allison: and you know he practices safe sex and in the way that it makes him safe and makes me feel safe and so but there’s still an experience that happens sometimes when he comes back from being on the road for a long time where I kind of have this like I know that you’ve been safe, I trust you and I have this really weird kind of like physically dirty feeling right it feels like you’re gonna put something inside me that’s been in so many other orifices and I can’t catalogue them, all right? It’s not rational, it’s not it’s like if there was something going on with an STD status he would let me know
Reid: Yeah
Allison: it’s it’s based on more of an emotional closest thing, it’s based on a I don’t feel like I’m in control of my body in those moments because somebody is some I’m putting my trust insist somebody else’s hands around my own bodily sovereignty which is some really intense stuff and ultimately what I usually just have to do is kind of just kind of work through the feeling feel my feelings acknowledge them at the same time say like okay Allison like let’s let’s walk it through what’s the worst-case scenario here, right? And once I go through all the worst-case scenarios and still come out on the side of like I trust Reid and I trust my relationship with him like not there’s nothing that’s really going to go horribly wrong but it takes me some time to like get my lizard brain to shut the hell up for a little while so that my rational brain can be like all right like let’s go through the list. So you might want to do a little bit of deep work to try and figure out what exactly is freaking you out about it if it is being a pariah, if it is being dirty, if it is being slutty or any of these things that are really negative connotations around sexuality in our world and herpes tends to be at this really bizarre one that people have touched a lot of anxieties to even though again not that big of a deal.
Reid: There’s so much cultural stigma
Allison: Yeah it’s it’s I mean it’s it’s madness to me really I don’t quite understand why there is so called cultural stigma, it’s a skin problem, right? It’s not something that’s going to cause in revocable harm particularly if you’re not pregnant or going to give birth soon.
Reid: Yeah and if you’re one of the people out there who’s watching who gets like really horrible outbreaks that are super painful like my heart goes out to you like that you drew the short straw on the herpes train.
Allison: Yeah, I don’t mean to dismiss the actual very real live experience of having
Reid: I mean it sucks
Allison: herpes outbreaks but I think the stigma attached to it is much greater in some ways that says like you’re dirty or bad and that’s just bullshit so I think more of it like I’m curious as to what the underlying concerns are, is it a fear of being any of those things or is it a fear of just being ill, is it a fear of losing some aspect of what you think is attraction or attractive body – all these things arereally complex so I think it would be worth I’ll dig into that, explore some of those deep feelings about it and you might come up with some really interesting answers.
Reid: Yeah, other things just you know we’ve already talked about it with some of the other answers to things like like is there something from your past around you know illness or you know being dirty or being slutty or like like whatever kind of like sex negativity negativity or illness negativity or something like that is there something from your past that’s that’s there for you have such a strong somatic reaction? I mean you can have whatever level of reaction you have to for whatever reasons but sometimes not all the time when things seem really intense those might be clues that that you know you’re like “Oh, you have a lot of jealousy in these situations.” Has anything ever happened to you when you were growing up that you know that’s kicking this up like is the somatic fear and anxiety that you’re feeling now like the actual feelings like can you kind of carbon date them are they from right now or is it from someplace else or from some another time and that can sometimes be helpful because I’ve asked people that when I’m coaching them and they’re like “well well no I mean I’m jealous at Brad but yeah it does kind of seem an inordinate amount” and then there’s like hah and because they’re they’re not they’re thinking about their entire lives not just this situation. Sometimes you can you can trace things back and it might be a clue and then when you have had those aha moments if they’re there then you can seek out resources to work on them and maybe you can shift them and maybe you can’t.
Allison: yup
Reid: Okay
Allison: I’m on my way to eat dinner.
Reid: Go eat your soup. I’m going to questions to let’s see, let’s see, let’s see, let’s check out and see what we got over here somebody from ma from Maui, Aloha more questions….we got waves coming on full-size candy bars what was that for? I don’t know what that’s for. We’ve got Oh, Brené Brown, Thank You Katrina for dropping in some links on shame and back to some more questions and then we’ll wrap it up in a little bit because we’ve got more questions but at some point, I can’t tell if Allison’s mad at me that I’m doing this and not eating dinner. I’m not sure. We’ll find out I think she can hear me. Okay so oh, here’s one this one it starts with getting fit ruined sex life like it’s a headline a tabloid headline. My friend’s husband this comes from anonymous my friend’s husband lost weight the fat her clit used to rub against isn’t there anymore and she’s having a harder time climaxing what can she do? How can I ever have sex with my husband again after I experienced a very profound….wait that’s like next question okay. Okay, so get fit ruin sex life, my friend’s husband lost weight, the fat her clit used to rub against isn’t there anymore and she’s having a harder time climaxing, what can she do? So, I cannot speak specifically to the clit but I can speak to the fat around one’s belly used as a sexual device, as a sexual enhancement tool I called it my pleasure bumper when I had a bigger belly it was really awesome. I actually I had never really thought of it like you can use your belly as a sexual device, as a pleasure bumper, as something for somebody to rub against and grind against or I particularly enjoyed having somebody straddled me while I’m on my back you know it got them by the hips and as we’re having penetrative sex with my penis I would like slam them I used my lats and my arms and pull them really hard as we’re fucking into my belly and kind of like having like dijjjj! Dijjjj! Dijjjj! And that worked really well for it seemed like everyone involved. In this situation and I also I lost my pleasure bumper and and that was kind of it was sad in a way but other things like if there’s nothing there for you to rub your clit against now for your friends clip against anonymous, we’ve got tools we’ve got a whole world full of tools professional tools create professional results, we’ve got vibrators, you’ve got dildos and things that you can you can use to hump up against while you’re also having sex with your partner.
There’s all kinds of things there’s sex furniture out there that might be able to get you into a better position to where you can get more grindy grindy situations going on with your clit. My….in my go-to is is vibrators I like vibrators, I like toys they’re just awesome, I like knowing that when I’m playing with people who have clits that you know they’re they feel comfortable using toys to augment whatever it is that we’re doing they’re super useful for times when I can’t get an erection and then we just go right to the toys. Dildos are great to have around, dildos and vibrators things like that so there’s lots of different approaches different positions, of course, can also help because now that this person doesn’t have have the belly that they used to is there another position or type of furniture or a pillow or something you can add to the the sex and the position that will allow you to have something to rub your clit against? I keep trying to envision a situation where Allison what’s the what’s the strap-on harness that allows for biocock and a dildo so you can do like double penetration do you remember the name of that? Yeah nerds who are watching right now, fetch fetch me that strap-on you….so there’s a couple of things you could do but you could if your partner’s into it because again this gentleman or this person who has the penis might not be into using toys and stuff but if they are, if they want to consider it you might be able to use a strap-on harness and the penis so you’ve got a dildo and a penis so as you’re riding the biocock you’ve got the other dildo placed strapped-on above the cock so it’s there for for rubbing. I want to think of other ideas, I want to brainstorm other ideas you all you’re all genius smart folks what are some, some ideas you can come up with to help our person anonymous with things that you could rub up against while having penetrative sex and Allison Moon has changed back from being a werewolf you lost your ears.
Allison: I did, I had to change back so I could eat human food.
Reid: Oh yeah and don’t forget hands, hands.
Allison: Yeah there are some cock rings too that have little attachments on them.
Reid: Oh good one.
Allison: That would be like a little bit of a
Reid: Yup
Allison: little knob
Reid: Yup
Allison: and also there’s a position that became very popular in the late nineties I think probably because of 6 feet under it’s a long story called grinding the corn but it’s essentially a move where he puts his penis inside um
Reid: unicorn?
Allison: no like it’s like I think it’s like a
Reid: corn in the band?
Allison: Stop. It’s a mortar and pestle situation. Okay, so basically you put the penis inside the vagina and then the man this is a missionary position it kind of moves higher up on her body so that he enters kind of at an angle and instead of going in and out like this you’re kind of going in and out like this
Reid: Yeah
Allison: um not always comfortable for everybody
Reid: It’s called grind the corn?
Allison: Yeah. I didn’t invent that the term I think probably Cosmo did. Anyway but the point is to you the base of the penis to stimulate the clitoris in lieu of a belly.
Reid: hmm yeah cock ring, the cock ring is a good one.
Allison: Yeah the cock ring is a little bit of
Reid: Yeah I’m trying to think which who makes that a fun factor I think makes a cock ring that has a little thing….oh the lovely duh there’s there’s an app and a sex toy called The Lovely that I have done consulting for so full disclosure and it’s a cock ringthat also has a vibrator in it but the way that it’s shaped because it also has a lot of tech in it because it’s measuring things like in in and out repetitions like lake steps it’s measuring thrust it’s measuring speed especially a whole bunch of things it’s actually it’s small but it would provide a kind of nub for you to be able to rub up against Wow you’re capturing all this awesome data that gets displayed on your phone and graphs and things like that and and also the app will recommend different positions and tips and things like that and and I and yours truly wrote some of some of that advice for the lovely so maybe again check out the lovely. Thank You Allison cock rings that’s what I was looking for.Comments thank you for posting all right we’ve got people on it looking for other things candy corn full-size candy but oh here it is regarding full-size candy bars, I had said something was the candy corn of whatever who knows what I said I can’t remember and maybe it was the full-size candy bar instead. That’s good, that’s good you know what now do you like my writing team already has found the harness it’s called the DP harness. So there you go and I think there’s a couple other harnesses out there like that thank you so much Katrina.
All right, another question so the getting fit we got that one done oh here it goes how can I ever have my this one’s a deep one this is a deep one get ready folks take a deep breath so this one is how can I ever have sex with my husband again after I experienced a very profound sexual and emotional connection with another partner? That person is not in my life anymore but it is hard to ignore the sharp contrast between sexual experience with my husband and the other person. I love my family, I want to make it work I just cannot make myself have sex with my husband, any advice? Anonymous. So thank you for this great question so if I was doing a coaching session with anonymous, my my first questions would be like sohow long how fresh is this relationship and I would start there for a coupleof reasons: one, long-term relationships versus new relationship energy for people who don’t have a lot of experience with both, right? Like a lot of us have had long-term relationships and a lot of us have have fallen in love before um but not everybody on the planet has has is currently in a long-term relationship and also been in love at the same time now there are a lot of people who’ve had affairs because the culturally approved version of non-monogamous is still cheating and by culturally approved I have air quotes around that but the idea now in the polyamory world’s swinging, kink, other kinds of non-monogamous plus integrity integrity those kinds of things consensual non-monogamy world there’s a lot of conversation about new relationship energy and how that can wreak wreak havoc on existing relationships and how do you kind of work around it or work through it or just be with it like how do you handle when you’re in a relationship and the new one starts an the flood of endorphins and you know brain cocaine basically that happens when when we’re in love. So the reason I would ask how how fresh is this past relationship is because if it was transitioned recently then there’s a decent hunch that what’s still going on is a lot of those residual chemicals and experiences from the new relationship energy. Esther Perel has a book called Mating In Captivity which is a brilliant book. Esther Perel also came out with a new book recently called The State Of Affairs and but I would recommend reading Mating In Captivity to start to understand how long-term relationships don’t feel like new relationship energy and just start kind of informing yourself around the what is like falling in love when it’s fresh feels very different, is a stark contrast to having a life partner that you’ve been raising kids with and building a family and I think it’s not like you forget but it’s like most of us don’t know what that’s like and to Willy until we experience it so for anonymous like congratulations you’re experiencing it and yes it’s a stark contrast but that’s that’s exactly what it is and you know with this new partner who now sounds like is out of your life if you were with them for however many years raising kids then and then fell in love with somebody new then it might be the same situation. So you know without kind of being cliche and being like this too shall pass can you be grateful for the experiences that you’ve had? You say that you know you you love your family and you want to make it work and then can you start on me I want to say like the slow road to recovery but there’s nothing really broken, you’re at where you’re at and what would it take or could you consider what physical intimacy non sexual or otherwise or sexual what that would what that might look like with your husband like doesn’t have to be big leaps and bounds you’re not trying to take a relationship that you’ve had for however many years and you know inject it with new relationship energy I don’t really think that can that really happens but could you imagine connecting with them sensually and intimately or even non-sexually in a kind of sensual close vulnerable way and what would that look like and and enjoy the relationship that you have and understand that the connection that you’re gonna have with your husband isn’t gonna be like the connection that you had with your the person you you newly fell in love with, they’re just different and that it also might be part of it too again I’m not a therapist nor do I play one on television but today on Facebook live I am a nurse could it also be the part of the thing that’s coming up when you write that you just can’t make yourself have sex with your husband and you shouldn’t be making yourself do anything but it could also be that the part of that might also be due to the fact that you’re grieving, you’re grieving the transition of this awesome fiery you know brilliant burning relationship that you just ended I don’t know but I would give it time. I would when and where it’s appropriate talk to somebody you know and and start getting your thoughts down maybe in a journal or something like that and and this is a really great question and if you if you need for support or anything you’re you know you’re welcome to email me and you can reach out at reid@reidaboutsex.com and that also goes for all of you I mean I read all my emails, I try to answer them for some of these questions because you come up with some amazing questions. I put them in my little inbox folder for videos and I try to shoot videos on them and you know you’re all welcome to to ping me and ask for advice if I have products or courses or things like that that that might be suitable for you situation and again you might want to come to High-Performance Relationship Mastery and that’s https://reidaboutsex.mykajabi.com/store/dqFp4mTN
Alright, another couple questions this one from Paul finally finally somebody’s asking a question about butts. Paul asks how do I get my wife to play with my ass? Allison, you want to jump in on this one?
Allison: I think that’s a man-to-man question.
Reid: That’s a man-to-man question Allison says. She’s smart. Paul if you’re watching right now or if you’re watching this later, come closer Paul like pull the computer closed. Have you tried asking her? I mean there’s a place to start now that get’s Allison to come over. That get’s…I’m being silly
Allison: I know.
Reid: Wow, we just bated her. It was great.
Allison: That was a pretty good bate.
Reid: man-to-man
Allison: That was a fine advice, fine advice. Speaking as a lady who enjoys playing with her man’s butt um
Reid: I have to talk to Allison
Allison: I don’t know you, I don’t know your butt it’s probably lovely. For somebody who’s squeamish about butts in general
Reid: You?
Allison: No
Reid: or you’re speaking for people?
Allison: I’m saying for somebody who’s butts, in general, be hyper-hygienic will help and might might start being hyper-hygienic before you even ask so that she gets starts to get to notice how squeaky clean your butt is because some people just are squeamish about butts because of you know dirt disease whatever whatever and it’s whatever everybody’s comfort is different. So you might want to practice with a little enema that you have at home you might web practice just really getting up in there and getting clean if you’re feeling real fancy maybe go get a Brazilian wax um anything that makes it a little bit more palatable for somebody who might not be into it. Again, like I don’t know if your wife saying about stuff or not but if if you’re not quite sure if she is or if she’s kind of like squeamish about it um making making your butt as pretty sweet smelling package as you possibly can will go a really long way to her wanting to put her finger and/or face in there.
Reid: I love you.
Allison: And then what?
Reid: I just love you fancy what a fancy ass.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: Put a little time and attention into it.
Allison: Yeah. I mean like how I mean
Reid: spruce it up Paul
Allison: Exactly like pretend you’re just it’s your first night working at the strip club and you got to make sure that that you get a lot of dollar bills.
Reid: Right. Treat your ass like it’s your honeymoon Paul. Wow, this is just this I don’t know what just happened. I, again I was being snarky but but serious like have you asked her? Let’s assume Paul hasn’t check out the Difficult Conversation Formula. Another thing that you could do I have an online course called Sex 10x that has a whole bunch of videos about ass play and again like this is it this can be tricky not in a bad way but like some people like “Hey, honey let’s take this let’s do this online course together” and the reason you bought the online course is because there’s a part of the course that’s about the thing that you’re trying to you know break the ice with on your you know with your partner so there’s like there’s a little bit of a hidden agenda but then you know some people you know your your wives and husbands and boyfriends and girlfriends and friends and friends with benefits better than I do everyone out there so maybe the call is you know you invite them to go do this thing or go to this workshop that has built into it a piece that’s really vulnerable for you and you’re trying to break the ice because your judgement is that if you ask them directly they might be a no and kind of put the kibosh on the whole thing. Great distinction Marcia Baczynski made in a podcast I was listening to Marcia and just go follow Marcia Baczynski she’s amazing, one of the co-founders of cuddle party and The Good Girl Recovery Project is one of Marcia’s babies. The thing Macia said was there’s a distinction between and a lot of people don’t make this distinction, do you want to do this and you willing to do this? So when you ask I’ll pretend I’m Paul like I’m like “Hey, honey do you want to play with my ass?” And and my wife says “no” you don’t know if she’s willing to play with your ass so she asked she answered the question that you asked and finding out like you know are you willing to play with my ass because it….around sex like a lot of the things that that we think people are asking is am I into this or is this something that excites me well maybe I’m not into it maybe it doesn’t excite me but I’ll still try it and especially if I if I love you and this is something you want to explore okay so could be also a good idea to ask make that distinction between the willing and and the wanting and it’s okay you know as long as as long as you’re okay with it it’s okay to do something that you that you don’t want to do if you’re if you’re okay with doing it like that like there’s the hard no I don’t want to do this and then there’s the like me I don’t care to do it like I don’t want to but I’m not a no and we don’t ask that because it because again there’s a lot of gray area in sex itself but a lot of times like we don’t have these fine distinctions and she’s back hello I’m chewing there’s also another thing and this is something that I’ve noticed that men tend to downplay a lot of the times in heterosexual relationships is how much pleasure something will give them because so you some men might present this to his wife okay you know I read this thing or maybe this would be fun as opposed to like I think that this would give me a lot of pleasure or I’m super curious about what kind of pleasure would give me would you be interested in helping me find out how good this could feel to me because a lot of times in your when you’re in a loving wonderful relationship it’s really fun to give pleasure to another person even it’s not something you’re into again you may have if you follow Reid you might know I was pretty gay until I met this one and then I was like oh maybe I’m not as gay as I thought it was it was my freshly waxed very very fancy ass but you also have freshly waxed balls and I still don’t particularly love giving blowjobs but I love making my man feel good and so I will give blowjobs here and there on special occasions when spired Halloween when you um when you really like actually like this is something I want to do for you because it would feel really good so I think presenting and as a like honey this would be something that I would really love to receive from you would you be down it doesn’t have to be in like a coercive way but really like a this would give me pleasure like let’s play with ideas of giving each other a lot of pleasure so I think that you lead with the pleasure I think that’s probably a really good place to start there great thanks all right I’m gonna do one more question because we’re almost at two hours now and and I I’m just surprised Facebook hasn’t kicked us off but I’m also afraid that if we go over some limit then they won’t post the video so I’d rather I’d rather cut it short and have more questions for later then lose the whole video for everybody who wants to watch it tomorrow and why not so I prefer this comes from Jim from Illinois I prefer to have fewer deeper erotic encounters than my partner who’s ready almost daily how can I postpone him without hurting his feelings he frequently accuses me of not being interested in sex which could not be further from the truth oh wait this isn’t from Jim this is from Nadia on Maui that not nice I’m so sorry nyeeehhh on Maui I prayed our fear of deep erotic encounters with my partner who’s ready almost daily how can I postpone him without hurting his feelings he frequently accuses me of not being interested in sex which could not be further from the truth okay there’s so many different ways to answer this question and so many different perspectives to look at so I would go into having a conversation around like ideal situations needs and like there’s the ideal and then there’s like the what would be like a worse like a bad situation and for both of you and maybe you bring in a like a therapist to kind of sit or coach to kind of be the third person to kind of mediate but maybe maybe you don’t need that but you’re having a conversation of you know this situation now already in the and the question is he often accuses me of not being that interested in sex so I’m kind of assuming that that the person’s already a little bit frustrated but when you look at I don’t want me to say this is like a libido issue this is more of a frequency issue and you know as for me as somebody who has a lot of sex there’s also a situation we could have like it’s not too much sex but like when you have a lot of sex like you’re kind of not horny for it in the same way you’re not craving it in the same way because you’re you know like you’re well fed so to speak the idea of talking with your partner about ideally like how much sex you know on the high end of the scale would they like three times a day five times a day three times a week whatever that is and then on the lower end like what would be kind of like a good kind of like baseline you feel like you’re getting your needs met and for some people that that’s an emotional choice so it’s like no I want to have sex three times a day and you’re like well you know what’s your kind of baseline average and you’re like three times a day which is usually more of a an emotional kind of answer then you know if we were having sex three times a week but I also felt connected to you and was getting some of my other monkey needs met right there’s a lot of people get a lot of their their social connection needs met also through sex with their partners and they don’t think that there’s more crayons in the crayon box so you know if we had sex three times a week and also went for acouple of walks or you know played a board game or did something fun that also kind of nourished me then overall what I’m looking for is connection and feeling loved and accepted by you and then maybe it doesn’t have to it doesn’t have to always be sex and the other question being does he understand that for you it’s not that you don’t love him it’s not that you don’t like sex it’s just that you would like to have a little bit more time kind of like a geyser like you need a little bit more time to build up the pressure so the sex is really like like good and that you’d rather have the oh then then force yourself to do something you don’t want to be doing or you know have sex when you’re not really pent up in that juicy way the third thing I would start investigating and chatting about is well how can I help you have your sexual connection with me your erotic connection with me in a way where I don’t have to have the sex allison is a great example of a relationship where you know there are times when we want to have some sort of sexual connection but you know Allison wants to have an orgasm and be connected to me but I’m not in the mood to to fuck or to go down on her hand fucker and Allison was genius and she’s like well we just hold me while I buzz off with my vibrator I’m like sure you know and so I would like cuddle her and kind of nozzle area and make out with her while she would get off with the vibrator and then that kind of met our needs she got to be connected with me I got to like be with her while she got off and then I could go back to work or whatever it was I was doing and they didn’t have to be like a whole whole production so also just trying to to get a little bit more explicit about what are the needs that you all need to get met because maybe you could you know jack him off with a fleshlight which is something you know that I think is a great addition to to all relationships and and can also be a lot of fun when and if you’re not in a mood to give somebody handout because like you know using a flashlight to jack off somebody it can be novel and fun and is also really useful for some folks who have certain kinds of hand issues and Cortney like like arthritis and things like that it there’s lots of uses for a flashlight you know two flashlights calm look at that FAQ there’s some some great ideas there for just how to use the flashlight but can you think a little bit outside thebox get clear about what kind of needare trying to be met and then put morecrayons in that crayon box of ways to get those needs met and I would look at those three different areas and and have some conversations about them and good luck with that and again like if you’re if if I mean you this is anonymous so this is somebody in Maui if you want to fly that to to Orange County and come to high performance relationship mastery December 1st through 3rd then that might be really fun for both you because willwill nerd out on a lot of relationship and communication stuff and emotionallike you things and we’ll also begeeking out here and there on somesexuality stuff and some sexual self confidence and skill things as well because getting to be savvy andcoordinated with how you negotiate and can figure out what your needs are andyour partner and support your partners and getting their needs met around sex also is another piece of having a relationship that that performs at a higher level so there and that pretty much takes us to about 2 hours so I hope this FAQ was really fun not too scary I’ve still got a bunch of otherquestions so I am gonna I’m gonna eat some food because I was flying all day I was traveling today and and I’m actually very hungry and I’m gonna put I’m gonna bring this FAQ to a close and I will use these amazing questions to answer for more of the face book lives that I’m gonna be doing and I just wanna thankeverybody including Ally moon who’s saying doing this motion from across the dining room table plug my event one more time Allison says so please if you if you curious share with a friend go to read about sex comm FOID /h PRM whichstands for high performance relationship mastery which is my three-day seminar that’s happening in Orange County Irvine California Southern California in December December first second and third so sunny Irvine California in the in the beginning of December and if you want to beef up on some kickass communication and relationship and sexual skill sets we’re gonna just kind of tear apart the old advice and we’re gonna throw it out and we’re gonna install some some new advice and some new ways of looking at relationships so you can identify why relationships dating long-term relationships short-term relationships white even casual sex can be so frustrating these days I have ideas I have tools and I have some things that a lot of people are finding a lot of value in and getting a lot of amazing transformation in their love life and relationship life and these aren’t just relationships for intimacy these are relationship skill sets for four that you can use for business communication skills you can use with your kids sexual self confidence and ways to navigate shame so that you can be better at it for yourself and you can answer questions better for your friends you’ll be less afraid of sex so that if your kids have questions you know where to point them embedded and for better resources and you can answer questions too so if high-performing relationships is something that’s interesting to you if you’re frustrated with the way things are then high performance relationship master might be able to help if you have a good or great relationship and you want to get it to some place even better a lot of these tools will help I know because I’ve helped a lot of people with them and you can take good and great and BOP it up to excellent and amazing and out-of-this-world and I hope to see their so read about sex that calm voice / HP RM it’s coming up real fast there’s some amazing bonuses so go check them out and and thank you Allison for telling me to plug it one more time as we wrap up everyone please have a great Halloween this is the jack-o’-lantern I carved myself my first jack-o’-lantern for the new home that Alice and I have here in Oregon and hence I had the Oregonian beard they wouldn’t let me move here until I started growing it and I kind of liked it but I’m kind of thinking ashaming it a little bit Alison really likes it so on your way out vote yes or no for the beard and nomatter what you vote you’re awesome share this video with a friend post it in a Facebook group of yours and have a really awesome Halloween everyone have a safe Halloween trick-or-treat and all that good stuff and yeah and and shout out to Ally howlat the moon for her guest appearances and go check out grill sex 101.com.
Alright, bye everyone! Say goodbye to the jack bye jack oh well like I just blot the candles somehow. Bye everyone.