What To Do When You Want To Start Out A Conversation That You’ve Never Brought Up Before!
Reid: How do you have a scary conversation when there’re something you want to talk about your relationship and you’ve never brought it up before. This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com/ and I’m sitting with..
Stella: Stella Harris from http://www.StellaHarris.net/.
Reid: Stella, how would you.. What would you advice being a relationship and intimacy geek?
Stella: What I always advice people to talk to their partners about the things they want and the things that they’re interested in. But it’s important to set yourself up for the best chances of good conversation that you can have. You always want to make sure all the basics are covered. You want to make sure the person you’re talking to is well rested and well fed and isn’t in a rush. All too often people will say bring something up when everyone’s rushing and heading to work in the morning or they haven’t had their coffee and sort of really basic things when you bring up a touchy subject when the other person is cranky. So, just covering all your bases and making sure you have time for it, often times having the conversation outside of the home doing something like at a coffee shop or a restaurant, having some sort of a neutral environment sometime can really help people relax if they’re just a little out of their space and they’re having a nice date night, something like that.
Reid: Yeah.
Stella: So, anything like that where you are in the right environment and the right state of mind and then making sure you check in about how the other person feels. You can let them know, hey, I’ve been thinking about adding a little bit of bondage or some other kink and you don’t need to talk for an hour about your detailed fantasies that you’ve been having yet. You can sort of say, you know, there’s this thing I’ve been curious about or that I’d like to try or that I saw in a video, on YouTube and use something like that. Start gauging reaction, give the person the chance to respond say oh my gosh, I’ve always wanted that also or gosh, that’s really scary for me and sort of let them give you queues about what you say next and how deep you go right away.
Reid: If you want, the thing that’s really useful is the Difficult Conversation Formula that I talked about. So, you can go to https://reidaboutsex.com/convo and download the worksheet where you actually kind of write out and brainstorm what are the things that you’re afraid of might happen by having a conversation, what are the things that you actually want to have happened by having the conversation and then kind of worksheet it out what’s the thing you need to tell them, that you want to share with them and getting it down to a concise couple of sentences. Because often, we get so anxious and we don’t have the clarity that we just blurt out what we’re trying to talk about and like we kind of rumble on, we give the story and origin of the idea and our partner is just trying to figure out like what you’re actually saying. So, the difficult conversation formula can be really useful for a lot of people because you’re also sharing with the person — you know, there’s something I want to have a conversation with you about, here’s what I’m afraid of if we have it, here is what I’d like to have happened by having a conversation, here’s what I actually need to tell you. And that formula also helps people get into a more empathy? Empathic? Empathetic state of listening. Yeah, thank you for laughing at me. Loss for words.
Stella: You’re welcome.
Reid: Empathetic state of listening so you just don’t blurt it out in a way that surprises them coz most people don’t handle surprise well. And then just understanding that every conversation is usually the beginning of a longer conversation where you get to dive in a little bit more deeply and just like you said, so brilliantly, you don’t have to have the whole hour conversation right then and there. Give your partners, your friends, your co-workers, whoever you’re having these difficult conversations coz it doesn’t have to be sex and kink.
Stella: Right.
Reid: Give people time to adjust and be able to handle what you’re starting to open up for them.
Stella: Yeah. A first conversation isn’t about making decisions or making a plan. It’s just starting a dialogue. It’s a great idea to not make a decision the first time you talk about something.
Reid: Yeah. Awesome! Leave some comments. What was helpful for you in this video? And, hit subscribe! Bye.
Stella: Thank you!
Reid: Thanks, Stella!