When Is Your Partner’s Sex Life Your Responsibility? | Facebook Walk With Reid And Allison
Reid: Hello Facebook! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/ with our special guest star today
Allison: Allison Moon of http://girlsex101.com/
Reid: Yes…yes. I even put Girls Sex 101 in the description.
Allison: Nice
Reid: And I think it linked…it linked to the page.
Allison: Sweet.
Reid: Happy weekend everyone! The question today, Allison and I have some….some guests staying at our place. They are lovers of mine and…and we had this geeky brain sexy conversation the other day and we got to talking about something which I want to talk about Allison and get your insight on but the basic question which I put in the description today and as you say hi, tell us where you are today. What do you…where are you listening or watching from? And also what do you think about our question which is, in polyamory, we’re polyamorous by the way if they didn’t know. In polyamory, when is it your responsibility, when is your partner sex life your responsibility?
That was the question I said.
Allison: That’s a pretty good question.
Reid: That’s a pretty good question. So what do you….what are your thoughts?
Allison: Well and I feel that’s a little bit tricky question.
Reid: U-huh! Trick question
Allison: Because regardless of your relationship orientation, relationship structure, your partner sexuality is never your responsibility.
Reid: Why it’s really noisy around here today? Okay, there’s all kind of stuff going on.
Allison: Yeah. So, [Inaudible 00:01:36]
Reid: Yeah. And now you’re checking your Pokémon.
Allison: Just making sure.
Reid: Yeah, that’s okay. No worries.
Allison: Alright.
Reid: Just check out Pokémon.
Allison: So yeah. Trick question because you’re….you’re never responsible for another person’s sexuality even if they’re your monogamous spouse. We’re always responsible for our own.
Reid: U-huh
Allison: So, that’s why it’s a tricky question but in terms of polyamory, what stimulated this specific question is because non-monogamous people have the rights in a relationship to have sex with other people. That’s essentially part of non-monogamy of all different kinds, polyamory bring us upset. We do have the right to go so while those stiff around whatever we want to call it.
Reid: Stiff around
Allison: And when does…I don’t know how to describe it. I mean you basically it takes time if you’re going to bind to the con….the context….to this question.
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: Reid and I
Reid: Sorry, it’s
Allison: Yeah
Reid: so noisy today.
Allison: already is
Reid: It’s like a Sunday
Allison: Sunday [Inaudible 00:02:40] Okay, so Reid and I have very different sexual self-expression as anyone who would in their relationship.
Reid: ‘Coz people were different.
Allison: ‘Coz people were different. Go figure. Reid likes
Reid: All the noises.
Allison: I want to move to the country so goddamn it. This is driving me insane
Reid: I’m so sorry.
Allison: I’m going insane.
Reid: Slowly.
Allison: Not so slowly.
Reid: This is when Allison left me on our Facebook live.
Allison: Oh, God. Okay. Anyway, I’m pulling back together. You talk for a second.
Reid: Okay. So here…here’s my idea, my analogy is if you think about food and if you’re hungry, do you is it you is it your partner’s responsibility to feed you? Now this is going to be a problematic answer in that. There are a lot of other factors going on here but if we simplify it to answer the question, what can you do in your relationships if you’re in multiple relationships to get your needs met sexually, sensually intimacy wise? And if you think about food, it’s not you know how do you empower each other to be able to cook the meals that you want and get your needs met for food in a way where it’s really works for you?
You know you and I kind of fend for ourselves for lunchtime and breakfasty things but we will often cook dinner together or one of us will cook and then the other one does the dishes.
Allison: And in our relationship, there’s this agreement that for dinner time, we’ll check in with each other about what we want, what our needs are, if one of us is really hungry or one of us isn’t, either try to find a middle ground or just deciding to just do it on our own. There’s a lot of wiggle room but generally speaking, we….there’s kind of this unspoken agreement that we always check in with each other about dinner.
Reid: Yeah but you don’t feel betrayed if I if you come home from running errands and I’ve already eaten lunch?
Allison: No…no….no.
Reid: Or if you were out late you know doing whatever you’re doing and I and you came home and you’re like you know “I’m hungry. I’m going to fix some dinner” and I was like “well, you know I had an early dinner because I needed to eat.”
Allison: Hello.
Reid: You….Hello everyone! You wouldn’t…you might be not the norms but you wouldn’t be like devastated that I didn’t have dinner with you?
Allison: No. So, in terms of sex, I think in and again the way our society treats sex is so bizarre anyway. That there’s this notion that in especially when you look at the monogamous paradigm that your sexual needs must always be met by your spouse. And if they don’t meet your needs, then they’re doing something wrong. And vice versa that if you aren’t in the mood and they are or they’re…
Reid: We’ll go this way.
Allison: That there’s something wrong. There’s something broken in their relationship. When the most common questions as sex educators will get is the whole question of a mismatch the libido because of mismatch…. match libido in monogamy generally means that one person is not getting their needs met in their relationship sexually and like me it caused a lot of strife. Even if you’re….regardless of whether you’re the one with the higher libido or the one with the lower libido. There’s always going to be a distinction if you can’t seek out your getting your needs met from other people. How do you negotiate that in monogamy?
Reid: I think what’s interesting too is just kind of the idea of and again like this is we’re already having a very big conversation because we’re actually talking about talking about things that in a lot of other…do you want to stay here? ‘Coz it might be quieter.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: That we’re talking about talking about stuff that for some people in some relationships will be like, “Oh my goodness. I can’t believe we’re having this really big conversation about libido and sexual desires and what kind of sex do you want to have.” And so I just also want to recognize that there’s a certain kind of relationship literacy or…or sexual literacy where you have the courage and you are in a situation where you can be open and honest and have conversations that might have been really difficult for my mom and dad to have because they…. one were lacking the communication tools and the emotional tools but two, they also were in a relationship societally speaking where these things weren’t even a possibility or…or things weren’t even couldn’t even be brought up. Because culturally speaking, this wasn’t an understood situation and you just weren’t going to deviate from you know climbing out of the box of what society was telling me was possible.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: So, I just want to preface this that….that this conversation, the ability if you even have it means that you’re living with tools and….and contexts that go against the grain of you know what most people would consider like a standard relationship. And then out of that, now we can have a conversation because we’re having an open relationship about like “well, so how do we like what are your needs and then how can I support you or help support you in getting those needs met and then I can also you know reserve the right to….to chime in about the things that I’m a yes to or not or a no to or kind of I don’t know what I am a yes to yet.” And I just want to kind of like put that as the context for….for this conversation so that it doesn’t sound really flippant that we’re just like “whatever like you know go cook do it yourself” when it comes to getting your sexual needs met.
Allison: Well, I mean the ability to have that conversation like you said, it is incredibly high level. I know so many couples where there’s just so much shame and stigma attached to sexuality and desire that if you don’t bring your A-game every time, every moment in your marriage or your partnership that you feel like you’re doing a bad job. That’s very common in relationships where one person is just not that intersex period or is dealing with trauma or is dealing with pain and the other person just has a…you know ave….of average sex drive. So it becomes a shameful aspect for the person with the lower sex drive or low or you know in… some wrong in some sexuality spectrum because they feel like they’re doing a bad job because in relationships you are supposed to have sex and you are supposed to be desirous of your partner all the time. And then of course on the flip side, if there’s somebody who has an overly high update for sex or it is kinky or is interested in exploring a different kind of sexuality, again our society tends to shame them for being perverts essentially. And so if you are in a relationship with somebody who is a normal sex drive, average interest in sex and generally vain and not kinky and your partner to somebody who has you know more I don’t know adventuresome interest to the person would be adventuresome unless they go shame in our society because it means they are deviant.
So, there’s that on that too. So these…I mean, you can’t really win in these situations. The best thing you can do is have the damn conversation
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: and be in a relationship with people who are healthy enough and honest enough that they can have that conversation without it having to mean things. Again like Reid and I can talk about the fact that he has a lot of sex with a lot of different people and I’m not particularly interested in having threesomes with people he brings home and if luckily we have the ability to have that conversation. If we didn’t, we would have been dead in the water a long time ago. We have to be able to communicate that stuff and even when I feel ashamed of that thing, even when you….you know think you’re being a…awesome, wonderful lover by being…..bringing me this hot chick to bang.
Reid: But I don’t do that anymore.
Allison: Anymore. But for a long time, for a long time you did.
Reid: Well, for a long time I was like “hey, here’s somebody I really like. Do you want to play with us?”
Allison: Right.
Reid: It was more inviting you to…to jam if we were musicians and it was totally fine for you to be like “no, I’m not I’m not feeling musical today.”
Allison: But it took me a long time to have the words for not even “I’m not feeling particularly musical today but I don’t like to jam with new people. Period.” And like in….during the beginning of our relationship, we were both pretty slutty and so we were both had a pretty good match and group sex was part of our life very commonly and as I’ve gotten older, it’s just not that interesting to me anymore. I don’t want to have sex with just anybody for funsies. It’s actually less fun than having a good conversation with that person or you know cooking a…a meal for everybody. I just not that into it anymore. And as a woman and as a queer person and as somebody partnered to a slut, it’s going to be a really long time to have the words to describe my changing interests without being ashamed because part of me felt like “well, I’m not slutty anymore. Reid’s going to leave me.” Or “I’m not really poly or I’m not really a good match for you and…”
Reid: It’s not true!
Allison: But again like we were throwing orgies and I was in the bathtub having wonderful conversations with people but not interested in touching their genitals and people thought there was something wrong with me for a while because why the hell are we throwing orgy if I don’t want to fuck anybody. And it…it was an act of bravery I think for me to be out about not being a slut
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: In a world full of sluts. And so, I…I want to I’m just sharing that because I want to keep on impressing the notion that there’s nothing wrong and you’re not broken if your desires change overtime.
Reid: Yup.
Allison: And if you if you decide you have different tastes that aren’t accommodated by your certain arrangement, you need to have these conversations. Especially as human beings, our hormones change our life….our lives, our tastes change of our lives and our notion of what feels good changes and I think we need to give ourselves permission to have to allow those changes to happen because if we don’t, if we if I…if I thought I still had to have the sexuality I did when I was 25 than I met you, like I would be doing a lot of things I didn’t want to really do just because I felt like I had to keep some sort of [Inaudible 00:13:03] which is unhealthy and that keeps our relationship from deepening and in….and evolving if it’s what going to be. I don’t want to be the same person that I was when I was 25 when I’m 50 with you. I don’t want you to be the same person you were when you’re forty with me. I think that that’s the beautiful thing about long….long-term relationships and just long-term relationships with your own sexual self.
Reid: My phone keeps telling me that it’s about to cut out and rather than be embarrassed and just end this prematurely, I made a premature joke. We’re going to say goodbye now.
Allison: Yeah. Sorry for all the noise.
Reid: Yeah. It was really noisy today. So
Allison: [Inaudible 00:13:36]
Reid: but we have no control over that. I hope this was useful. And did you get any Pokémon’s?
Allison: Yeah. I got four.
Reid: Four Pokémon’s
Allison: It’s a good spot.
Reid: And…and time spent with you today. So we’ll leave some links, if you go to https://reidaboutsex.com/convo C.O.N.V.O for my difficult conversation formula which might help there and then
Allison: And http://girlsex101.com/. I actually still have that poll up about hooking up. So if you have casual sex, if you used to have casual sex and stopped or looking to try having casual sex, go to http://girlsex101.com/ and the most recent blog post is a link to a survey. I would love for you to answer some survey questions so I can include them in my next book to make my book better and more inclusive.
Reid: Okay. We’re leaving you now. Hit some emoticons and we’re going to we’re going to hit some Pokémon. Bye!
Allison: Bye!