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How does traditional consent education fail us? What do you do if you’re in a new open relationship and it just isn’t working for you? Can someone really orgasm without having their genitals touched?
This week, Yana Tallon-Hicks joins the show and we roll around in all those questions and more (don’t miss Dawn’s story of aiming a penis). It’s a fun, laughter-filled talk and it’s clear why TEDx invited Yana to do a talk on sex education recently.
The listener questions this week are particularly delicious, especially the final question from Lady Lilly – both Yana and I are near tears as we listen to the pain and heartbreak of her question.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Yana and Dawn talk about:
- How current sex education models are like the “don’t do drugs” D.A.R.E. programs which is focused on saying no to sex instead of saying yes to pleasure and your needs.
- Yana’s recent TEDx talk in Vienna about porn brain being the new sex educator. Yana tells us all about the invitation and what her talk was about. Check out the resource section below for a link to the talk.
- Porn and the way the scenes unfold without any talking or negotiation and how that influences our expectations around sex.
- Consent being highly gendered when it’s taught on college campuses – it’s about telling men where they can’t go and women that they need to be protected.
- Pleasure-based consent and how that helps level the playing field to invite conversation about where you can go, not where you can’t.
- Even as a “sexpert” never assuming you know anything about your partner’s experience. It’s an important point because even for folks who teach sex for a living, there has to be a constant conversation about what folks want and feel and desire. So, that means everyone needs to be checking in all the time.
- Penises are not as easy as the cultural narrative would have us believe – there is just as much nuance to pleasuring a penis as there is a vulva.
- A listener question about his wife’s ability to orgasm without any physical touch. Is it real? Is this possible? We get super excited talking about how fun it would be to have someone who could have these non-touch orgasms and be in a power dynamic with them.
- Open relationships in response to a listener question about being in a long-distance relationship and navigating open relationship dynamics. She isn’t super comfortable with it, and we dig into the importance of not keeping score or making a lot of rules around feelings.
- Meaningless sex, why it doesn’t work for everyone, and why THAT’S OK.
- The importance of learning to trust someone in a space that is super scary and vulnerable. It takes practice, and feeling scared shitless is part of taking risks.
- LadyLilly’s email about her Daddy Dom/little girl dynamic and her broken heart. Her DD has cheated multiple times and she doesn’t know what to do. Yana and I talk about how especially hard that can be inside a power dynamic relationship like Daddy/little girl.
Resources discussed in this episode
Yana’s resource guide to open relationships is here. Password: compersionimmersion
Watch Yana’s TEDx talk.
Barbara Carrellas’ book “Ecstasy is Necessary”
A video of Barbara Carrellas having a brain-gasm (or thinking her way to an orgasm) in an MRI machine
About Yana Tallon-Hicks
Yana Tallon-Hicks is a consent, sex & sexuality writer and educator living in Northampton, MA. Her work centers around the belief that pleasure-positive & consent-based sex education can positively impact our lives and the world (like really though).
Yana’s workshops work to create a welcoming & comfortable space for all to explore crucial aspects of our sexual selves such as pleasure, communication, consent & the body and are taught at colleges, high schools, and sex toy shops all over New England.
Read more about Yana & her work here, where you can also read her sex advice column, follow her on Instagram & Twitter, and watch her TEDxTalk: Is the Porn Brain Our New Sex Educator? during which she talks about watching porn with her husband, how we learn about sexual pleasure, and what that does for our concept of consent.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: Hey, you. Before we jump into this week’s episode, just a quick reminder, make sure you’re on the Sex Gets Real Newsletter, which you can sign up for at dawnserra.com because not only am I teaching even more in-person workshops at Secret Pleasures in DC this October and November, but several of you have asked for online versions of the workshops that I’m teaching, which is blow jobs for all bodies, anal sex 101, thriving relationships, dirty talk, hand sex, and from curious to kinky.
I’m going to actually have online versions of those workshops. You can attend them from anywhere in the world. Those will be available in the next couple of months. So make sure you’re on the newsletter. I’ll be announcing the dates for those and the times very, very soon. I would love to see all of you in those, and get a chance to actually interact with you live, and do some fun exchanges and teaching. Here is this week’s episode.
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone! Dawn Serra here with Sex Gets Real. This week, I have a feeling this is going to be a super animated chat. I’m so excited. Welcome to the show, Yana. How are you?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Good. How are you?
Dawn Serra: I’m great. I just want to introduce you to all the listeners. Then we’re going to just roll around in pleasure and orgasms and threesomes and open relationships. I think we’re just going to massively geek out.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yes. Those are the things I roll around in often.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. OK, good. Well, to everyone listening, with me today is Yana Tallon-Hicks. She is a consent, sex ,and sexuality writer and educator living in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work centers around the belief that pleasure positive and consent-based sex education can positively impact our lives and the world.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: No big deal.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I know. I think one of the things that gets overlooked so often in all of the sex education that’s happening right now is the pleasure aspect.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: We talk a lot about consent. We talk a lot about… Then in the more traditional sex education world that’s happening in schools, it’s all about, “Don’t get pregnant. Don’t get STIs.” We so often forget that we’re doing all of this because it feels good. So how can we maximize that?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that… I do a lot of education around consent work these days. That’s been what people are really interested in for good reason, which is amazing. But a lot of the traditional consent education treats it like a dare program. They’re like, “Just say no. Don’t do drugs.” It’s this finger wagging, restrictive model.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: So the model that I really try to focus on talks about why consent not only makes for an ethical sexual experience and a non-traumatizing sexual experience, which of course is important, but also makes for a more pleasurable and enjoyable and enthusiastic sexual experience. Which often, for some reason, gets left out of the traditional conversation about it.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. What’s so interesting to me is what you just said about when we’re enthusiastic about something, and we’re feeling good about it, it’s so much easier to do. I think that’s where so often we have a disconnect between sex experts and the public is all of us have learned how being really enthusiastic and being really open and communicating really well literally is fun and leads to all of this pleasure. But there was a learning process that all of us went through. I think that’s the part that’s not so transparent to people who were like, “Well, that just sounds awkward and horrible. I don’t want to talk about that personal stuff.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the thing that I usually talk about a lot in my workshop is giving yourself permission to screw it up or to fall off the bed. The first time I ever put on a strap on, I spent a lot of time jumping around on the bed, wagging it around. I can’t get around. So I get used to it. That’s not really what you’re going to see in a traditional porn. It’s not really what’s ingrained in our brains is traditionally sexy. But it really helped break down this barrier to talking about sex.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. First, before we jump into a little bit more about pleasure, I know that you just did a TEDx talk in Vienna, all about the Porn Brain as our new sex educator. So what was that like?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: What was my talk like or what was the actual experience like?
Dawn Serra: Both!
Yana Tallon-Hicks: The actual experience was mind-blowing. I got the email to invite me to do the TEDx talk, first thing in the morning. I rolled over and looked at my phone, which tends to be how I wake up in the morning. It was like, “Hey. You should come to Vienna and give a TEDx talk.” I was like, “OK, this is spam.” ‘Cause, obviously, I write about sex a lot. So I get a lot of very strange emails. I just didn’t really believe it. Then in the email, the woman that had emailed me was a little bit of a super fan, which is amazing. She was geeking out about everything I had written in great detail. I was like, “Oh, shit. This is for real.” So, yeah. I just ended up getting in touch with them. They’re like, “Yeah, we want to fly you to Austria, so you can talk about all of the things that you want to talk about to 500 Europeans.” They were going to broadcast it all over the place. I was like, “Oh, OK. Cool. Yeah, I could do that. Sure.”
I was actually in Europe when I got the offer on vacation. So part of the process was figuring out, “Can I act like a famous person and go to Europe twice in a four month period?“ That was really cool. That made me feel pretty glamorous. And I have a lot of anxiety. It’s hilarious to me that my job has turned in to me talking to huge amounts of people. So that battle was pretty, pretty amazing.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: But the whole experience was awesome. I felt like, I don’t know, being able to blast off about that kind of stuff that I really love to talk about in such a public way was really amazing. But, yeah. The actual content of my talk, it starts off with me talking about watching porn with my husband on our living room couch, and goes from there about what is it that we learned about pleasure from porn because no one else is talking about it?
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations on getting that invitation and getting to experience that and go to Europe, of all places, which is fantastic.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I’ll have a link to your TED talk on the Sex Gets Real website for this episode, so everyone can go watch it and check it out. And you’re so right that the way most of us learn about pleasure when it comes to sex is from porn. Then secondary, Hollywood movies, reading magazines, and talking to our friends.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally.
Dawn Serra: Which are all very biased and skewed in a variety of ways.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I like to tell people I am not anti-porn, by any means. I think a lot of porn is super amazing. I think that we have this weird social script that tells us that all porn is created equally, which is totally not real. So I think that there’s some really harmful porn out there. I also think there’s some really amazing porn out there. I don’t want to group those things together. But I do think it’s important to think about, “What is it? Why are we left to piecemeal a pleasure-based education together for ourselves, and how does that fold into this idea of what consent looks like?”
Because so much of what’s depicted in a mainstream porn sense is that Joe delivers a pizza, and all of a sudden Jill is like, “Bow chicka wow wow” on the kitchen counter, and no one’s talking about it at all. No one says anything. Then all of a sudden, Jill and Joe… I forget. Was his name Joe or Jack?
Dawn Serra: Joe.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Joe and Jill are having these explosive, mutual orgasms in unison, and literally nobody has any idea how it happened.
Dawn Serra: Right.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Pizza, orgasm, no talking. That’s the pleasure education, the consent education that we have. We’re like, “Cool. This is how orgasms work. This is how pleasure works.” It’s like, “Whoa. What? That’s not real.”
Dawn Serra: Yes. I think that’s the disconnect, too, is we forget… I’ve talked about this on the show with so many people, so our listeners are like, “We get it.” But we forget when we’re watching it just how scripted, edited, and fantasy it is, but because there’s nothing else in our life filling in this script about what pleasure and sex look like, we take it as reality.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally. Yeah. I think that, what I’m hearing from you, is for your listeners, it feels like they’re beating a dead horse about that a little bit. But I think it really wormed its way into our brain in ways that we don’t even realize. We can sit here at our desks and be like, “Yes. Porn is scripted, and my life isn’t, and so we need to talk about it.” But when you’re really in the moment, it’s amazing how many people – really aware sex positive adults – still feel this pressure to be sexy by accident, and feel like you’re doing it wrong if you’re speaking or laughing or any of that fun stuff.
Dawn Serra: Or, taking breaks, I’ve had clients in the past who felt like they were failing in the bedroom because they had to stop and go pee. The assumption is, “When I come back, we’ve lost the moment. Now everything is ruined.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: “I hate the moment.”
Dawn Serra: Yes. Yes, exactly. So, yeah. Just these stories that we internalize about sex should look a certain way or feel a certain way or we should behave a certain way, we’re in a certain position. I was just talking to somebody – it must have been Dylan – on a recent episode. Somebody was feeling like they failed in the woman on top position because she got really exhausted. It’s like, “Yeah, that’s an exhausting position.” Right. And like porn is making it look like she’s going forever and ever in these positions, but she also practices a lot, and there’s lots of cuts and edits. For most of us, bouncing our entire body on someone gets really exhausting.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: That is real.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So tell me a little bit about how you talk to people about pleasure-based consent.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. Like I said earlier, I think that a lot of the time, our consent education, first of all, is happening, it’s too little too late. It’s after something has happened instead of getting in front of something happening, especially on college campuses, which is where I tend to go speak. So that is really challenging.
Then the other challenging part about consent or at least the kind of traditional conversation around consent that has been happening is that it really is very gendered. It focuses on this idea that consent is about telling men where they can’t go and what they can’t have. It’s almost like consent has become a favor to women in a weird way. You see that coming out with… There was a student, I think in the UK, who got a little bit famous because he protested going to a consent event by saying, “This is not what a rapist looks like.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: It’s like, “OK. Well, a rapist doesn’t look like anything. Rapists are defined by what they do.” But it’s just that really highlighted the gender part where it’s like this young man feels that the consent conversation is somehow against him based on his gender. It’s like, “Whoa. OK. No.”
Pleasure-based consent really makes consent everyone’s priority. I feel like it takes the gendered aspect out of it. So we’re not erasing people by gender and also by who they decide to sleep with. Because consent has also been built as a heterosexual, cisgendered narrative. So it’s like the LGBTQ community have suddenly left out of this traditional narrative of what non-consensual sex looks like. And that’s really dangerous. So I think that pleasure-based consent really evens the conversation in a way. Does that make sense?
Dawn Serra: It totally does. Something that interests me about that approach is, I take issue with how we simplify cis male pleasure. There’s this narrative in our culture that basically if a person with an attached penis has a hard penis, then it’s easy to get them off. You don’t really have to know very much other than how to yank or suck it or jump on it. I get so many questions from people who feel like there’s something wrong with them because they have a penis, and it takes them a really long time to come. Or, they don’t feel the same things they feel like they’re supposed to in the head of their cock or whatever it is. So I really like this degendering of talking about pleasure and consent because there’s so much nuance in all of our bodies, regardless of gender and genitals. Anything that helps to bring that nuance in, I think, is a really wonderful thing.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah. I think what you’re saying is dicks have been framed as the genitalia that don’t need instructions or don’t need active consent practices of asking people what they want and what they like and how they’re feeling and how it’s going. They’re framed as, “I have an erection and now I need something that’s built into my way of being.” Then that’s how consent conversation becomes, “Oh. Let me tell you where your dick can go.” It’s like, “Whoa. That’s not helpful at all.”
So the pleasure-based consent part, we have a ton of fun. I bring a bunch, a huge bag of sex toys with me. We talk about how to integrate consent into using sex toys together. We talked about integrating consent into trying to find each other’s orgasms and what feels good. We go around, if the front door to consent conversation is, “This is what you can’t do,” the back door is where we’re coming from, which is, “How does this increase pleasure for everybody?” and telling us where you can go. Having a container around your sex life isn’t just saying, “These are my limits.” But it’s also saying, “Hey. Look at all this awesome space that we have to play around in.” I’m glad that places are talking about consent more. But I do think the conversation has become one-sided in a way that isn’t accessible to people. People are shutting down because they feel like they’re being told that they’re bad or something.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Also, so often, the conversations I see happening, especially on college campuses is, one, about the college legally covering its ass, and two, it’s really about all the things not to do. It doesn’t help people in those gray spaces. It doesn’t help people figure out, “What am I OK with?” It’s just, “Here’s all the things I’m not OK with.” So many of us have real trouble articulating what we like, what we want, how it feels because that’s not ever part of the conversation.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: That’s where those workshops hinge on. Like, “Where is your enthusiastic yes? How can you give yourself permission to experiment to find it? How do you even find it at all? Then how do you communicate that to your partner? Then how do you also hear your partner’s enthusiastic yeses?”
I always tell people in those workshops I am technically a sexpert, but I don’t make any assumptions about who I’m sleeping with, at all. I have never ever given anybody a mind-blowing orgasm without hearing them say yes a bunch of times, and also, say no or “Not like that,” or, “You’re doing it wrong,” or, “Could you do something else?” It’s just part of the conversation. We can’t just assume that we know what we’re doing just because a movie told us that it goes like this.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. You’re so right. That’s something that I really want all of us to be talking about more is when I give my partner pleasure, just amazing pleasure, it’s usually because I’ve either asked a lot of questions along the way, so I’m zeroing in on, “Oh. Here we are. Here’s the pleasure zone. Here’s what feels good today.” Or, because they’re telling me, “Oh, I want this. I want that. I want this,” and I’m responding to that information, and then I seem like a rock star because I’m listening and I’m asking questions. I have to say, if I’m with someone and they’re silent or they’re not really helping me figure things out, I feel pretty terrible about what I’m doing.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I’ve really tapped in to this feeling of… I, of course – somebody that practices consent in my sex life – I hear yeses from people before I do anything. But I’m also really tapping into the difference between a yes and an enthusiastic yes in my personal life. I feel like if my partners aren’t enthusiastically yes about something, it isn’t going well for me–
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Or, them. I think that’s what people really forget is that consent seems like a one-sided conversation or experience, but it isn’t. The person asking the questions also needs to know that they’re doing something that feels good to their partner. Otherwise, they probably feel pretty lackluster.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Even being really enthusiastic about being unsure. It’s OK for me to choose to do something that I’m not really interested in doing, but I know my partner’s super interested, so I really am enthusiastic about their interest. I’m going to do this thing that I’m like, “I don’t know if this is my thing, but it sure seems to be your thing. So let’s try it.”
Something popped into my head while we were talking about dicks. It just made me laugh because I just did something recently, where it was one of those awkward mistake things. I feel like I should just share it because we’re talking about how we, as educators, there seems to be this, “Oh. Everybody knows what they’re doing.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, I hate that. I honestly hate that. Anytime I have a new partner I’m like, “Listen. Anything that you’ve read in my sex column is all a facade. I don’t have any game. I’m going to ask you so many questions. I like am–. I really would love some affirmation. I am the worst.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I actually haven’t announced this on the podcast yet, which is weird. But, anyway. I’ll just say it now. For listeners that don’t know, who don’t follow me on Instagram, a couple of months ago, Alex and I actually got married. Alex is now my husband. Anyway, two weeks ago, Alex and I were messing around and having fun, and he was straddling my chest, and I was jerking him off. He was getting all excited, and he was feeling good. I was really turned on by how turned on he was. Everything was feeling good, and I could tell things were really going in a great direction. Then he was like, “Oh, my god. I’m about to come.” So I just kept jerking him off. I totally forgot, you have to aim cocks when you cum, so it went in my eye. Then I jerked sideways, and I was, “Keep jerking him off”. So I’m like jerking sideways, and then his cum went in my hair, in my ear. It was just one of those moments afterwards where I was like, “Well, that was a fail.” So it happens to the best of us.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: No. I totally empathize with that. I also just got married a couple of months ago.
Dawn Serra: Yes, you did.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I haven’t been with cis dudes in a while, so ejaculate is a newer substance for me. I’m also doing the thing where I’m like, “OK. Wait. What am I doing?”
Dawn Serra: I have to aim the thing and do the thing.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: That’s really fascinating. Yeah. Listeners know I was in lesbian relationships, and then a trans butch relationship for 14 years, and I had no contact with cis dudes. A couple of years ago, I started taking cis male lovers, and it was this whole, “Oh, my god. I have not touched a penis in 14 years. What do I do?”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I think my break was eight years. Yeah. It’s really strange. You’re like, “OK. I know how to educate people about this anatomy.” But when it comes down to my real life, I’m like, “Wait, am I doing this right?”
Dawn Serra: Right, yes. Oh, the struggle is so real.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. Penises are not easy. Coming back around to the narrative about penises being easy, it isn’t necessarily. You’re like, “Wait. That’s a whole different thing.”
Dawn Serra: Everyone is a snowflake. Everyone is different.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Everyone is a snowflake.
Dawn Serra: I would love to shift gears just a little bit. One of the things that you mentioned when we were getting ready for the episode via email was how many questions you get from hetero cis women who really feel like they’re broken because they can’t orgasm. As an educator, it’s this constant, “You aren’t broken” kind of narrative that we have to share. I got this really fascinating question from a husband about his wife’s orgasm. I thought it might be fun for us to just tick a little bit.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Cool.
Dawn Serra: OK. Here’s the email. It says, “Hi, Dawn. I’m curious about something, and I thought I should ask. My wife and I endured a four year long distance relationship before getting married. Needless to say, we had a lot of phone sex. She had mentioned that she was able to reach orgasm without having any physical stimulation, and I honestly doubted it until a few years into our marriage. I basically just have to hug her from behind and talk dirty to her as she grinds her hips, and then she comes. Have you ever heard of this? Jay.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Damn. That’s magical.
Dawn Serra: I know. I thought so, too. I was like, “Wow. That’s really fascinating.” I love that he’s asking this question because I think one of the things our culture teaches is skepticism around orgasms for folks who have vulvas. Like, “Are they faking it? You can’t really tell. Is that real?” Or, feeling betrayed because there was faking or not believing certain orgasms because they don’t look like porn. I love this question, and I’d love to know what are your initial thoughts?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Well, my initial thought is that it sounds like if he’s writing the question in to you, that he’s concerned about this in some way. I’ve had a bunch of people with vulvas write in and be like, “Oh, I can only get off with my Hitachi. I really feel like I need to learn how to get off a different way to please my boyfriend–”
Dawn Serra: Yup.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Because he wants to feel like he’s doing it. Like he’s doing something.” It’s like in the case of this person that can get off just by getting hugs from behind, which rules.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: And the people that are like, “Oh, I’ve figured out how to give myself an explosive orgasm with my Hitachi.” That’s awesome. That is a gift. There’s so many people that don’t have that knowledge about themselves or have a lot of shame barriers around figuring that out for themselves. Then to try to put people back in the shame box once they do figure out their orgasms is like, “No. Don’t do that.” It sounds like it might be distressing for this dude to not feel like he has the keys to her pleasure. I think that is also a social script of being like, “If you’re a real man, you need to have the keys.” But no one’s going to tell you about the keys or how to use them. You’re just supposed to have them and know how to use them.
Dawn Serra: Right. We’re all magically just supposed to know all the things and do it.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. Especially if you are a masculine person, you are supposed to know.
Dawn Serra: You’re supposed to be the giver of pleasure and orgasms.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: It sounds like the distress part is coming from this idea that maybe his partner doesn’t need his penis to get off. That is just something that’s popping into my mind. I don’t know if that’s true. But I guess my question for this person would be, “How can he integrate this amazing way that his partner can orgasm into a partner’s sex life, where they both feel involved in it?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Or, even just finding ways to celebrate her doing that even more.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I mean, if she has tapped into something in her body that allows her to basically use her mind to get her off, which definitely is possible – I know several people who can orgasm just from fantasy alone – and use that. I mean, maximize her pleasure potential by making as many situations as possible, where you two can roll around and enjoy that. I mean, gosh, if I was in a power dynamic with that person, I would have so much fun.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, that was I was thinking. I was like, “Oh, if they’re in any sort of kinky relationship, you could really do a lot, pretty discreetly, out in the world.”
Dawn Serra: Oh, yes.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I’m thinking about mall dressing rooms. I would imagine changing into a bunch of outfits could be pretty awesome.
Dawn Serra: Hell, yes! Oh, my god. Yeah. I was thinking about that, too.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I feel like if this listener needs kinky suggestions, it sounds like we already have a good rolodex.
Dawn Serra: Oh, yes. We have ideas. The other thing that came up for me when I read the email was, for people who are really interested in all the different ways that you can have orgasms, I highly recommend Barbara Carellas’ book, “Ecstasy is Necessary.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: That’s exactly what I was thinking of.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because I think another thing that we do is we tend to feel like orgasms have to involve our genitals, and it has to involve stimulation of the genitals. There are so many people who can orgasm in so many different ways with different parts of their bodies. I had a girlfriend who could orgasm just from nipple stimulation and nothing else. Barbara can do breath orgasms and energy orgasms. There have been… Barbara’s even been in an MRI machine, I think, doing her breathgasms. They were able to actually see that, yes, her brain is having the exact same reaction as a genital orgasm. And so it’s real.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I believe there’s a video of Barbara in the MRI.
Dawn Serra: Oh, cool. I’ll have to go find that. Yeah. For people who are interested in exploring different ways of having ecstatic pleasure, that’s a fantastic book to read. It’ll just really open your mind to all these different… Barbara likes to call them gasms – like crygasms or angergasms or breathgasms or braingasms. But, for me, it’s really about this ecstatic release of pleasure.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally. Yeah. I think that that goes back to this idea of the Porn Brain. What the porn brain is telling us is, “This is how pleasure is supposed to go. If you’re outside of that, you’re doing it wrong.” That’s not real. That’s not true. If you feel good, if everyone feels good, then that’s awesome. It sounds like maybe this listener doesn’t feel good about some aspect of this. I think that is really the question. It’s not like, “Oh. Is my girlfriend broken because she can have an orgasm by breathing?” I think the question is, “What is it about that that feels icky to him?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I think also just, culturally, we’re taught to doubt other people’s experiences when they differ from ours. I just recently answered a question from a listener, where she was feeling concerned that her wife gives her lots and lots of orgasms, and as a result, her wife doesn’t really ever orgasm. She was feeling a lot of distress about that setup because she felt like her wife should have orgasms.
One of the things that stood out for me around that was my experience of orgasms is not what I should expect of my partners. Their pleasure profile and what they are really enjoying can look very different from mine. I have to trust them when they tell me they like what’s happening.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think going back to this particular question is if your wife says that hugging her from behind and whispering some dirty words in her ear and just letting her rub her thighs together gets her to come off or get off, then we need to trust her. Then see if we can just play around with that and maximize it.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right. There is nothing hotter than seeing your partner get off in the super authentic way.
Dawn Serra: Oh, yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I totally agree. Oh, my gosh.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Don’t overthink it. Just live in that moment.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Just send out Christmas cards that are like, “Guess, what we can do?”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I also feel like a lot of the people that I’ve had sexual experiences with, especially lately, all have their own little quirky ways they get off. Whether it’s like having their face covered or holding their breath or being on their stomach. And all of them have apologized. They’ve all been like, “Oh, sorry. This is weird.” I’m like, “No, dude. If that’s how you get off the best and the mostest, just do it.” That’s what I want. I don’t want I don’t want to see you reproduce an idea of an orgasm that you think needs to happen. I want to see you feel super fucking awesome in a really authentic way.
Dawn Serra: Oh, I totally agree.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Who wouldn’t want that?
Dawn Serra: So hot. Oh, my gosh.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: Well, thank you to Jay for writing in. He wrote me that question a few months ago. I’m glad we finally got to roll around in it a little bit.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. That delayed gratification.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, exactly. OK. The next question is about open relationships from someone named JJ. Are you up for that?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: OK. Here’s the email. It says, “Hey, ladies. My partner and I are in a long distance relationship, and we have been since we met. We’ve been trying to figure out what works for us, and we’ve been trying an open relationship. We’ve both hooked up with other people, but I don’t feel 100% comfortable with it. I feel like I did it because I wanted to be at the same level playing field as my partner.
I feel like as women, we have it ingrained in us that we can’t sleep around or that sex is sacred. So it’s harder for us to be unattached because someone enters our body or that if your partner sleeps with someone else, then they don’t care enough about you. So I feel like I’m questioning my self-worth a little, and if he really does want to be with me. I want to be open and support him in what he needs while honoring myself.
Dawn Serra: I also have just come into appreciating myself as a sexual being, and I want to explore what that means both with him and without him. We have amazing conversations about this topic, and it’s constantly open. I get reassurance and he says that sex is a purely physical thing with someone else, while with me, there is a connection. I’ve just never had meaningless sex before, and I’m having a hard time understanding it.
Do you have any advice on how to navigate this? Or, how I can know that just because he wants physical intimacy with someone else, it isn’t a reflection on me? Have you ever tried it and what has worked for you? JJ.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Damn. That’s a big question.
Dawn Serra: I know. There’s so much amazingness in there.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. You want me to go? Or, do you want to go?
Dawn Serra: Oh, totally go for it.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: OK. I just wrote down some notes because that was a long question. But first thing I wrote down was not feeling 100%, which I feel like it’s pretty typical when you’re first beginning any sort of non-monogamy exploration is this hesitancy of, “What is really this happening?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: But that’s always a good indicator of, “OK. It might be time to check in with how enthusiastic I feel about this.”
The other thing I wrote down was the level playing field. I think that’s a trap that a lot of people, especially people that are new to open relationships fall into, is this idea that there’s some scoreboard being kept. I think that it sounds like for him, this unattached physical sexual relationship feels good and feels possible. It feels like for her, unattached is just physical sex isn’t really what she’s enthusiastic about. So to fall into this idea that there needs to be a level playing field where it’s like, “Cool. You have casual sex with someone. I have casual sex with someone,” isn’t really doing her any favors and feeling 100% about it.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Then the other thing about questioning self-worth, I feel like is also really common, especially beginning open relationships, because we are sold this idea that a sexual and a romantic relationship are a package deal. And that our self-worth is defined by this scarcity model. That we’re the only one giving our partner all of those things. I think challenging that idea, especially for me in my own experiences, has been really, really helpful, and thinking about what is it that makes me amazing and awesome and valuable that isn’t just based on the idea that I’m the only person in my partner’s sexual world?
Dawn Serra: There’s a lot in here that I love. I think that she’s asking some really, really important questions. For me, it’s also feeling tender because these are things that I struggle with, and things that I’m still trying to unpack from myself. So I love that this question came in. There’s so much about it that echoes my own experiences or fears or pain points. So, yeah. I really–
The first thing I just want to say to JJ is, I see you and validate all of these feelings and questions because they’re all feelings and questions I have either had recently or still have. So that’s very real. I agree with you that, “I don’t feel 100% comfortable with it,” really jumped out at me, and the leveling the playing field. That’s a dangerous game to me. Trying to do one-for-one is a recipe, I think, for getting hurt. When you’re not feeling 100% comfortable with it, I know that honoring the way you like sex is going to be the best way to find your way through this. So if for your partner, he wants to have physical connections with people that don’t really have emotional ties, but for you doing something that feels a little more intimate feels right, that might mean he has five sexual partners to the one that you find that you take your time with and connect with.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I wonder how powerful she feels in this situation. I know that feeling your self-worth is shaky is not a powerful place to be. But also, at the end, I heard her say, “I am just starting to sexually explore myself as a sexual being,” which is a pretty awesome place to be. Especially if you are in an open relationship because you can have this really personal connection with your partner, and then have this sexual exploratory part outside of that, which is really great. But it sounds like, what you’re saying Dawn, is that she needs to find the way that works for her. It doesn’t need to be this casual– Who set up that casual rule is what I’m wondering.
Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Where is the space that she can find for what she actually wants out of this? Which might be more intimate. Maybe not like a one night stand type of thing.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. The “I’ve never had meaningless sex before,” and “I’m having a hard time understanding it,” I know that really well. When I came out of my last relationship that I was in for seven years, I decided, “I’m going to do all the things,” which meant all the people. It’s like, “I’m just going to have all this sex, and I’m going to meet all these hotties and just try all these things.”
What I learned very quickly about myself was hooking up with people who just wanted to hook up with me one time and leave felt terrible. And I leave room for me to change. So that might not be my story in a few years or ten years or 20 years down the road, but at that particular time in my life – and I think that’s probably still true now – when I had those, “Hey. Let’s hook up, Let’s fuck. Let’s flirt, and then I never talked to you again,” I find myself feeling pretty fucking terrible about myself.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally. And if she is struggling with self-worth, that is not a good situation.
Dawn Serra: Right. I started finding lovers who wanted to create space where we saw each other on an ongoing basis and where we got to really build deep intimacy. Even if those relationships weren’t something we were ever going to turn into romantic relationships, there was still this acknowledgment of, “Let’s create a space where when we come together, there’s a lot of passionate intimacy and vulnerability. Then let’s have really delicious, slow, open sex.”
Then as I started figuring out how to navigate that, I also started learning, as those lovers left my life, it did mean a certain amount of pain or even feeling a little heartbroken. But being OK with that experience because what we shared when we did have that time together was so much more important than the pain that came when we decided our time was over.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: So I don’t think that JJ needs to have meaningless sex. If meaningful sex is something that she’s interested in, then I think she just needs to negotiate what that looks like with her partner, and try it out for herself. I think one of the things that I’ve learned so much about open relationships is you have to start finding a lot of resilience around fucking up.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. And change.
Dawn Serra: Yes. And change.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Things people really hate to do.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Yeah. For me, I think it’s OK to say, “Hey. I want to try this thing,” so you and your partner negotiate what that looks like. Then maybe you try it and you fuck it up or it doesn’t feel right. Or, it feels way different than you thought when you sat down and just had a verbal conversation with your partner. Then circling back and talking about that again.
I really love what you said about self-worth and power because I have felt like I didn’t have power in a number of circumstances. And that can feel really terrible afterwards. So finding ways to take up more space and say, “I don’t think meaningless sex is what I want. If that’s what we’re talking about with this open relationship, then I need something a little different.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Also, these two partners are so different from each other. So thinking that the same exact rules and arrangements can be blanketed to both of them is pretty unrealistic.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. Also, her partner may change. I think when you’re exploring open relationships and non-monogamy, he might be interested in meaningless sex right now because it’s just a physical act. But there is a very real possibility that he is going to hook up with someone and have a really delicious connection that he wants to explore more.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I think that’s… I see a lot of… I teach Polyamory 101 classes to folks, and what I see a lot of is upfront people make a lot of rules out of fear, which is pretty typical. I am a proponent for flexible rules. At first, you make a really safe container around yourselves with a lot of rules and requests. Then they get flexible over time as you learn that your partner can go have sex with someone else, and then come back to you. Or, you learn that they’re trustworthy with the things that you agree on, and all of that great stuff.
But I think a lot of pitfall rules that people fall into is blanket statement rules, such as nobody will ever have feelings for anybody else. Because it’s so hard to control that, and you’re setting yourself up to either be in deep denial or be deceptive to your partner because you’re trying to fit into a rule that didn’t fit in the first place. I see that happening in this reverse way of this rule of, “The sex will be casual. The sex will be casual. It’s like if that rule doesn’t fit, it’s never going to work.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. One of the things that I learned– I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but in my experiences, a few of the lovers that I took during that period, upfront, would say– Now, listeners who’ve listened for a long time will know this. But several of the lovers that I had back then were married and not in ethical, non-monogamy situations. So they were cheating, and I was the person they were cheating with. Or, they were cheating with multiple people, and I was I was one of them. But this, “I’m married. This can’t mean anything. This is just going to be physical.” Then as we started talking, realizing we actually liked each other. Then once I felt comfortable having sex with them, when we started having sex on a regular basis, realizing we really cared about each other’s feelings. It wasn’t love in a lot of the cases. In some of them, it was.
But I’m thinking of this one married man who was very devoted to his wife. She had a really severe illness that prevented her from having any kind of physical contact. But she was from a very conservative religious background. So he made the choice to take lovers outside their marriage. I remember us after sex, laying in bed for hours, just him talking about how sad and heartbroken he was for her and for their relationship. He wanted to know what was going on with me. The sex was a small part of what we ended up doing. But we had a rule going in that wasn’t going to happen, and then it did.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right.
Dawn Serra: So, yeah. Allowing for that. Allowing for… I think it’s really important to do your best going in with what you have. Then when shit doesn’t go the way that you planned, and it hurts and you feel betrayed or you feel like you really messed up, finding ways to be resilient through that and hold each other gently, and then try again. Because I really think that in this space, it takes multiple hits and misses, oops, fall down, failures, until you start really finding your version of how this works, what you need, how you talk about it, and being more successful at it.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I love your use of the phrase, “take a lover.”
Dawn Serra: Oh, thank you.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: It’s delightfully old school. “I took a lover.”
Dawn Serra: I did. I took several. I also really loved the phrase you used about learn that they’re trustworthy.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I think that’s really important of just learning to trust someone in a space that feels really vulnerable and scared,
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I mean, to answer her last question – “Have you ever tried this?” – anyone that has ever been in a non-monogamous arrangement, I think, has been scared shitless at some point during the process. So feeling totally terrified is OK. I don’t think anyone is innately good at non-monogamy. It’s something that we learn. And it’s also something that we’re not given a lot of examples of. I think that’s really terrifying, too. Also, totally awesome because you get to create the rules for yourself.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. As you were talking, one of the things that struck me is, she opens with, “My partner and I are in a long distance relationship and happened since we met.” For me, personally, that’s presented a lot of challenges around non-monogamy because one of the ways that I feel very reassured and safe is with physical touch. So when I am with my partner physically, and we can talk and we can touch and we can cuddle, I feel my tanks being very full. I feel a lot more abundant in my thoughts and the things that I’m willing to try and how I feel about certain things.
But then when we’ve gone a long time without seeing each other, it starts to feel a little bit more of the scarcity model of like, “Oh, god. I can’t see you. I can’t get that reassurance. So if you go out on all these dates with these people, I can’t actually see your body language. I can’t actually touch you physically and reground and recenter.” So that’s felt particularly scary and threatening for me. Knowing that about myself is important.
Dawn Serra: To JJ, there’s lots of people who make long distance non-monogamy work really well. Everybody finds their own way, the way that you just said. But it’s also OK if you feel a little unsure, and you need some different types of check-ins, like seeing each other a little bit more regularly as you start this or realizing that you need some physical touch and some cuddles to reassure you. Learning those things about yourself so you can articulate them is also part of the process.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Also, that that’s not failing. I think a lot of people, especially in communities where polyamory and non-monogamy is very popular, I think that there’s this idea that if we’re not chill about everything right off the gate, that we’re doing it wrong. So what you were saying, Dawn, giving yourself permission to fuck up is really what needs to happen as well.
Also, what I do when I’m feeling really down about it is I will literally sit down and write a list of why I am amazing, all the reasons why I rule. Then sometimes I like to write down all the reasons why it’s really nice to have alone time. Then I pick those reasons – the stuff I like to do alone – and I’ll do those things when I’m feeling kind of like meh.
Dawn Serra: Oh, that’s a wonderful ritual.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I love that. I’m so glad you said that about, “I’m doing it wrong.” I know that, personally, probably 40% of my horrible, icky depressed feelings have come because I feel like I’m not good enough. It’s not effortless for me.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right.
Dawn Serra: So feeling like there must be something wrong with me or maybe my partner won’t want to be with me because it’s a little bit challenging for me to navigate. Giving yourself– One of the things I’ve had to really try to do is give myself permission to just know this is just my way of getting through this. Not everybody has this effortless fall into non-monogamy, even though that’s sometimes what it looks like when you read the books or watch the videos.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right. Totally.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So, yeah. Just leaving space for, “It’s OK to feel like I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing, and I don’t really know how I feel about it.” It’s OK to just sit in that space for a little while. You don’t have to rush out of it.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: No, not at all.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because I noticed one of the things that I’ve done… One of the most painful things that I’ve ever done to myself was betrayed myself by saying I was OK with something that I really wasn’t.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Same. That is the worse.
Dawn Serra: Oh, god. It’s like, to this day, one of the deepest traumas that I carry. So I just really want for other people to not do that. As uncomfortable as it might be to say, I don’t think I’m ready for that. I think I need a little more time or a little more reassurance, rather than just saying yes because you think that’s what’s expected of you.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: You know, I’m probably going to butcher this quote, but Brené Brown says something like, “Daring to set boundaries for yourself is taking the risk to disappoint others in favor of taking care of yourself.” Something like that. I’m sure she says it a lot better than I do. But I think that there’s this people-pleasing place that people get into when they are denying themselves the truth that they don’t feel comfortable.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: And that disappointing your partner by saying, “You know, I don’t actually think I am comfortable with this.” That’s important information to know so you can move forward.
Dawn Serra: I totally agree. Oh, my gosh. I have goosebumps because this just felt so good to talk about with you.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, JJ, I hope this was helpful. If you have other questions or developments even that you want to share, please write back. I’d love to hear how you’re doing and how you’re navigating this for yourself. Yeah. Are there any resources that you have really found helpful or comforting around this?
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I was actually just thinking about this. I could send you… I have a whole resource page for polyamorous folks that come to my workshops that I can send you. But on that page, there’s a lot of worksheets. There’s a jealousy worksheet that I think is really helpful. I really like reading “Opening Up” by Tristan Taormino and “More Than Two” by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert. There’s also “The Ethical Slut,” which has been around for quite a while, which is the original one. I think that reading books, especially the books that have worksheets and stuff like that, make me feel really good because it makes me feel like I’m learning something about myself, and it’s something active I can do.
Also, just hearing other people’s experiences with it, real experiences of feeling confused or icky or weird is super, super helpful because JJ is definitely not the only person who has ever been in this place.
Dawn Serra: Yes, I totally agree. OK. Well, I will link to all those books on the page for this episode, JJ. So check that out. Then Yana, if you have any resources you want me to share, let me know and I’ll get those linked, too.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I’ll send them over.
Dawn Serra: Since we’re already in this space, I have another question. It’s from someone named Lady Lily. The subject line is “Heart is broken. Please help.” It might be a little different because there’s some BDSM and power dynamics, but I’d love to roll around in it with you because it’s been sitting for three months.
All right. Lady Lily writes, “I have never felt so alone, and you’re the only person I can tell my story to. I live with my fiance. We practice 24/7 daddy-little girl. In so many ways, it has done nothing but enhance our already incredible relationship. I love him more than I thought possible to love another person. And maybe that’s why I’m hurting so badly right now.
Dawn Serra: He’s cheated on me before. In the beginning of our relationship, he was seeing other women while telling me we were exclusive. Finally, last August, everything came out in the open, and we were together. It was all of my dreams come true. After moving in together in January, I found texts from him to other women, which ripped my soul out. He swore they were only texts, and I found it in my broken heart to forgive him.
Lately, things have been wonderful, amazing, even perfect. I just found two different things with different women that have opened up all of my wounds again, though. First, he was in contact with an old friend. She’s always had feelings for him. When I found that he was hiding conversations with her, it hurts so much that it feels like he broke my trust. The second was he was asking to go over to an old client’s house for a sexy massage. He told me he had no intention of getting the massage, but was just flirting to gain access to get some money that she never paid him for work.
Dawn Serra: But this is the one I’m having the hardest time with. I feel like my world is crumbling, and I can’t talk to anyone. I want more than anything to forgive him and work this out. But I’m so scared that I’m giving my heart away to someone who just can’t take care of it. He has never been faithful to any person in his life. But he constantly tells me that I’m different, and that he has truly found happiness being a one woman man with me. I don’t know if you can write me back or help, but thank you for reading this and letting me put my thoughts on paper. It felt like I was talking to a friend, which I so badly need right now. Lady Lily.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Oh.
Dawn Serra: I know. It’s just like there’s so much pain in the message.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. Daddy-little girl dynamics are very near and dear to my heart, which I feel like makes this situation even harder. Because something that… What is it? Lady Lily?
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Something that she said was, “I feel like I’m giving my heart away to somebody that can’t take care of it.” I think that in those dynamics, specifically, there is such a huge caretaking element. To have that element be highlighted by someone that’s like, “Yeah. I’m going to be your 24/7 daddy. I’m going to take care of you.” Then turn around and do all this behind the scenes sneaky stuff is even worse somehow.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I totally agree. I think especially when you have these dynamics that have either a lot of caretaking or require a tremendous amount of trust, that secrets can feel even more painful. They’re amplified in how much they can wound you.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, absolutely.
Dawn Serra: I think that, for me, is one of the hardest things is the secrets. It’s one thing to do something, and then tell someone about it and ask for forgiveness. But to constantly be keeping these secrets, it feels so closed off and you don’t even know the person.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: And that secrets, no matter what they’re about, can feel like such a betrayal because when you feel like you’re opening yourself completely and sharing things and being really vulnerable, and then you find out this other person has this whole other little box full of stuff that they’ve never shared with you, I think that, in itself, can feel like a betrayal. Then when you start adding in lies about being with other people, then it’s just crushing.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I think it’s almost extra irresponsible, the daddy in this dynamic, to utilize his power and that role for sneaking around.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Because that’s a lot of power. That’s a lot of responsibility. I don’t know. I would imagine that if I were another daddy seeing that, that would really piss me off.
Dawn Serra: I totally agree. That’s the antithesis to me of being a daddy dom.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. It’s all characterized by being really nurturing and caretaking, and it’s like, “What are you doing?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think one of the first things that I just want to say to Lady Lily is, regardless of whether you’re a little girl, a slave, a submissive, a bottom – it doesn’t matter what kind of role you have that’s on the submissive spectrum – you are an equal player in this world. You get to say, “I’m not OK with these things, and these things hurt me. Here’s what I need going forward. If those things don’t happen, we need to have a really tough conversation because I don’t feel safe.”
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Totally. I agree. A lot of people that are unfamiliar with kink practices or maybe aren’t practicing them in ethical ways often think that the submissive partner doesn’t have power. That that’s the way that it is. But I often think that the submissive partner has equal, if not, more power in a lot of those situations. So I wonder, too. If Lady Lily has allowed herself to be convinced that she doesn’t have power in the situation. And to feel like you have to be OK with these secrets or these betrayals because of her role is a dangerous place to be. It doesn’t need to be that way.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because as a dom, as a master, as a daddy, you don’t get to take advantage, lie, manipulate, betray, and treat this person who’s given themselves to you like shit. That’s not what this is about, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Whether it’s conscious and intentional or he just keeps finding himself in these situations, and then making choices that are hurtful, doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things because Lady Lily deserves to feel safe and supported and her needs are getting met.
For me, I think… I’m not usually the kind of person that says there was some type of infidelity or betrayal, end things. I think there’s a lot more gray to most of these situations than we’ve been led to believe. I admire that he’s cheated on her, they worked through it, and they found their way back to each other. Then it sounds like he did it again, and they reconnected again. Now they’ve moved in together, and now we’re at this place where it’s happening yet again.
Dawn Serra: At this point in the game, I really think that Lily needs to just get really clear on, “If this is going to be a pattern that continues, how are you going to survive this and take care of you?” And that can be leaving, that can be having a conversation about needs, and maybe potentially trying to open the relationship up. It can be finding a way to forgive him again. Because I’m not going to tell you what’s right and wrong. But you really need to decide, “What is taking care of Lily looks like?” Then move forward with that because, for me, it just really sounds like her daddy is not taking care of her.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Right.
Dawn Serra: So she needs to take care of herself.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: That’s sort of the crux of that DS relationship.
Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah. I’m just so sad that she’s so heartbroken.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I hate it.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Me, too. I also just want to offer, it can feel really isolating and even there can be shame when you aren’t in a situation like this. Knowing you are not the only person who has been in this situation, you are not the only person who’s ever forgiven someone, and then they’ve betrayed that trust multiple times. You’re not the only one who was so hopeful about this daddy-girl dynamic and really wanted it to work and fell in love, and then it crumbled. I think finding support in this from friends or from other little girls, and just finding a way to not feel like you have to carry this all by yourself is super important.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I would love to put out there to Lily that I’ve been in that situation of forgiving someone over and over again because you love them, and you want to make it work and all of that stuff. And I agree. But there is a shame factor after the fact of being like, “Oh, how did I let this happen?” But that’s not the case. There is dynamic or dynamics for a reason. There’s a lot of moving pieces. It sounds like she’s really doing the best that she can. But, yeah. I think I agree. Getting clear on what does it mean? Is this the kind of relationship that feels good to me or feels the best to me?
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. Also, just knowing if you decide this isn’t how you want to live your life, if you decide that you don’t want to keep waking up to a new broken heart and you feel like this person is going to continue doing that, you will find another person who can offer you love and support and nurturing. You can find another daddy dom or you can find another dominant. Or, you can even find someone totally outside this dynamic that feels really supportive. If this isn’t the end of the road, it’s just a fork in the road.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: There’s that pesky scarcity model again.
Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah, yeah. And I really do get the isolation. I’ve been in situations where I felt either really betrayed or unsupported or even I betrayed myself. Then sat in that pain and that shame because I was scared to reach out to friends who might not understand the dynamics or I was worried about bad talking the person I was with because I loved them. Or, maybe I had done something wrong, and the more I isolated, the more pain I brought on myself.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I know you quoted Brené Brown already. But one of the things that Brené’s research has found is that when you shine a light on shame and shrinks, and that light is talking about it and sharing it with others. I hope, I want to believe that there are people in Lily’s life who they may not need to know the specifics. If you’re not out about your dynamic, and you don’t have support around your BDSM lifestyle, I’m sure there are people– I hope that there are people in her life who, if she just says, “I’m in a lot of pain, and I feel really alone and heartbroken. I could just really use some love and tenderness and support right now,” hopefully, there are people who won’t ask too many questions and can just be there for her.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. Oh, Lily!
Dawn Serra: I know. I don’t know that I have much advice beyond that, other than just holding space for the broken heart.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, totally. That’s what I was feeling. It’s like I feel like everyone can tap into that broken heart feeling, where everything is just so heavy.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: It’s a hard place to be, but it’s a temporary place to be.
Dawn Serra: It is, it is. Yeah. As much as it feels like there’s no moving through this or getting out from under the rock, it is temporary.
Well, Lily, please write back and give an update, if you feel comfortable sharing. Thank you so much for writing in and sharing your pain with us. I’m glad we were able to at least honor that a little bit and hold space for you. Believe it or not, we are past our hour.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Whoo!
Dawn Serra: I know!
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Look at us go.
Dawn Serra: I know. I would love for you, before we wrap up, to share with everybody your website or your social media, how they can stay in touch with you.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: I have a website. It’s called the yanatallonhicks.com, which is just my name. I am a huge instagrammer, so you can find me on Instagram at @the_vspot – V like vulva. I’m not super big on Twitter, but I’m on there at @the_valleyvspot. And, yeah. I have a newsletter. I have workshop lists. I have all kinds of stuff. You can find my sex column on my website. You can ask me questions, and I answer in writing. That’s me.
Dawn Serra: Yay! Well, I will have links to your website and all your social media on Sex Gets Real for this episode. I just want to, first, thank you, Yana, so much for coming on the show, and for this really rich discussion that just felt really personal and awesome and great.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in and for listening. If you have questions that you’d like to ask or stories that you’d like to share, of course, you can go to dawnserra.com. There is a contact form, where you can submit your questions, either anonymously or you can share your name, if you want a shout out or a reply. Yana, thank you so much. I’d love to have you back at some point in the future so we can roll around in more.
Yana Tallon-Hicks: Yeah. I’m fangirling over here. I’m so happy to be here.
Dawn Serra: Well, thank you everybody. This is Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real. I will talk to you next week.