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Body trust, queer identity, pleasure in a fat body, and losing attraction for a partner with Sarah Thompson
In a few days, I head to Portland for the ASDAH (Association for Size Diversity and Health) conference which will happen over my birthday weekend. The next few weeks will be all about body trust, rejecting diet culture, research around health at every size, celebration, and fat acceptance.
I could not be more tickled, especially because this week Sarah Thompson, the Resilient Fat Goddess, is joining us to talk about how everything changed for Sarah – access to pleasure, setting boundaries, shifting into new queer and non-binary identities – after doing body trust work with BeNourished.
Sarah and I initially connected because of a new blog post Sarah put out to partners who no longer find their partner’s attractive, especially after that partner has rejected diet culture and moved towards body acceptance. You can read it here.
So, we talk all about bodies, why we never owe our partners sex or attractiveness, trust, fat identity, queer identity, and all the feelings that brings up.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Sarah and I talk about:
- What is body trust?
- Body trust requires uncertainty and letting go of a plan
- Why uncertainty around our bodies is a step towards trust and liberation
- Why shifted for Sarah around pleasure after diving into body trust
- The difference between pretending and acting like you’re confident and sexy and actually embodying it
- How distanced Sarah was from fun and making time for fun in her life.
- How body checking and focusing on imperfections makes pleasure so much harder to be present with
- Sex with the lights on in a fat body? Yep.
- What led to Sarah being able to say what they want and what feels good for them after a lifetime of not being able to.
- Being raised Evangelical Christian and how that impacted Sarah’s experience of sex and intimacy
- Why people who benefit for diet culture and thin fetishism in our culture are often suffering
- Sarah’s recent blog post to partners who are no longer attracted to their fat partners
- Often people who are seeking body trust and rejecting diet culture go on this big journey that’s immersive and exciting, which can make partners and loved ones feel left behind.
About Sarah Thompson:
Sarah Thompson is an eating disorder recovery coach, consultant, and writer focused on body liberation, fat liberation, and body positivity. Sarah is a white, fat, queer, non-binary femme. Their writing combines ideas from a wide range of philosophies – Body Trust®, Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, Fat Liberation, eating disorder recovery, harm reduction, and more. Being committed to helping others finding more freedom and compassion in their lives is what led them to become a Certified Body Trust Provider. They were also the co-creator of Do No Harm Podcast. Sarah is constantly wondering how they can contribute to healing, justice, and liberation in our world where there is constant suffering. They love working with people who are asking these same questions!
Stay in touch with Sarah at resilientfatgoddess.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @rslntfatgoddess.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics, and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing, and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Hey, you! Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. This week, I am chatting with Sarah Thompson, who is an eating disorder recovery coach, consultant and writer focused on body liberation, fat liberation and body positivity. You’ll hear more about Sarah in just a little bit.
Dawn Serra: I am actually really excited because not only is next week my 40th birthday, but I will be celebrating it in Portland at the Association for Size Diversity and Health Conference where I am going to get to hang out with some really ridiculously rad folks. It’s going to be so much fun. Coincidentally, the episode that goes up next week is my chat with Virgie Tovar about her new book, “You Have the Right to Remain Fat.” So, yeah, this week and next week are all about body positivity and body trust and self-acceptance. It’s perfect timing because the ASDAH Conference is going to give me so much to think about. I am presenting there, talking about bodies and pleasure and sex. So that should be super fun.
I also wanted to let you know that you hear me every week plugging the Patreon support that you can offer to the show. If you want to help the show keep going and you want to just throw a couple bucks my way, I always appreciate that. If you support it at $3 level and above, you get access to bonus content every week. That only exists on Patreon for folks who support at $3 and above. But what you may not know is if you support at $5 and above, you get to help me field listener questions. So I put listener questions up, and then you get to weigh in with your thoughts and advice. If I think it’s great advice, if I think it’s well-thought-out, then you could potentially be on the show as a guest expert helping me to answer these questions.
Dawn Serra: We’re going to do two listener questions with some advice that came from you, Patreon supporters, at the $5 level and above. Then we will jump into my conversation with Sarah, all about pleasure and body trust. And then we have, of course, Patreon bonus content about the ways that Sarah’s eating disorder and diet culture really made it difficult for Sarah to realize that they were non-binary. So we’ll be talking about the ways that body politics and identity kind of play together.
Let’s start with this question that I got from Steve. Now, Steve wrote into me with the following. The subject line was “Tender, toxic masculinity.” “I swear, if I hear another female-led discussion about how men should behave or how we should be raised, I’m going to cry. How would you feel if men were constantly holding discussions in public media on how women should shape their behavior or how women should be raised in order to promote a better society? Please don’t presume.”
Dawn Serra: Now, when Steve’s email came in, I just happened to be sitting at my computer at that moment. I had just had a conversation about that very thing with someone in my life. I immediately replied to Steve with, “Hey, Steve. I get where you’re coming from. And yet, every movie, book, advertisement, religion, an act of gendered and sexual violence is telling women how to behave. All of which were and are largely created by, funded by and supported by men. That’s how our culture is set up. So if the conversations bother you about masculinity, I wonder, are you actively fighting against the ways women are policed and told to behave? If you aren’t calling out the dudes in your life who comment on how women look, act and exist, if you aren’t taking action against gendered violence, then you’re participating in the very thing you emailed me about.
I’m not being an ass. I’m being genuine and real. This is how our world is set up. We’re trying to find a way to stop dying, to stop being raped, to stop being beat, to stop being treated like second class citizens. The only way to do that is to talk about it. When men stop causing 98% of the violence in the world, then the folks who suffer at the hands of that violence will probably stop talking about what needs to change. But until that happens, we will attempt to find ways to survive by raising better boys and men and by shifting the culture of toxic masculinity because it kills us, literally.”
Dawn Serra: So then I asked Patreon supporters, “What else would you add? What kind of conversations around masculinity and gender would you like us to amplify and make even louder? Who should we center?” So Steph responded, “Dawn, I agree with you on this one. I was shocked at the lack of empathy displayed by Steve. I often want to cry because of the public expectations placed on my womanhood. I don’t think I have anything further to add except we’ve listened to the masculine voice for so long and we aren’t getting where we need to be. So centering the voices of those who are wronged is a great place to start. Equality feels like oppression to those with privilege. That seems to be at work in this case.”
Thank you so much for that comment, Steph. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and feelings about Steve’s email. I’m sure other listeners will have thoughts. So feel free if you support the show at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. At $5 and above, you can add your comments and questions to any of the previous listener questions. I’m happy to bring them back up and share additional thoughts and to extend the conversation.
Dawn Serra: Speaking of which, I got another listener email. There was a really incredibly thoughtful response to this one from a supporter. So Will wrote in and it says, “Role play sex.” “I’m a 74 year old male, married with four adult kids. I love your show. It has opened me to so much that I haven’t been aware of. My wife and I have rare sex. Sex has caused her pain. I have ED and often fail to ejaculate. I started playing an online golf game. I played golf in real life. So it was a diversion. Then I discovered a world of virtual sex there. I posed as a female in her 20s, who is a lesbian and sexually active. During the game, we can chat and describe what we do to the other. I can play it for hours, both getting better at the golf game and at the sex text.
My wife is amazed at how much time I spend with a juvenile golf game. I don’t masturbate while playing. I simply enjoy the sexual fantasies. I found your podcast when I was searching for information on lesbians. I imagine a lot of the girls in the game are guys also. So my question is, should I let my wife know what I’m doing? I really see nothing wrong with it, but I’m concerned she will. What’s your opinion? Am I misleading her if I don’t tell her? If I do, how might I approach it?”
Dawn Serra: So I opened this up for comments and Leviathan offered the following, which I thought was incredibly thoughtful. “Listener, thank you for sharing. Your role play sounds super fun. I completely understand the relief and entertainment that you find engaging in sexual chat online. The part in your message where you say, ‘I see nothing wrong with it, but I’m concerned she will’ contains your answer. Nobody outside of your relationship can tell you what is and isn’t okay within the boundaries of it or help you justify your actions within it. Only you and your wife can decide that together. It sounds like you have a good idea already that she wouldn’t like your behavior. Your secrecy then is all about fear of hurting her and, in addition to that, because of your wife’s potential response, you being concerned that you won’t get to do something that you enjoy, which is understandable.
We don’t want to hurt the people we love and certainly a part of you gets that, even though sex is painful for her. That doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t miss the intimacy that comes with it. Nor does that mean that she would find it okay for you to find that gratification from others. But willingly avoiding tough conversations is hurtful, too. Because it keeps you from finding solutions together and helping your relationship grow. Imagine if you find yourself longing to indulge in sexual fantasies and mutual connections, don’t you imagine she might have some of the same impulses. Ultimately, the decision is yours. Do you consider it unethical to keep a secret from your wife that you know she’d want to hear? And conversely, put yourself in her position. If she was doing something that she knew you would be uncomfortable with, would you want her to tell you?
Dawn Serra: If you’re going to approach it, consider the four-part apology-free apology. One, acknowledge what you have done, including the sexual aspect of it. Don’t try to play it off. Two, acknowledge the impact of your actions. If you know this is or could be hurtful to her, say so. Parts three and four concern making agreements about different healthier behaviors in the future. But this might depend on your wife’s response and the resulting conversation. It’s, of course, okay to make your needs known if you have them – connection with others, intimacy, sexual release, entertainment – and to pursue meeting those needs in whatever way makes sense to you. But if you want to continue to have a healthy and equitable relationship with your wife, this will mean there might need to be some co-negotiation about what you’re both okay with.”
Wow. Yes. Thank you so much to Leviathan for that incredibly well-written and thoughtful response to Will’s question about the online role play. I actually don’t have much to add, because that was exactly where I was going to go with my response. That you’re allowed to have these things that feel yummy and good and curious. You’re allowed to explore your sexual fantasies. And if you’re doing it in a way that is keeping secrets that might lead to your partner being really hurt if they discovered it or feeling betrayed, you probably need to have that conversation sooner than later. Because there’s so many potential creative solutions.
Dawn Serra: It might seem really black and white when we’re in the moment. It might seem like, either “I do this and keep the secret” or “I tell her, she blows up and it goes away.” But there’s a thousand other options. So many different ways to explore those sexual fantasies, to connect with people, to collaborate with your wife. The only way you do that is by having those open conversations and by inviting the co-creation and the negotiation that Leviathan mentioned.
Will, I think you know the answer already. Even though you don’t think there’s something wrong with it, you seem to understand that your wife might be upset by it. Leviathan had so many incredible points about different ways that you can approach it, different reasons why she might be feeling the way she’s feeling and even new ways to move forward together. I hope you’re able to find a way to broach the conversation with your wife in a way that feels really spacious and generous and open, so that the two of you can talk about what comes next. Maybe she won’t mind at all, but she just wants to know that this is an important part of your life. Or maybe she does mind and now there’s some new ways that you can move forward with other types of sexual fantasies or online erotica.
Dawn Serra: Thank you so much for listening, Will. I wish you the very best. And I also thank you Leviathan for offering such an incredibly thoughtful response. You took the words right out of my mouth and it was such a pleasure to get to share that. So listeners, if you head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, $3 and above gets you that extra bonus content every single week and $5 and above gets you a chance to weigh in and be a potential sexpert on the show with your own thoughts, responses and feelings to so many of the questions that I field each and every week.
So let me tell you a little bit about Sarah Thompson, who is the guest this week and then we will dive into our chat. As I mentioned at the beginning, Sarah Thompson is an eating disorder recovery coach, consultant and writer focused on body liberation, fat liberation and body positivity. Sarah is a white, fat, queer, non-binary femme. Their writing combines ideas from a wide range of philosophies, body trust, Health at Every Size, intuitive eating, fat liberation, eating disorder recovery, harm reduction and more. Being committed to helping others finding more freedom and compassion in their lives is what led them to become a certified body trust provider. They were also the co-creator of Do No Harm Podcast. Sarah is constantly wondering how they can contribute to healing, justice and liberation in our world where there is constant suffering. They love working with people who are asking these same questions. So here is my chat with Sarah.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Sarah. I cannot wait to talk to you about body trust and queer bodies and all the things. So welcome to the show.
Sarah Thompson: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and to be able to talk to you about all the things.
Dawn Serra: I have been following your work and your posts for quite a while because you’re heavily involved in body trust and diet culture work and fat acceptance. What actually got us to really connect for the podcast was you just recently put out a blog post on a topic that I get listener questions from somewhat frequently around fat bodies and attraction and relationships. We’ll definitely go there today. But I would love it if we could just start with listeners heard me talk a little bit about my experience at the Be Nourished Body Trust Program. But for people who are new, can you tell us just a little bit of what body trust is?
Sarah Thompson: Body trust is very different from anything that I had ever learned before body trust. It offers us a different paradigm to operate in than our weight-centric, weight equals health equals worthiness equals morality paradigm that diet culture has infused into all of our lives. It also offers us a way to reconnect with our bodies and ways that have often been disrupted because of diet culture. Maybe, for other reasons, it’s full of self-compassion. It’s full of really trusting that you know your body. And maybe if you haven’t known your body, that you can get to know your body and be able to somehow get to a place of respecting your body. Maybe even eventually befriending your body and being able to treat your body in a neutral way when it comes to taking care of yourself.
Dawn Serra: I love how you call it a new paradigm which one, we desperately need and two, it is. It’s a total shift. I think that’s what a lot of people get so uncomfortable around is when we’re talking about things like fat liberation and rejecting diet culture and specifically, body trust, we’re not talking about the three things you need to do to love your body forever. There’s not a prescription. There’s not a plan. There’s not a guarantee. There is not that quick fix magic pill that diet culture has trained us to look for. I think that nebulous like, “Well, what do you mean? It’s like an experience and I have to kind of unlearn these stories?” That’s, I think, really scary for a lot of people.
Sarah Thompson: It is really scary and uncomfortable and really gray. Like you said, the opposite of what we’ve been learning and what we’ve been trying to hang on to. Yeah. So I guess part of body trust is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Dawn Serra: Yes!
Sarah Thompson: Right?
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Yup.
Sarah Thompson: None of the like “quick fixes” or “the three ways to love your body” ever stuck or like created actual change and how I interact with my body. So it’s a bummer that the answer is get used to that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: And there’s freedom in that, right?
Dawn Serra: Yes. Like what if the answers really did just reside with inside of you and within your most loving, trusting relationships. What if it wasn’t about all the things that were trying to be sold to you and forced upon you and like… I think you’re right. Because we are raised in a culture that doesn’t teach us how to listen to ourselves and to fundamentally trust that inner voice, it feels foreign and scary and overwhelming. And it is because it’s hard, because most other people aren’t doing that either. But to start getting to that place, what an incredible permission slip and also really truly what liberation is about. This is what my body wants and this is what my body needs and I don’t have to answer to anybody else except for me.
Sarah Thompson: Absolutely.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So as you’ve been doing this body trust work, one of the things that you had mentioned was how much shifted for you around your experience of pleasure, because of not only body trust, but also feminism and really understanding patriarchy and some of these larger systems. Listeners know, I’ve been talking about this a lot lately and I think a lot of them are like, “Yeah. But this is a show about sex.” And it’s like, “Yes!” We need to talk about these things because otherwise, it’s just putting a bandaid on an ever growing wound. For you, what was that shift that you experience? What was your connection to pleasure before and what is your relationship to pleasure now that you’ve started doing and really embracing all of this work?
Sarah Thompson: There’s so much. The big things sticking out right now are I think that I was often just accepting that everything wasn’t going to be easy, which meant that it was supposed to be hard. Somehow that translated into not getting to feel good. When I was so wrapped up in thinking that my size was wrong and that I have a hard time saying this because I’m about to say, “I couldn’t be sexy” or “I couldn’t be attractive” and I acted that way. I acted like I was attractive or sexy or confident. But I didn’t know how to necessarily embody that. And embody feels like a nebulous word.
At the same time, there is a difference between acting like you’re confident and taking up space, walking into a room as if you belong there, walking into a room as if you are completely deserving and worthy of love and affection. Not just from other people, but also from yourself. That was a huge shift. There’s lots of different ways to experience pleasure. I think that I would forget that I was allowed to have fun or that I could schedule fun into my life. I was good at watching Netflix. I was good at relaxing. But fun?
Sarah Thompson: I was in grad school. I had a part-time job while I was in grad school. I live by myself and take care of all of the things by myself and have generally always been a workaholic and had several jobs while I was going to school before or worked 70 hours at my job every week. That does not leave much time for pleasure–
Dawn Serra: Nope.
Sarah Thompson: Or to really decompress and enjoy your life.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: Add on to that, then also, every time I’m having some type of physical intimacy. I’m constantly body checking. I’m constantly wondering what the other person is thinking of my body. Back then, I was like, “What’s the bra that’s going to make my boobs look the best?” I have to wear those heels because they make my legs look hotter or doing the flattering clothing because my body had to be flattering. I had to wear things that made me look better. Those take up energy and time and it’s really hard to be in the moment, be present, be enjoying the physical intimacy that you have if you are constantly worried about how fat you look or the zits that you have in between your thighs or any number of things that might not be perfect on my skin or you know.
Discovering body trust and discovering how connected all of our ideas about beauty and size and health and all of these things are so connected to the foundation of our country which is white supremacy and patriarchy. Discovering that all of this stuff, a lot of so much of it is one, to make money and two, to uphold the places that people have privilege and uphold that as the standard. And it’s such a tiny portion of the population that actually is any of those things. Not to mention, beauty doesn’t look one way.
Dawn Serra: Right.
Sarah Thompson: So all of this stuff interrupts the way that we relate to our bodies and the way that we’d be in our bodies and being able to see it, call it out, recognize it in my life and give myself permission to let go of whatever my weight was going to be and live my life where I’m at right now, instead of in the very unknown future that will probably never get here whatever weight I thought I wanted to be. Being able to let all of that go literally changed how I experience, pleasure and sex and physical intimacy. I went from somebody who often… I enjoyed cuddling and hugging and being touched and all of that stuff, but it was always— It was still uncomfortable.
So it ended up not being super enjoyable for very long and I would always end up with this feeling of, “Okay. Now, you have to get away from me.” I can’t say that any of this stuff has not crept back in or isn’t sometimes still a struggle. Now it’s like, I have sex with the lights on. I don’t really even remember that they are on. I had a partner one time who thank me for keeping the lights on and I’m like, “You’re welcome?” Because I hadn’t really even given it a second thought then. Whereas before, it was like, “Let’s leave one lamp on by the bed.”
Dawn Serra: It’s the most flattering light.
Sarah Thompson: I can say what I want. I can say what feels good. I can say what doesn’t feel good. I am probably way more open about what that looks like now. You know, all of this also has that extra layer – There’s so many layers – of being raised in a very evangelical Christian religion and especially physical intimacy or sexual intimacy. It was just not a thing. It was just all– I very much felt like I couldn’t appear sexual. I couldn’t have sexual feelings. I was wrong if I did. Masturbating was wrong. Let’s not talk about that. You’re just supposed to be good with not having sex until you’re married. The end. I can only imagine how much shame and how uncomfortable all of that was to also unravel and how much that also reinforced all of the patriarchal views about sex and boundaries and pleasure that we have.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. God when I think back on the ways that I would like– I had to have these certain types of lingerie on because I didn’t feel comfortable being naked. The lights had to be off or the sheets had to be just so because my tummy was unviewable. Yeah. Just those little body checks that happen. I mean, how many times that I get pulled out of the moment because I noticed the way that my tummy looked in that moment or the way that my boobs were swinging and (divert rates?) because they were different sizes. You know what I mean. It was just like all of these things that didn’t allow me to actually experience the sensations that were happening.
I also think too about… You were talking about how all of these things interrupt the ways that we could be in our bodies. It also just makes me think for people who are in fat bodies or disabled bodies or bodies who have experienced other kinds of trauma because of the world we live in, being in our bodies has been really tough for very specific reasons because of the violence and the harm and the rejection.
Dawn Serra: But even the people who are benefiting from the current system, even the people who do have those thin-like, traditionally fit, young bodies that we see as the epitome of desirable and sexy right now, one, a lot of people in those bodies are performing as well. But, two, spend so much time being afraid of losing access to that privilege of their body changing. That there’s also not a lot of presence and embodiment because you’re just spending so much time chasing the thing that you’re afraid of and never just being.
I love how you talked about just really being able to live where you are. What an incredible way to access pleasure and what an incredibly radical thing to do – to not be living in the should be’s and not to be living in the was’s and the were’s, but to just live in this moment, in this body, in this pleasure. And to allow that to exist is so powerful. Yeah. I wish that for more of us.
Sarah Thompson: I agree. I agree.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: You know, it’s important to say that like… I don’t know. Probably in the last couple of years, I’ve learned about asexuality and you don’t have to be sexual.
Dawn Serra: Nope.
Sarah Thompson: That’s your choice.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: I don’t want to also necessarily frame it as a choice because, for some people, I think that it’s an orientation.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. For sure.
Sarah Thompson: Maybe you just go really long period of time of not having sex. Or maybe that’s just what you always do. That’s totally fine. That’s what liberation is about, is you getting to decide what happens with your body and reclaiming the places where that may not have always been the case.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Thank you for naming that. You’re right. Whether you’re asexual and/or aromantic and that is just always been your experience or it’s a place where you are for a period of time, being able to not only decide what happens with your body, but being able to be in relationship with others who really understand and honor that, is this work. I think any of us who do this work can talk about, which is one of the reasons why you wrote that blog post to partners who were like, “I’m not attracted to my partner because they’re fat.”
It’s like, we can do the work ourselves and that is important. But we can’t be isolated islands. We have to have community and to know it’s okay to be asexual. But then, you have people around you who are constantly trying to get you to not be asexual, who we’re trying to make you sexual is a really shitty, horrible, sometimes traumatizing experience. So it’s like, all of us not only doing the work for ourselves, but for the people in our lives is crucial.
Dawn Serra: We need to be able to trust that people trust their bodies. We need to be able to trust that people know themselves and to honor that without coming in with all of these other stories we have around being in relationship means I’m owed access to your body. No, that’s not how this works. We all need to be unpacking that.
Sarah Thompson: Absolutely.
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Dawn Serra: So let’s talk a little bit about your most recent blog post which is “My Partner Has Gained Weight, Has Become Body Positive, And I’m No Longer Attracted To Them. Now What?” I feel that a number of questions recently on the show around this very kind of thing of now my partner says they’re not attracted to me anymore. I’ve pretty much brung the hammer down. But I’d love to just hear a little bit about, one, why did you want to write this and two, where did you land in speaking to these partners who are like my partner is soft over here learning all about fat liberation and I’m not feeling sexy anymore.
Sarah Thompson: Yeah. So I wrote it because I think as long as I have been in Facebook groups that talk about body positivity and/or fat positivity or body liberation or fat liberation, as long as I’ve been in this realm, I have always seen people bring it up. I’ve had friends that have brought it up. So it is something that I have seen happen frequently and I have seen and heard the reactions of the person who typically is the person that is being viewed as not attractive anymore. It’s tough. It is really tough.
I have to say that I have not personally dealt with this. Thankfully, somehow. I’ve also… I mean, the number of people that I’ve dated is small compared to other people that I know. I feel like I need to say that in case anybody is looking for me to relate on this topic from personal experience.
Sarah Thompson: So part of why I wanted to write it was because it’s so common. It’s really unfortunate. Part of when I was creating the blog was – wooh – marketing. I go type in phrases and such into Google to see what comes up as popular key phrase searches. It was atrocious.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: It was so atrocious! I’m sorry for yelling on everybody’s ears right now. But one of the comments was… Oh my gosh. I don’t even know if it’s worth saying, but… I’m sure it’s not going to be anything new to anybody. So I apologize right now for what’s about to come out of my mouth. “My wife’s fat. Does that mean that—” ”My wife’s fat. She’s no longer attractive. Can I go have an affair?”
Dawn Serra: Yep.
Sarah Thompson: I’m like, “That’s a popular searched phrase?” Well, yeah. Part of me feels bad for the blog title because I think that people have really strong reactions to it. At the same time, I really wanted it to pop up in those freaking searches.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Sarah Thompson: I, at least, added the “Now What?”
Dawn Serra: Right. Now what?
Sarah Thompson: I forget what your second question was.
Dawn Serra: Well, what’s the takeaway?
Sarah Thompson: Okay. So the reason why I purposely made it to the partners that are now uncomfortable is because they’re the ones with the problem. Why wouldn’t I address this article to them? This is the thing that they need to work on in having conversations with people about this over the years.
One of the things that really stuck out to me because it’s semi-hard to muster compassion for people that — the comments that people tell me what their partners have said.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Listeners know from my responses that this is a true statement.
Sarah Thompson: It’s like kind rage-inducing. I have no idea how I would respond if someone ever said these words to me. I think I would have instantly shut down. And, that’s not the end, In having these conversations with people, what I realize is that we are going through this whole entire process. All these times people are really… Once they discover it and they dip their toe, you often end up either walking the stairs in or doing the cannonball. Right?
Dawn Serra: Right.
Sarah Thompson: You are going in at some point. That means that we are immersing ourselves in images and information, in other people’s stories, in not just reading, but listening to podcasts like your podcast. We are doing all of these things that contribute to why we have shifted the paradigm from “I’m fat, so I’m unattractive” or “I have to lose weight to be more attractive.” That typically does not happen overnight for people.
What I realized was we have this expectation that partners are just supposed to be on the same page. Which is one of the reasons why I put some people don’t talk to their partners about what they’re doing because they’re really afraid of what the reaction will be. So then, they’re not even aware of what’s happening for us and how we’re changing. This isn’t to judge how anybody goes through this process. I think it’s just about how they need to unlearn everything, too. They have been steeped in diet culture, too. They have been raised in a culture that encourages toxic masculinity. Those things are not just abs– They’re not like– This is not just a heterosexual couple’s problem. Most articles about couples are written from a heteronormative perspective. And it’s not just a heterosexual problem.
Dawn Serra: Not at all. I mean, if I think of communities that have really, really, really terrible experiences around diet culture and body politics and desirability. I mean, gay men.
Sarah Thompson: Right.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I mean, the rampant misogyny and the rampant body policing that happens in gay men’s communities. None of us are immune from desirability politics. None of us are immune from the images that tell us who gets to be worthy and sexy. I mean, we see when we go to the queer bar who the hotties are that are getting hit up over and over again and who’s not considered the hotties? So yeah. You’re right. I mean, this is definitely not isolated to any single kind of relationship structure or sexuality. We’re all swimming in this soup of body shame.
Sarah Thompson: Yup. Just because this is part of a presentation that I did in June and I’ll be doing again in August, the same goes for trans people as well and non-binary people or gender non-conforming people. They – we, because I identify as non-binary – are not immune from the body shame soup, either. You do a search for trans women or trans men or non-binary people, I don’t know how many pictures pop up on the first page, but maybe one of them will be fat. There’s obviously reasons why they are the popular. They are the most desirable. Because once you’re marginalized in one respect, good grief if you have to deal with it in another. And so anyone who’s not cis is also affected.
Dawn Serra: Absolutely. Because if you’re trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming in any way, there’s cultural expect that you’re going to conform to certain things. That you’re going to conform to a thin androgyny ideal or that you’re going to perform masculinity and femininity to the point of “passing” by cis standards. Of course, there’s all kinds of politics around bodies and desirability, even within trans communities. I mean, the language of passing in itself is ridiculous, but it’s something that we use to police others transness and non-binaryness. Of course, we’re going to feel shitty if our bodies don’t allow us to hit those markers that give us access to more resources.
Sarah Thompson: Yes.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: Saying all of that, the takeaway from the article is I jam packed it with a ton of resources. Everything from the links for research, the links to other articles, the links to podcasts, links to people to follow on social media suggest people get help. Because if we are often seeking therapy or coaching or both or dietitians or whatnot, how do we expect other people to deal with it on their own. I hope… I haven’t heard from any partners, yet. I’m really curious, really curious. I would be really curious to hear how partners feel about the article. But I’m hoping that it’s red with compassion because I really did not want my typical rage reaction to come up. That was not the purpose. We can’t rage people into change.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Sarah Thompson: I think it’s important to talk about emotional labor and doing the emotional labor in your relationship and is everybody as invested as the other is? That needs to be talked about. Obviously, there’s going to be other people that are like, “My partner’s fat and I don’t give a fuck.” The article’s not for them. That’s what’s popping into my head about the article right now.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just really important for people who are listening, whether you’re the person who is starting to really get to know your body and maybe asking these questions and maybe you’ve stopped dieting and you’re really trying out intuitive eating and Health at Every Size. The work that has to be done around the “sexiness” and “attractiveness” is not yours to do, it’s your partner’s. They have some stuff to unpack. Often, in my experience, which is usually what I end up telling listeners to and we had this conversation a little bit on my Facebook page was often when those comments come up around like, “I just don’t find you attractive anymore now that you’ve put some weight on,” what’s being revealed is lots of other long-standing issues and low grade resentment. That is the easy way to say, “I’m unhappy and I need a thing to blame.”
Sarah Thompson: Yes.
Dawn Serra: To the partners who are listening, who are struggling with not feeling attracted anymore, I think the takeaway is exactly what you said of one, this is your work to do because whether you stay in this relationship or not, all future relationships are probably going to have a point where someone’s body changes in ways that are either unexpected or disappointing or frustrating. So just do the work now. Don’t ask your partner to do labor of educating you. Go do that work yourself. Educate yourself.
Also, leave room for the anger. Your partner is allowed to be angry. That you’re probably going to say insensitive things or ask the wrong questions. Your partner’s allowed to be angry at all of the things that they’ve taken in and you’re allowed to be angry as you start unpacking this, too. You are allowed to grieve and feel sad.
Dawn Serra: But I love how you’re naming the emotional labor there. We can’t expect the fat person or the disabled person or the person of color in our life or the trans person to be the one that does all the educating because that’s exhausting and that’s caretaking. I can tell you, that kills libido faster than anything.
Sarah Thompson: Faster than anything!
Dawn Serra: So don’t do that. And I think too, how can this be a source of fun and connection? It’s like, “Wow. I’m feeling these really intense feelings. Now, I’m realizing something needs to change.” How can we listen to these podcasts together? How can we share some articles with each other? How can we get outside and move in a way that’s about joy and not about weight loss? How can we use that as a point of growth together rather than of separation and isolation and shame?
Sarah Thompson: The last few things that you’ve said have reminded me of the relationship couples coach that I asked for comment for the article. Her name is Gina Senarighi.
Dawn Serra: Senarighi. Yeah.
Sarah Thompson: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: She’s magic.
Sarah Thompson: I loved her suggestion about that – to find ways to still keep connecting. I love the “How do we unpack this together that you just talked about?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think the controversial thing in there is our partners don’t owe us sexiness. Our partners don’t owe it to us to look a certain way that’s appealing to us. Our partners are responsible for feeling good in their bodies and finding delight in their bodies and being able to share what feels pleasurable and what they want more of and less of and what connection looks like, but they don’t owe you sexiness. Now, if they want to do something that feels good for them and you happen to find that sexy, great. But that’s not the toll that has to be paid in order to be in a healthy, thriving relationship. That’s just the shitty cultural stuff that we get given.
Sarah Thompson: Yes. I think if you pay attention, the more that people are in their bodies and are doing what feels good for them, that’s what tends to be attractive.
Dawn Serra: Yes! Yes! That’s the thing. Do you want someone who’s checked out all the time and just going through the motions because they’re miserable in their body and trying to suck in their tummy? Or do you want someone who was letting it all hang out, but they’re like, “Fucking ride my face!?” And I mean it. I mean, let’s go for the enthusiasm and enjoy.
Sarah Thompson: Absolutely.
Dawn Serra: Well, I know we’re about to hop over and have a little bonus chat for Patreon. But to wrap this up, I would love it if you would share with everyone how they can stay in touch with you find you online, subscribe to your newsletter, your blog.
Sarah Thompson: Yeah. So my website is resilientfatgoddess.com. You can find all of the things on there – my blog and the coaching and consulting work that I do. I’m also available for speaking gigs. I tend to talk a lot about eating disorders because I think that’s a way that also gets interrupted by all of the things that we’ve been talking about, our relationship to food. And what else do I have on there? I have a friendly guide to Portland that is coming. I have a soft goal of trying to have it done before the ASDAH Conference happens next week.
You can find my Facebook page by searching Resilient Fat Goddess or if you put in the @. I changed that E to an X, like a gender neutral way of doing goddess. Instagram is Resilient Fat Goddess without the S and Twitter, I took all the vowels out of Resilient, that with Fat Goddess.
Dawn Serra: I will have links to all the things in the show notes so they can just click right through and follow you on all the channels and also head over to your website for your blog goodness. So thank you so much for being here with me Sarah and for diving in. I know this is going to give listeners so much to think about.
I also want to thank all the listeners for tuning in. Thank you for being here. If you’ve got comments, questions, anything you want to share had the dawnserra.com there’s a contact form where you can submit anonymously. Sarah and I are about to go hop over and do a little bonus chat for Patreon supporters. So if you support the show at $3 and above, you get access to weekly bonus content that you can hear anywhere else in the world. So that’s at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. We will see you over there. Bye.
Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses.
As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?