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Marcia Baczynski, creator of the Good Girl Recovery Program and co-founder of Cuddle Party, is here this week, and there were SOOO many nuggets of inspiration and amazing suggestions that I had a hard time not quoting the entire thing in my notes.
We talk about asking for what we want in bed, setting boundaries, saying no gracefully so you’re clear without being cruel, and how your happiness is being compromised by all of the things you’re tolerating. We also field listener questions about rape fantasies and Marcia gives the most amazing advice to people who are about to try their first swinger party or sex party.
Get your notebook handy and share this episode with a friend. It’s full of incredible wisdom that you’ll want to hear again and again.
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In this episode, you’ll hear Marcia Baczynski and Dawn Serra talk about:
- Saying no unapologetically and what that looks like, plus the fear we have around saying no because we’re so afraid of other people’s disappointment and feelings.
- How most of us walk around up in our heads and don’t even recognize we have bodies. We expect to be able to know what our bodies want during sex, when we don’t know what they want during non-sexual moments simply because we aren’t paying attention.
- The importance of practicing using your voice, saying no and stating your preference, in low stakes situations every single day, so that it’s easier in higher stakes situations where you might have stronger feelings or fears.
- Marcia’s awesome graphic on 12 ways to say no gracefully that aren’t maybe. Check it out and share generously.
- Good communication in relationships means naming the invisible and everything that that means. We roll around in why it’s so important to say the things that seem totally obvious to you, and how that obvious thing might be the one thing someone you love really needs to hear.
- The two ways to avoid disappointment in relationship and why you need a liberal dose of both. Too many people expect change without communicating their expectations or adjusting their expectations, which leads to frustration and resentment.
- Being self-reflective and examining yourself and motivations and stories if you truly want to have connected relationships, good sex, and to feel comfortable in your own skin.
- Marcia’s Good Girl Recovery Program – what it is, who it’s for, and why she created it – shedding perfectionism, people pleasing, and finding your voice so you can get what you want. It starts by asking what are you tolerating in your life?
- What it means to name all of the things you’re tolerating and how tolerating thousands of little things drains our energy and happiness. Marcia helps people tackle a few things at a time which frees up so much energy to really show up and focus on the things that matter.
- Marcia’s blog post about women calling themselves crazy or being called crazy and how it’s really about emotion policing and pointing out the emotions that are not acceptable or allowed for women to have.
- A listener question from Happy Honey. She has questions about rape fantasies and being forced by her boyfriend to be his sexual slave. She has trouble voicing her sexual wants and needs and she even shuts down if she feels pressured. She doesn’t ask for sex when she wants it, and instead just uses fantasy to stay silent. How can she find her voice?
- Etienne wrote in with a question about exploring BDSM and sex with their partner who has a trauma and abuse past. How can you trust your partner’s excitement and desire to try new things when they don’t even realize the possible consequences? Marcia’s advice for sex parties and swingers parties is amazing.
About Marcia Baczynski
Marcia Baczynski is a internationally recognized expert on sexual communication, who works to provide people with practical tools to create extraordinary relationships. Her primary mission is to help people overcome shame and get in touch with what they truly want — romantically, sexually and relationally — even if it’s off the beaten path.
As co-founder of Cuddle Party, she has empowered tens of thousands of people to speak up for the kind of touch they way, say No unapologetically, and foster more connected, affectionate relationships. Her popular virtual course, The Good Girl Recovery Program, helps women to break out of the roles that keep them small and unsatisfied, and move into being more of who they are in all areas of their lives.
Marcia is a sought-after presenter and coach,and she has made hundreds of media appearances across the globe, including The Montel Williams Show, NPR, the Washington Post, GQ, Marie Claire, People and Newsweek, to name just a few. Marcia brings wisdom, humor, and creativity to all aspects of her work, and offers a fresh perspective on love, sex and relationships.
You can find her online at AskingForWhatYouWant.com, as well as on Facebook and Twitter @AskMarciaB.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone! I have three things before we jump into this amazing interview with Marcia Baczynski. The first is, I thought it would be really fun to have your help in creating a new intro for the podcast. If you want the possibility of your voice being featured in my new intro, all you have to do is call me at 747-444-1840, that phone number is on the website – of course, dawnserra.com and say, “You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra.” If you have any other fun little statements that you want to throw in, feel free to do that, but the core is going to be, “You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra.” If you happen to know any other languages, and you want to use the word “listening” to say in other languages, like Spanish or French, feel free to throw that in, too. Just make sure that you’re in a really quiet space with a really solid connection when you call so that it’s crisp and clean. Then you might be one of the voices that goes into the compilation of the new intro. That’s, “You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra.” So call 747-444-1840, leave a message, best quality that you possibly can. If you have recording equipment at home and you want to record an mp3, you can also email that mp3 to info@sexgetsreal.com. I would love to feature your voice as part of the new intro that I’m cooking up.
Dawn Serra: The second thing is, tons of you have written in recently with questions about anal sex. Since a lot of you aren’t in the DC area and can’t come to my live events, I’m doing a live class online, which means you can attend from anywhere in the entire world. It’s called “All About Anal.” You can learn everything by going to sexgetsreal.com/butts – as in your rear end, BUTTS, sexgetsreal.com/butts. It’s going to be on Wednesday, October 26th at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific for US and Canada. The best part is I know that if you’re in Vietnam or Australia, time zones can be tough. So there’s a 24-hour replay available, which means anytime in the 24 hours after that class, you’re going to have access if you sign up. So please check it out. I would love to have so many of you in this class. It’s going to be all about anal. If you’re interested in getting started with anal sex or finding ways to maximize pleasure, if you just super love butts, and you want to pick up a couple more tips or learn about some anatomy, then join me. It’s going to be an amazing, fun live event. You can ask me questions on the webinar, and I think it’s going to be a blast because the in-person classes have been amazing.
The third thing that I have for you is, please make sure that you are signed up for the newsletter. The reason is, iTunes has been having some issues recently. As we all know, whenever you’re relying on other people’s technology, sometimes problems happen. So a lot of podcasts on iTunes haven’t actually been updating with the latest episodes. It’s just made it really clear to me that I really want to make sure that everyone who listens to the show always has access. For those of you who signed up for the newsletter, I’m going to be updating the newsletter much more frequently with the latest episodes. So you’ll be getting in the email links to listen to the podcast so that just in case Spotify or iTunes or Google Play ever go down or have problems with sharing new content or for whatever reason, God forbid, I ever get banned because this is such a sexy show, I want to be able to still communicate with you and get the content to you. Make sure you sign up for the newsletter. There’s also going to be some freebies and worksheets that come out from guests that I have on the show. So all kinds of goodness. Make sure you go to dawnserra.com, sign up for the newsletter, check out sexgetsreal.com/butts to join me for the “All About Anal: Introducing You to Anal Pleasure Online Live Workshop.” Make sure that you check out the phone number so that you can call and leave a message and be part of the new intro for the show. I would love to hear your voice. Thanks so much, and let’s get started.
Dawn Serra: Hey, everyone. Dawn Serra here with Sex Gets Real. Joining me this week is Marcia Baczynski. Hi, Marcia!
Marcia Baczynski: Hi.
Dawn Serra: How are you?
Marcia Baczynski: I’m so good. I’m so glad to be here.
Dawn Serra: I’m really excited to have you on the show. I have so many listener questions about finding your voice and boundaries. I know we’re going to spend a lot of time rolling around in that stuff, but I think we’re going to have a really fun hour.
Marcia Baczynski: I am really looking forward to it.
Dawn Serra: Well, let me introduce you to the listeners. For those of you that don’t know Marcia, she’s an internationally-recognized expert on sexual communication, who works to provide people with practical tools to create extraordinary relationships. Her primary mission is to help people overcome shame, and get in touch with what they truly want – romantically, sexually, and relationally – even if it’s off the beaten path. She’s a co-founder of Cuddle Party, and she’s empowered tens of thousands of people to speak up for the kind of touch that they want, to say no unapologetically – that’s something that we really need to talk about – and to foster more connected, affectionate relationships. I love one of the last lines of your bio: “Marcia brings wisdom, humor, and creativity to all aspects of her work and offers a fresh perspective on love, sex, and relationships.” God, we need that.
Marcia Baczynski: I know I sent you that bio, but it sounds so good when you say it.
Dawn Serra: Oh, thank you. Well, there’s so much deliciousness in there. Yeah. Just from boundary setting to saying no unapologetically and getting what you truly want and being able to talk about what kind of touch you want. I mean, those are all places where I feel like all of us struggle because we just never get really taught how to do any of those things.
Marcia Baczynski: Totally. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I work with people on is so challenging to know how to do because we get so little modeling for it in our culture. We walk around like we don’t have bodies most of the time. So to be able to say, “Oh, I noticed that my body wants something. How do I then translate that into words, and then how do I get those words to come out of my mouth?” is a challenging thing for people.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. One of my favorite parts of your bio, which I made a little side comment on, was about saying no unapologetically. I would love to start there because that is definitely a place where I personally have really had to do a lot of growth and struggling. I know I get emails all the time from people who want to say no to a partner, and they’re looking for a way to get around having to say no.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. The challenging thing about saying no that I’ve noticed is that we go about it in a very indirect way a lot of the time. We don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. We don’t want people to feel bad. Sometimes we’re worried about what might happen if we say no – “Will we be judged? Will we be yelled out? Will we be harmed?” So there’s a lot of fear about the consequences of saying now. In addition to just look smaller or lower key things, like hurting someone’s feelings or letting somebody down, we take that on as our own problem. Sometimes, if there’s a threat of violence or getting fired or things like that, there is stuff that we might need to take on. We take all of it on. We take all of other people’s feelings and letting them down and all that onto ourselves. But then we still try to say no, but we pad it or camouflage it or joke about it. We basically act like we’re not saying no, while still magically hoping that people will abide by it.
It’s a really confusing strategy because if the person on the other side of you isn’t going to respect your note anyway, they’re not going to respect that because it’s not very clear. If the other person on the other side is somebody who is willing to respect your no, but they’re not hearing it because you’re not saying it, then they’re not going to respect your no. So it just sets you up for a situation where you’re just not going to be respected. And it’s really scary to be in those situations because we don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t want to let people down and all that. But it’s also really scary because the consequences of not saying no are: being a doormat, getting your boundaries run over, not even knowing what your boundaries are. Sometimes we come from situations in our family or socially aware, like we weren’t ever really allowed to figure that stuff out in the first place. We don’t even know where our no is.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: The no is a very complex thing to unpack. But I think it’s really important that people be able to do that.
Dawn Serra: One of the things that I personally have had to stumble over again and again is not knowing something was a no until it was too late, and being like, “Wow. That was a no I wish I would have known.”
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. I refer to those as gaps, actually. It’s not a yes or no until you’ve had an experience that tells you what your answer is. We sometimes act like the no and the yes is completely clear somewhere in us, but we just aren’t accessing it. I don’t think that’s actually true. I mean, until we have enough experiences in the world, we don’t have any sense of what our preferences are.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: So there’s gaps in our knowledge. But then sometimes it’s just like, “Oh. That was a really painful way to learn that.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’ve also found that it can be really, really difficult for people to also say yes to themselves.
Marcia Baczynski: Absolutely. We say yes to other people. One of the things I say about no is that a no to one thing is yes to something else. Often, the yes to something else is something that is internal, where we will often… Like your friend will say, “Hey, do you want to go to the movies?” and you know you’d rather stay in for the night. But you say yes because you don’t want to let your friend down. But you’re saying no to yourself. There’s always a no. There’s always a trade off right. Often, when we don’t say no to things we don’t want, we are saying no to things we do want. And that means we’re missing out on our yes. Then it becomes hard to know what our yeses are. It’s hard to know what our desires are because we’re so flooded and clouded with other things that other people want.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. It really resonates too, this not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. I think that one of the things that so many of us are really afraid of is disappointing someone and not being able to tolerate their disappointment. We compromise our yes or our no in an effort to just avoid this other person’s reaction. What are some ways that people can build up some resilience around that particular exchange?
Marcia Baczynski: Well, one of the things I’ve noticed in working with my students in the Good Girl Recovery Program and with folks at Cuddle Party is that a lot of times, this lack of tolerance for other people being disappointed comes from something that happened pretty early on, where it was really made clear to the child that it was not OK to say no, that there would be major consequences for it. Whether that was emotional abuse, physical abuse or just having things taken away, like having support taken away, having resources taken away being neglected, that kind of thing. Maybe it was a major incident. Maybe it was a minor incident. But somehow that message got communicated that if you say no, your means of survival are going to be taken away, your means of emotional support are going to be taken away or you will be harmed.
I think it’s really important to acknowledge, first of all, that you’re not crazy if you have that feeling of, “It’s dangerous and scary to say no to people.” That’s the first step. The second step, though, is to look at the current situation and to evaluate from current time. You’re not a child anymore. You actually have resources. If this person goes away, you will probably be fine. You’re not trapped in the situation. Many of the times you’re not trapped in the situation, you can get up and leave. If you speak up loudly enough, other people will notice that there’s a problem and come to your aid and support you. There’s a way that if we learned that lesson when we’re really, really young–
Marcia Baczynski: I will say this. I got this from my colleague, Betty Martin. But she says it brilliantly that even under the best of circumstances, even the most loving supportive home, we all learn before we can talk how to go along with things happening to our bodies that we don’t want. We all got our diapers changed when we didn’t want them to. We all had to put on pants when we didn’t want to. Put on our raincoat when we didn’t want to. Other people were maneuvering our bodies in ways that we didn’t want, even in the best of circumstances. So this is something we all do. We all go along with it.
But looking at the current situation, what will really happen if I say no to this person? I coach my clients all the time to go, “What’s true about now that wasn’t true then?” Just having that moment of, “Oh, this person that’s in front of me will be fine. Even though I’m scared of what might happen, if I look over at this person, they’ll be fine. And even if they’re not fine, I’ll be fine. I am finding ways to feel resourced around that.” And find means different things to different people. But having that recognition of what was true then is not true now. And practicing that, actually. Just practicing it all the time. I coach my clients all the time to practice this in low stakes situations where you really do know you’re going to be fine. The more you practice it in low stakes situations–
Marcia Baczynski: Cuddle parties. That’s one of the reasons cuddle parties, I think, has been so successful is that it’s a low stakes situation for people to practice saying no and not having to apologize or explain themselves. But you can practice this at the coffee shop. They get your order wrong, say ,”No. I didn’t order that. This is what I ordered.” Or, if your driver for cab or Lyft or Uber or whatever, says, “Oh, do you want to go this route or that route?” “No. I want to go this route.” Just saying no and then stating your preference in low stakes situations, and just doing that over and over and over and over again. It really helps when the stakes get higher because then you’re like, “Oh, wait a second. This isn’t quite as challenging as it used to be.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love how you said being able to say no without having to explain yourself. I think that’s one of the things that so many of us have internalized and conditioned ourselves to believe. That if we’re going to say no, then we have to explain why, versus just offering a, “No, I’m not interested in that.” Then offering that no that’s not all drawn out. I think that’s also where we get ourselves into trouble with confusing people. Because we might say no, but then if we talk for two minutes about all the reasons why it would be great, but we just can’t, I think then sometimes it offers false hope and confusing and maybe that was a maybe. So I really love that – inviting people to say no without having to explain why.
Marcia Baczynski: Well, I think part of what you’re getting at, what you’re pointing at is that often, we have a desire to maintain the connection with the person, and we’re afraid that our no is going to sever the connection. Y’all can Google this. If you Google “12 Ways to Say No Gracefully,” there’s a graphic that I made that will come up that gives ways to say no or maybe later that actually maintain the connection. But some of them are, “I’m a no to that, but I’m a yes to you.” Or. “I’m not so into that, but you go have fun.” Or. “I want to be in connection with you, but that doesn’t work for me. Can we do this other thing instead?” So offering a counterproposal. Or, saying, “I’m a no for now. Come check in with me later.” Which is different than maybe. It’s a clear no – “I’m a clear no. Here’s the timeframe, and here’s what I want you to do with that. I want to maintain the connection. I want to be in relationship with you.” One that people seem to really like is, “I need to build more trust before I’d be willing to consider that.”
Dawn Serra: Oh, that’s a good one.
Marcia Baczynski: The other one that people seem to like is, “I don’t have the internal resources to pull that off,” which is so self-referenced that it’s unarguable with. Nobody can say, “Look. No, you really do have the internal resources.” So there’s a few others on that graphic, if you just Google “12 Ways to Say No Gracefully.” It’s on my website, askingforwhatyouwant.com. But I actually made postcards of this graphic because it was such a popular blog post. People are like, “Oh, my God. I’m putting this on my mirror. I’m putting this on my bathroom mirror, on my refrigerator.” Because there’s a lot of nos that are not really clear nos because the no is to something very specific. But there’s a desire to say yes to something bigger. I think that’s also where we get really confused is we want to maintain the connection. We want to feel… We can frame it negatively, like, “Oh. You’re just codependently caretaking the other person,” which sometimes that’s true. But sometimes there’s just really a genuine desire to be in connection with the person and not have that no be like, “No!”
Dawn Serra: Right.
Marcia Baczynski: Like, “No. Fuck you.” Because it’s so easy to put a fuck you or you ask the wrong thing or whatever on the other side of that. So I think instead of explaining yourself, finding ways to reaffirm the connection is a much more powerful way to say no gracefully. Maybe you’re not saying yes when you really don’t mean it. You are saying a clear no, but you’re either putting a time constraint around it or reaffirming the connection or letting the person know that you would like to hear from them more or that you want to do something else or whatever.
Dawn Serra: I love that so much. I love that that puts into words so much of what I’ve felt and been wanting to describe about my own experiences of this, “I want to say no, and I also want to make sure that this connection still feels like I’m here for you. I’m interested in doing things for you.” I love that. I’m going to link to that resource on Sex Gets Real too, so people can find it really easily. Oh, my god. I love that. I love how you phrase that. Because I think you’re right. There tends to be this, “You’re not responsible for other people’s feelings, and so just say no.” But when you really do care about someone and you value the connection, considering their feelings is a very kind thing to do. You just don’t want to overdo it to the point where you’re sacrificing yourself.
Marcia Baczynski: Exactly, exactly.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love that affirming the connection. You actually said something. It was a quote that someone tweeted out from a recent discussion you gave at CatalystCon. I think that it touches on what we’re talking about already. But the quote was, “Good communication and relationships means naming the invisible, figuring out how to challenge the norm.” I love, “Good communication means naming the invisible.” Can we roll around in that a little bit? Because I think sometimes, that’s part of where we go wrong with our boundaries, the yes and the no is, we’re hoping we dropped enough hints or we gave the right kind of physical cues that someone will pick them up for not actually saying the thing.
Marcia Baczynski: Right. Yeah. There’s so many things that go unsaid in relationships. One of the first pieces of advice I used to give when I worked with couples, which I don’t work with couples anymore, but I did for a long time, is say the thing that seems totally obvious to you. Sometimes it’s really hard to say a thing that’s totally obvious because it seems so obvious. Like “I love you, and I’m never going to leave you.” Or, “Of course, I think you’re gorgeous,” or whatever it is. There’re so many positive things that don’t get said that become then invisible, and the other person just never knows them or needs to hear them, and they just never get that information often enough to know that that’s the foundation that all of these other things are talking about sit on top of. So that’s one piece of it.
I think another piece of naming the invisible is our assumptions about how relationships are supposed to go – “I’m supposed to take care of other people,” “I’m supposed to be pleasing,” “I’m supposed to be sexually available,” “I’m supposed to be monogamous,” “I’m supposed to be polyamorous,” “Whatever the assumption is, I’m supposed to do it right,” “I have to work harder in order to be loved.” And those are the really tricky ones because they’re unconscious beliefs.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: It’s hard to name them because they’re unconscious a lot of times. But when we can actually start to be like, “All right. What are all the things that might be true about this situation?” I often encourage people to have just a lot of self-compassion. We do a lot of work about self-compassion in the Good Girl Recovery Program. But that’s a foundational piece of all of the work I do is like, “Look. You’re doing this stuff. If you’re doing stuff that’s not really constructive for you, asking for what you want or setting great boundaries or having the kind of sex you want or whatever, it may not be that you suck.” It may be that you have a really good reason that just hasn’t been identified and named yet. Or, you used to have a really good reason that no longer applies. I think that’s where a lot of naming the invisible comes up.
Then the thing with the boundaries. It seems like if we get this really destructive messages about– If it’s really love, they’ll just know.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh, my god. Yes.
Marcia Baczynski: When I talk about naming the invisible, that’s something that I’m often pointing to as well. Sometimes you have to just be like, “Look. I don’t want you to sing that song to me. I hate that song. Fucking stop it.” I got into a fight with a partner one time about a song. I always think about that example. It took him forever to get what I was talking about. I was like, “No. It’s really, really, really annoying to me. You think it’s cute and funny, but I’m actually getting enraged. This isn’t just like ‘Haha! Poke the bear,’ because it’s funny. This is like poke the bear and the bear is going to claw your face off. I would like to be able to communicate that to you.” This is such a trivial example, but it was a boundary for me. Stupid song, which I’m not going to tell you what it was. I hate the song. You’re all wondering now. One song that makes me really angry. It’s irrational. So it’s even more embarrassing. Like, “Oh. I have this boundary that I could actually tell you. It’s totally irrational. Don’t care. I have it.”
Dawn Serra: That’s so important though because we have so many of those.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. That actually goes to it, too. You actually don’t have to justify your no or your yes or your boundary or your desire. You can just have it. I just hate that song. I just hate it. There’s no reason for it. None. I don’t have to justify it.
Dawn Serra: No, you do not.
Marcia Baczynski: It would be nice if I had an explanation. It might be a moment of intimacy and connection if I could explain to my partner why I hate that song. But I don’t even have that. I just don’t like it. There’s this way that by speaking the things that are invisible or that don’t have a good solid foundation or that you don’t have all figured it out or that seem really obvious to you, and you can’t even imagine why or how somebody could think differently in a very compassionate way – compassion to yourself, compassion to other people, compassionate to the idea that different things make up the world. It takes all kinds. And just having a lot of compassion for yourself, just like, “This is just how I work.” It really creates a lot more understanding space and ability to figure out what’s going on in a fairly non-blaming kind of way. Like, “Oh, that’s how you work, OK?” “Your nervous system is set up this way, so you like to be touched like that. All right.” Instead of just assuming that your body works like everybody else’s body, or your preferences are like anybody else’s preferences. Or, that what your partner learned with other lovers is going to work for you.
Dawn Serra: One of the things that I’ve gotten from just observing myself and from observing others is that there tends to be something invisible that’s not being named when people do that sigh of resignation over something their partner is or isn’t doing. Like if you walk in the door and the living room is a mess, and you were expecting it to be clean. So you’re just like, “Wooh,” [sighs] Then you’re frustrated, and you start doing the thing. I’ve found so many circumstances where I do that resigned or frustrated sigh. That’s a perfect opportunity to actually be able to say, “Hey, I had this unspoken expectation, and it didn’t get met. I’m feeling frustrated, so can we talk about that?” Those expectations that we often carry when we don’t voice them, then start building up those resentments. But we expect our partners and even our friends to just magically know that you wanted this thing to happen because you would have clearly done it this way.
Marcia Baczynski: Right. Totally. Yeah. I think there’s two ways to avoid disappointment. One is to communicate your expectations. The other is to adjust your expectations.
Dawn Serra: Yes.
Marcia Baczynski: I recommend a little dose of both.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: I see people just continue to try to adjust, continue to try to just, continue to try to adjust what they say inside of a larger set of expectations of, “Someday it will be different.” And they simultaneously don’t communicate what they want. Then there’s other people who I don’t tend to work with because they don’t seem to have any problem asking for what they want. They just ask for what they want, and they just demand it from the people around them, and then they get it. If they don’t get it, they just blow a gasket. It’s awful for everybody around them. So then they get what they want, but they’re not really feeling connected or intimate or happy most of the time. Those people don’t tend to go to my website.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Well, yeah. Because then so much of what you talk about, what you teach really, requires doing work on yourself, which means confronting a lot of the stories that you tell yourself, and a lot of the ways you move through life. And that can be really confronting for people.
Marcia Baczynski: Absolutely. It’s necessary, in my opinion. Well, I should say this. It’s necessary if you want to get what you want. If what you want includes connected relationships, good sex, feeling more comfortable in your own skin, you have to start telling the truth about what you want, and what your boundaries are, and what your yeses and nos are. If you don’t tell the truth about your boundaries and your yeses and your nos and your desires, you’re never going to feel at home in your own skin.
That being said, I’m also not a big fan of self-help culture, where, “You have to work on yourself before you can…” “You have to completely be transformed and perfect in order to be lovable. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m really interested in people having tools. Take the ones that work. Leave the ones that don’t. But it does require some self-examination a lot of the time for most people to just be like, “I am hiding something for myself. I’m hiding how not OK this is with me. That I keep letting people walk all over me.” Or, “I’m hiding how much it’s frustrating me that I’m not having the kind of sex that I want, and I love this person.”
Marcia Baczynski: I mean, there’s some really legitimate double binds that people find themselves in, that they try to resolve by just going, “It’s either A or B, and I have to choose.” A lot of my work is helping people compassionately and radically accept that there’s this contradiction. Then from that place, get creative about how they can talk about it, how they can articulate it. I find that when people can talk about what they want from a place that’s not like, “I’m inevitably going to let you down by telling you this,” it tends to go better–
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: If you’re not coming from that place. But that does require some self-acceptance and some willingness to take some risk on about, “OK. I really don’t know how this conversation is going to go. But I want to affirm that I want to be connected to you, and that’s why we’re having this conversation.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Let’s talk about the Good Girl Recovery Program that you run a little bit. Because so much of what we’re talking about has to do with what you do in that program. Can you tell us just a little bit about what it is, and why you created it?
Marcia Baczynski: Absolutely. The Good Girl Recovery Program is a six-week virtual course for folks who were raised and socialized as girls. Mostly women, but I do have some trans men, and I do have some trans women who are interested in the program as well. What we do in there is we unpack a lot of the messaging around being people pleasing, compliant, going along with perfectionism, being too much, being not enough – all of that kind of stuff – and how that’s socialized into us as girls and as women. It’s not to say that men don’t experience these things or people who are not on the binary don’t experience these things, they absolutely do. But the thing we’re unpacking is how that’s socialized for us as female people.
The course is six weeks long. But the way it works is that once you sign up, people can retake it as many times as they want for free. So people have been now doing this for a couple of years. Each time they do it, there’s a deeper cut on, “Oh. And this is how I people please. Oh. This is where I get compliant or age-regress.” Or, “This is where I just lose all ability to know what I want or how to articulate it.”
Marcia Baczynski: It’s a really fantastic course. We talk about what we’re tolerating. We start with what we’re tolerating. I’m teaching it right now. So I’m right in the thick of it. But we start with, “What are you tolerating in your life?” We look at things in your physical environment, things in your relationships, things in yourself, things in your workplace, things in your home, all that kind of stuff. And really take that apart to see where the patterns are. Then we get into, “How do you tell what you want?” We look at desire, and how do you feel in your body. What do you actually want? How do you tell if it’s your desire or somebody else’s? How do you tell if you’re going along with what somebody else wants? What are some clues that you can fall back on to help you figure out what you want?
Then we look at mess in our relationship, to not getting it right and not being perfect and that stuff, which always get super, Ahhh!” for folks. OK. Well, if I’m trying to avoid being a perfectionist, there’s this tendency for people who are trying to avoid being a perfectionist to try to do that perfectly, too. There’s this little bit of a snake eating its tail with perfectionism that we look at, and really stepping into what would it look like if I let myself be 10% messier? Just 10% messier. Because there’s this all or nothing quality of perfectionism, like, “I’m either perfect,” or, “I am damaged, awful, terrible, messy, horrible person.” It’s like, “Actually, just be an adult human trying to get through the world.” That section, we talk about how to complain and how to really freakin’ embrace complaining. We have a section that’s about bragging, and we have a section about complaining because it’s all about expanding the emotional range that’s available to us. Because as women and girls, we’re not allowed to have a lot of big emotions. We’re supposed to be compliant and go along with things and not be too much of anything.
Marcia Baczynski: Then we talk about sex. Then we talk about receiving and how to let in the good things. Then we really just look at, “OK. How do we get into relationship with this archetype that’s in us that is never going to go away? It’s actually there to protect us, but it’s kind of outdated. So how do we get into a right relationship with her and not make her the bad guy?” Even though when she’s running your life, she doesn’t lead you to places you want to go. But she’s there for a reason. So how do we honor the good parts of the desire to be generous and kind and supportive and that kind of thing, without it slipping into being a doormat or just going along with stuff? That kind of thing.
It’s a really fun class. I really enjoy teaching it. The women who’ve taken it so far have just got a lot out of it. It dovetails really nicely with a lot of the other stuff that I’ve done. It came to be because when I was teaching classes on open relationships or non-sexual touch with cuddle party or my asking for what you want in the bedroom and beyond class, I just noticed this archetype coming up over and over and over again on the feminine side of the room, with the women, and with people who were raised as girls. There’s a nice guy corollary. I get a lot of questions from men, like, “When are you going to teach the nice guy version of the course?” I’m like, “Give me a minute. I got to figure this one out first.”
Marcia Baczynski: But the other thing is I was raised as a Catholic in the deep south. I learned this stuff in my bones, so I know what it’s like to be wrestling with, “Be sexy, but not too sexy. Be smart, but not too smart. Speak up, but don’t speak up too much.” All of those double binds that I think are very socialized in women. We’re seeing it with Hillary Clinton right now. Literally, the internet’s like, “She doesn’t smile enough.” Then she smiles at last night’s debate, and everybody’s like, “Why is she smiling so much?” She can’t win. She’s criticized for her appearance and leaving the actual policy pieces out of it. You can just completely see this whole good girl phenomenon, the socialization of the good girl, completely all over this election.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love this question of, “What are you tolerating?” That is such a powerful question.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. It really is eye-opening. I have people make a list of 50 things they’re tolerating. The thing is, even if you’re incredibly well-adjusted, you’re going to be tolerating a lot of things. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about being neurotic. Even thoroughly non-neurotic people are tolerating a lot of stuff. Because you can’t actually deal with all of life all at once. But what I have found is that the more we’re tolerating, the more it is like a little pinprick of a hole in your cup of happiness, let’s say. It just drains you. Any one of them by themselves, it’s not that heavy to carry. So we’re like, “Oh. I can do that. I can do that. Oh that’s not that big of a deal.” We dismiss that. We say, “Oh. It’s not that big of a deal.” You know what, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just that you have 8,500 of them.
Dawn Serra: Right.
Marcia Baczynski: So, let’s tackle 100 of them. Suddenly, you have a whole bunch more energy. It could be little, little things. When I’m teaching the Good Girl Recovery Program, one of the things we do is.. I’m like, “Start with the little stuff. Don’t try to tackle the biggest thing on your list.” Start with a squeaky door. Start with the fact that you have four lipsticks that you hate in your lipstick drawer. Start with getting rid of three things you don’t wear or you don’t like from your closet. Just start chipping away at it. You’ll find that you just have a lot more energy. Then there’s other things as hard conversations you have to have with your friend that you’ve been in this weird space with for two years. Mentally you have more energy for that. Because you’re not tolerating it.
Dawn Serra: I also think there’s power in just being able to consciously see. Like, “Here’s the things I’m tolerating. Now, I can choose if I want to continue tolerating them or not.”
Marcia Baczynski: Exactly. Yeah. Because we make those decisions one by one. We never put them all together to go, “Oh. Whoa. This is all of it or 50 of them,” as the case may be.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think there’s also this assumption– I taught a thriving relationships class over the weekend. It was really fascinating to me because as I shared information with people, the feedback I kept getting was, “Wow. This is really fascinating, but it’s also really scary.” I think we have this assumption that if we start to see all the things we’re tolerating, let’s say in our intimate relationships, then we’re going to suddenly feel like this isn’t the relationship for us, and everything’s just going to implode. Instead, the choice could be, “Wow. I’m tolerating these 50 things that make me feel uncomfortable. So maybe we can just start talking about them and change a couple of them, and things will feel so different.” I feel like there’s this point of overwhelm of, “Oh, god! There’s all these things. This must be terrible. I’ve shined a light on the scary, and now I feel overwhelmed. Let’s just explode it all.”
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. I think the thing that’s really interesting about what you just said, is that often, the reason we’re tolerating it is because we want the relationship. But we think, if we look at it, we’re going to lose the relationship. In my experience, it’s the tolerating and tolerating, that then leads to resentment, that ends up destroying the relationship. So it’s this weird thing where it’s like, “Yes, it is sometimes scary to look at that.” Because there are things that you’re tolerating that aren’t working for you. But the fear is coming from the belief that you can’t actually address them. And you can actually address them, especially once you’ve addressed some of the easier pieces to address more energy, to address those harder conversations. It’s just getting some momentum going. It’s like, “OK. Let’s talk about the impact of you not picking up your socks.” Why it’s like it seem like such a small thing? Why wouldn’t you tolerate that? It may be at the end of the day that you talk about it, and you just decided, “Actually, this is worth tolerating,” but you’ve now talked about it, and it’s out in the open between you.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’ve actually found that to be true for me in my relationships. Something will be nagging at me and nagging at me, and I’m kind of irritated. I’m just not saying anything, not saying anything. And I’m having all these feelings about it. Then when I actually finally say the thing, just having actually said it, and have it received and actually feel heard, after that, oftentimes, the thing doesn’t even have to change. It’s just the fact that I had the space to have my feelings, share them, they were received well, and I was supported. It’s like, “Oh. OK. That thing’s totally not bothering me now.”
Marcia Baczynski: Totally. A lot of the times those tolerations, especially the interpersonal ones, it’s about not being seen and heard that hurts so much. But we do that to ourselves because we don’t bring it up.
Dawn Serra: Yup.
Marcia Baczynski: So we’re doing it. It’s not that they’re not seeing and hearing us. Yeah, you might sigh when you walk in and the living room is a mess. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be heard in what that means to you, what that meant to you. That doesn’t mean anything about… Your partner might be like, “Oh, she didn’t like that the living room was messy. OK.” But that doesn’t mean that they get the context of how you had a hard day at work and you feel like you have to do all the things because you just feel so overloaded because you’re supporting four friends right now who are going through divorces or heartbreak. Your boss just asked you to do something that you’re like, “I don’t even know if I can pull that off.” Then you come home and the living room’s a mess. Your partner’s not seeing any of that. They don’t know that that’s why it impacted you that way. So you sigh and maybe they’re in this weird passive-aggressive thing. There’s no intimacy that comes from that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I just see it like, “Yes”.
Marcia Baczynski: Like, “I’ve been there.”
Dawn Serra: Oh. I’ve so been there in my past relationships of just like, “Yeah.” As soon as that passive-aggressive stuff starts setting in, it’s just like, “Ugh, god.”
Marcia Baczynski: Passive-aggressive is a really good sign that you’re tolerating some stuff. You can blame your partner if you like, but I guarantee you some of it is your fault.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. You wrote this amazing blog post that I want to make sure we have a little bit of time to roll around in, and it just really struck a chord with me. I know we’ve been talking about good girl recovery and boundaries. One of the things you talked about that you do work around is this dichotomy that so many of us sit in of the fear of being too much, and at the exact same time, also feeling like we’re not enough.
You wrote this post about what it really means when women either call themselves crazy or get called crazy. One of the things that you opened in that post was talking about how ableist that word is, and how it’s a word that we really want to try and move away from since it just really makes mental health issues so invisible and all that kind of stuff. But it’s still something that we constantly hear of like, “Oh. She’s really crazy,” or, “I swear I’m not a crazy one.” You were talking about emotions and being in service to others. I would love for you to just talk about that a little bit.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. This is something that I’ve thought about a ton. Then when Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” album came out, there’s a line in there about, “What’s worse, lookin’ jealous or crazy? Jealous or crazy?” Then she puts in the third option, “Or, like being walked all over lately? I’d rather be crazy.” This idea of you can be jealous, which is bad or you can be crazy, which is bad. But those are your two options.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: I’ve just seen that so many times where a woman will say she’s angry, “But maybe I’m just crazy.” Or, she’ll say that she’s sad, “But I shouldn’t feel that way.” I think that men get this too, but the socialization is very different. Men, the acceptable emotion is anger and nothing else. Happiness is fine if a man’s happy, but he can’t be sad. He can’t be grief-stricken or longing or any of those kinds of things. Women can have some of those feelings, but they’re kind of crazy. There’s this way that we write it off as illegitimate, basically, is what crazy means – “This is not legitimate. This is not allowed. This is not acceptable.”
And that’s where ableism comes in too, is this idea of mental health issues are also not acceptable, legitimate or allowed. It’s problematic on so many levels. But it’s this idea of label… Crazy, I mean, you sometimes hear men labeled crazy, but it’s usually more lighthearted. It’s like, “Oh. He’s crazy.” You don’t hear his feelings dismissed as crazy because men’s feelings are policed in different ways. Women’s feelings are policed by this. This idea of, “I’m having an emotional reaction to something that’s not working for me, but I’m supposed to…” And it ties in with a good girl. The subtext to that is, “My emotions are supposed to work for other people. Therefore, they’re illegitimate, not acceptable, not allowed, and crazy. So when something isn’t working for a woman, it’s a big learning curve for some of us to figure out how to put ourselves at the middle of our own emotional experience, to just put ourselves at the center and not make it about centering other people.
Marcia Baczynski: Like I said, this is not the mental struggle with this precise issue. It’s just that it’s talked about differently with men. Because men totally do have this experience too, in some very different, also very painful ways that I need to write a blog post about because it bugs me. And by the way I see women hold men to the standard, too. I’m not saying that, “Oh, women have it so hard, and men have it so easy.” We all have it shitty inside of the patriarchy. All of us are not having a good time inside of all of the system.
But the word crazy, if I’m using it to label myself, I’m telling myself my feelings are not legitimate. If I’m using it to describe another woman, I’m saying her feelings are not legitimate or, “Don’t take her seriously. Don’t take her feelings seriously.” More to the point, “Don’t feel that. That feeling is inconvenient for me. That feeling doesn’t work for me. Don’t feel it.” So if the expectation is that feminine people remain calm and manageable and emotionally pliant and willing to set aside their feelings in service of other people, and a feminine person is not willing to do that or is having an emotional reaction that keeps them unable to do that, then it’s threatening to other people. We basically just slap a label of crazy on when people don’t comply to that, when women don’t comply to that.
Dawn Serra: I would really love to see that phrase go away. Not just disappear and it gets replaced by something else, but I would just love for all of us to really seriously to be able to identify why we’re using it, and see how completely ridiculous and toxic it is, that if something happens and a woman has a lot of anger come up or a lot of fear or whatever it is, that instead of just being, “Well, god, she’s acting crazy,” to actually be able to really see those feelings are important and valid for her experience. And you’re so right. Men’s feelings are policed in a super different way. They often are tied to being super feminine, if they have certain types of emotions. It’s, yeah, patriarchy. But, yeah. It just really hit me.
As you were talking, it just really made it so clear that our expectations around women is that the only emotions they have are consumable and palatable by others. At no point are we allowing a woman to have her own feelings for herself. We want women to be happy. We want women to be laughing. We want women to be smiling. We want them to be sad when situations are deemed appropriate. But it’s like to have any kind of large emotional reaction– Because you can even be too happy and too joyous and too loud about… I mean, I got written up at work in my corporate job for laughing too loud years ago.
Marcia Baczynski: Oh, wow.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. It was considered disruptive to the work environment. They actually gave me a written warning for it. It was just this moment of even my joy is being policed, and it felt terrible. I mean, my morale after that just nosedived and my feelings about the job in the workplace and my employer just went out the window. So, yeah. I love that you’re naming that and calling it out, and having a conversation around it. Because I think it’s an invisible part of the language that we use very regularly.
Marcia Baczynski: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it goes so many– I just want to keep talking about it. We can write a thesis about this subject because there’s just so many layers of it and qualifications on it. If you’re thinking about it in the workplace and how there are norms in the workplace, well, where did those norms come from?
This is another thing I talked about when I talked about naming the invisible, just asking that question – “Where did I get that idea? Where did those norms come from? Why is it the case that there is such a thing as laughing too loud? Why is that considered ‘ unprofessional?’” Then I think about all the other ways that men and women are policed around how they’re supposed to do things in the workplace. I’m like, “Where did those things come from?” I’m always asking that question – “Where did that come from? Where did that come from?” It gets me into trouble. I end up studying a lot of history – a lot of history. How do it get to be that way?
Marcia Baczynski: But it’s such an important way of examining the culture that we’re in and the water that we’re swimming in, whether it’s in our workplace or our relationships to be like, “Well, wait a minute. Am I illegitimate, not allowed, etc? Or, is this just a bad fit for me?” Because sometimes it’s the case that that’s useful feedback. Like, “Cool. I actually don’t want to be doing that because of these other reasons that are actually in alignment with my values.” Sometimes it’s like, “This is just a bad fit. I shouldn’t be here. No one’s winning. Wow, OK.”
Dawn Serra: I think often, we also label someone else, specifically women, crazy when we want to be able to not take responsibility. So if it’s not a good fit for both of us, and I’ve done something that you know is some type of betrayal or I’ve not upheld an agreement or I’ve just done something that’s not OK within the type of relationship we have, and then this other person has this big emotional experience, if I label them, “Well, she’s just crazy,” then that’s a way of distancing myself and saying, “Not it. It’s not me.” I don’t have to take responsibility. It’s all because of her being crazy.
Marcia Baczynski: Exactly.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: It goes so deep.
Dawn Serra: Oh, my god. It goes so deep. Oh, my gosh. Now my brain is just going a million miles an hour. Well, would you like to pivot and dig into a listener email or two?
Marcia Baczynski: Yes. Let’s see what they’ve got. Because I know you said you have some emails from people.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. It’s actually interesting because I have some emails from people that are six months old because I’m just waiting for the right person to come on or the right time. But this person actually just emailed me yesterday. When I read it, I thought, “Oh. This will be a really good one for Marcia.”
Marcia Baczynski: Awesome.
Dawn Serra: It was just perfect timing. OK. The email is from Happy Honey. It says, “Hi, Dawn. I wanted to really start off by saying thank you for your amazing podcast. It has been life-altering for me, informative, and also entertaining. I’ve listened from Episode 1 and loved listening to you and Dylan, and have major crushes on you both. I also just wanted to ask you a question.”
It says, “I was listening to Episode 125 with Karen BK Chan. There were some questions about rape fantasies that were asked. I felt compelled to write in because I was dissecting and exploring my own underlying recurring fantasy of being forced by my boyfriend to do whatever he wants sexually. I’m in a long term relationship, where I finally feel totally safe and comfortable sexually with my partner. In the past, I have definitely, at times, not used my voice and had sex with men for what I now see were not good reasons for me. These past experiences have definitely come up in my current relationship, causing me to shut down at times if I feel or imagine too much pressure. Or, if I know I’m not using my voice.
Dawn Serra: So when I do really want to have sex, and I feel nervous about using my voice, that fantasy comes up for me. It totally turns me on. But I’ve been having thoughts that it’s enabling me to further not use my voice because I turned something I may or may not really love that he is doing into part of the fantasy. Which then turns me on because I do enjoy being submissive. I’m learning to use my voice more and more. I know my partner would love it if I did because he truly cares for me. Sorry if this is incredibly long.”
Then she has a final question for me that’s unrelated to that. “So much love.” It sounds like she has fantasies of her boyfriend forcing her to do things sexually, which is hot – I have that fantasy too. But it sounds like she’s also saying there are points when she really wants to say, “I want this thing,” or “I don’t want this thing,” and instead of actually articulating it, she just folds into the fantasy so that it can arouse her.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: So what are your thoughts?
Marcia Baczynski: Well, I have a few thoughts. One is, I am all for just exploring fantasy and having fantasy, having a really rich fantasy life and not assigning a lot of meaning to your fantasies. That’s a separate thing from whether you want to put any of this into action. But if there’s something that you enjoy and it gets you off, great. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to stay the same forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean that if you see something that’s a problem, that’s problematic. There’s a problematic aspect of the fantasy, as applied in real life, that you shouldn’t go work on that in real life. But you can still enjoy the fantasy. I don’t necessarily see a problem with that. If it’s hot and it gets you off, great. If you’re learning how to use your voice in the bedroom, great.
In my opinion, the more you actually learn to use your voice in the bedroom, the more likely it is you can set up a scenario to maybe make that fantasy real inside of a container where you are talking, where you actually have clear agreements about how you’re going to go and clear agreements about what you’re going to do if it doesn’t go as planned, and that kind of thing. Because you can talk about it, and then you can go into the fantasy and like, “Oh, no. I can’t. I don’t have a voice.” And it becomes fun. It’s totally normal to eroticized things that we don’t totally understand or that we’re trying to reconcile in ourselves. That’s how sexy things work. It’s a little bit into our shadow, and it’s a little bit into our unresolved stuff. And that’s fine.
Marcia Baczynski: You may notice I am not a fan of perfectionism or self-improvement, to the point where you don’t have a personality anymore. So on the level of fantasy, I don’t necessarily see that there’s a problem unless there’s a problem for you. It sounds like that your boyfriend really wants you to be speaking up and to be asking for what you want and that kind of thing.
There’s a little bit of a complicated concept, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to convey it all really well, but I’ll try. This is something that I usually teach in much longer workshops. But allowing someone to do things to you that they want is a gift. Whether it’s a forced rape fantasy or just your partner’s having a hard day, and needs to ground and you’re just, “OK. I’ll cuddle with you,” or whatever. It could be any level of that.
Marcia Baczynski: We confuse doing and not doing with who’s giving and who’s receiving. So it looks like from the place of, “I want to give my body over to you for you to do what you want with it because I actually feel safe,” there’s a line, and that line is consent. That line is your agreement. That line is where you trust the person not to cross it past what you want. When we’re able to play inside of that line with things that have been really hard or problematic for us in the past, it’s really sexy and really hot. And it’s not a problem. It’s fun. So if you’ve had this experience of having people basically use your body in ways you didn’t like, and now you can have a fun time knowing that you can trust the other person to listen if there’s really a line, it’s a way of resolving. It’s a way of playing with it. Then a lot of these kinds of kinky power things are us playing with things that are maybe a little messy from our past, and we all have them. So that’s fine.
So there’s a thing here where, on one level, you’re giving your body over to your boyfriend as a gift, and it’s a gift he deserves. It’s a gift that he’s earned because he’s trustworthy. It’s a gift that he has shown himself to be somebody that you can trust. It’s also a very vulnerable gift to give because what if he doesn’t want to do that? What if he’s not in a place to receive that gift? He’s the one who has to take action. So if he’s taking action, he might be afraid that he’s going to cross your boundaries or it may not be his kink. It may not be his fantasy. That can be like, “Oh, I want this thing.” It’s a tricky thing because on one level, it’s a gift. On the other level, it’s a desire. Right?
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: But the desire is, “I want to give myself over to you to have the experience of feeling unsafe, but being safe, maybe.” Let’s say. That’s fun. We go on rollercoasters because we want that.
Dawn Serra: Exactly.
Marcia Baczynski: That’s fun. “I want you to make me feel unsafe, even though I’m safe.” That’s some of the subtext of this potentially – at least is for a lot of people. But it might feel too scary for him. So it’s vulnerable to be like, “I want this,” and for him to be like, “Can he actually go there? What does he need to feel safe around that?” That may be where he needs you to be able to use your words. That he can trust that you’ll be able to use your words, whether it’s a safe word like, “We need to stop this now,” or to negotiate it upfront, or to reassure him that he’s still a good person – you still love him, you still trust him afterwards – and those kinds of things. I don’t necessarily see it as contradictory that you would maybe want to play with this fantasy of not having a voice. The success of that for your relationship may depend on the degree to which you can articulate things outside of that immediate context. Does that make any sense?
Dawn Serra: Yeah, absolutely. Being able to say, “Here are the things that I’d really like to do, and here’s the ways that I would feel safe doing those things.” Also, asking for his experiences and his interests, and then being able to go in and play on that space. That all requires being able to actually speak those things.
I think like one of the tough things, at least in my experience, is finding my voice as a trauma survivor has been really, really challenging and scary for me over the years. My partner has made so many beautiful places and spaces for me to be able to practice saying my yeses and my nos. If he senses any kind of hesitation or maybe, he is really good about making a practice of actually pausing, and we have a conversation about it. But I’ve had to mess some of the stuff up. I’ve had to try and ask for things, and then realize in the moment or later, “I really could have done better at that.” And allowing for mistakes and getting it wrong has been really really important in, not only my experience, but also our relationship.
Dawn Serra: I think I would just offer that to Happy Honey, too, is as you start articulating the things that you want, the type of sex you want to have, the fantasies that you find sexy in involving your boyfriend, and those things, allow yourself to fuck it up and to say, “I think this is what I want,” and then to change your mind. Or, even afterwards say, “Wow. I was really wrong about that, and it felt kind of yucky. Can we just self-care around that, and then we’ll try again another time?”
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. Or not try again another time. Maybe go back to the fantasy realm, and that’s fine, too.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah. I think the subtext of what you’re saying there is, again, this compassion, self-forgiveness, like, “That didn’t work. All right, next.” Instead of being like, “Oh, something’s terribly, terribly wrong with me or with my partner. We’ve never should have done this,” etc, etc.
Sex is edgy stuff, and we can try to make it safe. But there’s some way that when we’re opening ourselves up for vulnerability, there is risk. And that’s just part of how we play. So a lot of it is about figuring out what kinds of risks we want to take and with whom, and how can we take care of ourselves and have resilience afterwards if it doesn’t go the way we want? Because the payoff is so good when it does go the way we want.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it really does. One other thing, I was just rereading the email. This one thing that she says is that, “Past experiences come up in my current relationship and ‘caused me to shut down when I know I’m not using my voice.” Sometimes it can be really difficult in the moment to actually be able to say the thing if you’re feeling really triggered and you’re shutting down. So you’re withdrawing or you’re going into freeze mode. It’s OK to, afterwards, when you’re feeling safe again and open again, to be able to have that conversation with your boyfriend and say, “Wow. This is what was going on for me. Here’s what I would have liked to have said, but I wasn’t sure how to say it. So maybe can we practice around that a little bit, and doing it in a non-sexual situation?” It’s OK to have these reflective conversations about the spaces where you were feeling those weird feelings, and to be able to practice with him when the clothes are on and you’re outside the bedroom. Because, like you said earlier, the more we practice in low stakes situations, the easier it gets to actually do those things and use those skills when the stakes are a little bit higher.
Marcia Baczynski: Absolutely, absolutely. I would also say too, if it feels like it’s too much for your relationship, there is nothing wrong with getting some outside help. I know Dawn coaches people. I coach people. There’s a lot of other really great coaches out there that are just phenomenally helpful at helping people get into that sexy headspace, and then like, “OK. What’s coming up for you? All right. Let’s talk about different options you have for how to talk about this. OK. Let’s practice talking about this. OK. What came up for you?” That process of figuring it out… Your boyfriend may not have the skills to help you figure out he may be able to hold it, but he may not be able to help you figure it out. That’s why we have podcasts and classes and coaching. Because this stuff – like we said in the very beginning of this podcast – this isn’t stuff we see modeled everywhere. So if you don’t know how to do it, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It just means you’re living in 21st century America.
Dawn Serra: Exactly.
Marcia Baczynski: Wherever you’re living.
Dawn Serra: We’re all swimming in this mess.
Marcia Baczynski: Yeah, yeah.
Dawn Serra: Well, I just want to thank Happy Honey for writing in and for listening and for saying all those sweet things, and for sharing your vulnerability with us so that we could discuss it a little bit. That was a really lovely email that you sent.
Marcia Baczynski: It’s a really good question, too.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Really good question. Marcia, I just want to check in with you. I have one other email that I thought might be fun to roll around in, but we’re a little past our time. Are you OK on time?
Marcia Baczynski: I’m good. Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s do it.
Dawn Serra: OK. Let’s go.
Marcia Baczynski: I got all day for you.
Dawn Serra: Awesome. I love hearing that. Someone named a Etienne, which is a French spelling, wrote in with a subject line of, “Cautiously exploring.” It says, “Hi, Dawn. My girlfriend suffers from anxiety and has been in emotionally abusive relationships in the past. I just recently opened her eyes to some kinks, such as double penetration, gangbang, fantasies, rape play, etc. I’m providing all of the assurances for her to feel comfortable, secure, and I’m always emphasizing that respect and consent is of the utmost significance. She’s very excited and enthused to explore with me as I continue to emphasize that we do so in ways that feel good for her. We’re planning to attend a swing party in San Francisco in about a month. I’m doing my best to foster open communication to make sure that we’re both OK to explore this for the first time.
But in the back of my mind, I’m still very concerned about her past and her anxiety. I don’t want to recklessly plunge into any situation that will leave us or her or me worse off. She’s excited to try everything without much thought for the possible consequences until I make her aware of them. As much as I try to be communicative, I’m worried I might be opening her up to something she’s not ready for or that we’re not ready for or that I’m not ready for with her. She’s an adult and can decide for herself, but I can’t help but try to shelter her because of her past. Please advise. I’ve just begun listening to your podcasts and think your positivity is fantastic. So thanks for reading. I hope to hear from you.”
Marcia Baczynski: Oh. That’s a good question, too. The thing that struck me about this is the way that, I don’t know the gender of the writer, but he or she is doing a lot of holding and caretaking for the girlfriend. I’m a little concerned that they’re not necessarily listening to what they want. The line about things that “we’re not ready for or I’m not ready for” really jumped out at me.
One thing I frequently suggest with couples who are going to sex parties or swinger parties or anything like that, especially for the first time, is decide on some boundaries ahead of time. “Treat it like it’s the first time, not the only time,” is the first thing I would say. Don’t act like this is your only chance and you have to do all the things. I think that’s the number one mistake people make is they’re like, “Oh, my god. I’ve never had this before.” They think that means, “I will never have it again. I have to take all the opportunities.”
Marcia Baczynski: So I really encourage people, especially their first time, to decide on the boundaries that feel comfortable for them ahead of time, and then stick to them no matter what happens. You can always negotiate down, but do not negotiate up. Meaning, if you want to be more conservative, that’s fine. But don’t be less conservative than whatever you decided ahead of time. The idea of… It’s always best to leave a play party or sexy party wanting more rather than feeling full or overfull. Because then you want to go back again. But if you feel full or overfull, like it was too much, then you’re not going to want to go back. Some of it is if you really want this to be part of your life, and you really are excited to try all of the things, I really encourage you to treat it like you’re going to be doing it for a long time, and therefore there’s no scarcity. So that means maybe you go and you watch or maybe you go and you flirt with other people or you go and you fuck, but only each other. Or, you really just sit in the juices of wanting more and having that frustration, like eroticizing that, that can be really fun. Maybe you are allowed to make arrangements with people for next time, but not for this party.
I think there’s a misunderstanding among a lot of folks that if you go to a party, that means you have to play. And that is maybe true for some parties. But the vast majority of these kinds of things, there’s no expectation that you have to do anything in particular. Swinger parties are definitely much more oriented towards sex. But that still doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to the nth degree all the time. There’s all kinds of nuance going on with different couples.
Marcia Baczynski: The other mistake that I think a lot of people make is they go to these things and they see couples who’ve been doing this for a really long time, have rather expensive boundaries, and they think, “Oh, that’s where I should be. Something’s wrong with me if I’m not there,” or “That’s the goal for tonight.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. That’s the result of ten years of being together and eight years of going to these parties. They know a bunch of people, and they’ve already made a bunch of terrible mistakes that they’ve learned from.” It’s not immediately obvious that they do actually have boundaries.
I was actually at Folsom Street Fair this past Sunday in San Francisco. I was talking with somebody, I was like, “It’s so funny because it’s so easy for somebody from the outside looking in to think that these people have no boundaries.” But the fact of the matter is, they actually have quite a lot of boundaries. They’re just in very different places than the average outside observer, so it looks like they don’t have any boundaries. But the same thing applies at play parties, sex parties, swinger parties, etc. These people have boundaries, and they have limitations. They may not be immediately obvious. So you should have them, too.
Marcia Baczynski: Going back to what we’re talking about much, much earlier about that gap – that gap in knowledge about what your yeses and nos are – go slow because otherwise, you might mind the gap. As they say in the London Subway, mind the gap. Know that you’re not going to know what is good for you and what’s not good for you in that circumstance until you’ve been in there for a while. So go slow. and treat it like you will have more opportunities.
That being said, I think that the writer should also really pay attention to, “Wait. What are your boundaries for this event? What do you need? What do you want? What excites you? Putting it out on the table instead of just letting her set the pace. She may, at some point, be moving faster than you, and just because her anxiety has kept her from maybe doing that in the past does not mean it’s always going to be that way. So really making sure that you’re both getting a chance to have limitations and needs and desires on the table, I think, is really, really important.
Dawn Serra: Everything that you’ve said just is amazing and beautiful advice, and so spot on. I love the reminder that when you go to these events and you see people doing all of these things that often, it’s because they’ve been doing it a really long time, and they know everyone. Going in with the goal of being frustratedly aroused and leaving wanting more is such amazing advice.
Then the other thing that I would just love to say too, is I think there’s a lot of value in having a discussion with your girlfriend before you go to the swinger party of, “Let’s talk about all the ways that we want to feel. Let’s also talk about how we’re going to take care of ourselves if other feelings happen afterwards.” If we go to this thing and she gets super triggered or something happens, and the both of you just feel really, really uncomfortable or afterwards, you have a lot of regret, beforehand, how can you create some moments of connection around how are we going to deal with regret? Or, how are we going to deal with, if we leave this thing and we both feel like, “Wow, that’s not at all what we were expecting?” So that if that happens, then you both already know how to communicate around it.
Marcia Baczynski: Exactly. I think that’s really important. I often recommend that people schedule brunch the next day. Make sure if you’re going to a play party or sexy party, especially the first few times, that you just have some space in your calendar. Have some time that you can decompress, and just build it in as part of the experience.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I love it. Well, Etienne, I hope that you write back with how the party goes, how your swing party goes. I hope everything is fantastic and sexy and fun and delicious for both of you, and you have this beautiful new juicy memory to roll around in together afterwards. So please do report back. Marcia, I would love for you to share with everybody how people can find you online and stay in touch.
Marcia Baczynski: Oh, yes. There’s all kinds of places. You can find me blogging and writing and how to work with me at askingforwhatyouwant.com – asking with an ING, askingforwhatyouwant.com. Then the Good Girl Recovery Program is at goodgirlrecovery.com. If you go there, there’s a free ebook you can download about, “If the good girl is running your life, and if so what to do about it?” Five clues that she might be running your life. So you can check that up there. Then you can find me on Twitter @AskMarciaB, which is MARCIA. And that’s also my Instagram handle. I don’t really post a lot on Instagram, but I’m going to start maybe. I don’t know. But I post a lot on Twitter. You can find me on Facebook at facebook.com/AskMarciaB. I’m sure you’d put this on the show notes. But yeah, check it out. There’s a lot of really great blog posts on askingforwhatyouwant.com. I really like getting questions from people. So if there’s something that you would like to see me write about or a question you’d like me to answer, send me an email via the contact form on my website. I’d be happy to write about it.
Dawn Serra: I love that. And I agree. There are so many amazing blog posts. on your blog. Desire smuggling is one that I’ve shared so many times. So yeah, everybody should go check it out. I will have all of the links in the show notes and also at dawnserra.com. You can also submit your own questions at dawnserra.com using the contact form or you can shoot me a message on Facebook. It’s Sex Gets Real. Or, on Twitter @sexgetsreal. So Marcia, I just want to thank you so much for being on the show. This was a wonderfully rich discussion.
Marcia Baczynski: Yes, it really, really was. There’s so much good stuff in here, and I love the writers. So thanks for writing in, guys.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, exactly. Thank you everyone who wrote in, and thank you for listening. This is Dawn Serra, and I will talk to you next week. Bye.