Sex Gets Real 172: Cooper Beckett on swinging, desire, & the struggle to orgasm

Guess who’s here this week?

Cooper S. Beckett from Life on the Swingset. It’s been 2 years since he was on the show, way back when Dylan was still here, so it’s wonderful to catch up and hear about his latest adventures.

We geek out about live sex demos and the Swingset takeover at Desire resort, which is coming up in a few months.

Plus, things get existential and deep as Cooper contemplates all of the ways his life has changed since he first started on his swinging adventures. We talk about the fragility of love, the lies we tell ourselves in relationship, his views on polyamory and labeling himself, and a lot more.

Then we dive into a listener email from David all about his inability to orgasm during sex. Cooper has personal experience with erectile issues and orgasm, so his advice is personal and practical.

Ready to hear it all? Me too.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

In this episode, Cooper and I talk about:

Swingset Desire Takeover for 2017. Tristan Taormino will be joining the Swingset crew for their 6th trip down to Desire. A week of pure hedonism. Plus, Cooper gets to teach an anal class with Tristan.
The power of in-person, hands-on classes in the world of sex education. It’s amazing for people to see the actual negotiation and talking through the actual, lived experience.
How Cooper based the seven main characters of “Approaching the Swingularity” on himself and all of the things he’s seen unfold at Desire each year.
Why Cooper’s characters do bad things, make bad decisions, and fuck up. Also, why the movie High Fidelity inspired him so much in this same way.
The intensity of a week at something like Desire or swinging getaways.
How after 7 years of doing Life on the Swingset, Cooper owns how little he knows what he’s doing. And I love that.
Why the traditional way people think about unicorns (a third to bring into a couple) is actually a horrible way to treat another human being. Cooper has changed significantly from his early days of a traditional swinger.
Happy accidents, being open to new experiences, and how it lead Cooper to everything he has now.
Why monogamy can protect you in some ways, but the terrifying reality is that anyone can leave at anytime for any reason. Cooper talks about why that’s so amazing and how that uncertainty has actually inspired him in his non-monogamy.
Embracing the fragility of relationships and the fragility of life to drive us to cherish each other, to honor ourselves, to be brave. It gets very delicious and deep when we dive into this section.
Why Cooper doesn’t think he can go back to monogamy even though non-monogamy is really hard.
You cannot change anyone. You can only change yourself. Cooper talks about the kind of person he is now and why it’s so important that we all constantly try to be better.
Why sex is built up to be bigger and more important than it really is. Cooper talks about why sex shouldn’t be on this pedestal. I can’t stop cracking up. So so true.
After all the existential discussions, we dive into a listener email from a young cis guy who is dating a queer cis woman. They have creative, open sex, but he is having trouble orgasms during sex with her. What gives? Cooper has wonderful advice for guys who can’t orgasm based on his own experience with erectile issues and orgasm issues. SERIOUSLY. Listen to this.

About Cooper Beckett

On this week's episode of Sex Gets Real, Dawn Serra is joined by the swing-tastic Cooper Beckett from My Life on the Swingset. We talk about his new book all about swingers, heading to Desire for a week of hedonism, becoming polyamorous, and much more. Cooper S. Beckett is the co-founder and host of Life on the Swingset: The Podcast since 2010, author of swinging & polyamory novels A Life Less Monogamous and Approaching The Swingularity, and memoir My Life on the Swingset: Adventures in Swinging & Polyamory. He teaches and speaks on swinging, polyamory, pegging, play parties, and coloring outside the boundaries of your sexuality. He is a graphic & web designer, photographer, and voice over artist, has been a guest expert on Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast, & is the announcer of Tristan Taormino’s radio show Sex Out Loud. He is currently working on two instructional non-fiction books, one about beginning non-monogamy, and another about pegging.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!

Hey, you. It’s Dawn Serra with this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I’ve got Cooper Beckett joining me. It’s been a couple of years since he was on this show. We talk all about the swing set takeover at desire and all of the adventures that happened there, and how they inspired a new book full of sex. Cooper talks all about the changes in his life in the seven years since he started doing Life on The Swing Set, and how he moved from a very traditional swinger to someone now who is really working not to label the relationships he’s in and all of the amazing things that have happened. We also answer a wonderful listener question from a cis guy who has trouble achieving orgasm whenever he’s having partnered sex. Cooper has personal experience with erectile issues and struggles to orgasm sometimes himself. So he has some lovely compassionate and super practical advice. I think you’re really going to love this. We get deep and we laugh, and Cooper has some amazing nuggets of wisdom, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Dawn Serra: Of course, if you’re looking for ways to level up in your life, my bi-weekly Sex is A Social Skill group calls are going on and we are having a blast. Every other week, we get together and practice all kinds of skills. We geek out on things like anger and love, and what it means to be cherished in relationship. It’s a really good time. It’s 13 bucks a month, but that gets you two calls a month with me that are 90 minutes. So check it out, check out the show notes or head to sexgetsreal.com/ep172 to learn about it. Of course, folks on Patreon who pledge at $20 or higher get free access to those calls. And if you want to support me at $1 or $3 or $5 a month- every single dollar helps so much, and I appreciate it. So go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show or head to sexgetsreal.com/ep172 to learn about those live bi-weekly calls I’m doing all about love sex and relationship skills.

So Cooper Beckett is the co-founder and host of Life on The Swing Set the podcast since 2010. Author of swinging and polyamory novels, A Life Less Monogamous and Approaching The Swingularity, and the memoir My Life on The Swing Set: Adventures in Swinging and Polyamory. He teaches and speaks on swinging, polyamory, pegging parties, and coloring outside the boundaries of your sexuality. He is a graphic and web designer, photographer and voiceover artist. He’s been a guest expert on Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast and is the announcer of Tristen Taormino’s radio show Sex Out Loud. He’s currently working on two instructional nonfiction books. One about beginning non-monogamy and another about pegging. Of course, because he loves pegging and Tristan, we both love her, that is where we start the show. So here we go and enjoy.

Dawn Serra: Welcome back to Sex Gets Real, Cooper. I’m so excited to have you here.

Cooper Beckett: I’m so excited to be back. Thank you for having me back.

Dawn Serra: You are so welcome.

Cooper Beckett: It’s been two years now right?

Dawn Serra: Yeah, it’s been a while. Actually last time you were here.,I think I still had a co-host.

Cooper Beckett: Wow. Yeah. I remember that you did have a co-host.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Dylan. She had amazing professional things happening for her that required her to step away from podcast life, since this was just a fun thing for her, whereas it’s more my job for me.

Cooper Beckett: Isn’t that what we all hope for, though is that an amazing thing will come along and take us away in whatever we’re doing?

Dawn Serra: Yeah, exactly. That the perfect storm will happen and the thing that we’ve always wanted will land in our laps. And that happened for her.

Cooper Beckett: Well, that’s great.

Dawn Serra: I can’t fault her for that at all. We send her lots of love, but you’ve been up to all kinds of awesome stuff.

Cooper Beckett: Oh, it’s because I can’t stop working. I just never stop.

Dawn Serra: You have books that you’re writing and then audio versions of that with many, many, many actors. You’ve got SS Desire and you’ve got several podcasts that you’re on. So you’re not joking when you say you work a lot and do a lot of interesting things.

Cooper Beckett: All that all fits around day to day life. So it’s too much really for any one person.

Dawn Serra: So let’s hear about SS Desire. I know that Tristan Taormino is going to be there this year, which is a huge draw.

Cooper Beckett: Oh, yeah. We are so thrilled that she can join us for the first time. She’s never been to Desire Resort in Cancun. And this is our sixth trip there and our second takeover. So we run the resort for a week in November. I’m so excited to introduce her to our group there, because I’ve always felt like she and I are looking for the same communities. And that’s what this trip really represents to me, is building my community once a year in a concentrated place, but then spreading that out over the rest of the year. It’s a lot like what Burning Man is to everybody who’s come back from Burning Man. It’s that space outside of reality. She and I are going to teach an anal class together.

Dawn Serra: Oh my God, what a dream.

Cooper Beckett: I know. I’ve been teaching a pegging class with my partner Ophelia every year where the nice thing about going to a Swinger resort is your classes don’t have to be theoretical.

Dawn Serra: You’re like, “Here’s me actually being pegged.”

Cooper Beckett: Indeed. So we talked about it, Ophelia and I have talked about it and then I lie down and she pegs me, and then we talk about what’s happening. Then I usually have a prostate orgasm and need to defer on the talking to her. But this year, Tristan’s going to be there also with a strap on and she’s going to be demonstrating and talking about anal on women. So we’re running the gamut.

Dawn Serra: Oh, that’s so fun.

Cooper Beckett: I know. I’m probably more excited about that than anything else.

Dawn Serra: I have to say, I’ve taught a lot of different workshops about a lot of different things. But I think that what’s really common for so many people is that even if you take a class, there’s still that element of fear of like, “This is new, this is an edge. This is a boundary.” “I don’t know if it’s for me. Everybody else in this room might love it, but I don’t know if it’s for me.” But there’s something really special when you can actually get to see people do it. And the way that folks like you and Tristan, in Ophelia would negotiate and adjust, and talk in a moment and make it fun. I really think that lowers the barrier to entry even more, because people are like, “Well, he looks like he’s having fun. Maybe I can have fun too.”

Cooper Beckett: It’s funny you say that because two years ago, I was having some physical issues and I had to stop mid-way through the pegging class. A lot of anal play for men can bring up a lot of emotional baggage and unexpected emotional baggage too. So having to stop this class that I’ve taught so many times brought up a lot for me. The group of people who were there were saying that it was actually better that they saw that than a completed class, because it showed unequivocally that sometimes it doesn’t work. And it’s okay to stop, which is something I don’t think we learn with sex stuff. You’re just sort of supposed to continue on right or force it.

A lot of men who have erectile issues, they try to force it. There is nothing less effective in treating erectile issues in the moment than then trying to force an erection, because it’s just not really possible. So it’s cool because since it’s real and it’s demonstrated right there – and we invite people that if they want to do the pegging thing next to us in tandem, they can. So if they want to watch and do it at the same time, they can. That’s just an experience you really can’t get in the States. But, really, in general, I think.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, that makes me think of so many things. One of the things I was thinking about, as you were talking was, I really love pegging my husband. And one of the things that that taught me was when he’s receiving his very vocal about like, “Okay, slow down.” “Speed up.” “Hold still.” “That’s a good spot.” “Oop, that’s too much.” “We’ve got to stop now.” Hearing him be vocal actually gave me permission to be way more vocal when he’s fucking me. Oftentimes, we’re socialized to, “No, it’ll get better just wait for it to get better.” And instead it’s like, “No, if he can be bossy to me when I’ve got something on his ass, then I can be bossy to him when he’s doing things to all my holes.”

Cooper Beckett: Absolutely.

Dawn Serra: Right? But I had the chance to see a hand sex class with Amy Jo Goddard last year, and she had demos. There was something really beautiful watching the people in the room who had never seen sex happen before. They’d seen it in porn, or maybe in their own lives, but to actually sit in a room with people at a conference, who had never seen sex happen in front of them. There was something really beautiful that unfolded. And I could actually see it happening in people kind of this sigh or this like, “Oh, okay, this is okay.” Or even, “Maybe it’s not the worst thing to use my hands.” There’s so much permission, I think, in like, “Let’s go to this Desire week and watch people have sex, and go to these awesome classes,” and get to see things you’re not going to see anywhere else, and to really get to marinate in all of those experiences

Cooper Beckett: And without the theatricality that accompanies the sex we watch, because I mean, even so called amateur porn still looks more theatrical- almost anyone participating in porn is doing it as a performance. So really, one of my favorite things about non-monogamy is that I have the opportunity to see what real sex looks like a lot more than I ever had before.

Dawn Serra: I was wondering as I was reading your new book, Approaching Swingularity, which has lots of sex in it.

Cooper Beckett: I felt like I put too little in my last novel, A Life Less Monogamous. So I felt like I’ll just swing wildly in the other direction.

Dawn Serra: Yes, so anyone looking for a book full of all different kinds of sex, this is the book for you. But I’m wondering – it’s very clear that so much of this book is based on SS Desire and your take over, and the things that you’ve seen and personally witnessed and experienced. I’m wondering how much of it is really informed by the people that you know, the relationships you’ve had, the things you’ve been told that happens to people there. Because it feels very real.

Cooper Beckett: I mean, I’ve always felt like I’m pretty good at synthesizing. I’ll take input from a lot of sources and can combine them and alter them, and come out with something unique. So the biggest thing that happened to me as I was writing this book, is I found myself basically fragmenting my personality. There is huge chunks of me in all seven – there are seven lead characters in this book. And there is something major from my personality in every one of them. So Krista, one of the two lesbians, has the conflicted sex drive that I have. Ryan has the anxiety that I have and the curiosity that I have. I could imbued with These characters with these major, major things that I dislike about myself, I guess. It’s fun because it allows me to really explore from a position that I know. Then take a lot of other things that I’ve heard or that I’ve seen or that I’ve experienced, and blend that together.

The big thing that I tell people is that there is no one person in this book that is based on a person I know. But there are people that share similarities. There are people that are – there are characters who are based on seven people I know in this amalgamation where they may read it and not realize that it’s partially them, which is important to me because I find it– I think it’s lazy fiction to just write someone you know. The most obvious correlation is between the character of Paige and Ginger, my co-host from the podcast. Paige and Ginger are not the same person. But I find when I’m at a loss for what Paige might be saying, I think about what Ginger would say in that situation. So she’s my keystone for this character.

Cooper Beckett: A lot of the characters have a central keystone that when I’m stuck, I go here. But the events, the things that happened in the book, I’ve seen all this shit. I mean, not necessarily in those configurations, but similar. What I really wanted to get across, too, and if you sign up for my mailing list, you can read the first four chapters for free. And the first four chapters include – three of the chapters are sex scenes, not just include sex scenes, are sex scenes. What I wanted to nail down and I found myself doing this unconsciously before I just reflected on these chapters is the idea that as much as we want to be fully 100% present in the moment for sex, rarely are we. It’s not that we’re not there, it’s just that there’s life and there’s distraction, and there’s anxiety, and there’s these things that we think about ourselves and our partners. And I wanted to address the idea that while we’re having this amazing sex, we’re also, yes, disturbed by the fact that we lost our job.

We can swing back and forth into the really hot stuff and then the distraction moment. A lot of people have told me that the sex in this is is sort of more real than they usually read. I think that’s what it is. Because we so often, when we’re writing sex, we’re writing sex as this transcendent moment. And sometimes it is. But I know as a person who almost never gets out of my head, I never can quiet the voice. That voice amuses me. Not in the moment, but it amuses me in general, because I feel like it’s something that we don’t talk about.

Dawn Serra: I totally agree. I actually really loved that in those first couple of chapters. This specifically kind of, “I’m going to obsess about this person and why they’re texting us,” or whatever it is. Andm “No, no, no, no, I want to come back and be here with this person.” And then the thought drifts in again, and “Oh, wow. That felt really good on my clit.” And, “Oh, I’m still thinking about the thing, oh, I feel an orgasm coming.”

The fact that we can call ourselves back over and over and over again. And sometimes we don’t need to do that, sometimes it’s just, “I am so lost in what’s happening.” But I think you’re so right, the reality is that often we are thinking about how our body looks or the weird smell that we just smelled, or that text that we got from our mom 15 minutes ago or whatever it is. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still enjoy it. We just have to work with how it is.

Cooper Beckett: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like when you put that type of thing in fiction, it helps lessen the anxiety of people who wonder if that makes them abnormal. I really tried to do that a lot in this book, is address those things that we worry about. And when I say we, I mean very clearly because I worry about everything. One of the biggest regulatory moments for me in media was seeing high fidelity for the first time. And high fidelity is that John Cusack movie from I think late 90s, maybe early 2000s. What it was revelatory about it is that he is not a traditional romantic lead. He fucks up. He makes poor decisions. He’s not always thinking of everybody else around him. And what is that if not everybody that’s our lives? So my characters do bad things, they make bad decisions. And they fuck up because I need to see that in media, because I always feel like a fuckup. So I need to see fuck ups because it makes me feel less of a fuckup. There was a focus of mine, then

Dawn Serra: There was this one point in the book where you remember one of the characters is being indecisive. And in that indecision, he’s actually making a decision that is hurting his wife. So she was like, “Well, I’m going to go off and do the thing that I wanted to do and you can just sit here and either not do the thing or do the thing that’s destructive or whatever.” And he has to kind of contend with that. That speaks so much to so much of the distress and the pain that I see in emails that come in here from people who are struggling with those tough decisions or who have made mistakes and are trying to find ways to recover, or whether or not to share the thing. So I really appreciate it that you had things like that in your book because those are real.

I mean, I think the amazing thing is it’s like this super sexy sex fucking-filled about basically what happens at SS Desire, and it brings in the reality of what it means to be in relationship and navigating all these different conversations, and feeling anxious or terror about yourself or not wanting to be naked in front of others. I mean, that, to me, is like one giant permission slip that’s also really super sexy.

Cooper Beckett: Oh, excellent. Good. Yes, yes. And I like fucking up the characters. I just like that. So this is sort of a sequel. It follows the same characters as my first book and more, but I made it so it wouldn’t be dependent on having read the first one. But in the first one, the main couple go through hell as they open up their relationship and it nearly breaks them. They’ve met this couple that they see as perfect – the veteran swingers. So when I started writing this one and started breaking out my story, I realized that I wanted their storyline to be internal rather than external. They’re not going to be fighting each other, they’re going to be fighting themselves. Then I immediately said, “Well, we’re going to see exactly how not perfect this other couple is.” I’m going to nearly destroy their relationship. It’s also, I mean, why read fiction, if there’s not catharsis of some sort going on? So I feel like it’s big. But, it’s important.

Dawn Serra: So I’m wondering for people who are curious about SS Desire and what it might be like, do you think reading this book is a really good way for them to be a little bit voyeuristic of, “What actually happens there? Does that sound fun for me?” Would you say this is a pretty accurate representation of the general flow and some of the things that you may see things you may hear if you were to attend such an event?

Cooper Beckett: I think so. Yes. I also will caution them that the intensity of the book is mostly, again, internal. It’s mostly people dealing with their own demons. So it may seem a little bit more intense than it might actually be. But at the same time, this is a – if you think about the intensity of a swinger party, it’s that you’re going to a place probably because you want to fuck other people. So you’re taking the intensity of a night out at the bar where you’re trying to pick someone up, and you’re taking the intensity of, “Okay, now I have performance anxiety,” or whatever. Then you’re extending that to a lot of people also wanting to pick people up and being naked for much of the time. Then you’re extending that again for seven days. It catches up to me every year. You can ride hard, ride life hard. Then about two thirds of the way through the week, you realize, “Okay, I am mortal after all. I need to dial it back or I will just completely disintegrate.” So you have your down moment.

What I did is, I spread these couples’ down moments across the book. So that’s why it’s extra intense, but desire is unlike any place on Earth. It’s so much at once, and it’s so much amazing at once because it’s one of the few times I really get to be in a legitimate community of people who love each other and treat each other unbelievably well. Obviously, not everybody because it’s people. At the same time, it’s incredibly cathartic because you work through things. Because that’s what we do when we’re in intense life situations, we work through our own baggage, we work through our own demons. Every year there’s something that comes up for me that I’m surprised by and happy that I worked through, but maybe not happy in the moment that I’m dealing with it. This past year was a certain thing that happened on a certain Tuesday in November. So there was that I had to work through.

Dawn Serra: That’s fucking terrible.

Cooper Beckett: Yeah. There were a lot of people wandering around like how do we still have fun?

Dawn Serra: Right, yeah. So you talked about how every year for you, there’s these amazing experiences and also these lessons that you’re processing. I know you have been doing Life on The Swing Set, the podcast, since 2010. So you’ve been doing it now for over seven years. I mean, for you, what has that arc been like?

Cooper Beckett: Oh, god.

Dawn Serra: What are the big things that, for you, have either changed or the common threads that keep coming up?

Cooper Beckett: The most common thread is that I don’t know what I’m doing. I think that’s important. But, when I started, I was a fairly traditional swinger. By traditional swinger, I mean, I was part of a couple who would get together with other couples and swap partners, and sometimes have more of an orgy, but generally it was one to one and two to two. I thought the way swingers thought, I didn’t much care about safer sex beyond condoms for penetration because most people don’t much care about safer sex, beyond condoms for penetration. I thought about unicorns the way most people do that, “Hey, we can bring this person into our lives to serve a function for us.” And that’s a horrible way to think about another human being. So, my first book, my memoir, My Life on The Swing Set was cobbled together from five years of blog posts. And I cringe when I look at the beginning of that book, at who I was then. I wasn’t a bad person, but I feel like I’ve evolved so dramatically since then. A lot of it is that I no longer – I try not to box myself.

I went from monogamy, which is a box to swinging, which is a slightly bigger box. And that was so limiting and I didn’t know it. So now I focus much more on every individual interaction and what this is going to be. Are we going to be lifelong friends? Are you going to be a flash in the pan interaction? Is it a one night stand? Is it a relationship? Is it fuck buddies? What is it? What do we have? That was a tremendous gift of freedom to start looking at it that way. Because of that, because I found that freedom, I started looking at almost everything in life that way – that I will see what it looks like when it looks like something I’m trying so hard not to determine in advance what things will be. Because that’s also a major source of stress for me. That’s my evolution. The realization that I’m not done evolving is the most important thing that I’ve learned. Because I was married, long-term married, before. I had been married for seven years before I opened up. And as grown ups, we sort of think we’ve stopped evolving. That may be true for some of us. But I think in general, we think we’ve stopped evolving because we see the limit of our existence. That limit of our existence, the appearance of a limit, is actually what’s limiting us.

Cooper Beckett: So all these projects I work on, I work on them because I can’t not – not because I think this is going to be the thing that catapults me somewhere else. It’s because I’m going to try this for a while and if this doesn’t work, I’m going to try this for a while. When I started the podcast seven years ago, I wasn’t thinking about a year later. And it’s amazing to me that I started something open-ended. Most projects I do have endings, eventually the book comes out. But the podcast is a completely different beast. Because it doesn’t have an ending. It will end at some point, but theoretically, it could not. And that’s a weird thing to wrap your mind around when you think about it.

Dawn Serra: It really is.

Cooper Beckett: Because, how do you know when you’re done? So what’s great about the way I work projects is I hurl myself into things before I have time to realize how much work they’ll be. I never would start a podcast the way I did. Because it’s easier to do a one on one interview podcast, obviously, wrangling people and voiceover tracks. So it’s a good thing. I didn’t think about it.

Dawn Serra: “I’m just going to do this thing.”

Cooper Beckett: Because it’s wonderful. It is responsible for nearly everything in my life. I think when we overthink at the beginning of anything, we run the risk of limiting ourselves from those beautiful accidents. Literally my partner, Ophelia, I met because she heard the podcast, and I never would have met her if I hadn’t done this crazy stupid time-sucking thing. So everything I do, every interaction with another person, every project I start, I try not to… It’s so different from the rest of my existence, which is worry about everything. I try not to think at all beyond the starting point, if I can help it. That was a very long answer. I’m not even sure I was answering your question.

Dawn Serra: No, it was wonderful. I think one of the things that’s so beautiful about everything you just shared is, so many of the questions and the stories that I get here, which are often very long and very vulnerable, is frequently tied to these very set expectations around what my body should be doing, how it should look, the type of relationship that I need to be in how I feel about porn, how sex should happen in order for it to count as sex. It’s all of these small little boxes that people feel so much pain and suffering around, because it’s not quite working and they’re trying to find the way to make it work without having to change or to say the scary stuff. And hearing you and your story, and how you have moved from being in these boxes and having these expectations to now trying to allow yourself to just know that, “It’s never done. I’m just going to keep learning, evolving.” I mean, that sounds like – it’s not that it’s going to be suffering or pain free as we all know. But it gives you this opportunity to like, “Well, here’s where I am. So where can I go from here?” Instead of, “I shouldn’t be here. Let me try and change the things.”

Cooper Beckett: Yes, yes. There absolutely is pain and suffering from this approach. And you do protect yourself. I liken it to the difference between monogamy and nonmonogamy. You are sort of protecting yourself from falling in love with someone else in monogamy. It’s not a complete protection. You still may do it. But since you’re not actively looking around, you probably won’t. So opening up to nonmonogamy it’s like, “Okay, now the training wheels are off, the limits are off. I could do this at any time.” And yeah, it could blow up in your face. Absolutely. But it’s an artificial appearance of protection when you don’t take risks.

The realization, for me, I got divorced. And that changed the way I think about a lot of things. I think that’s really one of the cornerstones of my non-monogamous experience is because so many people who are monogamous, and I’m not picking on monogamy at all, but so many people who aren’t monogamous think that their partner just won’t leave them – that somehow monogamy or marriage or fiance or relationship boyfriend-girlfriend – somehow that’s locking them in. They’ve locked in this commitment and it’s going to be there. The realization that anybody can leave at any time, literally anybody for any reason at any time, can walk out on you. Because it’s true. We don’t think about that because it’s terrifying. But it’s also amazing. Because if my partner could at any moment for any reason leave, that means she’s choosing not to. Choosing to be there is an active thing rather than a passive thing. Being somewhere because you have to or you need it is passive, and it’s desperate. But doing something because you want it. That’s amazing. It was a complete mind shift for me. That really anyone, I keep harping on it, because it’s amazing to me that I never considered that. That anyone could leave. It’s something that I recommend to every relationship is recognize the fragility of relationships because fragility causes you to treat it with care – not to be like a sterile environment and surrounded with bubble wrap, but to care, emotionally care. And that’s amazing.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. That’s one of the things that I think is so important when it comes to relationships. The more that we can really open ourselves up to the fact that there’s no guarantee that, at any point, a myriad of things can go wrong, can we then use that as inspiration to keep really showing up? To actually let ourselves be seen, to have those hard conversations, to ask those scary questions; and to not ever get to a point where we just think, “Well we’re both here and we’re stuck, so I might as well tolerate it but kind of ignore you, and not treat you really good. I don’t really want to hear about your day, so I’m just going to ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ you.” And instead realize if I keep doing that, there might be a morning when I wake up and the other person says, “I’m really tired of this and guess what, I am leaving.”

Cooper Beckett: Exactly. There are a lot of things that I don’t do because I’m afraid, and it’s something that I work on every day and I’m getting better at it. I’m taking risks. But still anxiety and chronic depression and all these things holding me back. And the more we can beat that back, and this is one of those do what I say not as I do things, the happier we’ll be. I have a really close friend who met a new awesome person, and then went out of town and he died. We obviously know that we’re all going to die. It’s going to happen. But we think that it’s going to happen way off and is so far off it doesn’t matter. We need to think that because otherwise we succumb to despair. There’s this really fine weird balance that I’m striving for. I haven’t found it, where I can see the fragility of life and my death and use it as an engine of change. And I think that’s the secret to life, and if I can just nail that down… Because why do we do anything instead of just sitting at home and watching comfort television? It’s because we need to live.

I used this mantra in my first novel. The couple was having relationship problems and they were feeling like they were just coasting through life. They had the mantra that, “Today’s the day we live, because just existing is not enough.” I spent a lot of my life just existing. And it was fine. There’s honestly nothing wrong with just existing, because you can be happy, you can live a life. But then I saw beyond it – going to Desire every year, It’s the closest to pure transcendence I’ve ever experienced. I’m not a spiritual person by any means. But going to this place where I can truly connect with so many people in such a short intense time span, it’s led me to aspire to that more often and that’s beyond just existing. So you can’t just keep… Wow, I guess I’m having an existential day.

Dawn Serra: We love witnessing you in that. And it’s like making me have my own – hearing you talk about–

Cooper Beckett: I hope it’s a good one. I hope I haven’t just put you down the rabbit hole.

Dawn Serra: No, not at all. But it is giving me a chance to have some reflection and find some words around a thing that – I have anxiety and panic disorder and I have trauma, so I do a lot of the constant worrying and self-talking stuff. For me, where I try to balance all of the little demons in my head and frequently fail is the edge of – I love my husband very much. He is an amazing, phenomenal human being, and we’ve created a relationship that’s beautiful. So I want that to continue to be a source that feeds the both of us. The demon side, the little voices in my head, tell me all the ways that I’m never going to live up to what he needs, so he’s going to leave at any moment, and so I need to constantly be working on myself or it’s going to end.

On the other side, I have this reverence for what we are co-creating. So I want to show up, and I want to try new things, and practice new thoughts, and maybe fail at them because that’s about growing together. It’s a very fine line between doing it from the place of not enough and doing it from the place of this is for both of us, this is for me, this is for us trying new things and seeing where we end up – no guarantees. And allowing myself to flop back and forth between the two and hopefully I get better and better at that, that I kind of move in the more abundant direction but in the more scarcity direction. But both of them happen and I’m constantly practicing that tightrope walk and failing frequently, but still getting back up and trying again.

Cooper Beckett: I think the key to any of it is failure. As a person who doesn’t exercise, it’s ironic I’m about to use an exercise. But when you’re making muscle, you’re literally tearing the fibers of the muscle as you work out. You’re literally damaging yourself, and then healing is what makes you stronger. That’s another terrifying revelation that I had was that the pain is what gives us the better. I was just talking to someone, a friend of mine, today who they just moved from really casual swinging into poly. It just came on really quickly for both members of the couple. And they’re dealing with how overwhelming it is. They’ve dealt with emotions like this before but never at the same time and never towards other people, and never having to see their partner, so there’s all this stuff.

I said the highs are much higher in poly than in monogamy and it’s my opinion, the lows are much lower in poly than in monogamy. You’re vacillating wildly on this sine wave here. But what’s amazing is when you can just dial it up a little bit, because as you improve yourself, which is what all of this is about – improving yourself, as you improve yourself, you pull the lows up. Maybe to the level of monogamy, maybe to the level of your best days. If you can pull your lows up higher, the highs are still – the peaks are really high. When people ask me if I’d ever be monogamous again, it’s one of the few things I am not hesitant to give an absolute, “I don’t believe I could ever not be open.” It’s because I’ve seen behind the curtain, and behind the curtain are these amazing transcendent peaks and experiences. Yeah, it’s really hard and it doesn’t get easier, you just get better. But only if you want it – only if you work on it.

Cooper Beckett: So it’s not about it’s not about your relationship. It’s not about your partner, it’s about you. We always need to be focused on being a better person, always, in every aspect of our lives. Because when we are, it improves everything. Iit improves all our relationships, it improves work, it improves what we do, it probably will improve how we sleep eventually. But it’s got to be about us, because you can’t change anyone. That’s another thing along those lines if anyone can leave. You actually cannot improve someone. They have to do it for themselves. The only way you can make them want to, really, is by improving yourself if you can have this aspirational challenge like you were just talking about. You want to live up to this opinion that you have of what your husband deserves. So that will encourage you to work on improving.

I’m confident that that goalpost is not nearly as far away as you think it is. But the best part about having a farther goal is you work harder. It sucks because you have to deal with that existential emotional dread, but that’s how we improve. I’m, without a doubt, a better person than I was a year ago, five years ago, eight years ago when I started non-monogamy – without question, I’m a better person now. Honestly, if I can continue to do that, even just a little bit, I think that’s what a life lived is. Because it’s not really about anyone else in the end. It’s about experience. It’s about me, which sounds selfish now, and I’m not sure why it sounds so selfish.

Dawn Serra: No, I think it sounds beautiful. I mean it goes back to you talking about that passive versus active approach to life and relationship where so many of us, because of the cultural soup that we’re swimming in, approach relationships and sex from this very passive thing, like it should just happen. It should just be there, it should just work out. But when we approach sex in a very active way, and we encourage our partners to be active in showing up amazing things happen, that’s where we have the opportunity to have transcendent sex. Because we’re both actively showing up in the same for relationships. I mean, even if you’re asexual and aromantic, and you don’t want any kind of partner, you still have relationships in your life.

Cooper Beckett: Yes. It is impossible to live a life without relationships.

Dawn Serra: Right. If I’m actively working on being a better communicator, if I’m actively working at setting better boundaries and listening to myself, and being more curious about others, and really being able to open myself up to the ever changing miss of another human being – everything around me is going to improve, but that’s really coming from me trying and practicing these skills, and falling down. You’re right, it creates this community effective, everyone starts leveling up together. And I think that’s where we start getting really powerful change happening is when we all level up together. But it has to start with us doing that work. I think so many people are trying to find ways to not do that work because it’s scary and uncomfortable.

Cooper Beckett: And it’s easy not to.

Dawn Serra: Right.

Cooper Beckett: I will, I’m just going to point out, I’m willing to avoid the political aspects of what you just said. I’m just going to avoid it. Because it’s so true. Usually I’m more fun. I’ve had a very rough week. So I’m very much in existential, philosophical mode. At the same time, there’s this incredibly silly and fun thing that accompanies sex, especially when you move into sex with many people. Because a lot of us have a lot of reverence for sex, we sort of build it up to be so much more important than it actually is. It’s really worse when we’re having very little of it. Especially if we’re in a relationship where we want more sex, and it’s just not happening, and our partner does or doesn’t – the imbalance, which is literally the most common relationship problem is an imbalance sex drive. You know what, almost everybody’s is imbalanced. That’s just true. So we build it up to be, “If only we could have sex…”

Dawn Serra: “All these other things will be fine.”

Cooper Beckett: Yeah. I mean, that’s incredibly unfair to sex. Because it’s not all that and this may just be the swinger talking, but sex can just be a wonderful way to spend a half hour. It can be silly, and it can be distracted, and it can be funny, and it can be a handjob or a blowjob or eating someone out and nothing else. You mentioned that sex needs to be a certain thing – it doesn’t. When we make it so much more important and put it on this pedestal, and it has to be us in dim light with music, and it will last for an hour and we will have penetrative sex, and we will both orgasm – it’s unrealistic expectations. When you can just have fun with it. Oh, it’s wonderful.

I think there’s a pureness to sexuality in non-monogamy and a pureness, I’ll acknowledge, is a weird word to use for it. In that, it is what it is. It’s It’s literally about the sex in those moments. And that teaches us to look at it differently. Because if it’s only about the sex, about fucking, and that’s also a wonderfully beneficial thing is if you can call it fucking sometimes. It can lead to de-mystifying it. I keep cutting you.

Dawn Serra: It’s okay. I just want to build on what you just said of – I’ve talked at length on the show about how because of toxic masculinity, and sexism, and misogyny, and patriarchy, that often men in particular, are only able to find ways to get so many of their needs met through sex. So sex becomes a coded way of saying, “I need affection” or “I need to feel seen.” “I need to feel valued.” I think one of the beautiful things about what you’re saying is when we can take sex down off the pedestal and acknowledge that sometimes it’s just this physical thing that maybe it got a little sweaty and my heart rate went up, or maybe I just got to share this moment with these other people. It kind of starts to highlight, “Wow, I have all these other places where I’m still not feeling seen or heard. So maybe it’s not the sex, maybe it’s, “I don’t know, actually, how to ask for affection” or “Maybe I don’t express my feelings.” It really shows you all the things you’ve been hiding behind under the guise of “It’s sex.”

Cooper Beckett: Yeah. Deep.

Dawn Serra: Oh, my gosh! We’re so smart. Everyone gets to hear how smart we are. Let’s just put that out there. I’m wondering, would you have time to help me field one question of a guy about orgasm issues?

Cooper Beckett: I promise not to take it to an existential.

Dawn Serra: We shall see. So David wrote in, the subject line says: “Cis guy who struggles to orgasm.” His email says,

“Hi, I’m a 26 year old cis guy in a monogamous relationship with a 23 year old cis woman. We’re both queer, and she has exclusively dated women until me, so we navigate intimacy, sex, and pleasure very creatively and openly. I discovered your podcast series while looking for a podcast that discusses orgasms and people who struggle to achieve them. And not surprisingly, your podcast has discussed the difficulty almost exclusively within the confines of people with vulvas. I have struggled with achieving orgasm in sex with a partner my entire life. While I can easily reach orgasm through masturbation, orgasming with a partner is difficult and often impossible. My current partner is the least judging or pressure-inducing partner in this regard that I’ve been with and yet, I’ve only achieved orgasm in sex once in the past couple of months of dating. Understanding how trying misses for me, we have alternative ways of helping me including various incarnations of prostate stimulation and topping me through DS play. So I was wondering what advice and other sexperts might have for men who struggle with achieving orgasms in sex with partners, and how people in general who struggle with orgasming, navigate relaxing, focusing and letting go. Three conflicting concepts often promoted to achieve orgasm. Thank you.”

Cooper Beckett: Wow. Okay, I’ve got a lot of thoughts.

Dawn Serra: Go!

Cooper Beckett: Okay. First off to give context, I have struggled a lot with performance issues over the course of, especially over the course of non-monogamy, because it’s an intense thing. So I went through a long period where I had erectile issues. I definitely have orgasm issues occasionally here and there. And I’m going to say a number of things that are going to sound obvious and sound like “You make it sound easy, but it’s not.” I know it’s not. So first is “achieve orgasm” is a phrase I want you to stop using. Because it’s not an achievement. It’s a thing. It’s a physical thing that happens. That’s it. It’s no different, ultimately, than getting an erection, getting penetrated. It’s just a thing that happens in sex.

When we talked about not defining sex as only penetrative, and how important that was, not defining orgasm as the goal of a sexual encounter is also tremendously important. I know we want it, because we want orgasms because orgasms feel good. Absolutely. But it’s not the goal of the encounter. There’s so much that goes on in the middle, especially if you’re doing prostate play or it sounds like you have a wonderfully open and communicative relationship, which is fantastic. But even so, you are putting pressure on yourself to orgasm, which is putting pressure on her to help you orgasm. So everybody’s goal is this elusive thing. The whole “Relax, it’ll get better,” is true, because that’s actually how it gets better. But being told to relax is again like, “Just don’t think about the fact that you can’t get hard.” When it is literally the only thing that you are thinking about at the moment. So how do we do that?

Cooper Beckett: There’s a few things here. One thing I would advise for the foreseeable future is go into any sexual encounter not planning to orgasm. Not in a not a, “Oh, I won’t orgasm, so who cares?” Try to reframe it completely so that’s just not part of the goal. Because if it’s not part of the goal, it gets easier because you’re not thinking about it. It’s like when people are having erectile issues – when I was having erectile issues, I’ll make it about me. What I would do is then go down on the person because it’s nearly impossible to be thinking about your erectile issues when you’re licking pussy. Nearly. I mean, you can still think about it, as I demonstrated in my book – you still think about every feeling you have. And when I say you, I mean me. So if you can distract yourself from the goal as much as possible, and no it’s not realistic to say all the time, but as much as possible, then that’s ideal.

Next, and I’m going to say this like a douchebag, why is masturbating yourself to orgasm during sex not achieving orgasm during sex?

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Cooper Beckett: Because, if the shoe was on the other foot, it is what every bit of advice for women who have difficulty achieving orgasm with a partner is told to do, “Use your fingers, use a vibrator. Get yourself there.” If you have an orgasm in the middle of a sexual encounter, it doesn’t matter who actually created it. It’s part of the encounter. So if you are able to masturbate yourself to orgasm, then just start doing it. Or get yourself really close if you’re fluid bonded especially get yourself really close, and then start fucking, and then have your orgasm internally because I know that’s an important thing for a lot of people – I get it, completely.

The last thing, and the thing that makes it very difficult for me to come from a blowjob, from a handjob, really only from from intense friction sex is – I believe Dan Savage coined it – Masturbation Death-grip Syndrome. Probably the problem here. As a man who masturbates differently than most men, I’ll just let you all use your imagination. It’s really difficult to get people to use their hand the way I use my hand. They shouldn’t have to, honestly. They should be able to just stroke and it would be fine. So it’s really a concern – everything I’ve said up till now is about making it less of a concern. Because, ultimately, that’s a good goal to shoot for is to not be worried about it. If you really want this, if it’s very important to you, that’s fine.

Cooper Beckett: Look at the way you’re masturbating and try it differently. Try it differently every time. Use more lube so it’s slicker. Use a looser grip because most people who have problems like this, it’s that you are squeezing yourself too damn hard. And you’re making it because… Vaginas don’t squeeze you like that unless the women are very good at kegels, in which case, sometimes they do. So you will never be able to replicate your experience with your hand with a vagina. And that’s okay because they’re different. But if you really want that to happen, I actually did… What’s the name– Fleshlight! Fleshlight has a trainer kit, that’s about removing the masturbation death grip syndrome from you. The idea is you buy a looser fleshlight and you only allow yourself to cum with that, you obviously don’t have to buy a fleshlight to do that. The key is, you can’t just revert to what you’re doing. Sometimes I’ll try something different and when it’s not working, I’ll just go back to the way that works. All that’s doing is reinforcing to your body that this is how we cum.

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Cooper Beckett: That is the thing, your body – it’s a completely different thing. We’ve talked about the mental portion, but the physical portion is all about neural pathways. You can’t just fix that by thinking about it. They actually have to be rewritten. The way to rewrite them is to deprive yourself from orgasms, unless– If you don’t masturbate for a while, and you keep having all the sex you’re having with your partner, eventually, you’re going to cum. Because your body is going to build it up. You know how exciting that’ll be the first time you cum from just that. Then your body will be like, “Oh, yeah, right. That’s how we do it. That’s a reward.” So all of this is a fancy way of saying, “Yeah, you got to relax a little. You gotta want it a little less.” Because that’s how you make it happen, by wanting it a little less. And that is the most frustrating way to look at it. But it is the only thing that helped with my erectile issues. It is the only thing that has helped with my overall feelings about sexuality, in fact, is when it was goal-driven, it was not as good. It included failures because it’s easy to be a failure if you’re not meeting a goal. But if you don’t have a goal, what are you failing at? If you don’t have an end game goal and you’re having sex, you’re having sex. So you’ve already succeeded at having sex. You didn’t cum, that’s a different thing. If you can’t leave that part alone, it’s the masturbation death-grip syndrome, I’m betting. But they both sound so sex positive.

Dawn Serra: They really do.

Cooper Beckett: I want them to see behind the – it’s the lifting of the veil – I want them to see behind the stage and realize that the orgasm is not as important as we think it is.

Dawn Serra: Yeah that was what was coming up for me. I so want to co-sign everything you said. I love the approach of like, “Let’s not orgasm. That’s literally what we’re not going to do where. We’re just going to do all the things and let it feel really good, and try all the ways. At no point are we going to worry about me having an orgasm, that’s the kind of sex we’re going to have. It’s orgasm-free sex for me.” Then see what happens. I think you’re so right that so much of this also comes down to when we remove the goal, it opens up the creativity. I was thinking both of Barbara Carrellas’s books, Ecstasy is Necessary and Urban Tantra, might be really interesting. Because Barbara talks at length about thinking off and having mental orgasms and finding ecstatic release that have nothing to do with your genitals. And that’s applicable for people who are able bodied and cis, and it’s also amazingly applicable to people with disabilities or trans folks. So if it works for them, it can work for you. And just approaching it that way.

I’m also wondering, what does the orgasm mean? Why is it important? Because I think that’s something that we don’t ask ourselves, we just assume it’s because everyone wants to orgasm. But why for you, David, is the orgasm important? Is it because you get a physical release? Because there’s lots of other ways that we can make physical release happen. I mean, I experience amazing physical release in the most shuttering body melting sensations after a really good flogging session. Or is it because it feels really good? There’s lots of ways for it to feel really good. And it’s not like it’s about having the wrong answer, but maybe giving yourself an opportunity to really understand, is this about feeling broken? Because if it’s about feeling broken, then that’s going to actually make your body feel betrayed and shut down. So asking all these questions. I’m also curious, why not try a magic wand?

Cooper Beckett: Oh, yeah, yeah. Think outside the box.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, use a vibrator. See what happens. I mean, maybe if your partner holds a vibrator, against the base of your cock while you’re stroking yourself, you’ll have an orgasm while your partner’s present. Because of the email that David wrote, there’s a part of me that really feels hopeful that if the answer is, “I just can’t orgasm with other people in the room. So can we get super sexy and I’ll get you off and we’ll feel super good.Then when I’m ready to cum, can you just go step outside and have a glass of wine, and I’ll make myself cum.” Then, I don’t know. I just have this feeling of being able to walk back in the room after he’s cum and just celebrate his fucking cum all over his chest and kissing each other post orgasm or whateve.That doesn’t make it less sex. It’s just a different way of having sex.

Cooper Beckett: Sometimes we have to change the game.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for helping me answer that. I love that you shared so much of yourself with that.

Cooper Beckett: My pleasure. I know that’s important for men specifically because they’re, at no point want to make it sound like men have it tough, because we don’t and all the things you said earlier, toxic masculinity. It’s all things. But sensitive men sort of do have it tough, because there’s so much expectation of who we actually are and what we should want. And that’s really worth exploring for him is exploring what you think is expected of you. Because I imagine this wonderful sounding partner doesn’t expect anything of you. I imagine she’s not saying, “Oh, don’t you love me? Am I not attractive when you don’t cum?” Then that happens to a lot of men. It’s happened to me. And that is the kind of pressure that we can’t move through to get it to work. It can be difficult and it’s so important to hear other people. It’s like hearing other people fail. It’s important to hear that other people have the same issues and are affected emotionally as well.

Dawn Serra: I would love it if you would share with everyone how we can find you, stay in touch, get your book, hear your shows. For folks who are like, “Oh, my god. Cooper so amazing,” which I totally also co-sign because you are, how do they find you?

Cooper Beckett: You can find pretty much everything at coopersbeckett.com. That is my home base. All three of my books: My Life on the Swing Set, which is the memoir, A Life Less Monogamous, and Approaching the Swingularity, are the novels, are all available on my site as well as on every other book sale platform. But if you buy them from my site, I get more money and I appreciate that because I am an independent. I am working on the crazy ambitious audio book right now with seven narrators because there are seven main characters, and that just went on pre-order, and will be available on September 5. And if you preorder it, you get bonus chapters and other things like being able to hear it early and getting outtakes and all the fun silly extras that most audiobooks don’t come with.

My podcast is My Life on the Swing Set and you can find that at lifeontheswingset.com as well as our entire Swing Set FM network, which is all sorts of sexy podcasts as well as my silly TV-related podcasts about Twin Peaks and Hannibal. These are the many things that I do. I’m cutting back on some of them. In social media, I’m @coopersbeckett everywhere. All those times where you felt me hold back about politics, if you follow me on Twitter, you will get all the things that I was saying in my head, instead of saying them on the podcast. I also say them on my podcast but I don’t like to walk into other people’s houses and just go off on politics.

Dawn Serra: They are used to me doing it. So I’m sure they will check out your Twitter and find we have some similar views.

Cooper Beckett: I imagine so.

Dawn Serra: Thank you so much for being here, Cooper. This was amazing and fun. I’ll have all of your links at sexgetsreal.com/ep172. Thank you for lending your voice and your spirit to this. This was great.

Cooper Beckett: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Dawn Serra: So to everybody listening, be sure to go to sexgetsreal.com/ep172 for this episode. You can check out all of Cooper’s links, check out his books, pre pre-order that audio book. If you have any comments or questions about this show or anything going on in your life, you know I love hearing from you and there’s a contact form there with an anonymous option. Until next time, this is Dawn Serra. Talk to you soon. Bye.