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So what’s up for this episode?
Mary wrote in because she’s have pain during sex. Her doctor didn’t help and she’s seeing a physical therapist for pelvic floor work, but what can she do? I’m not a doctor, but I can share a few resources about painful sex, which is often called dyspareunia for folks who have a vulva.
If you have dyspareunia, you might want to check out a trial that’s being conducted for a new device to help with pain during intercourse called the OhNut. Also, finding support groups and bloggers who talk about painful sex could be a fantastic place to start.
I also have some questions about the types of sex being had and why trying some other forms of sexual pleasure might take some of the pressure off.
Brooke is poly. She enjoys orgies, public sex, and dating others, as does her boyfriend. But she’s terrified of STIs. What if someone lies about their status? What if they don’t know they have one? What can she do to help with her fear?
MistressNeon wants to become a sexpert. How did I get started and what do I recommend for folks looking to switch careers? My answer is going to disappoint and upset a lot of you, but if there’s one thing I try to do it’s keep it real. So, buckle up because I have thoughts.
Ginger’s husband wants to try receiving anal, but Ginger isn’t so sure she’s into that. She wants to be open to new things, but she’s feeling a little anxious and a little grossed out. What can she do to find some joy in the fact that her husband asked for this and actually give it a try?
Anonymous Please is young, recently married, and says her husband has a special way of making her feel really really lonely.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
About Dawn Serra
Dawn Serra is a therapeutic Body Trust coach and pleasure advocate. As a white, cis, middle class, queer, fat, survivor, Dawn’s work is a fiercely compassionate invitation for each of us to deepen our relationships with our bodies and our pleasure as an antidote to the trauma, disconnection, and isolation so many of us feel. Your pleasure matters. Your body is wise. Dawn’s work is all about creating spaces and places for you to explore what that means on your terms. To learn more, visit dawnserra.com or follow Dawn on Instagram.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: This episode is brought to you by Time To Play: Explore Your Capacity for Play to Reconnect, Reignite and Rejuvenate, an online, on-demand workshop by me, Dawn Serra. Now, pre-enrolling and there’s a link in the show notes.
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!
It is very early on a Sunday morning. There is snow outside. I am sipping hot chocolate with a purring kitty next to me. It’s going to be you and me this week. I have so many questions that have been coming in from all of you and I love it. I love it as much as I love talking to all of these incredible thought leaders, experts and authors. I’m interviewing a really rad person named to Bianca this week that you’ll hear next week. But your questions just make me think and challenge me and scare me and excite me. I love when I do episodes just you and me talking through your stuff. That’s what we’re going to do again this week because it’s fun for me.
Dawn Serra: I also want to remind you, there are still spots available for the live taping of Sex Gets Real that’s happening March 22nd. So if you want to put your name in for a potential spot for the live taping, it’s how we’re celebrating 200 episodes of Sex Gets Real, then there is a link in the show notes and also at sexgetsreal.com/ep201 for this episode. If you want to put your name in the drawing, all you have to do is be over the age of 18 and available at the time and on the day that we’re doing the live taping. Then we will all be jamming live and talking. I will be answering your questions and it will be dropped as an episode of Sex Gets Real, which is super exciting. If you want to join me for that and be in the running, click on the link and join because we are going to have so much fun. We have to celebrate Episode 200 in an epic way and I thought all of us doing it together was the way to do that.
Also, for Patreon supporters, who support the show at $3 and above, this week’s bonus content, we’re going to be talking about love. So many of the stories and the beliefs we have about falling in love are about a very specific kind of love – a love that often doesn’t have longevity, love changes. We’re going to talk about some of the myths and some of the beliefs that we have about what it means to be in love and what it means to fall in love and how sometimes our expectations of how it’s supposed to feel make being in long term relationships with folks really challenging. So we’re going to go there. We’re going to talk about it. We’re going to grapple with it. It’s going to be awesome and fun and thought-provoking. So thank you to all of you who support the show, whether it’s $1 or $5 or $10 dollars a month. Whatever it is. Thank you so much. For those of you who have access, don’t forget to listen. It will be going up, as usual, today. So check that out – patreon.com/sgrpodcast. So let’s get started with some of your questions.
Dawn Serra: Mary wrote in and it says, “Hello, Dawn! I love your show. For about a year, I’ve been having pain with sex. Sometimes I feel it inside of my vagina and other times I get shooting pain down my leg. I’ve seen a doctor and they had no explanation and said everything looked healthy. I’ve since seen a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic floor and I’ve done jade egg and meditation practices to see if it would help. I get frustrated because I really enjoy sex and all of the positions, but I find it almost excruciating at times. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions or tips for me. Thanks. Mary”
First of all, Mary, I’m so sorry. Pain with sex, unless it’s intentional, no fun. I am happy to hear that you’ve been to the doctor. Although, we know doctors and the ways that they support women sometimes aren’t the best. But I’m glad that you’re taking care of yourself and at least accessing the resources you have available to you. Working with a pelvic floor physical therapist is a really wonderful place to start. Also, I love that you’ve been trying the jade egg and meditation practices.
Dawn Serra: It’s really interesting because I just attended that conference recently in San Diego, the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health, and the vast majority of the sessions about the latest research that’s being done and the challenges that doctors are facing was around dyspareunia or painful sex for folks with vulvas. It’s interesting because there was this weird belief that great sex for people with vulvas, is simply the absence of pain, which the absence of pain is not the presence of pleasure. They don’t seem to understand that. They seem to be in this place of, if we just eliminate the pain or if we just find a pill to increase the libido, then sex is fixed. And that’s just not how it works.
But anyway, on to your question, Mary. I want to start by just saying I am not a doctor. I have not been medically-trained. I am basically just going to be parroting some of the things that I learned from that conference, as well as some research that I did. It is by no means complete. I just want to offer, one, you are not alone. And, two, I talked to several women at the conference who were not doctors or researchers or nurses, but women who had had dyspareunia for years and had found their own ways through it. They were at the conference either to speak with a doctor they had been working with or to share a product that they had created.
Dawn Serra: There was one woman that I talked to, who struggled with dyspareunia – or pain during sex – for nine years, before she found something that worked for her and eliminated the pain. And then I talked to this other woman, who was a pure delight, and she struggled with dyspareunia for, I think, seven years. She was so frustrated by the lack of interest by doctors, the lack of information that she actually created a product called the OhNut. Like a donut, but it’s called the OhNut. It hasn’t hit market yet. But she’s partnered with a few physicians and they’re actually doing some human trials right now. But she created this thing that she actually found helped with her experience of painful sex. So they’re going to be taking it to market.
The reason I share all of that is because in talking with different people who have experienced different kinds of painful sex, there is no clear linear answer. There is no one size fits all. There is the fact that lots of people struggle with this and lots of people experience it. Something else that I think is really interesting is… I don’t know and this is just– This has been blowing my mind. But at this conference that was all about women’s sexual health, the focus of the research and the conversation was fascinating to me because so little of it had to do with social factors and cultural factors and behaviors. It was just about these biological functions that made the body seem like a set of chemicals or electrical currents that were firing in a certain synapse. It was just very disembodied and not at all somatic.
Dawn Serra: So many of these doctors are wondering why so many heterosexual women are dissatisfied with sex. They’re either experiencing pain or low libido. They’re not orgasming. Study after study after study shows that high numbers of heterosexual women are not having the kinds of sex that they want to be having.
And then I was in this special little breakout panel. It was at 7am in the morning. Just so early to conference. It was all about women who have sex with women. And so we were talking about queer women, biwomen, lesbians, trans women, non-binary folks. But basically, folks who identify somewhere on the queer-trans spectrum. The woman who was leading it was reading all of this research. I’m sure all of us have seen these headlines on these articles in magazines like Cosmo and Glamour. But study after study after study, that she was reading to us, show that women who identify as lesbians have the highest incidence of orgasm, the highest incidence of sexual satisfaction, the highest incidence of pleasure, the highest incidence of feeling sexually satisfied in their sexual relationships.
Dawn Serra: No one was putting two and two together. If we’re talking about all these studies and questions about heterosexual women not being happy with sex, struggling to orgasm, just feeling dissatisfied, and then we have all these studies that show that lesbian women have the highest rates of orgasm and the most satisfaction, perhaps we should turn our gaze towards the gays. Maybe we should start asking questions like what kinds of sex and encounters are the women in these studies, who identify themselves as lesbians, engaging in and what might we be able to then share with everybody else.
The reason why I think that’s not going to happen, at least at this particular medical conference, is because they are deeply entrenched in the gender binary, in femininity versus masculinity. There were entire talks about how men need intercourse in order to feel like men. All of you who have listened to the show for a while probably know how I felt about some of that.
Dawn Serra: Now, I don’t want to assume your sexual orientation or the kinds of sex that you’re having married, but the reason that I bring all of that up is because you deserve to have sex that you enjoy. You deserve to feel frustrated for having painful sex and for not having answers and for people trying their best to help you, but finding that it’s not helping you because that is such a miss in our medical community. We– God. I don’t know. The things that are being studied by the sex researchers at this conference just felt bizarre and they weren’t going to actually help us in the long run.
I want to just share with you a couple of pieces of information that I found both at the jconference and from talking to folks about dyspareunia or painful sex, and then offer just a couple of questions for you to sit with because I know a lot of people listening probably have painful sex as well. It’s very common. One in three folks with a vulva will have some type of pain during sexual experiences. Which, I mean, that’s 33% of people with vulvas are going to experience pain during sex. And so many people aren’t talking about it. That one in three number came from a study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, by the way.
Dawn Serra: I’ve been using this word dyspareunia and there’s different kinds of dyspareunia. Some of it is called primary, which is pain upon entry to the vagina. So that assumes you’re having sex with some kind of penetration, which, of course, lots of people have lots of sex, but never involves penetration. So note. Then there’s secondary dyspareunia, which is deep in the pelvis, and then there’s collision dyspareunia – I love that name – when it’s an object, like a penis or a sex toy, actually hitting the cervix or the surrounding tissue at the end of the vaginal canal. I just giggle at the thought of collision dyspareunia because there’s a collision.
So there’s different ways that we can experience different kinds of pain. Mary, you mentioned that you have pain in your vagina sometimes and sometimes that kind of shooting down your leg. The thing is, so much of this research basically says, everybody’s a little bit different. The reasons that pain happens are vast and varied. It can be endometriosis, ovarian cysts, interstitial cystitis, uterine fibroids, vaginismus. There can be postnatal causes after you’ve given birth. There can be menopausal and post-menopausal shifts that cause it. So it’s something that’s difficult to diagnose. It’s also a place where lots of doctors just aren’t super comfortable and don’t ask really good questions about the kinds of sex you’re having and how much you’re giving yourself time to reach full arousal and all that stuff.
Dawn Serra: One of the reasons why it can be really difficult to diagnose pain is because things like endometriosis and ovarian cysts, just those things alone are often misdiagnosed. Sometimes it takes multiple years of going to multiple doctors for people with vulvas to get the diagnosis of endometriosis or ovarian cysts. So if there’s this problem where it takes years to even get an endometriosis diagnosis, then it might even take a few more years beyond that to then find the cause of vaginal pain or pain during sex. It just sucks.
I would recommend for you, one, reaching out to the folks at OhNut. The website is O-H-N – like nut – dot C-O – ohnut.co. They’re looking for people to participate in their study right now. So if you are engaging in intercourse, then I think this is a product you might want to investigate. I would also recommend looking for books and blogs by women who – well, it could be any gender – but by people who have dyspareunia to see what’s been working for them, how long it took, the things that tried.
Dawn Serra: Then I just want to invite you, Mary, to… I know that this is such a tender thing because you’re frustrated and you’ve been doing all the right things and seeing all the right people and it’s just not what you want it to be. Our bodies change throughout the course of our lives. I mean, from puberty, to being in our 20s and 30s, to menopause to illness and disease, to parenthood and kids and aging. Sometimes those changes can surprise us and disappoint us and be frustrating and bring up lots of anger and rage and sadness. And so, one, I would encourage you to let your feelings be true. It’s really hard to be angry about this kind of stuff sometimes or we get angry because we don’t want to feel the sadness and the grief. I would invite you to have a conversation with your body. Let it know how you’re feeling. I know this sounds kind of woo, but maybe ask your body what it needs and what’s going on. Maybe having different kinds of sex for a while is exactly what your body needs. Maybe it’s new sex toys. Maybe it’s stimulating other parts of your body.
Maybe it’s doing delicious head to toe central massage with no genitals at all. There are so many people in the world who have amazing, enriching, satisfying sex lives and their genitals aren’t involved. So maybe giving your genitals a little bit of a break and trying some other stuff from a place of genuine curiosity and adventure could be fun. Whether it’s trying some kink or trying some tantra and breath work. I think that that might be a place where you can at least feel like there’s a sense of newness that’s not pain related.
Dawn Serra: “Ecstasy is Necessary” by Barbara Carrellas is a book I’ve recommended many times. One of the reasons I like that book is because the entire book is around all of these different ways that we can achieve ecstasy and tap into the erotic without it being just about intercourse and/or traditional sex. But there’s nothing wrong with it. I love all that stuff. It’s nice to also have other tools in the toolbox.
I would also recommend continue seeing your pelvic floor therapist. Sometimes– I actually talked to a pelvic floor therapist at the conference for a long time and sometimes it can take many, many, many, many months of a consistent practice to start actually seeing any kind of change or to know how your body’s responding. That can be frustrating because when we’re having pain, we want it to be over now. But this is just one of those things. It might take a couple months. It might take a couple of years. It might just take a while for your body to be angry about something. And you might get diagnosis down the road. I wish there was concrete answers and a straight line from A to B, but there’s not. I do though know that there are support groups out there and people who are absolutely blogging about this. I encourage you to connect with those folks. And care for you. This is a place where you’re having big feelings and it makes sense when you’re having those big feelings. So let yourself have those feelings and do whatever you can to care for yourself through that.
Thank you so much for writing in, Mary. If anybody who’s listening has experienced dyspareunia and you’ve found something that helped, please either leave a comment on the page for this or tweet at me or comment on Facebook, so that if Mary’s checking in, she has a chance to actually see your comment and learn from you, too. So thank you so much, Mary.
Dawn Serra: This next question comes from Brooke. It says, “My partner and I have been poly for two years. My partner and I enjoy public sex, orgies, dating, but my greatest fear is what if people lie about their status and I get an STI? I love the lifestyle and everything it offers me, but I am scared of this risk. What is your experience or advice?”
I get a version of this question somewhat regularly. I think it’s important to revisit somewhat regularly because this is something that so many people are worried about. The first thing I just want to say is if you get an STI, you get an STI. I mean, 80% of sexually active adults are going to have an STI at some point in their life. So it’s just what happens when you have sexual exchanges with other people. It’s just like when you go out to the Starbucks or you head to a conference or you go to work, the likelihood that you’re going to catch a cold or the flu or pink eye. I mean, it’s just what happens when you’re around other human beings. We don’t have the shame associated with STIs when it’s the cold or the flu because it’s just not related to sex.
Dawn Serra: It’s just yet another way that our culture keeps us feeling ashamed of sex and feeling like there’s something wrong with us for wanting sex, is because we have this baked in terror around STIs. But loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of people have HPV or herpes or have had chlamydia, gonorrhea. It’s just part of being human and smashing our bodies together and sharing space. So whether you get a cold or you get herpes or whatever it is, it’s just part of exchanging our lives and sharing our lives with someone else.
One, I would say, the fear that you have is largely because people have told you to be ashamed if this happens to you. It doesn’t actually change your quality of life, for the most part, when you get the most common STIs. I mean, herpes is literally just a skin condition. It doesn’t do a whole lot to you. It doesn’t change the way you live your life, for the most part. It’s very manageable. It’s the social things that we’re scared of. We’re scared of being seen as dirty. We’re scared of rejection. We’re scared of having to disclose something where someone might say something shitty to us. And that’s because we have shitty social skills. And STIs are a way of just highlighting the places where we feel most insecure and where we lack skills as a culture and a society.
Dawn Serra: So here’s what I’ll say. Other people put this fear into you. It’s something that I struggle with, too. But the truth is, if you’re engaging in sexual activity with another human being, especially multiple human beings, the likelihood of acquiring an STI of some version is pretty high. So just know that that’s true.
Also know, people lie about their STI status all the time because of this question. They are terrified of being rejected, of being judged, or being told they’re dirty or not worthy and that terror of the STI keeps people from disclosing. So I think that the more open we can be about these conversations, the more relaxed we can be about these conversations, the more we can be that beacon of permission – that Kate Kenfield talks about – the more likely people are to be honest with us.
Dawn Serra: Also, just know, some people don’t know they have an STI. And some people know they have an STI and they just haven’t come to a place where they have the competence to share it. I had that doctor on, the OB GYN on early last year and she talked about this. She knew she had herpes for like 10 years before she started telling partners because she was so ashamed and she’s a doctor. So that social pressure is real.
All of that is to say, you have to know what level of risk you’re willing to take on. And then you have to be willing to set the boundaries around doing what you need to do to stay within that safety zone that makes you feel comfortable. So if you’re really truly worried about getting certain kinds of STI, then you need to understand what are the risks and how are they most likely to be transmitted, and then what do I need to do to protect myself the best that I can. So whether that’s using condoms and gloves and dental dams or simply just not engaging in certain types of sexual activities with people until you’ve had a chance to maybe get co-tested or you’ve been seeing each other for a certain amount of time. You’re the one that has to decide what that level of risk is that you’re willing to take on, and then take the steps necessary for you.
Dawn Serra: What that means is, if you know that condoms are important for you during oral sex, then whether or not that person has an STI, you use the condoms for oral sex because you don’t know. They might not know. They might not be telling you. They might lie. Whatever it is, you can’t have the guarantee of another human being’s behavior. So you have to use your behavior to do whatever you can for yourself. And your partner is going to do the same for themselves, and then you have to decide what kinds of safer sex protocols, if any, you want to engage in with your partner. Because your partner might have different levels of behavior and risk that they’re willing to take on. And you can’t control that either.
Know that the fear is socially constructed. Know that STIs are ridiculously common. And then just decide what you want to engage in and the kinds of boundaries and requests you have, regardless of the information you get from other people. I hope that’s helpful. Know that this question comes up all the time. And have fun. Enjoy all of the public sex and the orgies and the dating that you and your partner engaging and enjoy it. And know that, if at any point, either of you does acquire an STI, super normal. Not the end of the world. And, yeah. We have feelings about it, but that’s because our society is shitty about sex. Thank you so much for writing in, Brooke.
Dawn Serra: MistressNeon wrote in with a subject line, “How does one start becoming a sexpert?” “Hey, Dawn! Love the show. Found it several weeks ago and powered through most of the episodes already. I know you’ve put forth a lot of effort and time to get where you are, but what would you suggest for someone who is interested in becoming a sexpert? I’m a dominant, above my husband. We’ve been in the lifestyle together our entire relationship. My love of sexual psychology and sociology, I believe, I would be successful. I would love to transition to a new career, but I’m not sure where to start. Thanks for your time and effort. MistressNeon.”
You are not going to like my answer. Most people who asked me this question don’t like the answer. Unless you are willing to go back to school and get a degree in something like social work or counseling, therapy. Becoming an expert is not a career move I would recommend for most people. Most sex educators, most sex experts have day jobs. They have other jobs that they do. They’re either therapists or social workers. They’re professors at colleges. They are writers with published books in other fields. They have day jobs like data entry or they’re in I.T. or they’re teachers. I mean, most sex educators have money coming in from other industries. Because it’s so hard to make money as a sex educator, as a sexpert.
Dawn Serra: I can tell you, from my personal experience, I have been doing this now for a number of years. I offer consulting to other entrepreneurs. I produce other people’s conferences. I do my own online conference. I have the podcast and I don’t make enough money to pay my bills. And that’s just a reality. So becoming a sexpert, if you want it to be your career is going to mean some really, really, really tough questions and a lot of hustle and a lot of getting money from a lot of different places because most people don’t want to pay for sex education, for porn, for information about sex. They have a lot of shame. Most people aren’t willing to pay good money for it except for a handful of people who have been in the industry for a really long time.
Also, you aren’t going to be able to advertise the way that most business owners are going to be able to advertise. All of your videos on YouTube will be demonetized if they mentioned sex in any way, which means you can’t make money advertising on YouTube. You can’t promote your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. You won’t be able to use Google AdWords and run ads there. I just want to put out there for people who want to come into sexuality, go in with your eyes wide open. Know that you’re probably going to have to have income coming in from multiple sources and/or have a job in some other kind of tangential field, and then do your sex experty stuff on the side or on the weekends.
Dawn Serra: The best way to become a sexpert depends on who you are and your experience in the world. Some people want to get the credentials because that does lend you a certain level of automatic expertise, whether or not the program was good and whether or not you were good. You know how our culture is. Letters after your name equal social status and respect. And if you don’t deserve it…
You can also go the self-educated route, which is the route that I took. My degree is in Business Management with a concentration in Communication. I certainly have a lot of years of study around interpersonal communication. I’ve also been through certification programs around marriage and family counseling, the Gottman method couples therapy, Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy. I’ve read a bajillion books. I’ve been to tons of conferences. I’ve learned from endless people.
Dawn Serra: So there’s a couple of people that offer some training programs in this space, if you want to become a sex educator. Tristan Taormino has sex educator boot camp. Levels one and two are completely online. She goes over a lot of this, of all the different ways that you can get certifications and education and where you can make some your money. She shares where she gets some of her money coming in from. I can tell you a lot of it is from books and from her work in the past making porn, and then from her podcast.
There’s a group called SFSI. It’s a S-F-S-I in San Francisco. They have a certification program all about sexual health that helps you to become a sex educator, where you know all about STI risks and anatomy and sexual health and that kind of stuff. Elle Chase highly recommends that program. So it’s kind of a hodgepodge. There is, of course, AASECT, which is one of the larger kind of governing bodies in the world of sex education and sex therapy. They have some certification programs that you can take to become AASECT certified. But they have ethics oversight and that kind of a thing. And they give you credentials with those letters after your name as well.
Dawn Serra: I think you just have to– Anybody who’s thinking about becoming a sexpert, a sex educator, anything, you have to decide, is this something I want to do full time? Or is this something I want to do on the side? Because I just love it so much and it’s important to me and I’m good at it and it’s fun. Is it something where you want to teach workshops on the weekend at your local dungeon or become a blogger and review sex toys? Do you want to write books or erotic stories? If you want to make it your entire career, then I would say talk to a lot of people who do this work. Listen to just how much hustle they do, how frustrating and isolating it is. Once you move into the sex world, pretty much all other industries will abandon you.
I’m not saying that from a place of bitterness. It’s just how it is. It’s too risky for people in mental health and for people in business to associate their brands with sex. Because to do so will then compromise their potential for advertising on all the major, major platforms where they advertise. Banks could potentially pull support and shut down credit cards and payment processors because none of those companies are willing to work in the sex field. So it’s just a really difficult place to be. Which also means if you’ve got that activist spirit, it can be a place where you feel fire all the time, because it’s not fair and it’s ridiculous. There are people doing amazing work in this space to move it forward. But it’s going to take many, many, many, many, many years and many, many, many, many people, especially that are reinventing the tech to nudge us in a new direction to make this a little bit less isolating and difficult.
Dawn Serra: So know that this has to be something you completely and totally and passionately want and that money is going to be so, so challenging to come by. And what kind of a life do you want for yourself? How much money do you need to survive? Do you have a family to support? Do you have travel you want to do? Factor all of those things in and talk to some people, and then decide whether you want to go the academic route or the self-taught route. If you go the self-taught route, you’re going to have to do twice as much work as the people who go the academic route in order to prove yourself and to really know your stuff. Stuff changes constantly in the sexuality field. So make sure you’re following as many thought leaders as possible, especially people from WOCSHN because the industry is very much in a place where it’s trying to figure out how to be more intersectional and more inclusive. The more we can all be at the forefront of that, the more successful we’re all going to be.
That was a long, pessimistic answer. But that’s how I feel about things. I also do consults with people who are thinking about getting into the world of sex education. I also do business consulting for therapists and social workers and counselors, mental health professionals, who want to increase their social media presence. So if at any point, you want some one-on-one coaching around this, you can absolutely reach out to me. I have done that for many people. Yeah. I’m here to give you my honest opinion and to try and help make you as successful as possible. But I just want people to go in eyes wide open and not thinking that this is a fairy tale profession. It is far, far from it.
Dawn Serra: So good luck, MistressNeon. I hope that no matter what you do, whether it’s becoming a sexpert or something else, that you enjoy all of your domination, deliciousness with your husband and being in the lifestyle. And there’s nothing wrong with just loving some psychology and sociology and studying all the sex stuff and talking about it with your friends without making it your career. So decide what you want, and then go for it.
Okay. Those are some long answers, folks. Oh, my God. I had a lot of thoughts this early in the morning. Okay. Let’s try and do a couple really fast. Just a quick reminder. Patreon supporters, patreon.com/sgrpodcast for the bonus materials for this week, where we’re going to be talking all about some of the myths around love and what it means to be in relationships and how we should be feeling so definitely stay tuned for that.
Dawn Serra: Ginger wrote in and it says, “Husband interested in anal.” “Hey! My husband really loves your show and sends me links to episodes all the time. We have been married ten years. We’re feeling like spicing things up. Your show has really opened us up sexually about not feeling weird about wanting certain things or having desires. We have a great relationship. My husband recently opened up about wanting to try some anal play with him being the receiver. We’ve dabbled on anal for many years with me and he loves it. But I’ve always been somewhere in the middle with it. Sometimes it’s good. Other times, it just hurts. I guess my question is, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about the idea of anal play for him or pegging. I’m really trying super hard to be open minded with it. But I feel like it’s giving me anxiety. And to be perfectly honest, I’m just not as interested in anal as he is. I know many men enjoy it and I don’t think he’s gay or anything. I just almost feel a little grossed out about it, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings and I really want to try new things and satisfy his desires. I guess you could call me vanilla. Or, maybe I’m just a bit boring. Ha! Any advice?”
Thanks for writing in, Ginger. Yeah. Anal. It’s a thing. Lots of people super love it. Lots of people super don’t. And a lot of people aren’t quite sure how they feel about it. A lot of the messages that we get about butts in our culture is that they’re dirty and that they’re gross and that they’re a place to be avoided. We’re terrified of poop and messes and smells. It’s the human body. It does all kinds of things. The thing with anal is–
Dawn Serra: A couple of things. First, I highly recommend that whenever we try new things, unless something was catastrophic or completely effin’ terrible, we should generally try it a couple of different times and a couple of different ways with a couple of different contexts. Because often, the first time we try something, we’re just so awkward about it. We’re overthinking it and we’re worried we’re doing it wrong and it’s clunky and we don’t like feeling uncertain. Probably not something we’re going to really love the first time we do it. By the time we get to our third and fourth time of trying something we’re a little bit less stressed because we’ve done it before. We’re a little bit less high stakes because we survived the previous times. It took me a couple of times of playing with somebody else’s ass.
I’ll be really honest, with my ex, we tried anal a couple of times and we were both just so squeeked and eeked and embarrassed. We would go to try and touch the other one’s butt, and then we would die laughing and it never really went anywhere pleasurable because we were both just weirded out by it. And that’s okay because I have now come to super appreciate anal for a variety of reasons. For me, on the receiving end, sometimes anal is really not comfortable. So I have learned that I need a really strong magic wand going and lots of clitoral and maybe even a few orgasms before I go to the anal, and then it can be pleasurable for me, sometimes. But I have to listen to my body. Some days, it’s just like, “Nope. Not happening.” And that’s okay. I just have to let go of those expectations.
Dawn Serra: When it comes to giving anal, that’s been a place for me of mixed emotions, mixed experiences. Certainly, I’ve had it be messy. Certainly other times I’ve had it not be messy. One of the things that, for me, I love so much about pegging is, one, the power and the gender role flip, that’s a wonderful experience to try on if you haven’t yet. But, two, seeing just how much pleasure it gives your partner is intoxicating. It’s heady.
I mean, I’m not someone who totally is in love with ass. It’s just not my thing. There are some people who want to look at it and lick it and smell it and touch it. It’s so their thing. And they want to bury their face in it. I love that those people exist in the world. I am not one of them. And that’s okay. It’s just maybe I will be at some point. I recognize that I change all the time. But, for me, what I love about anal is the power and the teasing and the pleasure that I’m able to give. That’s a phenomenal experience.
Dawn Serra: For you, Ginger, I would just invite in the opportunity to, one, try it a couple of times and a couple of different ways. Maybe it’s with a gloved finger. Maybe it’s with a butt plug that your husband picks out. Maybe you try getting a strap on, an affordable one and a harness with a toy that he picks out that he thinks would be a good fit, and see how it is. It might feel awkward. It might feel funny. It might not be your thing. Then you might try something one day and he has an experience of just utter and total ecstasy. All of a sudden, you’re going to be like, “I want to do that again. I have never heard you make those sounds. I’ve never seen your toes curl like that. I have never ever seen you that exhausted and happy after sex. I am definitely doing this again for you.” That, for me, is definitely one of the draws. It’s just the access to new kinds of pleasure, which is intoxicating and powerful.
You don’t have to love all things butt. I mean, some people do. Some people don’t. Some people change their minds and that’s okay. But what I would invite is, it might be a little bit messy. It might be a little bit gross. And maybe that’s a place where the two of you just giggle and laugh about it because like “Whoops. Let’s put the towel down and make sure we have some baby wipes handy.” And then you run screaming into the shower afterwards and the two of you laugh over something that you tried. The more you can just stay curious and open.
Dawn Serra: And investigate that anxiety a little bit. Is it because you feel like you’re going to be failing him, if you don’t? Is it because you feel like he’s going to be disappointed? And maybe take an anal workshop, either online – I have one – or at a local sex shop. Ask some questions about what he’s expecting, what he wants. It might surprise you just because he says I want to receive anal, maybe it’s something a little bit different than you thought. Maybe the two of you can watch some anal porn together to get some ideas for what he’s thinking.
Then, just try it. Sometimes we feel weird about things until we actually have the lived experience. We’ve tried it a couple of times, and then our feelings shift. Give yourself permission to just be like, “I don’t know how I feel about this, but I’m going to try it anyway.” Because there’s nothing wrong with doing that from a place of power and choosing that for yourself. Good luck. Have fun. Try all the things. Ask all the questions, and then dive in.
Dawn Serra: This last question is very short. It’s not even really a question. It’s a confession and it’s sad. My advice is going to be pretty short and to the point. Anonymous Please wrote in, “Dear Dawn, I’m a 21-year old female living in Louisiana. I met my husband three years ago and we got married this past May. I love him with all my heart. However, he has a special way of making me feel extremely lonely.”
There is something extra painful about feeling lonely inside of a relationship. I think part of that is because we expect relationships to offer us so much. That’s a lot of pressure, honestly, to just put on singular relationships. But there’s one thing of being alone and feeling lonely. And there’s another of sitting next to someone and still feeling lonely.
Dawn Serra: I’m sorry you feel that way. You deserve to not feel that way. You deserve to feel seen and acknowledged and supported inside of a relationship. I mean, you guys met when you’re 18. You got married at 21. There’s a lot that the two of you still have to explore and experience and figure out. One of them might be, “Hey. I feel super lonely and I really need us to investigate that.” So whether it’s therapy counseling, coaching, having some tough conversations. What would you need from him to feel less lonely? Is that the way he talks to you or doesn’t? Is it the things that he doesn’t ask or he does? Is there a whole bunch of emotional labor you’re doing that he’s not helping you with?
You need to get clear on where some of those lonely feelings are coming from and what might help shift it. And then you get to ask for support and changes, so that you don’t feel that way anymore. Because you get to make those requests and he might not like it. It might be tough. It might be scary and awkward. But just know that you deserve to not feel lonely. You deserve to feel the things that you want to feel. So go for it. Figure it out. What do I need? What’s not working? Then make those requests and the two of you can get to then create together and negotiate and try things. Some of them might work and some of them might not. If he’s not willing to show up for that and, at least, hold that space and hear you, that I think you need to ask yourself some harder questions about whether or not you even want to be married to him. I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. You are not alone. So many people feel lonely inside of their relationships. You get to ask for something different. So good luck. Thank you for listening. I hope that you find a way to feel more seen and heard in your marriage because you deserve it.
Dawn Serra: To everybody who tuned in this week, thank you so much. Don’t forget to head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and/or to hear the bonus content. As I mentioned at the top of the show, my three new workshops about play, anger and boundaries are all pre-enrolling right now. They are online, on demand. You can take them at your own pace, in your pajamas, at home, wherever you’d like. I love making these workshops. They are simple and straightforward and full of interesting questions. So join me! The Time to Play Workshop is going to be so fun. So check those out in the show notes. There is a link to all three of the new ones.
Of course, I will talk to you next week. I’m going to be interviewing someone who specializes in sexual health. We might actually talk about dyspareunia a little bit more. So stay tuned. This is Dawn Serra. Send me your questions. Oh, yeah. Send me your questions. Don’t forget to sign up for that live taping of Sex Gets Real to celebrate our 200th episode. Oh, my God! I just keep going on and on and on. I guess I should go get some breakfast. Okay. I’ll talk to you all next week. Bye!