Sex Gets Real 242: Rejecting romance, feeling sad about desire, poetry

What a great week of listener questions! I can’t wait to dive into these with you.

But first, the episode ends with a beautiful fat acceptance poem by Angela Braxton-Johnson, who I met at the Body Trust Provider retreat a few months ago. Angela generously agreed to read her poem for the show and to share more about what it means to take up space and find pleasure in a fat body. You do NOT want to miss it. You can learn more about Angela and grab her new book at angelabraxtonjohnson.com

Now, on to your questions.

First up, Tell Me What I Want, What I Really Really Want wrote in to report their orgasms are better than ever because of a discussion we had on the show about breathing during orgasm. Also, they have a question about rejecting romantic relationships in their life. Is it weird that she hasn’t been in a romantic relationship? What if she doesn’t actually want a romantic partner?

I found a bunch of resources for TMWIWWIRRW that you can find down below. I also recommend checking out Kale Gosen’s Relationship Anarchy YouTube channel if you want to learn more about RA from someone I think is pretty rad.

Mikayla’s boyfriend can’t orgasm during sex. She wants to know how to change that or how she can let go of thinking it’s her fault that he doesn’t come when they fuck. So much to unpack here, including asking him what HE wants.

T is struggling. She desires her girlfriend SO MUCH, and her girlfriend just doesn’t feel that kind of desire in return. T is poly and has other sexual partners for getting sexual needs met, but she can’t help but feel sad and rejected when her girlfriend doesn’t want sex with her. What can she do to transform these feelings of frustration and disappointment?

I LOVE THIS QUESTION. So many thoughts.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

Resources for Tell Me What I Want:

About Host Dawn Serra:

Meet the host of Sex Gets Real, Dawn Serra - sex educator, sex and relationship coach, podcaster, and more. 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: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Dawn Serra: Hey, you! Welcome to this week’s episode. There are a couple of changes that I need to let you know about. The first is because of the very sweeping changes that are being made as a result of FOSTA and SESTA, and Facebook’s updated guidelines – which I did a little emergency episode about recently. I have changed the name of both the Patreon page and the Facebook page for the podcast so that the names don’t trigger any of the violation algorithms. Instead of Facebook.com/sexgetsreal, you can now find the show on Facebook at facebook.com/SGRpodcast. So SGR for Sex Gets Real, patreon.com/sgrpodcast, that’s also the new link for Patreon. If you want to support the show as things become rather dire out in the world, and as it will become more and more difficult for me to share the show. Your support is going to mean a lot.

I also don’t know how long I’ll be allowed to stay on Patreon’s website, considering that this show does talk about sex and the laws that got passed are rather ridiculous and there’s a chance Patreon will not only mark me adult, but ban me entirely in the near future. There’s a lot of sex educators who are talking about and worried about the same thing. So in the meantime, you can now find the show at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. So if you’re a supporter and you want to hear all of the bonuses or if you’d like to support the show, you can head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. Now, the links for all of the things related to the show are always at dawnserra.com. You can head to any of the single episodes and find updated links there. And also in the show notes for any episode. If you’re listening on a platform like Google play or Itunes, you should be able to see the show notes and all the links are there.

Speaking of Patreon, if you support it $3 and above per month, you get weekly bonus content that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. It’s totally exclusive and just for your ears. And if you support it $5 and above, you can help weigh in with your thoughts about listener questions. I do have some advice from a patron for one of the questions I’ll be reading on this week’s show. So if you’d like to be able to participate, you can do that at $5 a month and above. And I usually post about two to three questions a month. Plus, you get access to all of that bonus content that gets published every single week and there’s quite a backlog at this point. So all kinds of things for your lovely ears to hear if you’re not already supporting the show.

Dawn Serra: Also a reminder, as things shift, as the potential for me getting banned from Facebook increases and from Patreon, I am very worried about Instagram. It’s probably going to be a lot harder to stay in touch with me. So I want to make sure you are on the newsletter. If you head to dawnserra.com/books/ that will not only get you on the newsletter if you sign up, but it also gets you immediate access to that super awesome book recommended reading list that I put together a couple of weeks ago.

You can also go to exploremoresummit.com and register there. That’ll register you for the free conference that I’m putting on at the end of February. This will be our fourth annual and it also gets your name and email address on my newsletter so that I can share news about the podcast with you and let you know where we’re going if things change and my pages do get deleted on most of the mainstream social media channels. So make sure I have your information so that we can stay in touch just in case things really go downhill quickly. So fingers crossed they don’t. I’m trying to do everything I can to keep myself and all the places where you follow. But should that change, if I’ve got your information then I can email you and keep you abreast of the show and anything else that’s going on.

I want to let you know that I’m doing a super fun holiday giveaway. I want to mail you a holiday card, handwritten by me and sent directly to your home with a Merry Clitmas Card from the Vulva Gallery. So I got 10 Merry Clitmas Card that feature the beautiful hand drawings of Vulvas from the Vulva Gallery and I want to select 10 special listeners to receive a handwritten holiday card from me. If you want to enter the drawing, I’m going to randomly select 10 people on December 18th, which means get your information in before then. It’s totally free. Plus signing up, gets you on the newsletter and you are about to hear why that is going to be real crucial. But if you want to enter the drawing to get a holiday card from me, you can go to dawnserra.com/holiday/ and there you can put your information in and then hopefully you will get picked. And then I’ll send you a fun little note just from me to you with this beautiful vulva painting on the cover.

Dawn Serra: Let’s dive in to listener questions. This first one comes from Tell Me What I Want, What I Really, Really Want. That’s the name they listed and the subject line is Masturbation and The Meaning of Life, Not Necessarily Related.

Hi Dawn, I absolutely love your show and just recently went back and listened to all the older episodes. So much great content. There was one episode with a lengthy discussion between you and a guest about the importance of breathing while masturbating and I just wanted to share that this has revolutionized my masturbation sessions. I, a cis female, hadn’t even realized it, but I was totally holding my breath immediately before and during orgasm. Since hearing your discussion, I’ve been focusing on breathing all the way through. And as a result, have had the best orgasms of my life. I cannot thank you enough for enlightening me to this and so many other juicy and thought provoking topics.

I also have a question for you. I am a cis, mostly straight female in my late twenties and I have never been in a romantic relationship. I feel some shame about not having had this experience and gained the associated skills at my age. I feel like I am behind quote unquote. Lately, I’ve been thinking about whether or not it’s something I actually want or something society tells me I should want and need for fulfilling life. Is this a, “Don’t knock it till you try it” situation where I can’t know if a romantic relationship is something I actually want unless I’ve tried it? Additionally, I know logically that there are lots of ways to live a fulfilling life without a romantic relationship or a life partner. But society is so attached to the, “You can’t be happy if you don’t have a partner” motif that it’s hard to know what other models look like. Do you know of any resources that could help me figure this out? Thanks. – Tell Me What I Want, What I Really, Really Want.

Dawn Serra: First of all, I love that name. Thank you for that giggle when it hit my inbox. I’m also glad that you’ve been experimenting with breathing and masturbation. There are so many incredible things that our bodies do to help us, not only connect with ourselves, but with pleasure. Sometimes, small changes and practicing new techniques can yield tremendous results. For us, this is especially important as our bodies change, whether it’s post pregnancy or post menopause or post puberty or whatever it is – post injury. Our bodies are constantly changing and being able to have that curiosity of, “What happens if I change my breathing during orgasm?” is yielding the best orgasms of your life. Yes, I love that you gave yourself permission to try that and I hope that that kind of spirit of adventure continues for you because who knows what else you might discover your body is capable of down the road. Thank you so much for listening.

Now, for your question about not having been in a romantic relationship, you really hit the nail on the head. You’re aware that the myths and the stories that are highly prized in our current iteration of culture and society, especially here in the United States and Canada, is that that places tremendous value – peak value – on romantic relationships and romantic love. It’s a hierarchy of love that does not mean to exist. But it does exist and it’s pushed down our throats from cartoons at the youngest of ages, through magazines, all the way up through YA novels and into adulthood and all of the movies that we consume. It can be really difficult to find alternative stories about living a rich, fulfilling life without a romantic partner and without wanting that or seeking that. It is 100% possible and there are all kinds of people talking about it, creating around it; and thinking about how we can, one, shift society to flatten that hierarchy out but, two, alternative ways to live our lives where we have more choices, where we don’t feel like the only way to get our needs met is in doing it this one specific way.

Dawn Serra: I want to say there’s lots of people who are in their late twenties and early thirties who haven’t ever really been in a relationship – Well, I’ll say romantic relationship because you’ve got all kinds of relationships and that’s another thing that we’re trained to do by the messages and the pop culture that we’re surrounded by is seeing, “I’m in a relationship,” as exclusively meaning a romantic usually sexual relationship. But you have so many relationships in your life that are full of all different kinds of love and they’re all really valuable and important. From platonic friends to neighbors to colleagues, and family to pets.

Meg-John Barker was the first person I talked to that really planted that seed for me. That all of these relationships, including with our pets, with our colleagues, with people that we write with in workshops, with people that we do pottery with. All of those relationships are meaningful, nourishing, fulfilling. They can be supportive and they can be things that we lean on and draw resources, inspiration, kindness from. And as a culture, we tend to devalue that. That those things are less than being in a romantic relationship, which is fundamentally untrue. But when that’s the reality, it’s really hard to see beyond that. Especially when a lot of the people in your life around you have bought into that, they’re going to not be able to really see an alternative often.

So I found all kinds of resources for you to check out and to send you down the rabbit hole of looking for people who might inspire you in talking about this. As I mentioned, Meg John Barker who wrote Rewriting The Rules and also co-wrote, Enjoy Sex with Justin Hancock. They have put out a number of books and zines all about gender and relationship styles. Meg John is amazing and talks frequently about essentially relationship anarchy, which is removing the hierarchy from our relationships; and seeing all relationships as completely and totally unique and no one relationship is more important than another. They’re just different. So getting involved with a relationship anarchy group might be something that’s really interesting to you.

Dawn Serra: One of the things I’ve noticed in the relationship anarchy group that I am a part of on Facebook is that 99.9% of the posts are still about romantic sexual relationships. Very few people are asking questions or sharing resources around non romantic, nonsexual relationships, which I think says a lot. I also think it’s because often there’s a lot less tension and drama in our platonic relationships and our peer relationships and our creative relationships. There’s really not a whole lot of vying or drama or jealousy going on in those relationships in my life. It’s the romantic sexual stuff that sometimes can feel more complicated and so maybe that’s why not as much as getting shared there. But do know there are people who are creating all kinds of content around that relationship anarchy. And like anything, choose wisely who you follow and who you listen to.

There are a lot of people talking and teaching about relationship anarchy who have some pretty, pretty toxic views. They see any form of monogamy whatsoever as abusive, and they really have some strong opinions about the ways other people live their lives that might be different from how they’d like to live theirs. So I encourage you, when you’re looking for experts that are talking about relationship anarchy, look for people who really are trying to find ways to validate the multitude of human experience while also calling out a lot of the toxic messaging that we’re getting about love and romance.

Dawn Serra: I also found a whole bunch of links and articles. I’m going to post those on the website for this episode. So if you go to dawnserra.com/ep242/ for episode 242. You’re going to see a big long list of links. Here are some of the things that I found. My hope isn’t that this is the final answer for you, but that this is a jumping off point for going down the rabbit hole of all the different types of people who are thinking and writing about this very thing you’re asking.

So the first is an article on Bustle called 9 YA books with No Romance to Read as an Antidote to Valentine’s Day. Now, I know you’re not looking for an antidote to Valentine’s Day per se, but I do think that finding stories that inspire us and light us up, and show us alternative ways of being that don’t send her around romance are so important. It combats and counters this soup we’re swimming in that pretty much only values romantic sexual relationships. There’s another link that I found on Electric Literature called We Need More Books Without Romance. And it goes in to why. There was also a Dear Prudence letter recently called The Relentlessly Friendly Neighbor Edition and someone who is asexual wrote in asking for resources of books and movies that didn’t involve romance or sex. And the Dear Prudence followers actually wrote in with lots of suggestions, and Dear Prudence rolled that all up into a little resource guide and it’s a whole bunch of movies and books not focused around romantic love. There’s also this really great article I found on the value of platonic love in Art For Ourselves, which is a nice little reflection on the ways that this particular person has experienced a devaluing of platonic love in their life and why they really want to center platonic over romantic or sexual love.

There are two ace resources that I’m including as well about what it means to be aromantic. Now, I’m not saying that you, listener, identify as aromantic. But there are lots of really interesting resources in these aromantic FAQs and resource lists that include links to articles about living in relationships that are platonic and caring, and supportive without having any kind of romance or sex. One of them is a queer, platonic, quasi platonic relationship. There is a blog post that they link to all about queerplatonic relationships and where we can learn more and who’s doing it. So I’m going to include these, aromantic links so that you can just go and look at all the resources and the people who are creating around this because whether or not you identify as aromantic, this might be a place to find some community.

Dawn Serra: There’s also this wonderful piece, it’s back from 2016 in the Thought Catalog called, This is Why I’m Choosing to Remain Single Forever. It’s really interesting. It talks about the critics and people who are just pushing so much for romantic love. And one of the things that they cite is a recent study that found that never married singles were more likely to have active social lives than married couples, as well as a greater tendency to offer help to friends, family, and their communities. Now for an outgoing person, that would be wonderful news. For an introvert, that might be the most terrifying thing ever. But I’m just offering that people are studying this and thinking about it. There’s another piece that someone recommended to me that’s several years old. It’s from 2012 but it’s called Single by Choice: Why More of Us Than Ever Are Happy to Never Get Married.

I also found this interesting statistic while I was doing all this research that women, however, the researchers define that, are more likely to be happy single than men. Again, however, the researchers define that. My guess is cis men and cis women. But they found that 76% of women reported being satisfied with a single life as opposed to only 67% of men. And the key reason for happiness was the people who were choosing singlehood. And in fact, the researchers found that because of the ways we’re socialized in our culture and in the gender binary, men run the risk of becoming more isolated than women do when they are single, which is why marriage can be particularly quote unquote protective move for men to meet their social needs. Hello, toxic masculinity and sexism, and patriarchy and femme phobia and all the other things. Whereas for women, again, social constructs and things are able to find more happiness. Because they’re not carrying that burden of needing someone else to do the emotional labor for them.

Dawn Serra: So there’s all kinds of people talking about this, writing about this, creating listicles around this, which is to say, Tell Me What I Want, What I Really, Really Want, that you are not alone. You are not broken. You do not need to be in a romantic relationship for a fulfilling life. I do want to offer that being in relationship with other humans and being in community is crucial for our overall health and happiness, and growth. So as long as you’ve got meaningful relationships of a variety of types in your life with friends and family and colleagues, then the sky is the limit. You can flirt. You can have sex, you can delight in all the things you want to do without ever having to engage in some type of romantic primary partnership. So check out the resources that I’m sharing. Again, dawnserra.com/ep242/ for episode 242. Check out whatever you can find on relationship anarchy and tread carefully. There is just as much toxicity I’m seeing in some of the relationship anarchy communities as I’ve seen in poly communities, as I’ve seen in Christian monogamy communities. I mean, toxicity everywhere.

So just trust your gut and no, you’re not behind, you’re not doing life wrong. In fact, I think it’s pretty rad that you have given yourself permission to even start asking questions about living this non normative approach to life. There’re going to be so many things that you can choose for yourself that you’ll discover without having to do something that doesn’t feel like a good fit for you. And I also want a name, you can be the kind of person who says, “I really don’t want romance in my life. I’m choosing all these other relationships. I see them as just as valuable. There’s no hierarchy in my life.” And you can move through life and then something can happen where it changes. Much like thinking you’re straight and then realizing at some point that you’re queer or bi, or thinking that you’re cis and then at some point realizing you’re non binary or trans. There is no kind of betrayal or lying or regret that needs to come up around that. We’re allowed to change. So you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re also allowed to be exactly who you are now for as long as you want to be in as long as feels good. But I love that you’re asking the question and hopefully all of these links and resources give you lots of different opportunities for connecting with writers and authors, and community leaders; who you can follow on social media that are pushing against this dictate that you have to be in a romantic relationship in order to be worthy, happy, peak human being because that is fundamentally not true.

Dawn Serra: Thank you so much for writing in. If anybody has any other resources that they want to share that I can pass along to Tell Me What I Want, What I Really, Really Want, feel free to email me at the show. You can go to dawnserra.com and use the send a note feature to get me anything that you might know of that I could then pass along to the community for other people who are asking this question.

Patreon supporters, if you support it $3 and above, this week’s bonus content is going to be about defining desire. I was reading through Writing Ourselves Whole: Using The Power of Your Own Creativity to Recover and Heal From Sexual Trauma by Jen Cross again. And there’s this great little exercise in there about defining and exploring desire. The question is, what are you waiting for the stars to bring? We’re going to talk about that a little bit. I’m going to read an excerpt from the book and then explore a little bit of what my desire looks like and invite you to do the same and to share it in the comments for that post. So again, patreon.com/sgrpodcast is the new link. I would love to see you there.

Dawn Serra: This next question comes from Mikaela and the subject line is, “Boyfriend can’t orgasm during sex”. Hey Dawn, I want to start by saying I love listening to your podcast. It brings me quite the laugh and has helped me in the past with some issues with my sex life. But I have a different challenge with my boyfriend now. He and I have been together for awhile. We’ve been having great sex for the past year or so. He has no issues getting it on, but when it comes to finishing, he can’t seem to. It’s put quite a strain on our sex life and I’m not sure how to help or at least not feel like it’s my fault. I’d appreciate any advice or feedback you may have on the subject.

First of all, thank you so much for listening to the show and for writing in with your question. This is not unusual. It’s very common. And again, like Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, so many of the stories we have around sex, especially someone with a penis and in your boyfriend’s case, his experience, is that orgasm as the end all be all over the sexual experience and if he’s not cumming, then there must be something wrong. My first question would be, does he feel distressed about this? If the history of the strain wasn’t there, and way back in the beginning when the two of you were engaging in sex and doing your thing and having fun and then he didn’t cum, was that distressful to him or did it become distressful for the two of you because of your feelings and you kind of, “Is something wrong? Is there something else I should be doing?” Did somehow shame or intense feelings come up because of your dynamic rather than just him and his body and how it is? If he doesn’t feel distressed about it, then I think letting it go and doing whatever you can to just trust him and his body is going to be super important.

There’s lots of reasons why he can’t orgasm during sex or why he isn’t right no, at least. Pressure has a lot to do with whether or not we can cum regardless of our gender. If we’re feeling pressure to cum , if we’re feeling worried, we might not cum. One, that can impact our level of arousal and, two, that can impact whether or not we can achieve orgasm. Because if we’re in our head thinking about orgasm and we’re not in our body, just savoring and enjoying all that pleasure, orgasm is going to be pretty hard to come by.

Dawn Serra: I’m also curious about the ways that he masturbates, if he uses a very particular stroke or grip and only that particular stroke or grip to come to orgasm when he’s on his own, recreating that during partner sex can be kind of challenging. Vaginas and vulvas and mouths feel really different than hands or toys. So that might be something else. If he wants to investigate this, it might be worth just asking how does he masturbate? Is he coming on his own when he’s masturbating and no one else is around? If he’s not coming then, then that’s a whole different thing. But getting curious about when does his body feel most at ease, where does he experience the most pleasure, how does he pleasured himself on his own? And then how was he experiencing pleasure with you? Maybe the two of you have super awesome sex and he fucks the daylights out of you. And then he goes to another room and he finishes. Maybe that’s awesome sex for the two of you.

So I have a lot more questions and I think that, one, it has to start with does he want your help? And if he doesn’t, letting it go and trusting him and questioning why you feel like it’s your fault. If he’s told you, “Things feel really good and this is really fun, and I want to keep having sex with you.” You even said earlier in your email we’ve been having great sex for the past year or so, then that would indicate there’s nothing to feel at fault over other than having really great sex. So I think there’s some stories happening around what it means for him to orgasm. What do you think it means for him to orgasm? What are the stories you’re telling yourself about that? Is that somehow a check mark that you’ve been a great lover or a great partner? Is it some type of proof that you need that offers you comfort? Is it something he has said or expressed? Investigating those things will offer, I think, some more information around where he you should go next. If he’s not distressed, if there’s been pressure put on him to cum, and if you can get creative around ways that he can maximize his pleasure, then all you can do in the end is just to trust that he knows his body and he’s offering you everything that he can truthfully; and then it’s on you to just let it go.

I was tempted to start singing, Let It Go, from Frozen, but nobody – Nobody needs to hear me singing. Anyway, thank you so much for writing in Mikaela. I love that you’re asking these questions and I think just doing a little bit more investigating into what’s underneath of the why. Why is this important to you and how important is it to him? And then is there something else that the two of you can do? If he’s interested in orgasming, he may not be. But if he’s interested in orgasming, maybe after all the sex happens, he goes off and he does that on his own. If he’s cumming during masturbation, which you didn’t mention. So I’m just guessing. But if he’s not cumming at all in any circumstance, I would say if it’s distressing him, maybe go to the doctor, have some tests run, make sure that there aren’t any masses or blockages anywhere. And if his body is doing what it needs to be doing and healthy, then he just has to decide what comes next. Is this a place where he wants to practice, explore, try different techniques or toys or is he really okay because the sex is great and the two of you are having fun, and this is just a thing that his body does. And the key is in just letting it be what’s true and moving on.

Dawn Serra: If you could use more support around that, please do reach out. I’ve got a couple of coaching spots available and my rates are going up January 1st. So many of you have taken advantage of it. It’s amazing and I’m really happy to be able to get you in before those rates go up. So Mikaela, if you feel like you could use some coaching at any point, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, I hope you continue having great sex.

This next question comes from T and the subject line is, “Unsatisfied sexual desire.” Hi Dawn, I’m 23 and have loved the show for years. I’ve been listening to it since even before I started having sex and I’m so grateful I had this resource and was able to start my partnered sex life, about a year and a half ago, with so much more knowledge and confidence than I ever would have had access to if I didn’t find your podcast. So thank you. I wanted to write in because I’ve been struggling with having much more desire for my girlfriend than she does for me. I long for her all the time and the smallest things she does will get me so turned on. But she doesn’t have the same experience. We don’t have sex very often and when we do, I don’t really feel satisfied by it because she has a lot of things she isn’t into. Oral sex, for example, that with other partners are a big part of sex for me.

We’re two women who have been together for 10 months now and are very communicative and love each other greatly. But our lack of a connected sex life makes me really sad, especially in the moment when I feel like I’m either getting rejected by her or holding myself back because I know the things I want are not shared. We are poly and I’m pretty slutty, so I usually have other sexual partners who I see for sex. But I still long for more sex with my girlfriend. She knows all of this and tells me I’m very normal for wanting more sex with her and that she’s sorry she can’t reciprocate that right now. Especially since she’s been dealing with a chronic hip injury. Basically, since we started dating that has really affected her sex drive and can cause her pain in different sexual positions. I understand that she doesn’t have as much of a need for sex as me and definitely don’t want to pressure her into having more sex than she’s interested in. So my question is, how can I let go of the sexual desire I feel for her in those moments when I know she does not reciprocate? That has been really hard for me and often leaves me feeling very sad and rejected. How can I deal with that sexual frustration and turn it into something positive that leaves me satisfied rather than dejected?

Dawn Serra: Oh T, There’s so much that I want to offer and ask about and hear about. So again, if at any point you want some sex coaching, reach out because I would love to work with you through some of these things. But that aside, we’ll do what we can with a couple of minutes here and see where we end up. So the first thing I just want to acknowledge is your sadness as valid. It’s okay to feel sad and disappointed inside of our relationships. I think that’s something that culturally, we’re really terrible at.

We don’t have many stories or role models that show us that part of being in relationship with other humans is sometimes feeling disappointed, sometimes feeling sad and frustrated or angry. And it doesn’t mean that the relationship isn’t good and healthy and nourishing. It just means it’s multiple humans being in relationship with each other who are going to move through life in different ways and change. So that’s just normal. Your sadness is normal and it’s real and it’s okay. And I want to just validate that that’s a truth for you.

The other thing that – well there’s so many things that pop out to me about this. But the one thing I just want to offer it right up front is you mentioned that your girlfriend has been dealing with a chronic hip injury basically since you started dating. And that that’s really affected her because it can cause her pain to be in different sexual positions. Living with chronic pain can take a real toll on our bodies. It can take a toll in our mental health and our spiritual health, on finding pleasure and our relationship to it. So if your girlfriend’s experiencing chronic pain, just getting through a day might be the most that she can do a lot of times. And if something might trigger that pain, it makes sense that she would want to avoid it. So I just want to make space for the fact that pain can really take a lot of our energy and can impact the ways that we connect with our bodies. Sometimes we just really don’t want to be in our bodies when they hurt really badly. Sometimes we don’t want to be touched when they are hurting. And that doesn’t mean that we love the people around us less or that we don’t see them as attractive and valuable, and wonderful and magical. It just means it is so fricking hard to be in a body that’s hurting, that sometimes you want to do anything but be in your body, which to have sex and to experience pleasure requires you to be in your body at least a little bit and to be present. And you want to do whatever you can to just numb out, be far away from it and to experience and pleasure at a minimum, no pain whenever you can.

Dawn Serra: So I’m glad that you mentioned that was part of her experience. It makes total sense that if she’s in a lot of pain, sex isn’t going to be real high on her list of things to do. I also want to just mention, I know you know this – your poly and you have lots of different types of relationships in your life but I’m curious about the ways that you want to experience love and connection and maybe the ways that she wants to experience love and connection. I’m thinking a little bit about the five love languages and then kind of translating that a little bit deeper into intimacy and the erotic. Most of us default to giving love the way we want to receive love. So if touch is really important to us, we tend to touch our partners a lot and want our partners to touch us a lot. And if our partner’s primary love language is not touch, it’s maybe gifts that might feel really confusing for them. It might not feel like love at all to be touched constantly.

I’m thinking about how important sex is for you in this relationship that you have with your girlfriend, especially considering that you have sexual relationships with other people, as someone who’s poly. What is the meaning of sex to you? What does sex represent? What does it offer? Karen BK Chan, who’s an amazing therapist and educator out of Toronto was the first person I talked to who really helped me dive deep into this question. She offers this to her clients as a therapist a lot, which is when you really think about, “I want to have sex with you,” what does sex mean? Why is it important? Is it because it offers more connection? Is it because touch is important? Is it because it gives you this sense of adrenaline and adventure that you’re sharing with someone? Is it because that’s when you feel like you can be the most vulnerable and seen? There could be a million reasons why, for you specifically, sex feels so important because usually sex is kind of a stand in for lots of other things.

If you can find your way to that answer specifically with your girlfriend, I wonder what are some adjacent things that could start helping you to get some of those needs met? So if for you, sex with your girlfriend means feeling accepted and feeling wanted and being seen, then what are other things that would help you to feel accepted and wanted and seen that your girlfriend and you can do that isn’t sex? Maybe it’s some massages, maybe it’s really intense talks and sharing a bath. Maybe it’s reading books together that are erotic and then sharing your experiences. Maybe it’s just pressing naked bodies together and not going beyond that. Maybe it’s having an alternative definition of what sex can look like. So I have just so much curiosity around the meaning for you. You mentioned that it’s hard not to feel rejected. So what I’m picking up on is that sex is a way for you to feel accepted and wanted. What are other ways that your girlfriend helps you to feel accepted and wanted? How can you build more of that into your life so that it feels more rich?

Dawn Serra: The other thing that I was just kind of thinking about, and this is a little bit of an unfinished thought, but you were asking how can I deal with the sexual frustration and turn it into something positive and that just got my juices flowing a little bit around, “What if this sexual frustration you’re feeling is something they should could frame is a great thing? To feel the sexual frustration and to know, ‘I still want this woman so much. I still feel so much desire for her that I’m feeling all this frustration and that’s just a symbol of the depth of the feeling and the things that I want to create with her and how deep I want to go with her,’” and can that be something that you transition into an affirmation of, “God, I so wished that we could be sexual right now, but I know that that’s not something that she wants or her body’s just not in a place where that’s okay. So let me just sit inside of this frustration and see it as a gift.”

I think often we try to avoid feeling the things that can feel overwhelming. We don’t want to feel the frustration, so we try to push it away by doing everything we can to get it out of us or, jealousy or insecurity. But what happens if you were to travel inside of it and to really sit in that sexual frustration? How does it feel in your body? Where do you feel that frustration? Is it in your shoulders? Is it in your chest? Is it in your hands? Does it have a temperature or a color? If you were really to just go inside your body and into that feeling and find the sensations, what might it reveal to you? Could that be something that you then turn into fuel for expressing yourself creatively, maybe writing or painting? Is there a way that you and your girlfriend can use that energy to then do other things and create new rituals for each other that don’t have to do with sex?

Dawn Serra: There’s a lot of potential in this space. Even though it feels heavy and sad and rejected. I feel the potential for lots of movement and creativity, which for me just says there’s so much presence of the erotic here in this space right now. There’s just a little bit of a mismatch and maybe some opportunities for exploring more deeply your motivations, your feelings, your stories; and then how can you use that to deepen your connection to yourself and to your girlfriend rather than allowing it to be something that drives a wedge and that feeds your insecurities and that feeds the stories around the rejection. God, there’s so much more that I want to ask and talk to you about and support you through, but I hope that that gives you just a jumping off point without me like waxing poetic for the next hour.

I feel a lot of potential here that feels really exciting, especially because you’re in a situation where you have multiple sexual partners who are meeting all kinds of other needs. So there’s this rich potential here with your girlfriend to be really deliberate and curious about what are new ways that we might connect that we wouldn’t have thought of until now? Ways to touch each other, ways to speak with each other, ways to create with each other and even for you on your own, to be able to really go inside and to befriend some of these feelings. What is the sadness tell you? What is this fear around rejection mean? Where do you feel it in your body and how can you channel it into new things? What would help you to feel super connected to her? Maybe it’s even her witnessing you masturbate in response to you being able to say like, man, I really am feeling some deep erotic feelings for you right now and I’d love to be able to show you. Would you be willing to witness me as I masturbate my desire for you? I mean there’s so many places you could go. My hope is that in hearing my excitement, it triggers some opportunities for you to feel some spaciousness and some curiosity to use this story as a jumping off point towards the new stories, new opportunities, new places that you can go so that the two of you can continue growing together rather than away and apart.

Thank you so much for writing in t I’m going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day and I hope that she found that a little bit helpful and maybe as a place to start some new conversations with your girlfriend and with yourself. Thank you so much for listening.

Dawn Serra: We are going to end this episode with a delicious, delicious treat. When I was at the Body Trust Provider retreat in October in Portland with BeNourished, one of the days they had some guest speakers come in and one of them was Angela Braxton Johnson.

Angela is this vibrant, incredible human who came in and read this poem. And the second I heard the poem, it just hit me so hard in the feels and I asked her immediately if she’d be willing to read it for the show. And that’s what we get this week and it is all about fat bodies and pleasure and self acceptance. Angela has recently written a book that is now available. You can check it out on her website, which is linked in the show notes and at dawnserra.com/ep242/ and I want to tell you just a little bit about Angela and then you’re going to hear this 15 or 20 minute chat with this beautiful poem and why she wrote it. Because I think that it’s really important for us to be able to sit in other people’s stories and delight in them around just what it means to be in our bodies.

Angela is a creative artist, in addition to teaching water aerobics, which her water aerobics pictures on Instagram looks so fricking fun. I wish I was in Portland so I could do them with her. She inherited her love of music from her mother who was always singing or playing music. Mama had quite the music collection and a variety of genres. She’s been singing in choirs, playing the flute, singing in groups, and even experimenting with singing and some of her poems that she’s been written to share through spoken word. Angela’s second love is writing. For her, to write is to breathe. She began writing and journaling when she was 9 years old and by the age of 15 was writing poetry regularly. She hasn’t stopped since. Angela is so excited to be sharing her words with the world through poetry. This novel that was just recently published and spoken word. If you want to learn more about Angela, you can head to angelabraxtonjohnson.com where you can also find out about her book, Who’s Watching Me? Here is Angela’s poem and a quick chat around lusciousness and fat bodies, and finding our ways towards ourselves.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to the show, Angela. I am so excited that you’re going to be sharing some poetry with us today.

Angela Johnson: Thank you so much, Dawn, for having me. This is such a blessing. I’m just – I’m excited. I’m smiling. So like the big kool aid smile. That’s me right now.

Dawn Serra: Good.That’s what we go for. Everyone on the who listens to the show, heard about my trip down to Portland for the Body Trust Providers Certification. And you were one of the speakers on one of the days and I was so moved by the poem that you read called Abundant Fatness and I just knew I wanted to have you read it on the show. So before you do that, could you tell everyone just a little bit about what the poem means to you? Why you wrote it?

Angela Johnson: Sure. I just wrote this poem in September, just a couple of months ago and it came to me out of this experience – as lifelong experience of being in a bigger body. I’m always, most of my life I’ve been fat except for the few small chapters in my life where I worked really hard and not be fat. And that never lasted very long. So I found body trust, I found BeNourished at a time where I was just like, “I’m tired of this dieting. I’m tired of people…” I didn’t know fully what I was tired of. I just know I felt really bad. I didn’t feel healthy. And some of the things I didn’t discover until I began to learn about body trust and I went to the reclaiming body trust weekend retreat. I’ve been on this journey pretty much since about April of 2017 and I just kind of came into my truth. I just recently, in the past few months I’ve stepped into this truth of, “This is who I am. I’m fat and that’s not a bad thing,” just this place of liberation. So Abundant Fatness is me kind of saying, “This is who I am.” I guess kind of bucking up, standing up to diet culture and standing in my truth.

Dawn Serra: Gosh, more of us could certainly use that in our lives. I think diet culture is very seductive and being able to just say, “This is the space I take up and here’s how I take up that space is such a powerful shift.”

Angela Johnson: Yes. And that’s what it was. I, I feel like that’s what it’s been, this powerful shift. That’s exactly what it is.

Dawn Serra: Well, would you treat us to your beautiful poem and let us hear about your abundant fatness?

Angela Johnson: Absolutely. Abundant fatness. So many look at me and the first thing they see is my blackness, my fatness, my so called obesity. Diet cultures, simplicity, anchored in lies rather than facts based research from health at every size. I will not compromise my body nor my soul. No nips and tucks. I refuse to give up my multiple belly rolls nor any part of me to please or appease society and its trolls. Finally whole, I feast. My appetites are valid from greatest to least. Sometimes too full, sometimes incomplete. No more longing for food that’s hardy and sweet. I eat from earth trees, ocean and seas, animals factories and honeybees. I eat whatever I want, whatever I please for taste, for comfort, and to be nourished. I eat whenever I’m hungry and right now, I’m hungry for righteousness, for rightness, for communion, with like minded, trading my crown of like whiteness for royalty crown with coil truth. Spiraling traumas from my youth.

I am courageously aging from princess to Queen, taking up space, ready to be seen while dealing with feelings and finally healing. From lie perms and straight up lies to chocolate covered melanin rooted in peace. No more numbing to disguise, my shackles released. I am up for the stoic task of removing generational mask while putting on metabolic fitness, making joyful moves while walking in the spirit. I am perplexed and vexed by your body mass index, which doesn’t measure discrimination nor my intersections of stress. I don’t accept my body being called obese. I’m a divinely created complex beast with modified and enlightened set points, a spirit wall and body joint. Any lesser version of me, pales to my colorful vibrancy, immeasurable by scales. Devices can only measure small fractions of me, I’m so much more than mere eyes can see. Covered by grace, limitless love from above abides within. I am somewhat holy with a plethora of sin. Getting to know me through real life, I pin my universe of words and verse. I am largely peculiar, marginally unruly, trying to walk and step with the truth, be the true me. I wonder if folks who look, see the true me. You have to look deeply and much more discreetly to see this abundant big fatness of three. Snap, snap. [snaps fingers]

Dawn Serra: Oh my gosh, yes!

Angela Johnson: That’s another thing that happens, girl. I’m in my fifties now. I applaud for myself.

Dawn Serra: Heck yes, you should. There’s so many lines in that poem that I love and so many words like I love that she used the word feast and then it’s just so sensual and mouth wateringly rich. And I love, too, how you talk about taking up space and being seen, which I think so many people think that they want. But they actually really resist because it’s risky to be seen.

Angela Johnson: It’s so risky. It’s not – it’s not popular. It’s this is this walk that I’m on right now, I get so much… When I was dieting, if you look back on my news feeds or the timeline when I was looking – when I was dieting and losing weight and everybody’s like, “Oh girl, you look so good. What are you doing?” And when I stopped doing that and my body became fatter and I stopped all the dieting, and just started just being, you can hear crickets on my timelines. Until I started meeting people like you and folks through BeNourished and communities. Basically, I’m meeting new communities because a lot of people still think that I’m promoting unhealthy living and you get all this kind of… But no, I’m not promoting that. I’m promoting that people in bigger bodies and fatness – I embraced the word fat. That people can be fat and be free and that have to try to be something that someone tells them they need to try to be like.

Dawn Serra: And I’m wondering, too, I really liked the part where you talk about courageously aging, which is also very countercultural – a culture that very much values youth. I think a lot of people struggle with the fact that like part of aging includes a body that’s changing and that may feel foreign to you. So how is courageously aging showing up for you right now?

Angela Johnson: I think if first started back when I, I was about 37 or 38, my mother was still living. And I remember when I noticed that my first gray hair and I was like, “Oh Mama.” I was excited. I got my first gray hair. It’s kind of like, I guess it felt to me, like a rites of passage I’ve got my first gray and my mother was so – She said, “Girl, most folks are depressed and crying when they discover… Here you are, excited.” So I think that was in me to embrace this, whoever I am. But society does beat it out of you. And I think now that I, like I’d mentioned it in my fifties now and I just feel like I’m aging courageously. I’m not trying to be younger, I’m not trying to look younger.

When I do things that like – I do like coloring my hair, but I’m not trying to be 27. I just like color. I just like colors. I think that’s what it is. It’s just I’m not getting any younger. I’m going to go into this courageously. I think a big part of the courage for me has been, I’ve been part of these systems that have told me I needed to be whiter or I needed to straighten my hair. Then coil truth is like now, I wear my hair the way it grows out of my head and that’s not always as popular. It’s becoming more popular. But when I first started locking my hair, it wasn’t as popular then to be… My white friends will be like, “Why are you doing that?” Now I have white friends with locks.

Dawn Serra: White folks got to take anything over they can.

Angela Johnson: Girl, that’s a whole nother show, right?

Dawn Serra: Yes it is.

Angela Johnson: I think another part of that being courageous is like my grandmother and my mother always wore their hair straight because that’s what they had to do to get work. You couldn’t wear your hair the way I wear my hair today, that wasn’t socially acceptable. There’s so many layers of that, courageously is like in every way that I am me, I’m going to be me. And that means that I’m going to talk, like I talk. Instead of being – I know the language. I know how know how corporate America talks. I can do all of that and I did for years, but now I’m just going to be, “This is me. And I’m going to say say ain’t and can’t and whatever,” Because I’m being who I am. Yeah.

Dawn Serra: So I have one last question for you before I let you go. And it’s a little bit of a surprise, but it just came to me while I was listening to you. I wonder as you settle into this place of this abundant fatness and this courageous aging and this feasting on life, what is pleasure for you look like right now?

Angela Johnson: Pleasure looks like a sunset at the beach, at the ocean. Like the sun setting over the ocean. Pleasure looks like at so many things like the river, like the ripples of the river. I love that water. So it looks like the sparkles that come from seeing the ocean or the river or any body of water. It’s the butterflies that I get when I see my husband or when he calls me on the phone. Pleasure is like that foot massage that he gives me. It’s so much more than the central act of making love to my husband. which is pleasure. That’s a pleasure, as well. Pleasure is a good soul food meal. It’s the buttery richness of a pound cake and that sweet creamy texture or have a sweet potato pie.

It’s the seasoning. It’s all of those magical flavors that makes my taste buds dance. I’m so visual. Pleasure is like opening up all of my senses where where I can smell, I can feel, I can taste, I can see, I can explore all of my senses without ridicule.

Dawn Serra: Feels luscious to just hear you speak. I would love it if you could tell everyone how they can stay in touch with you. Because I know you’ve got a book coming out soon. So how can people check that out?

Angela Johnson: Okay, so the book is called Who’s Watching Me? And today, I’ve been going back and forth with my publisher to get the last little tweaks on the description. So that ebook will be live possibly this week. But I will be posting – I have a website, angelabraxtonjohnson.com and then I’m on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. But the ones I use the most are Instagram and Facebook at AngelaBJ1 – The number one- poet. They can get on any of those platforms and I’ll be posting about it. And the book talks a lot about the trauma that I experienced. It’s book one of a series. So it’s going to be a nice bridge from where this little girl, Annie, starts. She experiences a lot of trauma and when I see this, I feel like abundant fatness, the journey that will come forth in my books is the bridge between that little girl in this first book and to where I am now.

Dawn Serra: I will definitely keep my eye out from when that book comes out and I will have links in the show notes for this episode so that everyone can just click through to get to your website and your social media. They can follow along and find out when that book is coming out. And Angela, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story and your poetry with us. It was beautiful.

Angela Johnson: Thank you. Thanks so much.

Dawn Serra: To everybody who tuned in. Be sure to click those links and follow along with Angela. The things that she’s creating, we all need in our lives. And of course you can find out more about the show and what’s coming up next at dawnserra.com. So until next time, this is Dawn Serra. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and to get awesome weekly bonuses.

As you look towards the next week, I wonder, what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?