Sex Gets Real 277: Cuckqueaning and the dangers of advice

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Creating community memories of abuse, why giving advice is a double-edged sword, attending ACA meetings, and wanting to cuckquean when you have trauma and no body confidence.

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This week we kick off by exploring a few interesting posts I came across.

One that’s a few years old by Ferrett Steinmetz on the dangers of giving advice can be read here.

Another is this amazing community memory that’s meant to help a DC antifacist activist community remember some harmful behavior one particular individual has been engaging in. Is there potential for other communities to create similar memories as a way to foster accountability and change? Check out the piece and share it widely.

We are diving into two questions this week.

The first is Ana Banana who wants to know what I think of going to ACA meetings (Adult Children of Alcoholics).

I explore the power of community to heal and also some of the dangers of placing all the blame on individuals.

Next is a question from Confused Quean on how to be a cuckquean while having deep body trauma and self-image issues.

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About Host Dawn Serra:

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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.

It’s time for another episode and the exciting thing is your emails have been coming in over the past week and I love it! If you’re listening to this and you have a question you’d love to ask, I would love, love, love to receive it. From relationship advice to sex questions to bodies and how we move through the world to systems and structures, send me your curiosities, your stuck places, confessions, fears, shame, and anything else you’d like me to hold and possibly share on the show. You can email me directly at info at sexgetsreal dot com or by visiting dawnserra.com and using the contact form there, which has an anonymous option. I love receiving these notes from you. I would really enjoy having a deluge of emails to savor in the coming weeks and months.

Dawn Serra: On last week’s episode, I shared a post by Sydney Faith Rose on anxious attachment styles. As I was actually prepping for this episode, someone that I follow on Facebook started a really interesting conversation about that very thing. So I thought I should fold that into this week’s episode. Now, I haven’t spoken with that person about sharing their name or their identity and they do have private Facebook and Twitter threads, so I’m not going to share their names for now. But I just thought it was really interesting they were talking with some folks about the ways that anxious attachment has become the stand-in for like “my crazy ex-girlfriend.” This person wrote, “I’m noticing some dudes lean on ‘she’s anxious attached’ as though it’s some kind of excuse for mistreating women. Like it’s the women’s fault because they just aren’t ‘secure’ enough to be able to handle being treated like shit. Textbook abuser logic.” So that’s the end of their quote.

While I do think we should be wary of using attachment style as this solution that explains all the things, we are far too complex for singular theories and answers to be the end-all, be-all of humanity. I do think that it’s important for us to note that when you dive into the research on attachment styles, it shows that people who are marked or categorized as anxious around their attachment styles will actually behave in similar ways to secure attachers when they’re in a secure relationship. Which echoes so much of what Sydney said, that I read in last week’s episode, which is we attach differently to different people and the circumstances really matter. Often, those of us who are displaying anxious attachment are just doing so because the situation is actually anxiety-producing – either because there’s actual mistreatment happening or because there’s patterns that are emerging that remind us of prior mistreatment. Both of those things deserve real attention and tending. There’s no shame in having an anxious attachment. It just means maybe there’s a reason we’re feeling anxious.

Dawn Serra: Then, as I was thinking about that and seeing this thread by this friend, which tied so beautifully to last week’s episode, I also came across a piece by The Ferrett, who if you’re on Fetlife and you’re in kinky circles, you know Ferrett has long been blogging about non-monogamy and kink and geek culture. Anyway, he wrote this thing back in 2014, all about Eve Rickert and Franklin Veaux’s book “More Than Two” and it really struck a chord. Both because of all the things coming out about Franklin Veaux and also, just really thinking about your emails, the things that were holding on the show right now.

I’ve received some feedback over the years – interesting, only ever from men – that usually says something about how they really want a concrete answer from me in response to their question. I’ve gotten emails that say things like “I want to know if XYZ is true and don’t give me any of that ‘well sometimes’ stuff. I want to know for sure,” which makes me laugh because that need for certainty says a lot about their need to be in control, but it’s something that I think about a lot.

Dawn Serra: So all of that’s going to make more sense when I share a bit from this blog post that Ferrett wrote a few years ago. The piece is called, “Every Piece of Advice Given Unleashes a Demon” Here’s how Ferrett opens the post, “So I’m reading Eve Rickert and Franklin Veaux’s More Than Two, which thus far is a damn fine book on effective practices for good polyamory. Yet ten chapters in, I can already see how the solid advice in More Than Two is going to get abused by some people, because the book is covertly tilted towards a certain kind of person. And I’m wincing. I’m wincing because the wrong kinds of people often grab my advice and use it as a club, and there’s no way any of us can stop that from happening. That’s the problem with writing essays designed to help people pick apart their problems: every piece of advice is meant to fix a very specific problem.”

So that’s the end of this beginning to Ferrett’s post. I think about this every time I answer one of your questions on this show or I share a post like Sydney’s from last week. I’ve had it happen that my response to someone’s specific email has later been used to excuse or to justify shitty behavior by someone who heard that response and then used it for their very different situation.

Later in the post Ferrett writes, “You can frame any given piece of wisdom as clearly as you’d like, but humans are bias machines, designed to take in the bits they agree with and silently discard the parts that don’t.”

Dawn Serra: I wanted to share that today because I when I say I treasure your emails, I really mean that. When I say I think a lot about what gets shared on the show, I really mean that. I spend hours upon hours thinking about your stories, the questions you ask, the world we move through. It’s the basis of almost every conversation that I have with the people in my life, my colleagues, with Alex. I know that my thoughts on this show are just a miniscule, tiny, tiny fraction of the influences and the people who impact each of your lives. 

So while I take this work very seriously, I also know that I can’t control what happens once these words leave my mouth and hit your ears and go out into the world, which is why I really try to offer multiple perspectives when I can because I know lots of different kinds of people listen to this show. And some are going to use the things that I share with care and others will not. There are people out there that are looking for anything to justify the things they desperately need to justify, even if it means taking things out of context. That’s just what humans do. I do it all of the time, too. Pay attention to the things that really are things I need to see and leave the rest.

Dawn Serra: I’ve said it before and I’m going to continue saying it for as long as I have a platform: I am not the expert on anyone’s life but my own. I might have knowledge about certain things that others don’t have. I might have experiences that others don’t have. I might have experiences that are similar to yours. I hope that I can offer people new questions to hold, that I can offer a little permission to feel new things, think new thoughts, but really my hope is that through listening to this show you find ways to deepen your trust in yourself, to deepen your compassion for others, to start asking newly interesting questions about the ways that we relate to each other, and to start seeing the invisible systems and structures and the culture that impact all of our lives in very real ways, so that then you can have that critical lens as you consider your life and how you want to move through it.

I just want to offer that as food for thought. These are all things that have been on my mind, come across my feed this week. If you’d like to read the rest of Ferrett’s post, I’m going to link to that at sexgetsreal.com/ep277 for Episode 277. Please go check that out and let me know what you think. These are all things that I hold so seriously and think about all the time. If you heard me on The Secret Feminist Agenda podcast, you know we’ve spent a significant amount of time talking about that. So that just felt really timely to start the show with.

Dawn Serra: There’s this other piece I came across this week that I also wanted to share because I think it’s a really interesting approach to some community problems that a lot of us have experienced, especially in kink community or polyamorous community or activist communities, queer communities. The piece is titled, “An important message to the community from the Don’t @ Me Collective.” It was posted to Medium and this piece is a collection of grievances that an antifacist community in DC has around an individual that they’re calling D. Here’s what I found really interesting about the piece and why I’m sharing it here:

The first thing is they’re specifically not naming D because they believe people can change and they don’t want to contribute to call out or labeling certain individuals as monsters or as disposable. 

The second thing is the purpose of the piece is to create a collective memory of the harms that D has done to the community so that as people leave the community and new people come in – often younger and less experienced people – there’s a historical document that allows for that harm to be held as true and that makes it easier for others to identify the harmful patterns that D, and ultimately others, might bring to the group. I find that fascinating. God! That would have been so helpful to me in so many circumstances in the past.

Dawn Serra: And the third thing is the list of grievances are really clear and really specific and talk about the impact that D’s behaviors have had on the community, the very real impact. Something that often goes unnoticed because people get in their feelings and pick sides and become defensive, and then the impact becomes invisibilized or lost.

Then this particular message closes with a call – several calls, actually. The first one is for D to examine their behavior and to change. It also asks friends and acquaintances of D to hold D accountable for the ongoing harm, which I think is such an act of love, but a deeply uncomfortable one for most of us who really don’t understand how to be held accountable. The piece also asks community organizers to decenter D in the community, to make space for other voices and perspectives because one of D’s consistent behaviors is to center himself, and then to ridicule and to sneak behind people’s backs who don’t center his perspective. I think that’s a really valuable action and a specific concrete one. Then the very last thing that they ask is for all of us who don’t know D and who aren’t a part of this particular community to reflect on the behaviors that they’ve listed in the document and to consider how these behaviors and those like it might be impacting the communities that we are a part of. Maybe we’re doing some of these behaviors and we don’t even really realize it. It’s an opportunity for all of us to learn and to grow and to be able to name some things that can be really difficult to put our finger on.

Dawn Serra: Something that I’m so intrigued by these days is how we can be doing personal relationships and community differently. How can we recognize culture and privilege and power and the ways that they influence people’s behavior and the ways we show up in each other’s lives? How can we do better at focusing on behavior and doing things differently without creating these really false binaries of perfect victim and monstrous abuser? If you’re not just the right kind of victim, then we can ignore you. If you aren’t monstrous enough, then we’re not going to address the behavior because it makes us uncomfortable.

I think that this piece is an invitation for all of us to collectively remember, which is fascinating to me. Because so many of the stories and the experiences of harm that happen in so many circles and communities and groups gets lost as people leave. I think we also see this a lot with the Franklin Veaux accountability with what’s happening. So many people were experiencing the same types of harmful behaviors but because they were leaving the community, that knowledge got lost. 

Dawn Serra: I love this idea of collectively remembering so that we can all do better, so that we all have shared language, so we can ask different questions. I mean, anybody who’s ever been in any kind of sex positive space for any period of time – from kink to tantra to polyamory to leather – knows that so many of our spaces have a legacy of silencing people who have experienced harm and continuing to allow people who harm others to continue their cycle of abuse, especially on incoming and younger and newer members. And that has to stop. We have to stop with the cycle of trauma and harm. But it does mean getting uncomfortable. And it does mean having the space and the time to do things like this particular document that they’ve shared. 

I think that this kind of process not only allows more people to know what’s going on, so that there’s less of that whisper network where only certain people have access to certain information. But it also gives all of us new ways to examine our own behaviors long before they get to the point of extended and severe harm, which is so much more difficult to repair and create so much more shame and all the things.

So if you want to check it out… I do think that it’s a really interesting approach. They’re asking everyone to share it widely as a potential way for us to do things differently. Maybe this creates new opportunities for even more ways of being in community. Maybe this is the beginning of something or sparks new ideas. You can get the link and read the piece at sexgetsreal.com/ep277. I’ll have that and Ferrett’s piece, if you want to check those out.

Dawn Serra: Our first email this week comes from Ana Banana. Ana writes: “Oh, how I adore you! You have helped me feel normal, opened my eyes to new possibilities and acceptance. I’ve recently started going to ACA meetings and I wanted to know what your opinion is towards this type of meeting. Thank you for being you!”

Oh! Hi Ana! First of all, thank you so much for all the kind words in this very short, succinct message. It means so much to me to read your words “you have helped me feel normal.” That’s the hope, the dream, the big yes! I want that for so many more of us. 

For your question, Ana, I believe what you mean by ACA is adult children of alcoholics meetings. If you mean something else, write to me and let me know. But everything that comes after this is going to be answering your question based on that definition.

Dawn Serra: My short answer is it depends. It depends on the group itself and who is attending. It depends on the facilitators and their training and their perspectives. It depends on what it is you want and need from the meetings. It depends. And it’s complicated. 

If there is one thing that I know it’s that we heal in relationship. But also, so many of our wounds come from relationship. That’s the messy truth. There’s a siren right now. I don’t know if you could hear that, but it’s very loud. Okay. So we heal in relationship and there’s just way too many of us that are trying to force ourselves into healing by going it alone. We’re taught to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to figure it out. There’s just so much toxicity inside of that hyper individual idea of thinking if we can just figure things out in private, we can fix all the things without ever being seen as hurting or as being less than perfect. But that rarely, rarely works and often just makes them so much worse.

Dawn Serra: Being in compassionate, supportive groups foster growth and empathy, witnessing, and healing in ways that I can’t describe. I mean, having your story echoed by others in the room can remove so much guilt and shame. The first time that I was ever around a whole bunch of other rape survivors and heard their stories and the things that they were grappling with, the shame that they carried, the fault they had taken on, I experienced this big, huge sigh of relief because I realized it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t me that was the problem. It wasn’t on me that I was the only one feeling this way. There was all of these other smart, amazing, beautiful people feeling this way too. That created permission for me to maybe start living my way into a different story around this very hard thing. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been a part of a group or facilitated a group where one person says something like, “I feel like I’m the only one. I’m so ashamed.” Then almost everyone else in the space says the exact same thing. I think that’s really profound and it can really help us to let go of some of these stories that we have, things that we used to tell ourselves when we’re alone, in the dark or even one-on-one with a therapist. There’s just certain things that we need a group for. And all those different voices and perspectives, it can be beautiful.

Dawn Serra: That said, I also think that there’s a tendency especially around AA and NA and all the offshoots that include ACA and other groups to pathologize a lot of behaviors that are actually really serving an important purpose. Sometimes these groups can place way too much emphasis on the individual without taking larger circumstances into consideration. Things like racism and poverty and disability and trauma and access and so many other things.

I have several friends who credit AA and NA with literally saving their lives and giving them a touchstone to return to again and again, year after year after decade after decade. And there are just as many people who have been harmed by these programs for a wide variety of reasons, from poor facilitation to the hyperindividualism and blaming people for experiencing things like poverty and racism to the fact that the science just really doesn’t hold up with what we now know about addiction and brains.

Dawn Serra: Now, ACA is a little different in that it’s supporting the children and families of alcoholics. Again, I think there’s so much power in being supported by others who may have similar experiences to us. And, again, there’s a tendency to pathologize behaviors, often behaviors that are specifically culturally prescribed or ascribed as being feminine, that are actually behaviors that are really deeply caring and wise.

I can’t remember if it was last week or the week before, but I mentioned an article by Dr. Chris Hoff called “The Myth of Codependency.” I think he has a whole episode of his podcast, “The Radical Therapist” on that or he’s got a video on YouTube. I can’t remember which one. But I think, particularly around ACA, there’s this really heavy reliance on breaking free from codependency which, depending on your family and your circumstances, may or may not be helpful. But I think that Dr. Hoff‘s piece, “The Myth of Codependency” can be really helpful for unpacking that.

Dawn Serra: I also think that it’s really important that we place the steps of any AA or NA or ACA program within the context of our current lives, not just ourselves. So many of the things that are on The Laundry List, as it’s known in ACA, which are the 14 traits of adult children of alcoholics – they call it The Laundry List – are things that so many people experience to varying degrees because of gender roles and class and culture and religion and a heck of a lot more can lead to so many of the things being named.

I take a look at the list and Trait #2 from ACA’s Laundry List of Traits is “We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.” When I think about people who are deeply seeking approval from others and who lose their identity in that approval process, I think about diet culture which literally teaches us to do that and gender norms and capitalism and patriarchal religions and white supremacy. They all encourage us and indoctrinate us into this kind of behavior. We’re punished, in fact, if we don’t do that. We’re taught to hand over our power to authority figures like teachers and bosses and doctors and priests. That they have more knowledge about our bodies than we do and in the process, we give up listening to ourselves and our bodies. We’re told to sit still when we need to move, to ask permission to go to the bathroom. We’re told we’re not hungry anymore, even if we are hungry or to eat past full because we have to clean our plate based on the rules of our parents’ dinner table, and so much more. 

Dawn Serra: There’s so many reasons and ways that, culturally, being approval seekers and losing our identity in that are deeply rewarded. Of course, this behavior is usually groomed and rewarded specifically in women. There’s this normalization culturally because it supports the systems and the institutions who benefit from us abdicating our power in service to them. So is this behavior the result of a parent who is an alcoholic or the cultural messages that are all around us or both? Who bears the burden of this trait the most? If we were to look at all the people who really connect with that statement, “I became approval seeking and lost my identity in the process,” my guess is that most of the people who strongly identify with that probably identify as women or at least there’s more women than men. Maybe there’s something bigger at play there.

I also think Trait #3 is worth looking at from the Laundry List. It says, “We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.” If you’re a woman – cis, trans, or non-binary – you know the very real risks of angering someone with your no. We read headlines weekly about some guy who stabs or shoots or strangles or rapes or punches a woman for rejecting him. We know that the vast majority of domestic abuse is men on women. Of course, there’s other kinds of abuse that are happening in all kinds of different relationship styles depending on power and privilege, but when you’re really taking a look at that high level, broad category, women are generally the ones who are on the receiving end of deep physical trauma and abuse.

Dawn Serra: And, if you’ve read Brittany Cooper’s “Eloquent Rage” or Soraya Chemaly’s “Rage Becomes Her,” you know that women’s anger is deeply, deeply punished and pathologized, literally from birth, in western culture. Doubly so if you’re Black or Latinx. 

Then you add on top of that, inside of diet culture, where we’re taught that our outsides determine our fuckability – also, thanks to misogyny and patriarchy – our worth, our options for success and employment, where we’re ridiculed for being in a non-normative body, we’re punished by parents who are terrified of having a fat or a disabled child. Being frightened of personal criticism is a given because we’re literally told we can’t be loved if we end up in a body that’s fat or aging or disabled. There’s a reason we fetishized youth. There’s a reason we fetishized smallness. These are all things that we’re indoctrinated into, so personal criticism can have very high stakes. 

Dawn Serra: The reason I bring all of this up is not to say that the Laundry List isn’t helpful. It’s just to say we have to ask critical questions about the conditions of the world around us as we consider traits like those on the Laundry List. It’s not that they’re not helpful in some cases. My guess is they’ve probably brought deep relief to so many people who finally have the language for so many of the things they’ve been feeling or living out in their lives that they didn’t know they needed. I think it’s just that too often we reduce collective trauma, historical trauma, intergenerational trauma, systemic oppression down to this singular cause of an alcoholic parent. 

The truth is yes, an alcoholic parent or a parent who is absent or abusive can cause deep, deep, deep trauma and a sense of not being safe, and harm. That is real and that is painful. We definitely need to have that witnessed and validated and maybe some of these things emerged because the culture we live inside of was designed in a way that made it so easy for us to fall down on that already slippery slope of loss of self and neglect and harm. Why didn’t our parents have more support? Why wasn’t the community there? Why was it only on them to take care of us? It comes back to, again, the colonialism and the white supremacy and the ways we do nuclear family here on the West. There’s such a lack of support and so much just crushes down on the individual. There’s a reason so many parents feel so overwhelmed and burned out 

Dawn Serra: I think to answer your question, in the end, it just comes down to you, Ana. In the meetings you attend, do you feel seen and supported and heard and valued? Do you feel like you’re finding needed connection with others who can understand some of what you’ve been through? Are you finding a place where you get to practice some skills around boundary setting and grieving the childhood that you had that can help you move you forward with your other relationships? Are the facilitators or the leaders or the sponsors or the elders really compassionate and willing to consider the specifics of your experience and influence of culture and the life you live?

If you find that you’re feeling really fed by these meetings, then I say, savor them, soak up what feels good. If there’s parts you really like and parts that you don’t, take what works and bow out of the rest. Then, if at some point, whether that’s now or down the road, you find that this ACA meetings just really don’t feel like a good fit for you anymore or maybe you found something that offers you more support or more nourishment in a way that you need at that point, my only hope is that you’re going to give yourself permission to then move in those directions without feeling like you have to stick with ACA. Because I think, sometimes, there’s a guilt that can come up with people who leave AA or ACA, even if they’ve found other ways to thrive. I also think that it’s really important for us to name that even if when we’re working with deeply imperfect systems and groups, we can still find a lot of meaning and love and connection and joy.

Dawn Serra: For you, Ana, if these ACA meetings feel helpful, allow that to be true. You aren’t doing anything wrong, even if some of their practices reinforce or pathologize certain behaviors. You don’t have to agree with everything to get something really powerful out of it. You are allowed to move in the direction of your own healing and aliveness, and I think that’s a beautiful thing if that’s what you’re finding.

Thank you so much for listening, Ana Banana, for writing in. I hope you continue to find support and relief and a sense of growing more fully into yourself, whether that’s at these meetings or lots of other places.

Dawn Serra: This week’s episode is generously brought to you by LOLA, once again. The truth is, I don’t have time in my life to do all of the things that need to get done. That is an understatement. So finding small ways to ensure that I have lots of time for play, for sex, for rest, for eating delicious food is a really important part of how I keep going while juggling multiple companies and long days and huge visions. That’s why I’ve been a really huge fan of LOLA for such a long time. LOLA is a female-founded company offering a line of organic cotton tampons, pads, and liners. They now offer sex products, too! They’re generously sponsoring the show this week and you can get 40% off your subscription.

So here’s how LOLA helps me to avoid period and sex crises at the last minute because sometimes, I don’t remember to do everything in my to-do list. Their subscription is fully customizable. You can choose your mix of products – pads, tampons and liners – the mix of absorbency, the number of boxes you want, and how often they deliver them. By the way, they come in this super discreet and really cute, pretty little boxes. LOLA’s subscription is really flexible. You can change, skip, or cancel your subscription at any time. So when I’m traveling or if I’m going to be out of town and I don’t need it that month, I just adjust my subscription and it’s done.

Dawn Serra: Plus, it’s not just period products. The Sex by LOLA line is available for subscription, too. You can add it to your period subscription, so everything comes in a really convenient box on your ideal schedule. I love their ultra thin condoms, and that’s something I am always on the lookout for. So definitely check that out. 

And, you also know, just from listening to this episode, much less the others, that ethics are hugely important to me. So I also love that every single purchase with LOLA allows me to do good. LOLA donates feminine care products to homeless shelters across the U.S. with each purchase you make.

I also just want to let you know that the FDA does not require brands to disclose a comprehensive list of ingredients in their feminine care products and most of them don’t, if you ever check the package. LOLA offers complete transparency about the ingredients found in their tampons, pads, liners, and wipes. You’ve heard me rant and rave about the importance of high quality lube, non-porous toys, and now you can be confident that what’s in your period products is great because our genitals deserve the best. And LOLA agrees!

Dawn Serra: If you want your period products and even condoms, lube, and wipes, delivered to your door, super conveniently on your schedule, with a company that believes in centering the health of your body, check out LOLA. You can get 40% off your first subscription. Just go to mylola.com and enter SGR – for Sex Gets Real – when you subscribe at checkout. That’s mylola.com, fill your cart with your goodies, set your subscription, and then enter the discount code SGR at checkout to save 40%. Thanks to LOLA for supporting the show. It means so much to me and I hope all of you listening jump on that massive discount! It not only lets LOLA know that this is a show they should continue partnering with and it helps me so much.

Before we jump into this next email, I also want to remind you, you can support the show financially at patreon.com/sgrpodcast while getting all sorts of bonus content. If you support at $3 per month (that’s only 75 cents per week), you get weekly bonus content from additional listener questions, extended guest interviews, to videos of me and other helpful and fun tidbits. There’s a huge catalog at this point for you to enjoy, so check that out! If you support at $5 per month and above, you can help me field listener questions by sharing your thoughts and advice. You’re going to hear that in this next email. Every dollar makes a really huge difference because this is totally self-funded. So head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and to get your goodies!

Dawn Serra: Okay. Confused quean wrote in with a subject line of: “How do I engage with this kink without being hurt?” The email says, “Hi Dawn, Recently I stumbled upon the fetish known as cuckqueaning and, for whatever reason, I dove all the way in. It’s the only thing that’s getting me turned on anymore. But, here’s where it gets tricky. I have colossal body image issues and deep insecurities due to trauma around my body. This manifests itself in some pretty serious self-hatred and the almost complete inability to be happy with how I look. The reason this is important is that a huge part of cuckqueaning – as I like it – is this idea of humiliation and degradation. While I find that incredibly hot, it also feels like a knife to the heart when I think about engaging with this kink and the things my husband would say and do as a part of it. 

We have been married for nine years and together for twelve. I’d like to experiment with this kink, but every time we try, I get incredibly hurt and triggered about him finding another woman attractive. Even talking about the subject with him feels triggering. I want to be open with him, but I also don’t want to invite a bunch of heartache into my life. My question is – and sorry for the long note – how do I engage with this kink without constantly being triggered and hurt? Sincerely, Confused quean”

Dawn Serra: For everyone listening, a little context, cuckqueaning is basically the equivalent of cuckolding but with different genders. Wikipedia actually says, “A cuckquean is a wife with an adulterous husband. In modern English, it generally refers to a woman whose fetish is watching and deriving sexual pleasure from watching a man having sex with one or several women besides his girlfriend, fiancée, wife or other long-term female sex partner.”

I posed this question on Patreon for the $5 supporters and two people shared their thoughts. Leatstarlet wrote, “One idea I have is you could step into your cuckqueen role. Give yourself a name and once you’re in the role of this cuckqueen, imagine she thinks all of her insecurities are hot. Inventing a person outside of yourself could help create emotional distance and help your brain separate you from you as cuckqueen. Also, aftercare is so important after dirty talk or intense play. Cuddle with your partner. Bring up things that they said and ask, ‘Did you mean when you said x?’ They can respond and say, ‘No. That was just me talking to you as cuckqueen.’

Dawn Serra: If you think it’s hot, focus on the hotness of it and make sure after you’re done, your partner gives you affirmation and loving words. Sometimes something might go too far and offend you. You should have a safe word with your partner so you can stop and take care of your feelings. I hope this helps! It can be hot to talk about our insecurities. Me and my partner have found that bringing them up can make them less triggering in real life. And also, remind yourself you are more than the sum of your parts. Your partner loves you for you including your body and not dependent on your body.” 

Another supporter, Angela, commented, “One of my favourite things about kink is that you can change it up in order to meet what you need to get out of it! I don’t have personal experience with playing in the cuckoldry sandbox, so take my suggestions with many grains of salt, please. 

I wonder if you can play around with the humiliation aspect of things to make it not have anything at all to do with the questioner’s body? What would that look like for them? What actions or words might help as a part of aftercare/reconnection to reconfirm the questioner’s importance within their relationship, and to their partner?

Dawn Serra: If – and only the questioner can decide – she is in a place where she thinks she might like to try changing her relationship with her body – this I have tons of experience with – I’d suggest she take a look at the Body Trust work that is happening with Be Nourished. (Thank you, Dawn, for introducing them in your Pleasure course!)”

Those both came from Leatstarlet and Angela. So thank you to both of you for supporting the show and, of course, for sharing your thoughts. I love them both. And I agree. Part of what’s so lovely about kink is that it’s this invitation to get endlessly creative. We can take the ideas and the fantasies and play with them to find ways that make them work for our bodies and our minds. For the things that aren’t physically or mentally possible, we can still find versions of the fantasy to enjoy. I mean, alien insemination might not be possible (yet), cause I know there’s a lot of people who are ready for aliens to inseminate them. But that doesn’t stop folks from making egg depositor sex toys and playing it out. The reality might not be possible but a version of the reality can be fantasized and made real.

Dawn Serra: I love Leatstarlet’s idea of trying on a persona. Role play can definitely take some getting used to, but it can be a really powerful way for us to shift our mindset and to take on new behaviors and characteristics that might not be a part of our regular lives when we’re being ourselves. Whether it’s a really badass, unforgiving Domme or a cuckquean, if you were to really channel your fantasy into a character, a version of this way of being, what would that look like? What would your name be? What would you wear? What would you say? How would you behave as this other person? Make it not you but a character you’re portraying and that can be a little switch in our mind that allows for some new space to play. Because when your husband is saying these humiliating and degrading things, it’s about the character you’re playing, not about you personally.

I also really appreciate Leatstarlet acknowledging that sometimes in kink, you do get hurt. Sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes things go too far. Sometimes you didn’t know a thing would feel really fucking terrible until it’s way too late and then you’re in the terrible. Having contingency plans for when that happens is crucial because it’s not an if, it’s a when – when you’re doing kink. Being able to really take some time to repair after that happens means talking beforehand and putting some plans into place and I love the idea of the safeword.

Dawn Serra: Both Angela and Leatstarlet mentioned aftercare which I 100% agree with. When we’re doing edgy scenes – whether it’s physical or mental or psychological – having a solid aftercare ritual can make all the difference in the world as a way to come back to ourselves, to reconnect with our partner, to be really gentle. Also, to acknowledge that sometimes when we do these things – whether it’s being suspended in rope or being humiliated and experiencing degradation – big emotions might come up. We might work through some stuff. There might be lots of tears and crying and all kinds of things and that’s just part of it.

I also really love Angela’s question around the humiliation aspect. It made me think, what if the ways you’re being humiliated have nothing to do with your body at first, but other aspects of self. Like maybe your voice or your accent or your vocalizations during sex – other things like that? What if your body, or certain aspects of your body are totally off the table for now while you really navigate this space? Maybe even the humiliation and the degradation come later, even though that’s a part of the fantasy? Is there a piece that you can implement or try without going all in?

Dawn Serra: I think one of the things that is just so common around folks who are new to discovering something that makes them really turned on is this desire to go all in and do all the things at once. And I totally get it because that desire and that arousal can be really intoxicating and you may want to chase it.

But it’s also really important for us to take a moment whether that’s a few hours or a few days, a few weeks or even longer, to really check in with ourselves. What’s the smallest version of this fantasy or this kink that I want to do so that I can really understand how it feels to actually do it and to find my way of doing it so that it’s sustainable and hot rather than traumatizing and harmful – which is not sexy?

Dawn Serra: Maybe, for example, you want to try hook suspension with hooks through your skin. The place to start might be with a few needles in a really intimate environment to see what your physical and emotional reaction is to something actually going through your skin, to the pain before going big with the whole scene. Maybe in your case, confused quean, you and your husband can try some baby steps towards this big sexy fantasy that you’re holding onto. How can you build in anticipation and keep the desire burning, even if there’s a discomfort because you’re really hungry for more, that allows the two of you to find your version of doing this safely? It’s probably a lot less uncomfortable than going all in and then finding that you are deeply wounded by the experience and then potentially damaging even more trust in yourself, trust with your husband and making it so that you don’t ever want to try it again.

I also second out Angela’s suggestion around Be Nourished and their body trust work. I mean, I just got certified in it, so of course, I’m in! But I did build some of that into the Pleasure Course. If you haven’t already, what would it look like to work with a professional or to take some workshops or to attend a retreat that might help you to start relating to your body in a different way, to address the trauma so that you are more resourced and more connected to self for some of these edgier activities that might be really difficult to do?

Dawn Serra: The last thing I want to offer is you don’t have to act on this at all. Maybe you and your husband have looked at this 99 different ways, tried every baby step you can imagine, and it still just really fucking triggers you and hurts. It doesn’t make you wrong and you’re not a failure. It’s just how it is. It’s the truth. Trying to make your truth not true is a way of gaslighting yourself. If this just ends up being a super fucking hot fantasy that you get off to in your head and you save your in-person sexual activities for things that aren’t triggering and painful, great!

Who knows what’s going to feel good a year from now, five years from now, a decade down the road? How can you create something that’s really sustainable that brings you two together and that contributes to your healing and your pleasure rather than the opposite? Who knows what your relationship with your body and your trauma is going to be down the road? Now might not be the time, and it’s super okay if that’s true. I think pushing ourselves to do things that deepen our trauma, pushing past our boundaries is actually a form of self-harm. And the last thing that I want for you confused quean is to be sabotaging or causing yourself more harm which causes more body distrust and potentially drives a wedge between you and your future fantasies and your future erotic adventures and maybe including your husband. 

Dawn Serra: The answer is you and only you know whether this is something you can handle right now. If the answer is I really want it but I just can’t find a safe way to do it, then let that be true and let it be a super yummy spank bank material that you circle back to down the road to see if there’s a better time. If there are some smaller versions of the fantasy you can work your way into, maybe that’s where you start. Get creative and really feel into it, but sometimes the things that most turn us on are the things that just aren’t a good fit for our lives right now. Sometimes we have to grieve that and allow that to be true. But I’d rather that than you harm yourself and potentially your relationship and cut yourself off from the future potential or deeper connection, yummy kink, yummy body stuff. 

I hope that helps and I hope you have many, many, many yummy cuck fantasies down the road. Thank you so much for writing in, Confused quean! To all of you, that’s it for this week! I would love your emails. So don’t forget, if you got any questions, anything you’re curious about, anything you could use help with, shoot me an email info at sexgetsreal dot com or head to dawnserra.com to use the contact form if you want to do it anonymously. I will be back next week. Bye!

Dawn Serra: Thank you to everybody who watched. I hope you had a great time. We’ll have links to Meg-John’s site and social media so that you can find them and stay tuned for more interviews. This is Dawn Serra with the Explore More Summit and we will see you next time. Bye.

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

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