The Second Circle Series 4: BAD SEX
Episode 6: How to get better at talking about sex
Whether it’s with our friends or, more crucially, with our partners, sex IS something we need to be able to communicate about if we want it to be good. But it’s so hard! Why? Because for all the other messages we get around sex, all the things we’re taught or that we glean from our culture or the media… no one tells us how to talk about it.
The Second Circle is produced, written, hosted by Franki Cookney | Editor: Lucy Douglas | Audio production: Anouszka Tate
Theme music: Roof - Big Spoon (Instrumental Version) | Incidental music: _91Nova - Moiety, From Now On - Small Circuits, Lasae Lyx - Suffering In Paradise, Blaeker - Stay Up All Night | All music courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
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S04E06: How to get better at talking about sex
Fran Bushe 00:00
I often find it much easier to talk to a roomful of strangers who have come to see my work, then to speak about sex, honestly, with a partner.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 00:12
Yep, I can relate to that! You know… you might think, someone who makes an entire podcast where they talk about sex must have it nailed, right?
Over the last five episodes you’ve heard me having pretty intense conversations with people about their sex lives, about their work in the field of sex and relationships. And you’ve heard them, talking quite openly with me about their feelings, their bodies, what they like and don’t like.
So on the face of it, we’re doing the thing. We’re talking about sex. But having conversations with a stranger or a professional colleague is a world away from having them with a partner.
It is one thing to talk about sex in the abstract, but it is quite another to talk about what we personally want from someone; someone who has the power to say yes or no, to accept us or reject us.
Communicating our desires, preferences, bodily needs, and feelings, is not easy.
But it’s also really necessary if we want to put an end to bad sex.
[THEME MUSIC]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 01:20
You’re listening to The Second Circle. This is Series 4: BAD SEX.
I’m Franki Cookney. I’ve spent the last five years writing and reporting on sex and relationships and each time I read a piece on how to make sex better, how to improve, how to spice things up, I get the increasing sense that maybe we’re coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of papering over the cracks, I say we dig down and have a proper look at the foundations. In this series I’m turning sex advice on its head and exploring what makes sex bad in the first place.
The stories you’ll hear and the language people use to describe their sexual experiences can be pretty explicit so listener discretion is advised. All the sex we discuss in this series was consensual but it wasn’t always enjoyable and some accounts may be distressing.
Well, this is it, pals. The final episode of the series. Boy, what a ride. We’ve interrogated the idea of sex positivity, we’ve torn up the sexual scripts and smashed those “should stories”, we’ve discussed how to broaden our horizons when it comes to pleasure, we’ve abandoned the idea that bodies need to do certain things and look certain ways and we’ve shot to shit all the tired myths about sex drive.
But. We’ve come to a sticking point. Because there's no use understanding all of this stuff, unpacking it, disrupting it – doing all of that tricky fun stuff so we can figure out what we want – if we can't actually talk about it.
Whether it’s with our friends or more crucially with our partners, sex IS something we need to be able to communicate about if we want it to be good. But it’s so hard! It’s so scary. Believe me, I know. And everyone you’ve heard on this podcast knows as well. There wasn’t a single interviewee who told me they found it super easy to talk about sex - and believe me, I asked them all!
At the start of this episode you heard Fran Bushe. If you recall from Episode 3, Fran is a comedian and performer. She literally has a solo show where she will get up on stage and tell an audience her entire sexual history, complete with all the difficulties and feelings you heard her describe to us, and yet when she gets in bed with a partner it can feel excruciating. Why? Because for all the other messages we get around sex, all the things we’re taught or that we glean from our culture or the media… no one tells us how to talk about it.
Fran Bushe 04:12
It gets bandied about all the time, everyone's like, communicate, communicate, you need to communicate, no one teaches you how to communicate. And I remember having a conversation with a woman that sold a range of sex toys, and she was like, Make sure when you're, if you're talking to a partner about using a sex toy, make sure that you're not using language that is around size or girth or anything that makes them feel potentially intimidated by it, or like they'll be replaced by it. And, and it just wasn't anything I'd thought about, you know? Having a chance to have an open conversation about potentially using sex toys in a in a sexual situation. And you're like, Oh, wow, communication is difficult. There's so many So many ways things could be interpreted. And you're at your most vulnerable, right? So I, you know, I'd love to say, Oh, we should definitely be taught how to communicate about these things. But I don't. I don't know what that would look like.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 05:21
The message that “communication is really important” is something you will see in every sex advice column, in every sexual wellness article, on every sex positive influencer’s Instagram feed, but very rarely do we acknowledge how freaking difficult it is. So I wanted to take this opportunity to do exactly that. Because, friends, it’s hard. It’s SO hard.
Not only are we not taught how to do it, in most contexts we are actively discouraged from doing so.
But hang on… it’s a funny thing to say we’re bad at talking about sex in this country because in some ways, we never shut up about it. Globally, Brits have a bit of a reputation for being uptight about sex but at the same time I’d argue we’re bordering on prurient! We actually love talking and hearing about sex… but only as long as we don’t have to dig too deep.
I remember at university people joking about how drinking games such as “Never have I ever” always end up being about sex. But is it any wonder when it’s such a huge part of our lives and we have so little opportunity to discuss it. I know I would leap on those games, not only as an opportunity to “confess” and gauge people’s reactions in a socially acceptable setting, but to hear about other people’s experiences.
Bragging about sex, making jokes and innuendos, sharing shocking anecdotes, or telling embarrassing stories – these are some of the acceptable ways of talking about sex in British culture. But being real about it, revealing our curiosity or naivety - that’s where the danger lies.
For all the supposed sex positivity that exists in mainstream culture, many of us have memories of being shamed for talking about sex.
I spoke to writer and sex therapist-in-training, Tatyannah King. During our chat, we swapped a few stories from our teenage years. She might have spent her childhood in North Carolina, in the US, while I grew up in Surrey but we actually found a lot of crossover. Both of us can remember being curious about sex and having it made very clear by our friends at the time that that curiosity was not cool. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to share this section of the interview because… to be honest, it’s kind of embarrassing. But the fact that Tatyannah connected with the story and immediately recalled her own example made me think that probably a lot of us have had this experience, this feeling of desperately wanting to talk about sex, but finding ourselves shut down by our peers.
Tatyannah King 08:10
I didn't always find it easy to talk about sex, because I noticed how much other people began to either be freaked out about it or told me to stop talking about sex. So a little bit of context: After my parents taught me about sex and anatomy, and relationships and dating, I would go back to my friends in the playground. And keep in mind, this is first grade, so I was really young, and so were my friends. So I would ask them if their parents taught them about sex yet, and most of them said no, a few of them said yes, but those few they said, Oh, yeah, my parents taught me that a bird dropped me off at the doorstep or, you know, something corny, like that. And I would say, Your parents are lying to you, this is how it happens! This is where the vagina is and what it means, this is how babies come into the world. And then, of course, words spread around, and my teachers eventually found out and my teachers called my parents and they told them to tell me to not discuss that at school. So even from a young age, I kind of got the idea that knowledge surrounding sex can be a dangerous thing in other people's eyes. And granted, we were young so I understand to some extent where they were coming from but even as I got older and talked to other people in high school, I just noticed that the general outlook around that, there was some tension with teachers and older people.
Franki Cookney 09:45
Oh my gosh, I really relate to that actually. When I was about nine years old. I found some condoms in my dad's sock drawer in his bedroom. I think I was stealing some of his socks because I used to… really stupid thing, but we were supposed to wear white socks at my school for our school uniform. And my act of rebellion was to wear like black socks or navy blue socks. So I didn't have those because my mum obviously got me the white socks that I was supposed to have, but I used to steal my dad’s. So I was going through his sock drawer to steal some socks and I found some condoms. And I went back, like about once a week I went back to look at them to be like, okay, like, I knew what they were, but I was a bit like, “Whoa, this is real. My parents actually have these.” And then one day, I took it upon myself to take one into school to show my friends because I honestly thought in my open-hearted way that they would be just as fascinated as me. And that was not really the case. Most of them were like freaked out like, “What the fuck is this? This is horrible. Like why have you brought this in?” I just have this distinct memory of somebody snatching it off me and like running across the playground, then it kind of ending up on the floor and a load of other kids of similar age, freaking out like, “Oh, what's this?” And then somebody's obviously telling the teacher. And actually, the teacher was really nice. He wasn't really shaming of me. And they did tell my parents, but my parents were… a bit like you're saying where my parents were a bit like, “Okay, like, this is fine, but it's not appropriate for school” kind of thing. Like they weren't sort of telling me off like, ‘Your interest in this is inappropriate’, but they were like ‘Taking it into school is inappropriate’. So actually, the real message I got there wasn't so much from like my teachers or my parents, but it was like my friends, like the other kids in my school were just so like, “What the hell?” like really shocked by this. So that's really how I got the message that like, it's not really, it's not really appropriate to be interested in sex.
Tatyannah King 11:45
I have a similar story to that too, because it was my freshman year in my undergrad studies, and I was having a conversation with my girlfriends about masturbation and how I do it. And I told them that it's funny because when I watch TV or porn, the woman's usually fingering herself, but usually I have more gratification with a rubbing motion or rubbing the palm of my hand or cupping my whole vulva. And then I thought that all my girlfriends would be like, “Oh, wow, cool, we do the same thing.” Or, “Oh, interesting, we do something different.” Like I just thought their reaction would be different. But they all looked at me like, “What in the world? You actually touch yourself?” Like, they just looked like it was weird, or disgusting, or shameful. And I remember going back to my room, and I was just, I felt so embarrassed because I thought they were going to be like, “Oh, you know, you go girl,” but they were looking at me like I was a freak. And I just didn't really bring it up much. But now that I blog about sex toys, and masturbation on the regular now they're actually coming up, where they're asking me about different recommendations for vibrators and sex toys. So I feel really happy that they've come around to being more open about it. But at the time, they were not having it. They were like, “What in the world is wrong with you?”
Franki Cookney 13:09
Oh, man,I think it's difficult as well, when you're in that situation. You see other people react a certain way. And you're like, “Oh, God, I don't want to be the only one who's like, ‘cool,” when everybody else is going ‘what?’”
Tatyannah King 13:20
Right?
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 13:21
I am cringing so hard remembering this story and empathising with Tatyannah’s experience. I mean ultimately both of us now write and talk about sex professionally so… is that a coincidence? Maybe not. Is that how we’ve dealt with the embarrassment of those situations? By formalising our position? Legitimising it?! I don’t know. One for my therapist, I guess. But regardless, I think those feelings of being shamed or ridiculed by your peers can really stay with you.
But… how ELSE are we supposed to learn how to talk about sex? This kind of reminds me of what we heard people talk about in episode two whereby sex is considered to be something you can simply arrive at in the moment, able to do it, without ever having been able to discuss it or ask questions about it. If we can’t talk about sex outside of sex itself, what hope do we have of being able to talk about it in the moment?
Even if we manage to shake off this societal shame, that’s really only the start. Having sex with someone is a hugely vulnerable thing, not just literally (because we’re generally naked) but emotionally too. And there is so much going on, feeding into our experience of it.
There’s the basic environmental stuff like whether it’s too hot or too cold, what music we’ve got on, whether the location is comfortable. Is it too bright? Too dark? Am I hungry? Thirsty? How much time do we have? There’s your own relationship with sex and your body to take into account and the various complex feelings that might spark.
And then there’s the complex interpersonal stuff between you: How well do you know each other? What is the power dynamic? How are they making me feel? Do they seem interested and invested in my pleasure? How will they react if I ask for something?
Add the mind-altering effects of sexual arousal on top of that and we’re supposed to somehow be able to just… say what we want? OUT LOUD?? Are you fucking kidding me?
Even when we’re not actually in the moment with someone, discussing our sexual experiences, what went down between us, what we might like to do next time, if we’d even like there to be a next time, can feel really daunting. When I was crowdfunding for this series I shared a story about a period I spent in my twenties hooking up with a friend. I think we probably had sex four or five times over a couple of months but we NEVER SPOKE ABOUT IT. At least not directly. Obviously there had to be the exchange of words such as “I’ve got a free house” or “You coming back to mine?” but in terms of actually referencing the sex… nothing.
And I reckon many of us have been in a similar situation. Where it’s clear there’s some kinda sexy something-or-other going on between you but NO ONE DARE SPEAKETH THE DEED.
About a year and a half ago I was interviewing people for a feature about sex in the pandemic and Amy got in touch. As with some of the other people we’ve heard from, Amy isn’t her real name. But she’s in her twenties, married, she’s a mum and she and her husband have an open relationship. They are consensually non-monogamous. In the course of our conversation Amy told me that she’d started sleeping with one of her best friends. “OK, so how does that work alongside your marriage, what’s the deal there?” I asked her. At which point she admitted she had no idea. Neither she nor her mate had ever acknowledged to each other what was happening between them.
Franki Cookney [interview clip] 17:00
I’m still really obsessed with the fact that you haven’t talked about it
Amy [interview clip] 17:03
*laughs*
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 17:04
Listening back to the recording of that chat is so funny.
Franki Cookney [interview clip] 17:07
What’s going to happen now? There’s no ending to this story
Amy [interview clip] 17:08
*inaudible response*
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 17:10
I’m trying to maintain professional boundaries, but I can hear myself really battling with the instinct to give her advice, like I would a friend!
Franki Cookney [interview clip] 17:17
I’m really having to hold back from like, I’m getting way too invested! I wanna be like “Okay, right, this is what you need to say to her.”
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 17:25
In the end I did end up saying to her, you know, what’s the worst that can happen? Most of the time in a situation like this, the other person is feeling just as awkward as you. And to be honest, nine times out of ten they’ll probably be grateful you broke the ice.
Franki Cookney [interview clip] 17:40
Oh I just, I know the feeling. If it was me now I’d be like, right let’s just do this, what’s the worst that can happen.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 17:49
A few weeks later I got a DM on Twitter. It was Amy. “Guess what, I spoke to my friend and everything’s fine!” she told me. “I’m so glad I finally just did it.” So of course when I began putting together this episode on communication I invited her to come back and tell me how it happened.
Amy 18:08
So it would have been going back about three years ago, maybe. I had basically been on a night out with my friend. And at the end of it, we ended up sleeping together without having sort of pre-planned it, which was nice. And then in the morning, we kind of just didn't say anything about it, and sort of didn't really acknowledge that it happened, which is kind of hard when you wake up next to each other. And just sort of went home and carried on with it. Just, you know, like, carried on how we were before.
We were just out with our two friends. And we went to a club when that was easier to do. And it was probably about two or three. And it was that we were on the way home, and we got outside her house first. And she just said, “Are you coming in?” And I said, “Do you want me to?” And we kind of did the thing where you look at each other but you don't actually say what you mean. You just kind of have to try and guess what the other one means. So I was going “Do you want me to come in?” She was like, “Do you want to come in?” And I was like, “Okay, yeah, I'll come in.”
But yeah, neither of us said anything about it. I think it’s because… I kind of didn't want to bring it up because I was like, What if I say something about it? Or I didn’t want to bring it up and she's like, I want to pretend it never happened? Or, oh, I don't know, like be the one to say something. And then for the other person to say, Oh, that's not what I sort of think about it. If you know what I mean. I didn't want to say something. And then for her to go, “Oh, no, we're on a different page.”
I mean, that the worst case scenario is that that would happen. And I'd say, all right, that's fine. All right, then. I mean, you know, rationally, that's probably the worst, the worst scenario is we don't agree. And we go, “Oh, well, okay. Well, let's, you know, leave that then.”
Franki Cookney 19:54
When I spoke to you, whenever it was almost a year ago, when I spoke to you, it was bothering you though. It seemed like it was bothering you that you hadn't talked about it?
Amy 20:04
Yeah, it was a bit because I just wanted to know what the deal was. But again, I was just worried that what if I say, “Oh, this is what I think of it.” And then she says, “Oh, no, that's completely not what I think at all.”
Yeah, we did eventually talk about it. I think it was when we were on our way home from rehearsal. And she brought me home, and we were in the driveway. And I was like, “Tust before I go…” I was like, well, we're here now. So I just sort of very, like casually said, “I just want to check how you sort of feel about it all and what you think about it,” and she just basically said, like, “I just like, how it is, how it's going, like, we just are friends, and that we just occasionally sleep together. And that's fine with me.” And I was like, okay, that's fine. As long as that's genuinely how she feels, like, as long as… cuz sometimes she does the same thing as me and doesn't want to say anything too controversial in case that's not what the other person thinks. So I was like, “Okay, as long as that's what you actually want and you're not trying to, like, say what you think I want you to say?” And she was like, “yeah, that's that's pretty much what… I'm happy with it. You know, I'm not seeing anyone else at the moment. So I don't have to sort of consider that. So I'm happy with how it is.” And I’m like “Okay. That's, that's fine.”
Franki Cookney 21:29
How do you feel now about these kinds of things? Like, if you were in a similar situation in the future? Do you think it would feel easier?
Amy 21:36
Since then, so like, a couple of few months ago, this year, I was dating someone. And I definitely felt more confident to talk about it. It didn't get past the sort of beginning, into any sort of ‘official’ territory. But I was definitely like, right, I'm not going to repeat the “What's going on. What's the situation?” thing. Because I can't do that. Let's just talk about it. And he was like, slightly surprised. But I was like, “Okay, this is what I want. What do you think? This is what I think. Let's do this.” He was like, “Okay.” Which is, I don't know, maybe he's not used to it, I suppose? But I was like, I'm not repeating the ‘what's going on’ situation, let's just get to the, cut to the point.
It's ridiculous when you think when you actually have the conversation, like, why have I put that off? I think a lot of the time, it's, you think it's going to be way worse than it is. Like, realistically, how likely is it that they're going to say, that was an awful mistake? All of those ten times are all awful mistakes. I never want to see you again. I don't want to be your friend. I hate you. Like realistically, that's unlikely.
I don't even know specifically what I was so worried about. Just the possibility that something “unnamed bad” could happen; just sort of like the looming ‘What If?’
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 22:53
What if? What if they don’t want what I want? What if they think I’m weird or gross? What if they literally laugh in my face?
Often, avoiding talking about sex is a means of avoiding our own negative feelings. Feelings of rejection or embarrassment. But sometimes, the negative feelings we’re trying to avoid are someone else’s. What if we don’t want what they want? Are we going to risk upsetting them or making them angry? Or are we just gonna… ghost.
A friend recently told me a story about a guy he’d met online and started sexting. It was the spring of 2020 and COVID-19 had shut down the whole of Europe. They were both in lockdown in different cities so there was no chance of them getting together in person but, my friend figured, it was nice to have someone to exchange horny messages with. Lockdown came to an end, travel became easier, and the sexting buddy said he was going to be in town and did my friend fancy meeting up IRL. Uh oh. Truth is, my friend did not really fancy meeting up.
Work was busy, his social life had picked up again, numerous selfie exchanges had made him realise he wasn’t quite as attracted to the guy as he’d first thought, and he wasn’t convinced their sext chemistry would translate to the real world. But instead of finding a way to gently communicate his disinterest… he simply stopped replying.
Rest assured listeners, I roundly chastised him for this behaviour. And then I asked permission to tell his story.
When I was first putting this episode together I had a whole list of people to talk to. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I don’t think we really need an expert to tell us why we ghost, why we avoid conversations, why we stall when it comes to talking about what we want and need from sex. I think we know.
And as for getting professional advice… again, I’m not sure there’s a therapist or sex educator on the planet who can provide a universal template for how to overcome our fears of talking about sex. When it comes down to it, I honestly think the best way to learn how to communicate is through experience. And while I can’t provide you with that experience (at least, not via the medium of this podcast), I can share some of mine. And that of my guests.
We’re going to take a quick break now but stay with me because when we come back we’re going to get their advice and hear more about what they’ve learnt about communication along the way. Back in a tick.
[AD BREAK]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 25:31
The Second Circle Series 4 is sponsored by iPlaySafe
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Franki Cookney [voiceover] 25:56
This episode of The Second Circle is also sponsored by The Pleasure Garden
The Pleasure Garden is the UK’s inclusive sex shop. Like me, they believe great sex should be for everybody, regardless of gender, sexuality or disability. Toys are categorised by type, never by gender, and when browsing product pages you’ll find details of access features such as the size and placement of controls and the weight of the toy.
In The Pleasure Garden, pleasure is important – well, it is right there is in the name – that’s why they carefully choose every product they sell, stocking the highest quality, body-safe sex toys around.
Every order is shipped in discreet packaging and UK postage is free when you spend £50. Second Circle listeners can also get a 10% discount on any order with the offer code BADSEX. Shop now at pleasuregardenshop.co.uk
[AD BREAK ENDS]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 26:55
Like everything we’ve discussed in this podcast series, I don’t believe there is an overnight fix for communicating about sex and relationships. I think there are exercises we can maybe do, and we’ll come back to some of those a bit later in this half of the episode. But what actually works is probably going to be different for everyone. I wanted to showcase that so I asked almost everyone I spoke to for this podcast to tell me about their communication successes as well as what they find hard about it. First up, here’s Meg-John Barker:
Meg-John Barker 27:27
I mean, personally, I think seeing communication as sexy is really good. You know, I just think there's so much space for like, sharing fantasies. You know, often it's seen as this, this communication is kind of seen as this sort of boring thing to get out of the way or this too serious thing that gets in the way of the spontaneity or whatever. And it's like, No, you know, spending – and I'm sure a lot of people have had these experiences in lockdown! – you know, spending ages like having sexy messages back and forth, or like, you know, gradually letting people know what you're really into! That can be so hot. So I think, you know, maybe not separating sex and communication about sex completely. But yeah, again, it just really requires a cultural shift, because we're just not used to communicating consensually about loads of stuff, you know. I think, you know, just in friendships, it's really, really hard to say openly “This is what kind of friendship I'd like. And this is what level of contact and Oh, actually, that's changed for me, and this is where I'm at now,” you know, that kind of stuff is incredibly hard. And what people generally do is they ghost, you know, or they keep doing something they're really unhappy doing, right. So just think, that's in this really less-loaded area of friendship. So imagine how much harder it is in kind of really deeply intimate relationships. And imagine how much harder it is when we're talking about something that has so much shame and fear around it. So it's more about like, how would we get better at communicating about every everything, and that just being the norm, that it's okay to say, what we want and what we don't want and what our boundaries are, and, you know, our limits, and we're just not used to doing that at all, you know.
Franki Cookney 28:57
A lot of people I've talked to who've sort of managed to get to a point where they feel more comfortable talking about sex have described how they would, at some point, they found that one friend that they can actually speak to, they've sort of tested the water found that it's okay, and then once you're able to talk, honestly, and openly and vulnerably, to one person, it makes it a little bit easier to do it with another person. And I mean, I was about to say, I think that's something that I found, but obviously, I'm, I literally do this for my job.
Meg-John Barker 29:27
It's still and it's still hard, right? Like, even for those of us who do it for a job, you know, yes.
Franki Cookney 29:32
I'm literally making a podcast where I just get to talk about sex for like, six straight hours. And I mean, even more, because obviously, you know, six hours after I've edited it all, oh, yeah. And yeah, and even I, in personal context, still sometimes find it excruciatingly difficult, like even describing it now I can almost feel that tightness in my chest of like, “Oh, I need to say this thing. And I'm scared.”
Meg-John Barker 29:50
Yeah, because there's so much at stake, and they're gonna feel rejected, or they're gonna reject me, like, it just feels, you know, and again, there's something about how sex is woven into relationships, you know, so that it feels like, yeah, that it might be some kind of personal failing on our part, you know, that gets revealed, but also that will fear from losing relationships.
Franki Cookney 20:09
So much at stake.
Meg-John Barker 30:11
Yeah.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 30:11
Meg-John is right. We’re not really encouraged to make ourselves vulnerable in any other situation so why would we magically be able to do it with sex?
Interestingly, though, vulnerability is having a bit of a moment right now. I say “right now” , arguably it’s been going on for a while. If there is anyone left on the planet who hasn’t watched Brene Brown’s 2010 Ted Talk “The power of vulnerability” then allow me to direct you to it.
It is very good, actually. I first encountered it when I first went freelance six years ago. She talks about allowing ourselves to feel our vulnerability instead of trying to push it down. It’s almost a direct counterpoint to the “confidence culture” we talked about in the first episode and it definitely helped me deal with rejection and precarity in the early years of being a freelance journalist. I later read her book, Daring Greatly which, again, is about dispelling the idea that vulnerability is weakness. OK, I read half of it. By then I was feeling a bit better about my professional life and so actually, what really stood out to me, was how flippin’ relevant this advice was to my sex life!
One Brene Brown line in particular that gets bandied about a lot on social media is this: “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.” Oof. I’m not really one for a motivational quote but it’s hard not to find that poignant after everything we’ve talked about in this series.
Talking about what we want and need out of sex and relationships is emotionally risky. For me, I just had to get to a point where the prospect of not doing it seemed worse than the prospect of doing it.
It took a while but eventually the prospect of perpetual unfulfillment overtook embarrassment, awkwardness, or fear of rejection as the thing I *really* wanted to avoid.
And it does get easier. The more you do it, the more natural and less awkward it feels. You start to realise that the probability of being met with disgust or dismissal or abandonment is lower than it seems and slowly, slowly, the stakes start to come down a bit.
Ella Dawson 32:27
Talking about sex to your partner is a skill that you practise and learn. It is not something that comes to any of us naturally. And the more that you practise it, even if it's just in front of a mirror by yourself, the more comfortable you are having those conversations when they do really matter. When people ask me for advice on disclosing their STI, um, like practice, when you're in the shower, practice with your dog, practice with your friends on the phone, just get used to forming the words so that when you need to see them, they come to you easily, they're not you're not racking your brain, you need to practise. And having courage is something that you learn, it's not something that's innate. It's something that you develop in yourself. And being a courageous and generous sexual partner. It's not something that you're born as, it's something you learn to be and you learn, with the people that you're seeing you learn from each other, you help each other ideally. And I think a lot of people assume that because I write about sex, that I know how to have amazing sex, I know how to talk about sex, and I'm still learning how to have vulnerable conversations. Like, it's not that hard for me to talk about my STI status, but it's very hard for me to talk about my depression and how that interacts with my my sex drive, like, you just have to learn and keep learning and keep trying, because being afraid of rejection or vulnerability is like a normal human reaction. But it is also something that you need to work on in order to have the types of relationships or sex that you want to have.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 33:59
That was Ella Dawson. In Episode One, she talked about how being diagnosed with herpes forced her to start having proper conversations about sex. She said then that being the one to start those conversations actually helped her partners open up about their own needs and desires. She said just now, “you learn from each other”. This is absolutely true. And I think you can give each other courage too.
I remember the first time I decided to have a sexual health chat with someone prior to meeting up. I wanted to ask them when they last got tested for STIs and what their results were. Intellectually I knew this was a very sensible and not at all shameful thing to do but I was so nervous. I was nervous about how presumptuous I sounded, asking to exchange STI status when I didn’t even know for sure if they wanted to have sex. I was embarrassed at seeming too forward and worried about “killing the mood” somehow… a whole bunch of stuff. I wrote out a message in my notes app (I think it probably went through about three or four drafts) and then I copied it, pasted it into my WhatsApp and hit send before I could change my mind. My heart was pounding while I waited for their response.
But, I have to tell you that this person responded SO well. “Oh yes, thanks for bringing this up!” they said. They immediately sent me their most recent test results and explained how often they get tested and what barrier methods they preferred to use during sex. If anything they were grateful to me for being the one to bring it up.
I kept that message as a template in my notes app and I still use it now! And I can honestly say that first time was the hardest. Since then it’s kind of become less and less of a big deal in my mind. It feels just like part of the routine of dating, like arranging a time and place to meet.
This idea of doing something over and over until you barely even have to think twice about is something that Hannah Witton is really into. She’s the sex education YouTuber we heard from in episode four. She’s a big fan of habit-building when it comes to her work life and, she says, many those same tools can also be applied to sex.
Hannah Witton 36:23
I think it's hard to talk about sex, because of all of that stuff we've talked about in terms of just like, the fair the lack of education. And then, ultimately, like on a kind of human level, I think it's like our fear of rejection, our fear of putting ourselves out there and saying to somebody, this is me, please be kind. And the fear that they might reject that they might say, like, oh, why do you like that? There's something wrong with you, or like, Oh, no, I don't like you, like some iteration of like, “You're bad. I don't like you,” as a response. And we are terrified of rejection. But I don't know, rejection doesn’t get… No, actually, I was about to say rejection doesn't get any easier. But I do think that rejection does get easier.
Franki Cookney 37:20
Yeah, I think it does. I also think that talking about things that feel really scary, it gets much easier. The more you do it.
Hannah Witton 37:27
I also think it's the strength in habit building. Yeah. And I mean, this allows me to talk about one of my other biggest passions, which is like productivity and organisation. But the power of habits - oh, my goodness. And I was in a webinar recently, and they're talking about contraception. The presenter basically was talking about how condom use comes down for a lot of people to habits. So if you are a person who has a habit to use a condom in all of your sexual encounters, then even when you are drunk or high, you will still use a condom in those sexual encounters because it's just a habit that you have.
And habits for me in a lot of areas of my life. Do make things easier. And so if you can make a habit out of like you said, the STI disclosure conversation, then it just becomes like, just this second nature.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 38:24
This can be applied to a lot of things, from talking about sexual health to asking someone how they like to be touched. Once again, it’s worth remembering that other people find these chats intimidating too. So, healthy communication it’s not just about getting good at saying what you want and need, it’s also about being receptive and willing to engage with what the other person wants and needs.
If we know deep down that we’d judge a partner for having a foot fetish, or being interested in piss play, then that’s also something we need to engage with. That’s not the same as saying that we have to accommodate those desires! Of course not. We need to be able to say no. But, ideally, we don’t want to shame our partner in the process.
Once again, I don’t want to play down how hard all this is. I sometimes worry, when I’m talking about this stuff, that I’m painting a picture of a sort of egalitarian sex utopia, a magical space where all ideas are expressed and received impartially and nothing is loaded and there are no power discrepancies. Saying yes or no is this equal-weighted thing with zero stakes and it all feels as calm and neutral as asking someone if they want a cup of tea.
But sex is nothing like tea, despite the viral video. You might remember it. In 2015 Emmeline May and Blue Seat Studios created a short cartoon explaining that consent is as simple as offering someone a cup of tea. It was released that same year by Thames Valley Police and was a big hit. On the face of it, it took a complicated concept - consent - and made it really easy to understand. “If the person does not want tea, you would not force them to drink tea.” Well, we can all agree with that. Coercing someone into drinking tea would be bizarre. But that’s because we don’t emotionally invest in tea. Tea doesn’t mean anything to us. Sex does.
Saying yes or no to sex is always going to elicit feelings. The challenge is not to eliminate those feelings, but to navigate through them. This is where proper comprehensive consent education comes into play.
Some people whose work I really like on this subject include Shrimpteeth who is a sex and relationship educator on Instagram and Patreon.
I mentioned Justin Hancock’s book Can we talk about consent? in the second episode. What’s brilliant about this is that it manages to simplify consent, make it easy to understand, without losing out on nuance.
American writer Jaclyn Friedman also wrote an essay which I love called Sex & Consent: It's Time To Go Beyond The Rules in which unpicks the message of her own book “Yes Means Yes” which she co-wrote with Jessica Valenti in 2008. “Real consent,” she writes “requires us to really be present when we’re having sex with someone. It requires us to see our sex partners — whether they be anonymous hookups or life partners — not simply as instrumental to our own pleasure but as co-equal collaborators.”
There’s no way any of us can smash all of this in one go. But we can start to take small steps towards it. Here’s Tatyannah King again:
Tatyannah King 41:46
If people are struggling to talk to their partner about sex, one of my suggestions would be to take you and your partner out of the equation, and just ask them how they feel about something. And maybe blame it on another friend or blame it on TV or something, you write in a book and say, Hey, I read this in a magazine, what do you think about this and maybe get their honest opinion from just that example, because I'm the type of person where I really want to know what somebody is thinking. So I try to take myself out of the equation and use an example from something I supposedly saw in a magazine or TV. And then my second piece of advice would be to maybe show them if you've actually seen it, an example from TV, maybe watch that show with them. And maybe they'll give you your opinion just from that visual representation that they're seeing. And that'll help as well.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 42:40
This is such good advice. I already talked in Episode 4 about the power of following people with a diversity of bodies on Instagram. We also heard from Sarah in the previous episode about how a Tik Tok reel actually gave her and her girlfriend a way in to talking about asexuality.
Putting yourself into spaces, whether real or virtual, where people have open conversations about sex can really help break down the stigma we’ve learned to associate with it. They also give us a space to practise. In my early days of exploring sex journalism I went to countless meetups, workshops, book clubs, cabaret nights, discussion groups… just trying to meet people and expose myself to conversations about sex. At first I would just listen but over time I began to participate and participating there made it easier to do it in my relationships too. And it doesn’t have to be in person. I know many people who have had the same experience through blogging, through reading and writing erotica, through online forums like Reddit and of course social media.
I could bang on and on about how valuable I think social media is when it comes to sharing ideas and having conversations around sex. I highly recommend following everyone you’ve heard on this podcast and having a look at who they follow and interact with too.
In Episode Three, Amani Zarroug also mentioned how valuable podcasts can be as a starting point. And while I’m certainly not about to sell myself as the answer to all your communication prayers, I do genuinely think that starting a sentence with “So I heard someone talking about this on a podcast the other day…” can be a really good way into a difficult conversation.
One of my all-time faves is Tina Horn’s Why Are People Into That? which looks at specific kinks and desires and examines what it is people like about them. I still think about the 2017 episode on shame on a near-weekly basis! And it feels like a cliche to recommend Savage Lovecast. The show, hosted by American sex and relationships writer Dan Savage has been going since 2006! But one of the reasons why so many people connect with it, why it’s so many people’s way in to talking about sex, is because of the volume of real life questions and dilemmas he fields from listeners.
Hearing real, unvarnished accounts of what people do and fantasise about is a very good way to start lowering the stakes for your own desires and fantasies, to help you realise you’re not as unusual as you might have thought.
I also love to recommend Nancy Friday’s work for this. If you’re not familiar, Nancy Friday wrote several books in the 70s, 80s and 90s, documenting people’s real sexual fantasies. The most famous ones were My Secret Garden and Forbidden Flowers which focussed on female sexual fantasies and Men In Love which looked at those shared with her by men.
All of these resources can then be used as a jumping off point for your own conversations.
A few years ago I wrote a feature about sex and relationships apps. A lot of them were fairly cringe but there was one that I quite liked. It was a pretty simple concept, the app presented you with various different sexual scenarios and fantasies and you had to select yes, no, or maybe, depending whether they piqued your interest. You synced your account to your partners and it showed you which ones you matched on. So if you said yes to something and your partner said no, it would just disappear into the ether and neither of you would ever know. But if you both said yes or you both said maybe - “ping!” a match.
You could also write up a list of scenarios and create “yes, no, maybe” tick boxes for each of them. Fill them in and then compare notes with your partner. If you’re not sure what to include you can find loads of templates online. These are sometimes called sex menus. Here’s Rob and I discussing one created by sex coach Stephen DeWit on a Second Circle episode back in 2017…
Rob Davies 47:06
The idea of the sex menu is that he has provided a list of sexual activities. And I guess if you and your partner have trouble maybe vocalising what you do and don't like, or maybe if you don't have trouble vocalising it but, you know, you just want a new way of approaching it. He's listed… God, looking at this list, it looks like maybe about a hundred, possibly more, activities.
Franki Cookney 47:20
Woah. Okay, that's a pretty extensive sex menu.
Rob Davies 47:22
That's a lot, right?
Franki Cookney 47:23
So wait, wait, what's the idea? You take Dr. Stephen de Wit’s menu to bed with you and order off it.
Rob Davies 47:27
Right? Well, I'm not sure that's necessarily how it works. I think the idea would be, we might be sat here over dinner and you've got your sex menu and I've got my sex menu, and we fill them in, in total silence. And you have to say whether you'd be up for something not up for it slightly interested…
Franki Cookney 47:48
Okay. So what would you do? You'd both fill it in, and then sort of maybe swap and see how you've matched it up?
Rob Davies 47:54
Yeah. And I, you know, I can identify with that. I think people sometimes find it easier to write something down that they're into, rather than saying it out loud. And, you know, you may then find that the other person is absolutely fine with that. And that allows you to vocalise it and talk about it.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 48:05
Hello waiter, yes, I will start with the deep kissing, followed by some nipple play. For my main I’d like the cunnilingus and can you do me a side of rimming with that? Lovely thanks.
Ha, can you imagine? Still, it’s a great exercise to try.
There’s also a BDSM test which I saw someone recently describe as being like the Myers-Briggs test for kink. You can find that pretty easily online if that sounds fun (personally, I’m a sucker for that kind of thing) and it’s a good conversation starter too. But hey, see what works for you. Play around with a few different things. Watch some Tik Tok videos, comment on a few Instagram posts, have a look at a sex menu, write yourself a cut-and-paste template on sexual health, listen to the odd podcast episode… see what comes out of it.
Throughout the series, I’ve stressed that I do not have the definitive answers on any of this. This podcast is not intended to be the final word on bad sex. If anything it’s just the start, an opening into – maybe – a fresh way of thinking about it.
And I honestly can’t tell you how much I’ve learnt while making this series. I’ve known for a while that most of the sex advice we dole out in the mainstream media barely even scratches the surface of what a lot of us are grappling with. But this podcast has taken me deep into the human psyche and I’m not sorry about that.
To my mind, the greatest mistake we make is to treat sex as something simple and separate; to treat our sexuality as something detached from the rest of our personality, or life’s experiences. It’s not. It’s deeply, deeply entangled.
To have good sex, we need to give ourselves permission to really engage with sex as a part of our lives, as part of who we are.
[THEME MUSIC]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 50:10
So… that’s it! That’s all the BAD SEX I’ve got for you. Unless, of course, you were one of the fabulous people who signed up to receive the bonus episode! That will be coming your way very soon and I’ll be in touch with more information on how to access that, both for subscribers and everyone else.
Thank you so much for listening! I have had a blast making this series and I would absolutely love to hear what you thought about it. Drop me an email at secondcirclepodcast@gmail.com or send me a voice note, if I haven’t made it clear by now, I bloody love voice notes. Go to speakpipe.com/TheSecondCircle to record one now.
And don’t forget to leave a review, it really boosts visibility and helps me spread the word.
The Second Circle is produced and hosted by me, Franki Cookney.
My audio producer for this series was the brilliant Anouszka Tate. She has not only produced a beautiful-sounding piece of audio, she also held my hand on what has been a big learning curve and exhilarating creative challenge for me. Hire her for all your audio needs!
My editor on this episode was the incredibly talented Lucy Douglas, who has provided exactly the kind of tough love I need and whose structure and storytelling insights helped me wrap up what is an impossibly vast topic into six episodes.
And of course huge thanks to the ever-supportive Rob Davies who provided the second edits on all my episodes. Arguably easier than the first edit but no less crucial! He’s also my husband and co-parent so when I say I couldn’t have done it without him, I really do mean that!
And for the final time I am going to reel off my big ol’ list of names, here we go! As you know I could not have made this series without the incredible support of those who donated to my crowdfunder. Thank you to all of you. In particular I’d like to thank Rochelle Dancel, Rachel Wheeley, Christine Woolgar, Anna Richards, Quinn Rhodes, Hugh de la Bedoyere, Simon Eves, Clíodna Shanahan, Chris and Livvy, Paul Nixon, Tabitha Rayne, Douglas Greenshields, Tun Ewald, Jack, Laura Hunter-Thomas, and David Kreysa. You guys fucking rock. Thank you for being part of this.
[ENDS]
Episode 6: How to get better at talking about sex