When Fantasies Hurt

Posted on February 27, 2014 by sexualityreclaimed

I have seen a few different search terms in my stats that indicate people are searching for resources around what to do when a particular fantasy is hurting their relationships. I think the idea behind this scenario is that a partner has shared a fantasy with you and perhaps now you feel insecure about yourself or your relationship and maybe you wish you didn’t know about the fantasy. Maybe your partner is so insistent on sharing the fantasy, or even making it materialize, that you are closing yourself off from your partner and are starting to feel like you are sexually incompatible.

That is a tricky, and probably painful, situation. What do you do?

First, I think it’s important to recognize that everyone has fantasies. We probably have different fantasies, but we are entitled to our own. They are ours, just like our feelings and thoughts are our own. Try cultivating your sense of independence around your fantasies and work on respecting your partner(s)’s imaginative boundaries as well.

Second, it can be helpful to view the sharing of fantasies as an intimacy-building component of a relationship. Viewed from this light, when a partner shares a fantasy, they aren’t doing it to make you feel less-than or insecure about yourself or your relationship, but because they feel close enough and safe enough with you to share a vulnerable part of themselves. It could even be viewed as a form of coming out, depending on how deeply someone has held onto a fantasy, and how much it makes up their sexual identity.

Third, it could also be helpful to work on assessing your own sexual intelligence and your ability to be GGG (Dan Savage’s acronym for good, giving, and game), in addition to your sexual soft and hard boundaries. Is the fantasy initially squicky to you? Can you imagine indulging it in some way, in some circumstances? Are you willing to talk about it or try it? Is it something that is absolutely non-negotiable to you?

Fourth, I think that Dan Savage has it right regarding the idea that people deserve to evaluate relationships not just based on traditional compatibility measures (personality, finances, living, kids, religion, etc) but on sexual compatibility as well. Try thinking of sex as a distinct category that you can use in evaluating your relationship with someone. It doesn’t make you shallow or ungrateful to evaluate a relationship based on your sexual compatibility: it makes you honest and it shows you are invested in assessing the long term sustainability of a relationship. (Obviously, determining how important a sexual incompatibility issue is to you is important in this as well. Maybe the sexual incompatibility isn’t that important to you, and maybe it’s a huge deal. Only you can answer that.)

Fifth, approach your partner with your honest feelings and thoughts around the fantasy sharing and start brainstorming possibilities for moving forward. Is the fantasy triggering some insecurities for you? What do you need from your partner? Do you need your partner to stop sharing the fantasy with you? Do you simply need some emotional reassurance? Would it be helpful to have some boundaries around sharing- for instance, we can talk about the fantasy a few times a week, and other times need to be reserved for other erotic play/talk?

Lastly, if the fantasy is taking up a large amount of space in your relationship (maybe it’s turned into a “third partner”) and it’s not a presence you want at all in any way, maybe it’s time to come to terms with the fact that you are not sexually compatible and move on to more compatible relationships. (And: if your partner is pushing you to do things that you are not comfortable with, that is another flag that your relationship is not sustainable. If you are uncomfortable, that is a sign that the fantasies may not be for you and maybe that your partner is not respecting your feelings and boundaries, which is not a healthy or satisfying way to be in relationship with someone.)

I’ll say for myself that J and I have gone through a little bit of this. Not in terms of really sharing fantasies that hurt one of us (at least to my knowledge) but in carving out specific times for specific kinds of erotic play (“we’ve talked about that a lot this week, I want to talk about this other fantasy tonight”). I have also had flashes of jealousy before in hearing some of J’s fantasies, but those feelings have largely been founded in fears that the fantasy would turn into reality and feeling like I wouldn’t be able to handle it right then. When I can ground myself in the moment and see the hotness of his fantasy myself, I have calmed myself down quite a bit, and been able to enjoy our erotic sharing (and, am also able to emotionally calm down over the long run with the confidence that I could handle it if the fantasy turned into a reality).

Have you ever shared a fantasy that has hurt your partner in some way? Have you ever been hurt by a partner’s fantasy? How have you negotiated that?

fantasies

Sexual Violence, LGBTQ Community, & Trafficking

Posted on February 27, 2014 by sexualityreclaimed

This week I was able to participate in a couple of webinars for work- one on domestic violence within the LGBTQ community, and the other on minor sex trafficking. Because I see such an obvious intersection between sexual violence prevention and intervention and reclaiming healthy and equitable relationships, I wanted to share some of my notes with you all.

-Domestic violence and sexual assault hotlines often include the suggestion to call 911 if someone is experiencing an emergency. This does not really take into account the historical experience of many people of color and LGBTQ folks with the police. What would be a more just way of serving survivors when they call after hours?

-Have any of you seen the Power & Control Wheel? While it is used in many settings and is well liked by many therapists and advocates, it also simplifies the experience of many marginalized groups. The standard wheel definitely captures many common patterns and behaviors within violent and abusive relationships, but when creators have tried to tailor the wheel to different populations, they have not necessarily done a very good job. For instance, the P&C wheel for LGBTQ folks simply layers “homophobia” around the outside of the wheel without actually providing specific examples of how homophobia intersects with experiences of domestic violence.

-Tactics that abusers often use within LGBTQ relationships include: isolating and threatening to out the survivor, using the survivor’s vulnerabilities to keep them from leaving the relationship or reporting abuse, using a survivor’s internal oppression to their advantage, using children as pawns, using the smallness of the LGBTQ community to keep a survivor quiet, leveraging institutional violence to keep a survivor quiet, and playing off of any substance use/abuse that is going on.

-Intersectionality is a big component for any person, and particularly relevant for understanding abusive and violent dynamics within LGBTQ relationships where other marginalized identities exist (ethnic, poly, BDSM). So a queer person of color who is in a D/s relationship and is experiencing nonconsensual abuse will face a much more challenging situation in leaving or reporting the situation than a white straight person in a vanilla relationship.

-Sex trafficking is different than consensual sex work. (This of course can get us into a discussion about what consensual means. To me, consensual means a “yes” given by all post-pubescent parties involved. The legal definition of consent, however, is very strict: if you are a minor-18 years- then you cannot legally give consent to sex.)

-Workers often refer to their pimps as “boyfriends” for a variety of reasons: many pimp-worker relationships start off as dating relationships which makes the relationship complex; the word pimp is often stigmatizing so workers often opt to refer pimps as dating partners instead

-The dynamics present within domestic violence and intimate partner violence relationships and trafficking relationships look very, very similar

-The Trafficking Victims Protection Act broadly affords victims rights to trafficking victims, because the Act recognizes trafficking as a crime (no kidding)

three-women

I Am Yours

Posted on February 21, 2014 by sexualityreclaimed

Last night I saw “I Am Yours,” one of the films at this year’s Portland International Film Festival. For some reason, my friend and I thought it was a comedy (which is partly why we chose it)- but it wasn’t. So instead of having a piece of light-hearted and fluffy entertainment, I received something deeper to reflect on.

Here is the synopsis from the PIFF website:

I AM YOURS

DIRECTOR: Iram Haq – NORWAY

Mina is a young single mother living in Oslo with her six-year-old son Felix. A Norwegian-Pakistani, she has a troublesome relationship with her family, who blame her for her divorce. Understandably: she’s a natural flirt, and while she has plenty of male companions, they tend not to hang around for long. One day, Mina meets Jesper, a Swedish film director, and they fall head over heels in love, but boy and man don’t exactly see eye to eye…. “I wanted to make a very naked and true story…. Often we see female characters being as good a person as possible. Mina is a normal human being, always running after being loved but not knowing what love is.”—Iram Haq. This year’s Norwegian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

The movie opens with Mina masturbating to porn- I already knew I was going to like her. And from there on out, we see that she accepts and welcomes her sexuality. Although her family is a traditionally hierarchical and patriarchal Indian family, she has somehow managed to divorce a husband (seemingly because she flirted too much with other men) and keep up with various lovers. I appreciated witnessing a character that has unbridled lust, a complex sense of what it means to be a parent, and a complicated way of interacting with her son, parents, and lovers.

The film illustrates the control her family seeks to have over her and her sexuality perfectly- it is unflinching and suffocating.

As I watched Mina run from lover to lover, I was struck by the title of the movie- “I Am Yours.” That seems to capture Mina’s approach to relationships and love- handing all of herself over to whatever romantic partner is in front of her. But that leaves her with none of herself to tend to. Even the modeling from her family around parental-child relationships and love show that parents do not love and accept their children unconditionally, a pattern that she does not exactly emulate although she does end up physically abandoning her own child. I kept rooting for her silently: You are all yours! Through her parents trying to control her life and her relationships, her ex husband pressuring her to behave in different ways as a parent, and her various lovers manipulating and using her in ways that suit only them, I watched her hand over herself to the people in her intimate life and then silently move through her days. The movie ends quietly, with her alone. I was left wishing that she finds herself, collects all of the pieces of herself she has given away unknowingly, and reclaims her sense of identity.

I think the movie shows the rub between different value systems: interdependence and familial obligation, individualism, sexuality as freedom, sexuality as sin. If you have a chance or ability to see the film for yourself, I recommend it.

Recent Reads

Posted on October 12, 2013 by sexualityreclaimed

Many Teens Admit To Coercing Others Into Sex
Consent people- teach your kids, please.

What Humans Can Learn From A Simple Kiss
I thought this was a neat article! I love the Inuit kiss the author mentions near the end. I’m going to start doing it :D

All My Exes Live in Texts: Why the Social Media Generation Never Really Breaks Up
Still working on this last one- it’s long! But really interesting! And definitely resonates with me.

Read up! :)

Another Swingers Club! & Drag Queens, Flogging, Male Strippers

Posted on September 1, 2013 by sexualityreclaimed

J and I finally visited the other swingers’ club in town, and just happened to go on its grand reopening night.

Overall, I like the aesthetic of our regular club better. But, this other club is better for just lounging and chatting with other people. Which J and I both liked.

Highlights of the night included:

-Performances by a couple of drag queens (side note: for some reason I haven’t been able to pinpoint yet, drag queens turn me on. I don’t know if I would want to have sex with one, or if it’s just the super beautiful feminine appearance, or if I just a huge erotic charge from being around non-normative gender displays. But I loved being there in the front row to watch!! Which leads me to…)

-Both J and I were incorporated into a couple of performances. It was so much fun! J got his clothes torn off of him while she lip synched “Closer.” And he got us free tickets to the Erotic Ball for his cooperation! I am so excited to experience another sexy event! And I got my clothes ripped off and FLOGGED (note: a first for me). I really loved the flogging! It wasn’t super hard- it just felt like a really even slap or spank. It was good pressure and left the right amount of sting.

[Another note: something super interesting was that the drag queen did not seek consent of her participants. She just ripped off people's clothes without asking, touched people without asking- it was poor modeling for a space that espouses itself on consent.]

-A rope suspension demonstration, led by a lovely friend of ours who has tied me up several times. It was awesome to see someone suspended so quickly and well!

-A male stripper group. They were okay. Not quite the level of skill that I was expecting, but still fun to watch. I may have had quite the time with one of them later on… ;)

The club felt more like a divvied up office building, but some of the spaces were neat. One plus was their dancing pole had quite a bit more room around it so dancing there was a little more fun (than at our regular club). The music was lower, so we were actually able to talk to some new people. The food was decent. And this club has hot tubs, which was a lot more appealing than I thought it would be (the rule is to finish playing elsewhere. Thank goodness…) We also both really appreciated the fact that this club seems to attract a wider spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities and appearances- we both appreciated the diversity and felt “at home” there. (That’s my biggest gripe with our regular club- that it doesn’t feel welcoming to gay men, trans people, or cross dressers- although we have seen and met some at our regular club. Having a drag queen MC an evening or more gender fluid events would definitely help shake things up.) I don’t know if we’ll go back to this club or not, but I am so glad we finally checked it out!

I AM YOURS

DIRECTOR: Iram Haq – NORWAY

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