49. Queer Love, Queer Sex: How Intimacy Changes Over Time featuring Therapist Calvin Hauer

In this week's episode, we discuss how sex and intimacy can change over time in long-term queer relationships- from pre-wedding to post-wedding and beyond!
Thank you SO much to this week's guest: Calvin Hauer. You can find out more about Calvin, his practice and his email by visiting this site: https://www.calvinhauertherapy.com/

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Transcript

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Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-1 0:34

Hello, my beloved queer folks. How is everybody doing? It is. Starting to feel like winter. Here in the Midwest and I always have mixed feelings about it. But. Other than that, I hope that everyone has continued to find ways to. Pope and. Process and do what you need to do. Um, In the weeks. Since the election and, and leading up to an Accuration day, I know it's such a weird time. Yeah. I wish I was better. With the words and I. Find myself saying that probably too often for somebody who has their own podcast, but. I just wanted to quickly come on and give a personal hello to everybody. That's keeping up with the podcast. And I also just wanted to kind of give a forward to this week's episode. I, we talk about it a lot. Um, the guests I have on the podcast, we talk about. Consenting and giving folks plenty of time to decide if they want to listen or not to this episode, but just giving folks a heads up that we are talking about sex and this episode, which for me personally, I really had to put my big girl pants on and, uh, and get ready for this episode. And it was so great. It's just. Wow. I'm realizing I've come a long way since, uh, being a little pastor's kid who. Was taught that, even saying that word out loud was, uh, sinful. So, um, I'm just, yeah. And he decided for you all to listen. But I also really encourage you to. Maybe find a time when you can listen to this with like a paper and pen or some way to take notes, just because I feel like. The guests I have on, he just has so many valuable points and also kind of offers like some resources and some ideas and some questions that you can ask yourself and your partner. And so. I just think it'd be really cool. Uh, to be able to kind of take notes or, you know, maybe just be willing to listen to it multiple times and kind of pick up the parts that. That really stuck out to you. So. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.

3:07

Cruelly Beloved. Welcome back to this week's episode. I have a super awesome guest here. I have Kelvin with me here and I am going to pass it over to Kelvin to kind of introduce and we'll go from there. Hi friends, my name is Calvin Hauer. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Minnesota. I'm a sex positive therapist. I'm a part time professor, and I'm a full time nerd. So I specialize in working with sex and sexuality. And that comes in a lot of different varieties. I focus on a lot of different aspects of those topics within my, uh, office. And, like I said, uh, part time professor, I teach, uh, other marriage and family therapists about sex and sexuality. I teach the, what is it? systemic assessment and treatment of sexual concerns class at one of our local universities. It's a mouthful. I just call it sex class wow. It sounds so official though. Very cool. It sounds like you do so much for people and for the community. So thank you so much for all you do. I mean, I try to give to community, but community supports me, right? It's a simple thing. So as much as I try to work with folks, you know, recognizing community supports me, they pay my bills. So, you know, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know we kind of chatted about this, um, but I was kind of sharing that. Both myself and I know from speaking with people who listened to the podcast, there's a lot of folks here who have like religious backgrounds and who have expressed, you know, both the feelings of, so even if they're in like a happy and secure queer relationship, there's still like those feelings of shame and unlearning things from our past. And, um, Some of that comes with, like, some uncomfortability when it comes to discussing sex and intimacy. So, um, I was just wondering if you could kind of touch on that and Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, baseline, right? Informed consent. We're talking about sex today. I'm going to be talking about sex. I'm going to be using language that specifically centers sex, um, and we can get into that a little bit around, you know, how we talk about this and why it's important to talk about it the way we do. I really want to name though, if sex is a hard subject to listen to, to engage with, it's totally okay to just tap out on this one, right? Skip this one. It's just some, some dude talking about sex, whatever, right? Know that there's plenty of resources out there. I'm always happy to talk to folks, be it by email, schedule sessions, whatever, right? It's, Again, we're leaning into community. I want to support the community as much as possible. And if that means just being some guy that maybe you engage with when you feel ready, totally fine. Uh, what else should I acknowledge? I think just really, you know, I'm going to talk about some of the things that come up around sex, especially within queer relationships and queer marriages. Uh, some of the historical context around, uh, queer marriage and some of the discussions around that when it, in centering sexuality and talking about some of the explicit stuff. So if you don't got that in you. No, no shame on that. Please take care of yourself and know that I'm always available via email. Uh, it's just Calvin at CalvinHowardTherapy. com. Again, that's Calvin at CalvinHowardTherapy. com and that's C A L V I N H A U E R. Perfect. Yeah, I can definitely link that in the show notes for sure. Yeah, no, that's so great. I really appreciate you saying that. And yeah, obviously no shame in the game. If this episode isn't for you, um, yeah, do you have obviously again, I know people can can reach out to you for like the specifics, but do you have any thoughts for just kind of. Maybe some good starting places for folks who might still kind of be working through this. Oh my gosh. Absolutely I'm gonna pull it up on my side just so I get it right though my favorite person is regarding like sex and religious backgrounds is Rev Bev. So Reverend Beverly Dale is a scholar and Reverend, uh, who studies sexuality and different interpretations of religious teachings through a sex positive and queer lens. She does amazing work. I know she was running the, I think, Incarnation Institute. I may have missed messed that up, but you can you can Google her. She's great. Rev. Bev and she does a lot of great work around centering queerness in religious texts. Um, and she does a lot of really calling out some of the sex negative teachings or challenging some of the sex negative teachings from some of our, uh, religious institutions, specifically from her perspective, Christianity, but she has a cohort of folks with other, uh, religious backgrounds that she also engages with. So, if you, if that's part of your story, you know, check out her stuff. She does amazing work and just know that. Just because you were taught something, or you were told that the Bible says this, or this religious script says this, know that before the printing press, religious scripts were changed by scribes, right? So, the people who held power changed our religious texts. And then the people who hold power now, interpret the religious texts within a certain context. Believe what you, what you need to believe, right? And recognize that your creator or God or whomever, however you refer to them, they want you to have really awesome sex. They want you to be your authentic self. They want you to center joy, right? And So many of our religious backgrounds and teachings around sex are misguided or misinterpreted or could be interpreted a different way through specific historical contexts and specific historical context about who was changing our religious texts. So that's a whole vibe, but just know that like, you know, there's a lot that goes into it. And my genuine belief is that, you know, God wants you to have amazing sex. Wow. I'm like, we could just end the podcast right here. Like that was so beautiful. And so I, yeah, I just, I don't know if I've ever heard it articulated so well. So thank you for saying that. Totally. Let's talk about sex. Yeah. Yeah. So I know when we kind of first started chatting, um, you, uh, kind of presented the idea that There's a lot that goes on in like the different stages of queer relationships, um, from, you know, dating to engagement to wedding, all of that. So, kind of take it away. Totally, totally. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about, some of this stuff is in context to heterosexual relationships too. But, I can speak to it from a queer lens. Um, I'm a bisexual. I work with primarily queer folks. I do have a few straights that I work with and, but like they're queer straights. So when we, one of the traps I see are not traps, but one of the difficulties I see within relational development is kind of the ongoing next thing. Um, um, I don't know if you have dogs, but one of the things that I always think about. Oh, there we go. You know, when your dog gets really impatient and wants to do the next thing, even if you're doing something that the dog likes in my household, we call it onto the next thing. I think we get like that within our relationships, not to equate relationships with dogs, but to say, I think we get into this place of forever looking for the next dopamine drop, right? All those good endorphins and dopamine, all the good feelings that come with the new thing onto the next thing, right? And when we're talking about relationships, when we start a relationship, we enter that new relationship energy. So, the polyamorous and non monogamous really call this out, right? When you start a new relationship, you're in NRE, or New Relationship Energy. And that's that, like, amazing feeling that your body just is, like, buzzing because you're talking to someone, and you're like, there's new things, you're learning about them. You can share the same stories you share all the time, but they're new to them, too. So, like, it's just all that good, good, good and that continues for some say like three months to two years, depending on the relationship, that new relationship energy, all this feels so good. And there's all of these like micro. Escalations that occur. So, you know, when you first start talking to someone, you're flirting, it can feel really nice, like, oh, the back and forth. And at the escalates to hanging out, going on dates, doing romantic things, that first kiss, all of those things are gonna be really rewarding to our bodies and our brains, right? Your brain is literally saying, connect with this person. You like them. Keep talking to them. Keep engaging with them. And that's new relationship. Energy is probably the stage where I see people fall into the most trouble folks in early recovery tend to relapse in N. R. E. because if they're meeting up with someone new and they offer them a drink or something like that, their brain is buzzing with so many neurochemicals that they're just like, yes, I don't care. I can do this. Yes, trouble, but it's also I see it like affect work, right? I stayed up too late texting my new sweetie. I have can't focus at work or you know, I am like not focusing on other like family relationships or friend relationships because I'm focused on. This new person that N. R. E. escalates more and more and more until you're really, really established, right? Say cohabitating, um, and like seeing each other all the time. Now, what do you do? The next best escalation is engagement, right? And that kind of restart some of that new relationship energy. You get a lot of kudos, you get a lot of excitement. You're engaging with a lot of people around, you know, this new step. And that kind of continues through the wedding process. And then you kind of run into that thing that, I don't know if you've heard this, uh, Olympic gold medalists fall into a huge depression. Right. They've been training for this thing. And then what now? Well, I see that with, with marriage, people put all of this energy into this relationship into this event, right? Like, we're bringing the families together. We're doing all this stuff. And that can go a number of different ways, right? It's funny, I was talking to my wife, uh, prior to coming to my office to record, and I was like, well, we're talking about, uh, queer marriage, and One of the things that are like, what are the things that you think about with that? Like, what are some pro tips? And she's like, that you don't have to have sex on the night of your wedding. Absolutely. Right. It's okay to just want to fall asleep and not. engage in a sexual connection, right? It's a lot that's happened that there's so much pressure. I think on the wedding night and then the honeymoon to be like super sexual or whatever. Right? And that's kind of entrenched in get pregnant. Now go have babies and for folks who can't do that unassisted. Now we're just focusing on the sex piece, but maybe not. Maybe we're not acknowledging that. I don't know. Right? And But post, post wedding, now we're looking at, you know, do we buy a house? Unless they already have a house, right? Do we start a family? What do we want to do with the next parts of our life? I've seen a lot of straight couples fall into onto the next thing, onto the next thing, start a relationship, cohabitate. Get engaged, get married, have kids. And then the having kids process is so traumatic and disconnecting for the couple that by the time that they can actually reconnect and really form like a sexual bond together again, the kids 18 and the marriage isn't feeling really. Disconnected. And that's often where I, you know, I'm doing work with, you know, some folks say like, what do you want out of this marriage now? And with gay marriage being still relatively new, uh, legally, We are starting to see, like, the, well, what is the on to the next thing piece? How do we keep people together? What do we invest in to maintain the relationship? So we're not relying on new relationship energy. We're not relying on the relationship escalator and all of those, like, dopamine hits along the way. Yeah. Wow. That is, yeah, it's like, I'm listening. I'm like, Oh, this all is make so much sense and is very true, but I feel like it's probably not something that all of us like recognize, right? It's so easy to get kind of just caught up in it. So, Oh, yeah. And like, why wouldn't you want to get caught up in it? It feels great. You know, it's just, it's a natural high, just, you know, all the time. And It's, it's an awesome feeling, right? As much as I'm maybe I am critiquing this or, you know, we will continue to critique it. Like, I really want to acknowledge it feels awesome. All these steps feel great. And I am such a don't overthink what feels good person. If it feels good. And those are these steps all are bringing you two together more and more like that's awesome. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Right? Really? Just like the world sucks. Enjoy the nice things, right? And let's look at the sustainability because sustainability is really key and maintaining happy, healthy relationships. Yeah. I did have a question pop into my mind and Maybe it's too broad of a question, or maybe it's not the right question, but I'm, I think, hearing you talk about some of these things, I'm like, but I feel like this has to manifest differently for different kinds of couples, and I don't mean it in, like, a stereotyping way, but, like, lesbians, obviously, we do have a stereotype of moving very quickly, and, like, you hauling and all of those stereotypes, But lesbian bed death, right? Like that's the, like, that's the other stereotype, you hauling and then lesbian, uh, bed death, this is, you're not familiar with that. I'm a lesbian and I'm not familiar. This, so it's, it's, uh, it's referencing like long term lesbian relationships where sex becomes less and less prioritized to a point where there just isn't a sexual relationship. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just curious. Cause like that, you know, it's a stereotype. It may not always happen, but like from our perspective, that's not necessarily unhealthy. Whereas like for another couple, maybe it is, or like it manifests differently in a different kind of relationship. So. Kind of curious about that. Totally, totally. I think it's so important to recognize every relationship as its own thing, right? And yes, we're talking about, um, we're maybe talking about some stereotypes here and, you know, we can acknowledge that stereotypes can be really harmful and, you know, disclaimer, disclaimer. But to say that, like, there's a lot of considerations that go into all different types of dynamics, right, so be it a lesbian relationship, gay male relationship, bisexual for bisexual relationship, straight for bisexual relationship, it all gets complicated, right? Recognizing that there's just going to be dynamics that show up within every relationship that are going to provide some strengths and provide some challenges. I think that when we talk about like the idea of like gay marriage as like a legal concept, there's so many reasons why we needed that, right? Specifically, historically looking at You know, who gets, you know, in on the will and who gets to visit you in the hospital. Like, these are really important things, especially for our communities. And some of the critiques were, if we're going to assimilate. and we're going to, you know, kind of model ourselves after a straight marriage, that's going to cause problems. Um, and so we need to do it differently. And I think that over the last, you know, was it 11 years now? Uh, the, the dynamics are shifting and evolving. How we talk about marriage within queer community is shifting and changing. How we talk about some of these dynamics and some of these like, Things that just kind of pop up as jokes or whatever, um, are starting to shift too. Right? We're acknowledging you hauling. We're acknowledging, uh, you know, circuit gays who are maybe ready to settle down. We're acknowledging all of these different things and it becomes important for all of us to really Talk about what do we want this relationship to look like it's so easy again in that new relationship energy stage. It's so easy to fall into just like falling madly in love with somebody, right? Who doesn't want a sapphic romance? God, that's like forever, right? But, you know, eventually some of that has to subside. You got to do other things. Got to pay the bills, right? You got to go live your life. Yeah. How do you keep that quote unquote spark going? How do you, you know, draw attention to, oh, wow, we moved in with each other really quickly. How do we feel about that? How do we embrace again, the challenges of the relationship, right? It's so easy to minimize those, it becomes increasingly difficult to actually, like, sit down and say, hey, we both want to move really fast right now. Maybe we need to slow down or, hey, You know, we are avoiding really difficult conversations about sex, and we should really set some intentions around talking about that. I don't know if I answered your question. I went on, like, 4 side quests. Stereotypes are there for, you know, a number of reasons and stereotypes can be funny. Stereotypes can be true to a certain degree. And it can be harmful, right? And so, you know, with whatever we want to embrace around them, also acknowledging that it doesn't have to be your fate. Yeah, totally. So is that kind of one of the general principles as you're talking about couples moving through the different stages and, how life changes and all of that? Is that kind of a general principle of you want it? Yeah. Couples to figure out what is going to be sustainable for them. Or what do you kind of help couples through these different stages? Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. Right. You know, unfortunately, and you could ask any, like any couples therapist, this question, like how many of your couples actually stay together, more of our couples break up and stay together because they're coming to us in active, right? Like. Shit has gone off the rails. We're doing, you know, we're trying to repair some major ruptures, right? It's always funny when I have a couple coming in where everything's going well, but they want to work on sustainability because sometimes I'm like, What are we going to do? And then Calvin, get out of that mode. We're not in firefighter mode now. We're in, you know, like, foundation laying mode, right? Let's, let's embrace carpentry and not firefighting. So. With, like, with looking at sustainability, it's, the work that I do is a lot of asking some of the hard questions, right? So, typically, with, like, all of my copy out in the world or how I advertise myself, I really lean into, I work with sex. Mm hmm. I work with sex specifically. Uh, I'm not an intimacy coach. I'm not a, you know, I don't focus on intimacy. Intimacy per se, because I really want to say I work on work with sex. Now, side note, going on a whole side quest here. Language is super duper important, right? That's why I like reclaiming queer is really important to our communities. Uh, why bridging away from just gay to like gay. Uh, lesbian, bisexual, like, being able to talk about all the nuances of different experiences is really important, right? And when we use catch all terms like intimacy, we actually do a few disservices to ourselves. Because intimacy is many different things. Intimacy can be holding hands and talking about, you know, growing up. Intimacy can be making food together. Intimacy is sharing resources. Intimacy is connection. And there are so many ways to be intimate with somebody. And to equate sex with intimacy, we actually Minimize all the other ways that we're intimate with folks around us. It is true that they're like sexual intimacy is a form of intimacy and sexual intimacy can bridge like mental, emotional and physical intimacies and like a few other intimacies as well. Time. But sex itself needs to be talked about. We have to say sex, uh, I work with sex or sexuality because, You're modeling to your clients or the people that you're talking to that I take this really seriously and This is an important and legitimate part of you How many of us are walking around feeling illegitimate about our sexuality or who we are as a sexual person? We all have a complicated relationship with sexuality, right? And so when folks come to me, I never want them to be able to be working with me and say, Hmm, I think I need to work with a sex therapist, bro. You're with me. We're doing it, which has happened in the past when I've worked in clinics where they didn't talk about sex as much in like their advertisements, despite the fact that they were a sex therapy clinic, it confuses people. And so. I put it out there. We're working with sex. We're talking about sex. I'm going to model asking you about sex. We're going to say sex a million times. We're going to talk about penises. We're going to talk about vulvas. We're going to talk about all the parts. We're going to talk about ways people are going to be sexual. That's all important because if we can model that it's okay to talk about, In a safe space, it's going to be talked about elsewhere, so come to me, oftentimes they want to work on maybe desire discrepancies or exploring different ways to make their sexual relationship more sustainable, because maybe the, you know, again, the quote, unquote spark has died and I have to do a lot of work around. All right. How do we build an active, sustainable sex life amongst these people? What feels on, you know, what feels on brand for them, or like, you know, good for them? And what doesn't? How do we explore those things? And how do we just talk about it? You know, the two of them through a third party, like myself. So that was a lot of side quests. I'll totally acknowledge that. I don't know if I even touched on your question, but when they come to me, right, we're going to talk about like, Hey, sustainability, you know, what makes you feel good as a sexual person? What makes you feel good as a sexual person? If there's a third person, what makes you feel good about being a sexual person? What feels good in your body? What feels good in your brain? Where, when is sex intimate? When is sex not intimate? How do we talk about that? How do we invite our whole body into a sexual situation? How do we acknowledge trauma? We put it all on the table and sort through it so that we're not avoiding it. Because that's the thing that I see happen with so many folks is the avoidance of the topic of sex. That can lead to total avoidance of sex as a concept within the relationship that can lead to, you know, an affair or sleeping around that can manifest a lot of different ways. So do you then find it beneficial to talk about? Sex differently in these kind of different stages, or do you kind of try to figure out how to, you know, keep it the same? Or do you kind of individualize it based on? Oh, my gosh, great question. I'm going to answer your question with a question. Uh, name for me a relationship that has not evolved or changed in your life. Sorry, can you say it one more time? Name for me a relationship that you have that has not evolved or changed over time. None. Right? Our relationship with sex is the same way. Right? What feels good and sexy when we're 18 maybe doesn't feel good and sexy when we're 80, right? And I don't know about you, but I don't want to retire as a sexual being. I don't think many of your listeners want to retire as a sexual being, right? We want to be sexual throughout our lives. And so if I were to approach it from the standpoint of, Let's set, let's set the post and like, let's keep that forever. We can't, we run into the issue of, well, it's going to work for now until it doesn't. So what we're doing is oftentimes I'm meeting clients where they're at, right? If it's a newer relationship, we're leaning into the NRE and we're leading into, What feels good about this? And also, let's acknowledge the hard pieces now, right? If they're maybe in that two to like six to eight years together, we're starting to look at, all right, what are our next goals? And how does your relationship with sexuality maybe work in conjunction with those goals or not? And then kind of that 10 years plus area now, we're really looking at how do we keep the relationship erotic as this person is now your family. Yeah, yeah, that's so real. And I know that it's can be kind of such a big overarching question and obviously it's going to look a little bit different for for everybody. But do you have some kind of general things that you can offer to folks as they're. You know, in their different stages of maybe they're, they're in a committed relationship, maybe they're engaged, or maybe they're about to get married. Oh, my goodness. So, one of my favorite tools for folks is filling out a yes, no, maybe list. Okay. So, this is, If you want to be, like, hyperclinical about it, it's called a sexual interest inventory, but I like Yes, No, Maybe list more. Google Yes, No, Maybe lists. Uh, you will find a number of them. The Scarlet Teen one, I really like, especially for, like, newer relationships. There's, like, some that, in that list, There's, like, some subject matter that just will not apply to certain relationships. Acknowledging that, but a yes, no, maybe list is just a list of different, like, sexual situations, or sexual acts, or relationship styles, or how you handle difficult situations, like birth control stuff, if that's part of the process for folks. And. What happens is, uh, I'm going to talk about it from a couple's standpoint. I work with a number of couples, too. But, uh, you know, a couple will individually fill out their yes, no, maybe list and it's that list and for things that are like yeses, you circle yes. If it's a no, you circle no. If it's a maybe, you circle maybe. Very self explanatory. And the idea is you bring it together and you compare. You know, and you're looking at the lists, right? So each person fills out their own and then you compare and a lot of it's probably going to feel like, Oh yeah, I knew this about you. But there's going to be a few where someone's got a going to have a yes. And maybe their partner is going to have a maybe, or there's going to be maybe some yeses that have never been stated. Or there's going to be new sexual acts that people have never considered. And I'm like, I don't even know what muffing is, let's, let's Google it. Not at work. being able to go through that and do that every five-ish years, maybe more often, is a great way to keep talking about sex and our individual relationships with sex and how we share that with our partner because. We need to be able to continue the conversation beyond just that initial fumbling in the bedroom. Does that feel good? Yes. Right. We need to, we need to optimize it. We need it. We need it to feel good for everybody. So I like to use a tool like that. I really like talking about spontaneous versus responsive desire. The tool control model from the Kinsey Institute is that, is that idea. And the idea that in a new relationship, we're going to have a lot more spontaneous desire. It's that desire, just like the lightning bolt, as Emily Nagoski says, the lightning bolt to your crotch, like, oh, my gosh, like, that's awesome. Right? Like, us who experienced spontaneous desire. That's amazing. And there's so many factors that go into that spontaneous desire and. Unfortunately, culturally, really, we really norm that that's the desire we're supposed to have versus the responsive desire, which is that, like, setting intentional time together, sharing time in bed, just, you know, massaging each other or, like, holding each other, talking about our days. Physical intimacy, the emotional intimacy, and checking in, do you feel like you would want to be sexual tonight or not? Being able to coach people through that can help them continue to engage in sex. Again, sex really gets deprioritized. It's that this weird thing and, you know, not to be this guy and also to be this guy, right? Like, we live in a capitalist culture and sex, especially queer sex, doesn't, doesn't create money making opportunities, right? Now, you could argue that heterosexual sex creates babies and that, you know, Supports the economy and blah, blah, blah, blah, right. But queer sex inherently doesn't fit within a patriarchal capitalist system. And so it's easy to really avoid it or to like deprioritize it when you have, you know, you're working 70 hours a week and you're dealing with family stuff and you have to mow the lawn again because apparently the grass has grown and Oh my God, something's happening with our house. Right? Like. Life gets really unsexy, and when you don't have that spontaneous desire anymore, or you're not as aware of it, sex really kind of can fall off, and unfortunately that's where we see the avoidance occur, and the, well now if I, you know, it's been too long, if I try to be sexual with my partner, it's gonna feel awkward. Well, sex is awkward. That's okay. Sex is goofy. Sex is silly and dumb, right? Like, it's the most important and least important thing we do and we have to prioritize it. We have to prioritize it more than we do. And that's a lot of the work that I do. Especially with my queer clients. I love kind of the things that you recommended because they're so, it's so simple, but I love that it, I can meet you where you are at in different, in different stages of your relationship. Um, I think kind of my last question is my partner and I, when we do something like this, we're like, yes, we very much want to talk to somebody who is at least queer themselves or has experience working with the queer community, even just from the aspect of, like, they're not going to be like, wait, how do you guys have sex? You know, just like baseline things, of course. Right? Um, but I'm kind of curious if you, if you Notice like big differences between the topics and issues within the queer community, or if there's a lot of overlap in just relationships in general. I'm trying to think that's such a big question. I mean, every community, like queer community is such a big umbrella, right? So to approach, to approach. Different sub communities, or, you know, just communities, I should say, uh, as though the umbrella will justify working with everybody the same way is a huge disservice, because the concerns within certain communities may not be as much of a concern in a different community. And that doesn't mean that those concerns aren't legitimate or anything. It's really just like showing up and saying, like, You know, what's going on and how can I be effective, you know, from a therapeutic lens anyway, how can I be effective in supporting these folks? So, you know, kind of like zooming out for a second, you're acknowledging, like, you don't really want to, you wouldn't want to work with a therapist who is going to ask how do you have sex, right? Now, I actually do ask that question, but not in that way, right? Like, I understand how lesbians. can be sexual with each other, right? I understand how various people can be sexual with each other. And when I ask that question, I'll ask like, hey, what does sex look like within this relationship? How do you, how do you talk about sex? How do you communicate, you know, prior to, during, and after sex? What does aftercare look like? Is there a prioritization of this or not? And really kind of engaging in those conversations to get at more of the nuance of what's the presenting problem. The other, like, question that often I will ask is, what is sex? Right, because the like, tired, boring joke of, you know, lesbians are always virgins because they're never having sex, fuck you, first off, and, you know, like, how we conceptualize sex through a penetrative lens is not helpful. Right? Sex can look so many different ways. It can involve all of our body. It can involve, you know, our brain. I mean, it has to involve our brains, but like, it can involve so much. And oftentimes, I see people really segmenting themselves into sex is this act or this act. Nothing else. And if you are working with a therapist who asks, who is like trying to support you in sex and is super act for focused and not inquisitive of sex as a larger systemic piece. That's a big red flag, in my opinion. Not talking shit about your therapist, and also to say, it's important to have a therapist who's curious, who wants to know about your relationship with the subject, but is not asking you to educate them about it. Basics around what sex is as like, you know, from an act standpoint, also, but also like listeners, please don't fall into that trap either. Right? Like, don't fall into the, this isn't sex or, you know, I don't count like this. This act isn't sex, but this act is sex. Acknowledge that there can be a sexual charge in many different acts. And it's important to talk to your spouse or your partner about, you know, what constitutes cheating, what, you know, when, like, what are the dynamics around an affair, what that, what counts as that or not, right. I've worked with many, now this is, sorry, total side, but this is something I work with a lot with more heterosexual folks is. Um, folks getting caught masturbating and looking at porn and coming to me saying I'm a sex addict and one sex addiction is controversial in sex therapy fields, we don't need to get into it. I take a more out of control sexual behavior model standpoint. Um, but when I asked them like, Hey, what's, you know, tell me about the problematic sex. They will talk about, Oh yeah, I masturbate once a week and my wife found me or my husband found me or whatever. And then the question becomes, okay, like why, tell me about how that's a problem within your relationship. That's very normative within, you know, it's actually a little bit lower, but, you know, uh, it's, it's relatively normative. Right? So now we have to look at like, what are you looking to get out of in this space? Do you need me to like, say, you're okay, or do you want support? Right? And I think that to kind of expand that to, um, all relationships, it, there is a really important discussion that needs to happen around. What is. What constitutes an affair constitutes cheating is looking at porn cheating is read is reading erotica cheating is You know, flirting with somebody cheating or is, you know, oral sex cheating, like what counts or not? And how do you co create that agreement? All relationships are co creation. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you for taking my big question. Broad question and running with it, you know, I ran with it. I don't know that I really, uh, I hit it, but you know, we're going to, we're going to go with it just to say, right, this is such a sensitive subject, right? And I know that this is just a teaser. Like I think we could keep going. I know I keep going all day, but you know, talking about this for another two hours, easy, right? I really want to stress to listeners. Talk about it now. Right? Have that internal conversation. What is your relationship with sex like? You know, what informs that relationship for you as an individual and within your dynamic with your partner, what do you want it to look like? And how do you talk to your partner about that, about those dynamics? If you don't talk about it, it's not going to change and it's just going to be avoided. Yeah, and I'm going to say it now, but I think I'm going to need to kind of go back in terms of front and say it that people should really have, like, a paper and pen or like note taking somehow, because I feel like there were so many good little tidbits in here, but also really good questions to be asking and hopefully encourage some, some conversations and, um, With each other. So totally, totally. And just know that there's so many resources out there and there's so many quality resources out there. Don't settle for your best friend who knows nothing about healthy relationships, right? Like, or, you know, don't settle for somebody who's just trying to sell you something, right? There's so much great community based knowledge, especially within our communities. Queer community had to acknowledge sex, we had to own our sexuality, and one of the greatest things about being queer is that queer community shows up for each other and will educate. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Thank you so much, Calvin. It has been such a joy and to Discuss sex with you, which I never thought I would be saying as a little bastard's kid, but it's been, it's been so, so great. So thank you for sharing and thanks for all you do. Thanks for having me. And thanks for taking the chance on me. I'm just some goober who was like in your DMs being like, in your podcast. Yes.