Aubrey Lancaster, ASEC-certified sexuality educator, guides us into the rich tapestry of intimacy, exploring limerence, sensual attraction, and the myriad ways we relate to each other beyond the physical. We confront the concept of libido, dispelling the myth that it is the cornerstone of sexual activity, and instead celebrate the array of intimacies that bond us.
Here's your first step in spicing up your sex life--get Lee's free erotic massage technique: rockthebedroom.com/
For new erotic massage techniques every month: rockthebedroom.com/membership
Aubrey Lancaster, ASEC-certified sexuality educator, guides us into the rich tapestry of intimacy, exploring limerence, sensual attraction, and the myriad ways we relate to each other beyond the physical. We confront the concept of libido, dispelling the myth that it is the cornerstone of sexual activity, and instead celebrate the array of intimacies that bond us.
Here's your first step in spicing up your sex life--get Lee's free erotic massage technique: rockthebedroom.com/
For new erotic massage techniques every month: rockthebedroom.com/membership
I am so excited for this episode because I am about to get an education. I hope you, the listener, also learned something new. Or maybe you know this stuff already, I don't know, but I had no idea how deep this particular rabbit hole was, not a clue. I had the honor of being on a panel of speakers recently, and Aubrey Lancaster was one of them, and when she was speaking my jaw dropped Like I was sitting at my computer just like oh, please, keep talking, please keep talking. She shone a light on a lot of topics, but specifically the topic of asexuality that I did not know a lot about, and the cool thing was she helped me to make sense of how I had been feeling in certain sexual situations. So my mind was blown and all I could think of we've got to get her on the show. So I am so over the moon that she's with me today to unpack all this stuff and blow your mind too. So thank you so much, aubrey, for joining me today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. I'm excited too.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is going to be juicy, I can just tell. So let's just jump right in. Tell us what you do and who you help.
Speaker 2:So I am an ASEC certified sexuality educator with a focus in asexuality and aromanticism. I actually started out in adult product sales 20 years ago sales 20 years ago and it wasn't until I was 39 that I finally came to understand my sexuality and how it had been such a huge part of my journey and discovery the entire time and realized that so much time in the sexuality profession and not understanding that meant this information was important and needed to be brought to these spaces. So I did my studying. I actually studied for a semester under Goddard Graduate Institute to learn more about the academia and the cultural context and you know a lot of what's going on around this issue and then moved over into my asex certification and have been doing a six hour training on asexuality and aromanticism for the last two years to specifically bring this information to sexuality professionals.
Speaker 1:Right, and do you work with women or men specifically, or is it just kind of anyone who Awesome, okay, cool. I think my audience is mostly women, but guys need to hear all this good stuff too.
Speaker 2:Anyone can be asexual.
Speaker 1:And right yeah, and cause and I love hearing that too because I grew up thinking, you know, men are horn dogs and all men would just think about sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. There was some kind of stat where a man thinks about sex every six seconds or something like that throughout the day. And so I grew up with this conditioning that men wanted sex, like all men just point blank wanted sex, sex, sex, sex, sex and that's all they thought about. And that made me feel really weird and a little bit like on guard because I didn't think about sex. So it's kind of it's nice to know that that, that that was a total generalization.
Speaker 2:Well, and part of that is also the fact that our society will hypersexualize some people and desexualize others. And within that gendered context, our society kind of hypersexualizes male sexual desire and hyper-romanticizes women as far as romance goes. So when we have these expectations, if we don't fit within that narrative, we think there must be something wrong with us. So men who aren't heavily focused on sex or may even be asexual, are told that they are somehow lacking, as are women who may not desire romance or may be aromantic are told they are lacking. And then we get into all the diversity of gender that exists and how that adds new layers of hypersexualization and desexualization. So really we need to make space for some people to think about sex a lot and other people to not really think about sex very much or not be interested in interpersonal sexual activity, and step away from some of these assumptions and especially gender stereotyping. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and I'm glad that you're one of these people who are bringing this to light, because otherwise, you know, men end up feeling emasculated, women end up feeling like they were prude or something, and so this is an important conversation. That's why I wanted to have you on so badly. I'm like, oh my gosh, no one I know is talking about this. This needs to be talked about a lot more. That's why I'm in this job. Yeah, so good. I would love for you to share the story about you growing up and discovering your own sexuality. I heard a little bit of it and I found, found. I'm like, oh my God, I wasn't the only one in parts of your story, it was very it was. It gave me permission to be okay with my coming to sexuality story too, so I would love for you to share that, if you're, if you're open to that.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I was raised in a secular Jewish home so I didn't have religious shaming as a child. I understand that could be a huge part of some people's journey, but for me it wasn't. Who were women who becoming women, who were really excited about sex and we're constantly talking about it and really getting obsessed with it. That was the norm in my world. So I didn't have this kind of dual idea that you know girls weren't interested in it. I assumed I just wasn't. That there was. You know that it was kind of okay, that's them this is me which is true. That it was kind of okay, that's them this is me which is true. But I was getting romantic crushes. I got a number of romantic crushes throughout my teenage years and I never felt like it was a problem to not become sexual, you know. It was just kind of like, okay, why is this hard?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I did have my sexual debut as a teenager, but it was more of a receiving type of experience, so I didn't really understand why I wasn't as motivated to return the favor. And it wasn't until I was married that I was in the position of being expected to want to engage sexually on a regular basis, and I didn't understand why I didn't. And I didn't understand why I preferred to engage alone, alone. And so I ended up joining an adult product company selling in-home adult toys and such and learning how to enhance pleasure and how to access physical pleasure. And I had so many aha moments from that just understanding that clitoral stimulation is necessary for a huge part of the population that has a clitoris in order to even orgasm. Not understanding that it's okay to not need penetrative sex or to not orgasm. Just from that and all of the different ways that I learned how to access pleasure.
Speaker 2:And yet I never found anyone quote sexually appealing, like I never understood the um, the boy band like I'm gonna date myself. New kids on the block did not do it for me. My crush was um Wesley Crusher from Star Trek Next Generation and I had no sexual fantasies about him. I just wanted him to fall in love with me, and so that's how kind of a lot of my mindset was. It was about, you know, falling in love. It was the love story, it was that romantic story, and yet I still didn't feel that very often. So, um, I don't know what you, what your experience was with some of those things growing up.
Speaker 1:Well, I, um, I started engaging in sex when I was about 15, I was almost 16. And, um, it wasn't a good first experience. Um, I mean, I was, I was boy crazy. I'd always been boy crazy. Lots of crushes growing up. But my first guy, like I, I, I realized after years and years, decades. I realized that I wanted to be close with boys. I liked kissing them, I liked the foreplay, I liked you know, I don't even like calling it foreplay because it makes it sound like it's it's. You know, it's not the main event, it's just the lead up to the main event. And I hate that because the main event, the whole intercourse. And I hate that because the main event, the whole intercourse.
Speaker 1:It never appealed to me as much as kissing, as making out, as all the touching and the rolling around and all that. In fact, I remember hormones raging in my teens and having fantasy dreams about. You know, I remember this one particular boy I had a crush on and, like huge crush, I would have sold my left arm to date. This guy kind of thing Like I, just, you know, totally boy crazy. And my dream, my sex sexual fantasy dream, was just the most passionate, was just the most passionate, deep kissing. That's all we did was kissed and I remember the feeling even to this day and I have a memory like a sieve.
Speaker 1:But I remember this dream as feeling like I was just. Every cell of my body was saturated with desire and passion and being totally like, not in lust but in love I guess it would be love, but major desire with this person and all we were doing was kissing. It was such a turn on to just be making out. It was such a turn on to just be making out. And I realized that I had a lot of sex in my teens but it was kind of empty, like I was using sex as a way to feel loved, as a way to get the attention, as a way to get the affection, and I thought the only way to do that is to have sex, is to let them penetrate, because otherwise that's, there's no way a guy's ever gonna. You know you'd be called a tease if you were to stop at foreplay and not let him, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, she gave me blue balls, you know, like it's a bad thing that whole thing. So I felt pressured to have sex, but I wanted to have sex because I thought that was the means to the end that I wanted, which was acceptance, love, affection, all that and I've always felt that towards men. Is that that crush, that that romanticism? I guess I would actually love for you to maybe define for our listeners the difference between you. Know, you talk about asexual and aromanticism. Let's talk about that just a little bit.
Speaker 2:Ah, so for some people and not for everyone, for some people sexual attraction and romantic attraction are different. For some they're completely intrinsically intertwined, but for some they're not, and for some people one may exist without the other. So in this context we kind of talk about sexual attraction as finding another person sexually appealing or hot or sexy person sexually appealing or hot or sexy, and it can be its own kind of spectrum. Anything from you know. Oh yeah, I could imagine having sex with that person in the right circumstances, maybe to complete full body arousal.
Speaker 1:I need to pull my clothes off right now and have sex with that person, like that kind of a range, and does that also include, like I can think of someone and think, oh, hot, yum, Do I actually want to have sex with them? No, I'd like to like lay with them in bed and you know, the foreplay and all that. Is that still in the same category that you're talking about?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of this is about how we relate to these terms ourselves, so I can't give you a clear delineation as to this. Is sexual attraction? This is not. It really has to do with how you relate to the terms. So there's a lot of asexual people that don't really relate to the terms sexy. So there's a lot of asexual people that don't really relate to the terms sexy or hot.
Speaker 2:When regarding another person, there's also more differentiation in terms of attraction. So I mentioned sexual attraction. There's also romantic attraction. So romantic attraction would be finding another person romantically appealing. It could be anything from intense limerence where it's that thunderbolt fireworks, see them across the room, eyes locked. I am going to marry that person all the way to a light crush like ooh, I would like to get to know them better and maybe have a relationship with them. But there is that concept of limerence, which is a term coined by Dr Dorothy Tenov in her 1979 book Love and Limerence, where she actually based it on six years of research, interviewing thousands of people to describe the experience of romantic attraction. Romantic love, everything from the characteristics, including that euphoria, intense norepinephrine and dopamine and serotonin dumps when you think that they like you back, to intense heartache when you think they might not, coupled with intrusive thoughts where you can't get the person out of your head. All roads lead back to thinking about that person. Their good qualities are magnified and their bad qualities are minimized. Excused and ignored.
Speaker 2:Oh, I hate that.
Speaker 1:I hate that. It's like a witch no Bane switch. We do it to ourselves.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, it's part of that process in our brain. Now. Romantic attraction thrives on hope and uncertainty. Hope for reciprocation and uncertainty as to whether or not the reciprocation exists or whether or not that relationship can be solidified and continued, and it is in the kind of the manifestation. So sex can be a symbol of reciprocation, but it's not the goal of limerence. The goal of limerence is the reciprocation of feelings at a similar level of intensity, right? So sexual attraction can exist without that, without that romantic need, as can romantic attraction exist without a sexual component, right? So it is just that reciprocation of love. But there's other kinds of attraction. There's also sensual attraction that's more relating to kind of skin hunger, a desire for touch, cuddling. All of that quote foreplay.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That can exist in a context where it's not a precursor to sex, where it is the pinnacle of the evening. That is the goal, where it is that one-on-one physical touch, so cuddles, kisses, things that don't have to be sexually arousing, and I think that's one of the things that I find as a way to kind of distinguish to some degree. Sexual attraction may include this feeling towards either an actual feeling of sexual arousal or desire to become sexually aroused with this person, whereas sensual attraction doesn't need to have a sexual component.
Speaker 1:Right, I think I fall into that component really when I think about it, and it's funny because you know, I teach erotic massage and I talk about sex all the time, and I mean sex and like the big umbrella of every, all the things that's why I say sexually arousing activities, right.
Speaker 1:And so people assume that I'm just this girl who's horny all the time and just, you know, needs penetration all the time and just I'm sex crazy. And I'm actually not. I'm not at all, although I will say, um, I talk to my ladies about this all the time in my membership. We do these coaching calls and often I'll end up saying the words, being in the mood that that, that libido, that desire as a prerequisite to engage in any kind of sexual play is actually a myth. A myth Like being playful, being intimate, doing all the touching and all that thing, all that stuff gets you in the mood. So you might not start in the mood, but you can get in the mood. There's like a momentum that takes over and I find that a lot of people don't engage because they're like, oh, I'm just not in the mood. But if he were to start something, they would get in the mood.
Speaker 1:So I encourage people to not wait to be affectionate to their partner, even if it doesn't lead to a desire for penetration. It's more taking the time and making the effort for connection with it, like if they're married, they're with a partner or whatever, and they want to feel close and they want that person to feel loved and they want to feel loved in return. It's just I love taking libido out of it. You know, like you make a nice dinner for your partner and you know that they're going to love that dinner. It's got nothing to do with libido, you're just doing a loving, kind act. It doesn't always have to be sexual in nature, and so I like to encourage women to engage in some type of affection, whether it leads to intercourse or not, in order to just keep that connection.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is where we start talking about how terms like intimacy, pleasure and love get kind of conflated with a whole bunch of other things that could be going on. Intimacy is closeness and connection. Sexual intimacy is a kind of intimacy, but it is not the only kind of intimacy that exists. There's many, many different ways that we can build closeness and connection. So if what the people are looking for within the relationship is more closeness and connection, some people may just default to sexual intimacy and assume that's going to do it and it may not. So starting to think about all the different ways that we can bring intimacy into a relationship if that's what the couple feels that they need more of can help to take some of that pressure off of sexual intimacy as being the only option. Same thing with pleasure. How many different kinds of pleasure can we access that don't inherently need sexual activity to be pleasurable, right?
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that reminds me of a few weeks ago. I had a date and the gentleman I was talking with he was just he, he was talking about his ex and they had sex every night. Like they, they just it was just a you know, a given. And he said, well, you know, just like touching and stuff, that just naturally led to sex every night. I'm like, but was it natural? Because he, he liked to give her massage and it always led to sex. And I'm like, well, maybe she just wanted to massage, because after a while she's like no, no, no, I don't want to massage anymore. She just cut him off at massage. I'm like, well, maybe because it was conditional, like, maybe that was like. And he said, well, that's just a natural lead in and we had sex every night because I gave her a massage every night. I'm like, ooh, but you're tying those two things together and that's an assumption that if you give me a massage then it's just automatically assumed that we're going to have sex. That rubbed me the wrong way, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's why I talk about the difference between a favor and a chore. A favor is freely given. It may or may not involve mutual pleasure, and if a favor is asked for and denied, then it's okay, no worries, move on. A chore is expected, it's conditional. There are consequences if a chore is not completed. If you say no to a chore, that means you are just delaying the inevitable.
Speaker 2:So in order to make space for this. There has to be that understanding that a no today does not mean a yes tomorrow, that each no does not bring us closer to a yes, that we can say no forever and that can still be okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I want to flip it too like a yes today doesn't mean a yes tomorrow. I could be all in today, but tomorrow maybe not, and that's got to be okay.
Speaker 2:Like Emily Nagoski says, it's all contextual like Emily Nagoski says, it's all contextual.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, Exactly. Oh, I love this. Oh so good. In one of the podcasts that I heard you in, you were talking about responsive desire. Could we talk about that? Could you define that for the listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's another concept that I learned, mostly from Emily Nagoski and then reading some of the science behind it. There's spontaneous desire and then there's responsive desire and, in a nutshell, spontaneous desire is desire that manifests in anticipation of pleasure, whereas responsive desire is desire that manifests in response to pleasure. So that spontaneous desire can be interpersonal, which is how we usually think of it, like look at this other person, oh my God, they're hot, I want to have sex with them. I now have desire. But, asexually speaking, spontaneous desire doesn't have to be interpersonal. It can be thinking about ooh, the thought of sexual activity sounds really good. Thinking, you know, asking my body. How does that sound to you? My body goes yes, that sounds great. Spontaneous desire, anticipation, spontaneous desire, anticipation. Whereas that responsive desire, there may not be wanting in the moment, but there is the understanding that once that stimulation begins, desire will follow.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:So that sounds along the same lines as the don't wait to get in the mood Exactly, start doing some things and see if you to get in the mood Exactly, start doing some things and see if you do get in the mood, kind of thing I like that Responsive desire is especially more common once you get past the initial limerent lust phase of the relationship, where there's a lot of different reasons that you may anticipate sexual pleasure, Whereas once you've been in that relationship for a while you may lose a lot of that context and anticipation. But the body can still respond, you can still want that intimacy, closeness and connection. And once you start to build the actual physical arousal, desire then follows right love it.
Speaker 1:You say it way better than I do and sound way smarter than I do when I talk about it. That is such a great way to put that. Thank you for elaborating on that. That's's so good.
Speaker 2:What's that? I'm all about soundbites. I like to have it in little bite size. Yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. So, with limerence, when you're not attracted to a person sexually, is that like? Is that like an absolute like? Does that if you're typically like, oh, I just, I'm never attracted to people, is that an absolute like? Does that if you're typically like, oh, I just I'm never attracted to people, is that an absolute? Does that mean that they can't ever be attracted sexually to someone? Or is it just because it? And and maybe I'm not talking about limerence, I don't know, but maybe I'm talking about just asexuality, where, um a person will say, yeah, i'mexual, but is that a black and white thing, or are there a lot of gray areas?
Speaker 2:We have what is called the gray umbrella. Oh, okay, we actually have a term, gray sexual, for people that are in that gray space and there's a whole bunch of different terms that the asexual community has created to help communicate more positions within that spectrum. So asexual is an umbrella term, gray sexual is an umbrella term, same with asexual and aromantic. There's also gray areas there. A couple of things to unpack on what you said. So limerence usually involves a sexual component because it is just as common within allosexual spaces, allosexual being people that are not asexual, basically. But limerence can be experienced without a sexual component, which is why there are some asexual people that still experience limerence. There's also people that only experience sexual attraction during limerence, so that may be the only time they experience it manifest. And there's people that only experience sexual attraction under other circumstances, such as once they have gotten to know someone, formed an emotional bond, so that's demisexual. And then the gray area. It's also kind of a fluidic term because it for some people means they consider themselves somewhere between asexual and allosexual, whatever between means. For some it means they experience it at a lesser degree, it may not be as strong. Others, they may only experience it under certain circumstances and some just it's very, very rare that they experience it. So, making space for this gray area.
Speaker 2:The main thing is that these are terms that are a rejection of compulsory sexuality and a motto, normativity and singleism and all of these social constructs that tell us that we must experience sexual attraction. If not, we're lying or there's something wrong with us. We need to go get our hormones checked All of these things we declare. This is okay. I don't need an explanation. I don't owe you an explanation. It's okay if I don't want sex. It's okay if I don't want a romantic relationship. There are other pleasures in life and other ways to build intimacy.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. That was really great. What would you say? A lot of my clients in in my membership. They, uh, they're married. They come to see me because they've been married a long time. Maybe they need to spice things up. They don't want a divorce, they love their guy, but they don't want sex. You know, like they're, they're just sort of like like it's become a chore Once they get going. It's usually okay, but often the only kind of sex that they've experienced is just missionary and you know, not a lot of, not a lot of exploration and it's just, it's boring, and but they don't want to get a divorce, they don't want to leave that guy. They love them and they're very affectionate toward's boring, but they don't want to get a divorce, they don't want to leave that guy. They love them and they're very affectionate toward their guy. Like, they want that closeness, that connection, but not sex all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's really difficult because the way that our society sets up marriage is that it is assumed that sex is going to be a component of that. In some cases it's even a required component, you know. I mean certainly, stuff around the legality of whether or not the marriage is consummated, you know, may even determine the legitimacy of the marriage in the government's eyes, and some states have contextual reasons why you can get divorced, and a lot of it still ties back into sex. So being able to say you don't owe your partner sex is a radical statement in and of itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:That's true, being able to embody that and live that and find how to live in a relationship with somebody and move forward from that with the idea of maybe even never having sex again and seeing what does that even look like? And that could be really scary. And that's where we start to break it down again. What is it that they are needing out of that? Because if he just needs to get his rocks off, there's products on the market for that.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a lot of toys, although you know what? I was sitting in the hot tub a few nights ago with a woman and we were having this conversation because she found out that I had this rock the bedroom business. And she's like oh, and I mentioned something about ED. And she goes well, my guy doesn't have ED. He can get an erection, but he just can't maintain it. I'm like, well, that's that falls under the umbrella of ED. She didn't know that he had issues in the bedroom before they got married, because they're both very religious.
Speaker 1:And she does like penetration. That is really that's, that's how she gets stimulated. It does like penetration. That is really that's. That's how she gets stimulated. It's through penetration, but because of their religion, they can't do toys. Like she's open, she's more open. But he is like no, we're going to hell if we use toys, because that's a sin and that's not pure and God doesn't want us to have that kind of sex. It's either penetration or nothing, you know. And I'm like, oh, my God, that damn religion. It's okay for people to be religious, that's fine, but I just find it's really limiting when there are products on the market to help stimulate and like if you don't know how to stimulate a woman's clitoris. Okay, well, there's a. There's a toy out there that'll do it.
Speaker 2:You just got to hold it, you know Well and some of it has to do with understanding that these are tools. They are to facilitate pleasure and connection. We use eyeglasses to facilitate sight. We have lots of different accessibility aids in our culture to help us navigate when there are things that our bodies aren't doing the way we want them to do. Our bodies aren't doing the way we want them to do.
Speaker 2:So figuring out how to make space for accessibility tools in the bedroom can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be against one's religion and there's a lot of resources out there to navigate that too. I don't have them on the top of my head, but I know they exist and that's certainly something to explore how to reconcile one's religion with the accessories and tools that may be needed to facilitate that relationship, because finding a way to bridge that can absolutely be within alignment of one's religion. All of that said, there's so much else we can do to access intimacy and interpersonal connection. Connection. So you know, whether or not one of the partners is physically capable of what they desire is a different thing from not desiring it and not wanting to desire it.
Speaker 1:That's one thing I hear all the time is women are like my hormones are all out of whack or menopause or whatever, and I no longer have that desire. I want to get that desire back. They had desire, very sexual, and they just don't feel it anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sometimes it's hormonal. But honestly, a lot of times it's contextual. You know, sexual arousal often thrives on newness and novelty and what can inspire fantasy, and you know that erotic experience. So sometimes people know exactly what they need and that's what they do and it works for them. And sometimes it only works for a certain amount of time and it stops working and it means they need to change the context. They need to figure out what does excite them, what does inspire them, what does pleasure look like to them now?
Speaker 1:What does pleasure look like to them now? Right, and also, don't you think that bringing in intimacy like a deeper connection, not necessarily sexually related, but just instead of the monotonous same old, same old daily grind you know, 20 years in a marriage or whatever the routine that couples get into but just by incorporating some type of just intimacy, like walking past your spouse and squeezing their shoulder as you go by, or holding their hand once in a while, um, unconditional, not with any strings attached, but just affection?
Speaker 1:I love that you lean into all of the sensual options right I'm like, because I think those are tools to access more sexual activities.
Speaker 2:Also just a small part of that larger spectrum too. Let's talk about intellectual intimacy, a meeting of the mind, somebody to geek out over things with, info dump with you know, talk about your thoughts and feelings on the world around you, or share in a fandom of some kind, Right?
Speaker 2:You know I don't dislike physical touch. I like physical touch, but my cup is filled through intellectual intimacy learning from somebody else, teaching somebody else, sharing your thoughts and feelings and being affirmed and heard or challenged, and given the space to make mistakes and question and figure things out, or just get excited about something that you mutually enjoy. My spouse and I are currently watching through the series of Supernatural and you know we're constantly pausing it and talking about things like we don't sit quietly through watching shows. It is an active experience for us. So the idea that you know sitting and watching TV at night is a boring alternative to sex no, it's fun for us. That's how we love engaging with each other and you know that helps fill my cup.
Speaker 1:I gotta say I get a little turned on when I, when I can find someone who I can geek out about, like sci-fi stuff. I'm a big movie buff and if you say you're into Star Trek, star Wars, the, the, all the Marvel, you know, superheroes and and all the woo, woo stuff, oh my gosh, I'm like Whoa, you just got better. Looking to me, like it's amazing to me how I can meet someone and they don't even turn my head. They, I, they could, I could pass them on on a street corner and I wouldn't even glance in their direction like not attracted. But then we get into a conversation and we have some common ground and and they're, they're funny or witty or whatever, and just engaging, oh M G, like all of a sudden I got heart emojis in my eyes and they literally transform their face, literally looks different and I feel a draw to them, whereas before now swipe left like there's no, no, it's an absolute no.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, I need to kiss you now.
Speaker 2:I have a term for you. Yes, please. Have you ever heard of sapiosexual or noetosexual?
Speaker 1:Sapiosexual I have. But what's that second word?
Speaker 2:Noetosexual. It basically is the same thing, because there was a lot of controversy and stigma around the term sapiosexual. Some people use noetosexual instead, but so you've heard sapiosexual.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have. Yeah, Like mental stimulation is a turn on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's its own spectrum. Again, it's self-identification, how you relate to it. For some people Now here's the way that it has been defined that people get kind of pushed away from the idea of being attracted to intelligence, which is kind of like being attracted to beauty. It creates this image of beauty standards or intellectual standards, and immediately makes you feel like you are putting down people that don't meet those standards, whatever they may be. But an alternative way to look at it is being attracted to or needing an intellectual connection in order to access sexual attraction. So sapiosexual or noetosexual is kind of the intellectual attraction version of demisexual, which is emotional attraction is needed to access sexual attraction. So some people need that intellectual bond in order to access sexual attraction.
Speaker 1:I think I'm one of those. I love this conversation because I think it's highlighting the importance of there's it's not black and white, sex is not black and white, or attraction or romance, it's not black. None of that's black and white, ever. There's so many gray areas and and there's so many ways to for us to explore within those areas and and just by doing that, you can really spice a relationship up and and make it more. I think, enrich it like make it more multifaceted, when you're open to exploring varying degrees of sensuality or sexuality or different ways to experience desire for each other or comfort with each other. To experience desire for each other or comfort with each other. To me, that's what I'm taking away from this conversation. It's just, it's a whole buffet of deliciousness that's out there if we're just open enough to explore the different shades of gray.
Speaker 2:Absolutely All of those topics, the different shades of gray, all of those topics. It's stepping away from the assumptions and the narratives that we've been fed and starting to think what is it that I want? What do I want? What does pleasure mean to me? What do I enjoy doing with my partner? Do I even want a partner? Is that what's fulfilling for me?
Speaker 1:is? Is that what's fulfilling for me right, and trusting that there is going to be a partner out there who will meet those needs. You know, like I gotta say, when I found out about this whole asexuality thing and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I think I'm in that category to some degree, what the heck? Immediately I thought, oh great, I'm great, I'm never going to find a guy, because what guy is is when they find out, oh well, you know, not so much into penetration, but let's, let's make out for a half hour and it not lead anywhere Like what guy's going to go for that is where my brain goes.
Speaker 2:When we get into these expectations based on gender, what we find is that they don't necessarily fit, regardless of what your gender is.
Speaker 2:So, you know, if you are attracted to men and you're assuming that men are going to need sex penetrative sex, whatever that might be in order for you to be in a relationship with them, then it is going to seem very limiting. But if you can recognize that there are many men out there that don't, that are just as apprehensive about the fact that they don't want that kind of sex or they don't want sex at all in a relationship, and they're also out there going, don't want sex at all in a relationship and they're also out there going, how am I ever going to find a partner if I don't put out whatever that's going to mean for them? So really, we just need to find better ways of matching with others in the world on the most important things. These dating websites that are based on swiping, that are based on this instant physical attraction response, aren't going to give us any of the data that we need. And if you have to make this decision, you can't just browse profiles.
Speaker 2:Okcupid. When I first, when I met my spouse on OkCupid in 2008, and when I was on it in 2008, it was still owned by the original developers who had developed this amazing algorithm and you could browse profiles and you could save profiles. You can come back to profiles. You know they were very detailed. They asked all of these questions and the questions helped to create these matches, this match percentage, and there were thousands of questions you could answer that would help to narrow down your matches. Then Tinder bought out OkCupid and they tried to impose their Tinder algorithms onto OkCupid, redesigned the site and now it's just another swiping algorithm. You can't save a profile and come back to it later. You either have to say yes to it or no forever, and that is not helpful for anyone that doesn't have that instant gratification connection and even then, that doesn't give you any idea as to how compatible your lifestyles or interests or anything else might be.
Speaker 1:Trying to find someone in the real world where you can actually have a conversation and get to know them is so much easier than trying to read between the lines and you start to assume what a person is saying. Even if you get into a texting conversation initially and they say something, you could be interpreting it as them saying it in a certain way, that kind of like you said later. Like we expand on the good aspects and we minimize the bad aspects, my brain is making this guy just so eloquent and so lovely, so kind and considerate and really in actual fact he may not be like that at all.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the reasons that I got on OkCupid in 2008 was because I knew that I would fall for somebody that was not a good match, and then my brain would keep telling me no, we can figure this out, we can make it work. So I wanted to find a way to find somebody that I knew was going to be compatible with me before I let my heart at it and you know, I'm lucky that I was on it when it actually worked that way, my my spouse and I were like an 80 something percent match at the time and we messaged back and forth for a while before our first date and, you know, once we actually met, we fell very quickly. But the options are just not there. And yet that would be such. That's what we need. We need the original. Okay, Keep it back. I don't know how to do that, but organically, you only have access to so many people in the world.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sites like that give a much wider access to people that you would never meet in your day-to-day life. Absolutely so we need tools like that. It's just harder to figure out how to use them and how to create tools that are going to give us the actual data we need. Yeah, and we haven't even talked about the fact that we have an entire world of non-monogamous relationship models to explore. You know that those are on the table too.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We already engage in forms of non-monogamous relationships and don't even recognize it when we think about emotional intimacy. People who are socialized as women are given the freedom to have emotional intimacy with other women, men, people socialized as men are expected to have exclusive emotional intimacy with their sexual romantic partner. So that in and of itself and I'm not going to say that's across the board Some people the emotional intimacy is also expected to be monogamous from the woman too. But if you think about it, there are many ways we may have deep emotional bonds outside of our family and partner, and that can be just as important. That could be just as much of that connection. You know, some people have one best friend, some people have multiple best friends.
Speaker 2:Those are forms of non-monogamy when we're talking about exclusivity of a form of intimacy, right.
Speaker 1:I love that, that. It is intimacy for sure. I have very, very close friends who I just absolutely adore and love, love, love. And we're not sexual, we're friends. But I've been more intimate emotionally with them than I have with a lot of my partners, like romantic partners, and that's valid, that's important, it's really important.
Speaker 2:I have a four-way best friendship from college. We've now been in this relationship for over 25 years and we don't rank our relationships within this group. We have individual relationships with each other and then we have our group relationship. We get together once a year for a weekend getaway. We Zoom together every Sunday. We are very connected, very emotionally close. We have a Facebook group just for us. We have very strong bonds with each other and we have had partners that didn't understand our relationship and kept, and some of them wanted us to devalue our collective relationship in favor of that romantic partner and it's it's been a challenge over the years, but we have continued to hold our relationship together.
Speaker 2:We have worked on it you know, and it's it's been an amazing part of my life.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that, that commitment like every Sunday connecting and then every year getting together, that's quite a commitment. That's love, that's, that's wonderful and that I mean. But they're not that emotionally intimate with them as you are with your friends.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I love, that Our love story is one that gets devalued in social context and yet, you know, it's one of the most important relationships in my life and we have a beautiful love story. It's just a platonic love story. It's an also another way to term. It is an amical love story. Amical being a sibling or, um, you know, best friend type bond right, which is a strong bond yeah oh wow, that's lovely love is vast and is such a beautiful thing to explore.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm sure you know about, uh, the, what are they? The love languages. Yeah, yeah, anne pottership wrote an alternative 18 languages of modern love and it centers platonic love and de-centers the religious, heteronormative type of hierarchical love that Chapman's book created. So I definitely recommend going and looking up Anne Hoddership's work on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will. I'll include that in the show notes. I had not heard of her. I got to check that out.
Speaker 2:18 you said 18. Yes, there's also a workbook.
Speaker 1:It's so good. I did get an education today. I knew it in the beginning and you were true to form, you delivered for sure. I'm really yeah, I'm really glad that you were open to coming on the show today and educating me and, who knows, some of my listeners about this really important topic, because it feels very in the shadows and not talked about and not brought any importance to, and so I think it is important to explore this. I mean, it's just sort of I don't know. It feels like an evolution of liberation and freedom that we've been exploring in the last century, especially for women, I guess, and this just feels like another step in that evolution of love, basically. So thank you for being a conduit, a vehicle to deliver this to the world.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing your story too. I enjoyed the back and forth. That's always nice. Thank you, Aubrey.