Tongue Tied

I SUSPECT YOU’LL USE THIS BOOK, LIKE MOST books of its kind, in two ways. You’ll either skim it or read it cover to cover now, when you’re first picking it up, and then later you’ll use it as a reference when you’re addressing a particular issue or new relationship.

I’m a big book nerd, both personally and professionally, and my home and office are filled with books. I’m not sure I have a single book-free surface. And although I have sticky tabs marking my favorite passages, whenever I pick up a beloved reference, I find something new. Maybe the first time I read the book I wasn’t dealing with jealousy, but now every word in that section leaps off the page like it was written just for me. That tends to be the way of these things. Some tools don’t speak to you until you need them.

The other difference could be whether you read this alone or with a partner. Again, either is fine. Some of the exercises call for self-reflection, and others can be done with a partner, in or out of the bedroom.

With many exercises you could be doing it as a book club for two (or more), where you work through chapters and examples intentionally. But many of the items can also be brought up casually, with no reference to the book. You’ll have to get a feel for what style works for you.

In my classes, I always tell students that now they have me as an excuse. If they need an icebreaker with their partner to try something new, or to bring up a touchy subject, they can say, “So I was in this class . . .” Because sometimes knowing how to start the conversation is the hardest part. That’s probably one of the reasons you’re reading this book. So feel free to use it as your excuse, from mentioning what you’re reading to leaving it on the coffee table. This book is a tool, and I encourage you to use it in any or all of the ways that make sense for you and your situation.

This book is written based on some core philosophies. It assumes that we’re all responsible for ourselves and the way we behave in relationships, and also for our own well-being and needs. Ultimately we’re all responsible for getting our own needs met, from having sex to having orgasms to getting to try that new restaurant that just opened. Would we like our partner(s) to be involved in some or all of those things? Sure. But it’s still our responsibility to ask rather than expect them to read our mind.

And if your partner doesn’t want to go to that restaurant? That’s when you decide if you want to go alone, or with another partner, or with a friend. Or maybe to decide that it wasn’t a need but a want, and one you can do without.

The same is true for sex. You can’t get what you want if you don’t ask for it. So this book will give you ideas of things to ask for, as well as ways to do the asking. But it’s always possible the other person will be unable or unwilling to do what you’ve asked, so then it’s up to you to figure out how to take care of yourself in that situation. And we’ll talk about that, too—about what to do when you hear “no.”

You’ll read the word partner in this book a lot. It’s already appeared in this chapter several times. When I use the word partner, I mean whoever is in front of you in that moment. It can mean a hookup you’ll spend an hour with, and it could mean someone you’ve committed to spending your life with. It’s referring to whomever you’re having sex, kink, and conversations with.

The word negotiation will also come up in every chapter, if not every page. For some people the term brings up frightful memories of asking for a raise or buying a house. For others, they think of a lose-lose compromise. When I say negotiation, I mean a very particular kind of communication used to reach agreements around sex and kink. In sex and kink negotiation, everyone’s needs, desires, and limits are taken into account, and the only activities that will be engaged in are the ones everyone feels good about.

Kink refers to a whole range of activities, from spanking to bondage to more advanced fetishes. The term is very versatile and tends to stand in for any activity (usually sexual) that’s considered unconventional or outside the mainstream.

I also use the word play liberally. It’s commonly used in both kink and sex-positive communities to describe the activities two—or more—people are going to engage in. Play could be a threesome, or it could be a spanking. It’s a way of defining the set period of time when these activities are being engaged in.

This book also strives to be as gender neutral and sexuality neutral as possible. Unlike some popular books on relationships, I don’t believe the genders are all that different. Yes, the way people are socialized is hugely influenced by our presentations. But I don’t think treating your partner like an alien, or like an animal to be tamed, is a healthy or productive stance to take.

“A study at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, led by Lise Eliot, has found that the hippocampus is the same size in both men and women. The team’s discovery came from a meta-analysis of more than 6,000 structural MRI scans, which showed that there was ‘no significant difference in hippocampal size between men and women.’ The discovery also counters many popular explanations of the differences between men and women. ‘Sex differences in the brain are irresistible to those looking to explain stereotypic differences between men and women,’ said Eliot. ‘And they often make a big splash. But as we explore multiple data sets and are able to coalesce very large samples of males and females, we find these differences often disappear or are trivial.’ ”

—FROM A WIRED ARTICLE BY EMILY REYNOLDS¹

The problems of socialization in a sex-negative society are why this book also talks about figuring out, and owning, your own shit. Have you been socialized as a caretaker? (I certainly have.) That’s something you need to learn about yourself so you can figure out how to balance those impulses with your own self-care. Not to mention avoid stifling another person by providing care they haven’t asked for and don’t want.

Have you been socialized to believe your needs come first, or that doing the dishes is never your responsibility? That’s something to look at, too.

You can negotiate any kind of relationship you want to have. Maybe you fetishize 1950s households, and playing those roles is part of your dynamic. That’s fine with me. As long as everything that means to you has been explicitly stated and agreed upon by everyone involved. Because where we get in trouble is when we make assumptions. And many of those assumptions are drilled into us from day one, often based on our perceived genders.

So do the homework of turning those assumptions on their heads, or at least interrogating them so you can keep what’s useful to you and discard the rest. Perhaps the only guarantee I can make is that figuring out and owning all of your biases and assumptions will improve your communication and your relationships.

Some writing and advice on relationships would have you waiting for “your other half.” As much as I love the Aristophanes myth, I don’t buy the story. And I think it’s harmful. We’re all whole and fully realized people on our own. And maintaining our own identities, and our own independence, is essential for showing up in a healthy way to our relationships.

Whether well meaning or not, sometimes people use tools meant to help with communication or relationships as a way to manipulate others. The way it usually goes is that someone points to the tools or philosophies in the book to tell someone else they’re “doing it wrong” or to bring all communication to a halt until it’s spoken in the form the book suggests —like the buzzer going off in Jeopardy! if you don’t answer in the form of a question.

Using the tools in this way utterly misses the point. It’s turning them into weapons, and that isn’t fair to their creators, or to your partner(s). So use the tools in this book (and others) to improve your communication skills, not to control the behavior of others.

I hope you’ll find some of the tools and exercises in this book helpful. But keep in mind that you can choose what’s useful to you and leave the rest.