Submission is a gift because it’s hard – Amy

In this episode of Good Girls Talk About Sex, we talk with Amy, a 47-year-old cisgender white woman who describes herself as bisexual and married.

I was interested in talking with Amy because she teased me with this bit of info: after being with her partner for almost 30 years, they discovered a previously undisclosed mutual interest in a new sexual adventure. How did they go for so long without discovering this shared interest? She tells us in this conversation.

Good Girls Talk About Sex
Good Girls Talk About Sex
Submission is a gift because it’s hard - Amy
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In this episode we talk about

  • The librarian whose support allowed her to dive into more adult material than other kids her age
  • How Amy handled getting her first period
  • The young man Amy chose for her first sexual experience
  • The boundaries that Amy and her husband set for their relationship when they were in college, and how that has developed over the 20+ years of their marriage
  • How Amy discovered her submissive side
  • The Quick Five

Full episode text

LEAH: Hello friends. I want to give you a quick update about what’s going to happen on this podcast over the next couple of months. Today’s episode was scheduled to be the season finale. But about a month ago, I got the idea for a special end of season episode. I won’t spoil it for you but I think you’ll like it. So next week, you’ll hear that and it’s the actual season finale. Then, I’ll take a short break while I record interviews for Season 2. I’ll be back with new episodes in the second half of May but keep checking your feed between seasons because I may not be completely silent. I hope you’ll also join me at my new YouTube channel at IamLeahCarey. The link is in the Show Notes.

Here on the podcast I interview other women about their sexual histories. On YouTube, I share my own stories about where I came from and the sexual healing I’ve experienced to be here today as a coach and a podcaster. So, that’s enough business for today. I hope you enjoy this episode and I look forward to meeting here again next week for the season finale of Good Girls Talk About Sex.

[MUSIC]

LEAH: Hi, I’m Leah Carey and this is Good Girls Talk About Sex. This is a place to share conversations with all sorts of women about their experience of sexuality. Before we get started, I want to tell you this. These are unfiltered conversations between adult women talking about sex. If anything about the previous sentence offends you, turn back now! And, if you’re looking for a trigger warning, you’re not going to get it from me. I believe that you are stronger than the trauma you have experienced. I have faith in your ability to deal with the things that upset you. Sound good? Let’s start the show!

[MUSIC]

LEAH: In today’s episode, we’ll meet Amy, a 47 year old cisgender woman who describes herself as Caucasian, bisexual and married. I was interested in talking with Amy because she teased me with this juicy bit of info. After being with her husband for almost 20 years, they discovered a previously undisclosed mutual interest in a new sexual adventure. How did they go for so long without discovering this shared interest? She’ll tell us today.

Our conversation went for over an hour and there’s so much we couldn’t include in this episode. You’re going to want to hear the whole thing including the story of the evolution of how Amy and her husband defined their relationship, so now is the time to head to Patreon.com/goodgirlstalkaboutsex to access all of the full, uncut interviews featured on this show. I’m so pleased to introduce Amy!

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m really excited to talk to you because I know from some of the interactions we’ve had, you have a really interesting story to tell. So thank you for being here.

AMY: Thank you for giving me the space to talk about it, for asking.

LEAH: Absolutely, so the first question I ask everyone who I speak to is, what is your first memory of

sexual desire? [LAUGHTER]

AMY: Oh my. So when I was very young, I grew up in a nice, warm, loving supportive household and I remember realizing that men and women were different when my father had a friend who would frequently come over. Now this is all in my head, there was nothing else going on but I looked at this tall dark haired bearded strappy man wearing a red flannel shirt and I had feelings. There were things going on that I’d never felt before.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: And I think I was probably about 8 or 9. And I just kept it to myself and thought, “Oh.” And around that time, you’re often reading the Judy Blume books and all the other books that start stirring these things and I just recall like things coming together in my mind and going, “Ohhh.”

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: So how long did it take for you to turn that into actual action to have an experience where you put that together with actual physical pleasure?

AMY: Probably about two days, no. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: I do remember not hiding, but kind of knowing that these things that I did in my bedroom by myself were kind of things that I had to hide and “Oh my gosh what if mom found out?” And every now and then, she would have a suspicion. Like one time, I was a little frantic and I didn’t even know it. I would go to the bathroom and I would exercise that PC muscle. I’d start going to the bathroom and then stop. Then start to go to the bathroom then stop and get a lot of pleasure out of that and I remember one time my mom coming down the hall and just banging on the door and going, “Will you hurry up? What are you doing in there?”

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: How did you discover that that muscle and that exercise?

AMY: I don’t know. I just discovered it. This happened and I felt, “Ooh that felt kind of good. I’m going to do it again.”

LEAH: Wow. Do you remember discovering masturbation?

AMY: I don’t remember it specifically. I remember doing it a lot but I don’t remember it specifically. [LAUGHTER]

LEAH: Do you know how old you were when you started?

AMY: Probably around 9. 8 or 9.

LEAH: And did you come to something that you would know call an orgasm?

AMY: Yes.

LEAH: What did you think of that then do you remember?

AMY: Amazing, I was like, “Oh my God. What is this?”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Around the same time I had started to put together kind of my own experiences with some things I was reading about. I had a really great librarian in my school that, I had a very high reading level, so she pretty much let me roam in the library instead of like, “Okay, you kids can be here in this section” and “You kids can just be here in this section.” So I had some access to information both fictional storytelling and also books about health that I started diving into. I was very well read as a young adult.

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: So what were you looking for?

AMY: I mean I knew there was something amazing out there. I didn’t understand it because I had a very chaste childhood. I never had any bad touch or any types of those things happening so it was totally just this amazing wonderful world that I was discovering because I remember having that feeling of, “Oh, these are why boys and girls bodies are different.” And then just going, “But why don’t I understand the mechanisms?”

I mean I remember my mom took me to the doctor when I was probably ten because she saw the signs of me approaching puberty and I got that silly little book, I wished I kept it. That silly little book the

doctor gives you that explains it as when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they lie very close together, but that wasn’t doing it for me.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: I knew there was something else going on out there and I needed to learn about it. [LAUGHTER]

LEAH: That’s so funny. When I was little, I think I was about 4 or 5, when my parents got the how babies are made book and it was pretty graphic. It wasn’t sexual but it was like this is a daddy’s penis. When he loves the mommy very much it gets erect. And my parents ran an inn and we lived in bedrooms in the inn so I was there all the time. And I was cute and precocious and I would sit down and I would talk with the guests. And every once in a while, my parents would come out and find me reading the how babies are made book and these are like a 70 year old people who have these really big eyes like, “Is this okay?”

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: What were you hearing in your childhood home about “appropriate sexuality”?

AMY: Not much. Not in a bad way but just not much. I’m an only child and at home, I never saw my parents fight. I saw way more grab-assing and kissing and things like that. So I did grow up in an almost idyllic kind of household for that kind of stuff. My mom and I were very close, close physically and we did a lot of the kind of girly rituals. We would brush each other’s hair and rub each other’s shoulders and give each other facials, things like that.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: My father was open but was also kind of cautious of all those things like, “Oh, honey that’s for you to handle.”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: But I do remember one evening, I was probably 11 and my period had just recently started and my mother treated that so beautifully. I remember it happening and I was prepared for it but not prepared for it at the same time. And I remember just saying out loud to my 5th grade teacher at the time. I was like, “I need to go to the office because I think my period just started.”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Right in front of my whole class. But to me I was like, “Well”, looking around, “It’s going to happen. Well not everybody, but it’s going to happen to a good number of us so why would it be weird?”

And literally she took me out for ice cream and we went and brought products and talked about all that stuff and it was a great celebration. And I remember probably a couple months later, we were in a living room watching a movie and I tried to almost covertly convey something to my mom about that. And my dad just goes, “What, you think I don’t know about that?”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Of course you’re embarrassed, you’re an 11 year old girl, everything’s embarrassing. But yeah, I mean it was kind of like, “It’s okay, this stuff isn’t weird. It’s okay. It just is.”

LEAH: So it sounds like you had a really affectionate home. Did you see your parents like kissing? Did you have an idea of what happened between adults?

AMY: Oh yeah. Yeah like every night when my dad came home from work, mom and dad would kiss and whenever she’d be cooking dinner, he’d come in and smack her in the butt. They were just very not explicit, but very demonstrative. There was a lot of love in our house.

LEAH: That’s really lovely. So how old were you when you first started exploring sexuality moving from solo sex to partnered sex?

AMY: I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve been reading. I’m prepared. I’m realistic.” And I was 14 when I actively decided I’m going to get myself laid.

LEAH: Oh wow.

AMY: Yeah, It was very much an “I’m going to make this happen”. And you know what? It’s the first time I know it’s not going to be great but I’m tired of reading about it and hearing about it. I want to check it out.

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: Yeah, and so how did you go about that?

AMY: Oh my. With that kind of intention in my head, I was hanging out with Missy one summer week and we’d gone camping. And at the end of the story you’re just like, “What? These things really happen?”

These guys rolled up in their car and said, “Hey girls how are you doing?” And they were chatting us up. Because you have to understand that at 14, I really looked more like a young college student. I always looked old for my age. I developed really early.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: And I spent a lot of time around adults so I also maybe acted a little different too so I was wearing cut off shorts and a college sweatshirt so the assumption was that we were college students. And they were like, “Do you want to come to our party in our house tonight?” And we said, “Yeah, sure” because we knew that her aunt and uncle that were camping with us, they were going out partying. They would probably be drunk all night.

So we said, “Sure we’ll go to this party”, so they swung through the camp later on that night, picked us up, and we went to just a house party. It was some college students and I remember just kind of following Missy around for protection but then someone started talking to me and I really liked him and I thought he was pretty funny and pretty cool and nice. And I didn’t drink as a teenager but I remember asking, “Do you have something to drink?”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: And I took two swigs of something really vile like Mountain Dew and vodka, something really ridiculous. And it was literally to screw up my courage and then he asked me if I wanted to go back to his room. I mean it was something totally cheesy like, “Do you want to see my martial arts uniform?”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: So cheesy but I remember pausing because I was so aware just because of what I had read. I was so aware. This was not a fantasy. This was not a fairytale. This was serious stuff and I remember taking a deep breath, taking another drink and saying yes, I’d love to.

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: And how scared were you?

AMY: Man, there’s that thrilling type of energy that you can sometimes say is scared and then there’s that really “I’m fearful for myself” scared. This was definitely the former.

[LAUGHTER]

Amy: But yeah, I mean like shaking scary. Because as much as you read, it truly is the biggest darkest unknown I had as a child. And I was so lucky this young man was amazing and I remember it in detail. First, we were sitting on opposite sides of the bed and he was showing me his marital arts uniform.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: As cheesy as that is. And then he moved a little closer but he asked, “Can I move closer to you?” And I said, “Yes.” Every step of the way, this was back in the 80s. We didn’t have a lot of media teaching people about consent but he was very kind. He was very considerate and kind of every step of the way, there was an “Is this okay? Can I kiss you? Can I this that?”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Things were going smoothly until we were in bed. We’re under the covers and I’m in my bathing suit. It was summer. We were around camping so he’s taken off his sweatshirt and I’m in my bathing suit and it’s time to take the bathing suit off. I leaped out of bed, like boom, like a shot. And I stand up and I say, “There’s something I have to tell you.” And he had this look on his face like, “Oh God.” And he’s like “Yes?” And I said, “I’m a virgin. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what I’m doing.” And I remember the look on his face.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: It was like jackpot, no. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: No, it was surprised followed by concern and I remember he looked down. He took a deep breath. I recognize that. And then he pulled the covers back and he said, “I would love it if you would come back in here with me. If you don’t want to, I’m totally fine with that as well. It’s whatever you want to do.”

LEAH: Oh my goodness, that’s lovely.

AMY: Yes. It was amazing and so I chucked off that bathing suit and got back into the bed. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: Frankly, over the next few hours, he taught me a lot. He was patient. He was considerate. He was sexy. And I had a great time my first time. I wouldn’t say that I orgasmed, I wouldn’t say it was that great but it was not the horrifying painful awful experience that I had read about that I was really prepared for. And I was a curious young woman and he would ask me, “Have you ever done this?” And I’m like, “No.” And he’s like, “Would you like to learn?” Yeah, we had quite a lovely evening.

LEAH: Did you ever see him again after that? AMY: I did not.

LEAH: Wow. It sounds like one of those perfect encapsulated moments.

[MUSIC]

LEAH: Interviews for this podcast often run at least half an hour longer than what we can include in an episode. Want to listen to the full unedited interviews? Become a community supporter at Patreon by visiting patreon.com/goodgirlstalkaboutsex. There are a bunch of cool extras there plus you’ll be supporting open and honest conversations about female sexuality. If you enjoy these conversations, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It will help more people find the show and don’t forget to tell your friends!

[MUSIC]

AMY: I have been with my partner for 29 years. We’ve been married for 26. LEAH: Wow.

AMY: We met when I was 17 and I was just out of a 2 year relationship, which is really long for a high school student. And I was like, “Seriously I’m done. I’m done with relationships. I want nothing. I’m going to be on my own forever.”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: And two weeks later, I met him and I don’t necessarily believe in love at first sight and I remember looking at him and going I must date him.

LEAH: So before we started recording, we chatted a little bit and you told me that for much of your marriage, the two of you were open. You had an open relationship but that you didn’t really use that openness very often. You didn’t actually engage with other people that much. So can you talk a little bit about how the two of you decided that an open relationship was the right choice for you and what kind of communication was required in order to make that a workable solution for you?

AMY: For us, it was kind of part of our natural progression. We come from very different backgrounds. I came from a very safe, warm, loving demonstrative household. And I mean to this day if my parents are around and one of them goes and takes a nap, I’ll go and cuddle up right next to them. That type of safety. He came from a very different background. So right off the bat, our communications styles, our love languages, our needs, our wants were very different. And that was always a challenge. And from very early on, we were aware of those differences and worked even at our young age. We were smart but we were young and stupid.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: We didn’t know how to talk about these things in the way that we would today. But we had a period where we did break up and it was only about 2 weeks but we came back together, we talked about “I want to be with you but I’m not really done playing around in this way either. Is there a way to do both?”

And we also talked about it in the sense of I’ve always had different boundaries with my friends. I mean I had friends when I was in high school where we would sit and cuddle on the couch and watch movies together. And so I wanted him to know that that was different, that was okay and so we had already been talking about boundaries that were a little different than the norm. And so that kind of naturally rolled into this “I want to be with you but do we have to be with only each other?”

And so for a period of time, we did that in college. But then it was really more of something we spoke of philosophically because it is a lot of work. It is a lot of time. And we didn’t necessarily always have the social circle that would kind of offer those opportunities. So through the years, we didn’t really pursue it.

And then we moved to Oregon about 13 years ago, I found love tribe in Portland after I’d been here for about a year. And I got involved in Love Tribe. I’m the outgoing, confident, secure one. He’s wonderfully social when you get to know him but it takes him a while to trust and he just isn’t going to run out into a crowd going, ”Hey, where are the cool people?” Like I can do sometimes.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: So what tended to happen during that period of time, I was going to events of various types and we were always discussing our boundaries, always discussing what was okay, always discussing what are you feeling? What are you hoping to do? What have you done?

Being open and transparent has always been really important to us and so during that time, I had some connections that I kind of shared. I remember I had a lover once and we’d be sitting one night talking and he’s like, “You know I think my partner would really get along with your partner.” And I was like, “That’s a great idea.”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: In hindsight, it was not. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: But we learned. We learned a lot about that situation. But yeah, I brought some people into our household that that connection itself gave me the comfort and the security to open up. And then about a year and a half ago, we just had one of those life experiences where you find yourself standing on the

precipice of change. And you either have that choice to kind of shy away from the cliff edge and go back to what’s comfortable but not really what you want, or make that leap where you want to be.

And for us, we were really holding back just a little bit from each other and we both decided, no, we’re going to take the leap, we’re going to do it. And so I would say about a year and a half ago we started much more pointedly and consciously trying to develop types of connections we wanted, more connections and more shared connections. Of course there’s been a lot of processing of that along the way because you can talk about something in theory all day long but how you really feel when it happens can be a lot more nuanced and complex.

It really comes down to the individuals figuring out, what do I need? What do I have to offer? Because whether you have the primary relationship or a stressful job or a commitment to your heart or child rearing responsibilities, those are all things which take up the time and resources that are in your life and you need to be able to really understand what are my priorities, where am I already invested in my time and what do I have to give?

LEAH: I liked the way you just talked about that. Because it’s so easy to over commit and to think this is something that I want but do I really have the space inside my life the way it looks? And if I do, great,

but if I don’t, do I want this enough in order to give up something else to make space for it? I think those are questions we often don’t ask ourselves. Or let me just claim this for myself, that is the question that I often don’t ask myself quite as much as I should.

AMY: I think you’re in good company. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: Yeah, I think one of my goals has been to ask those questions early and often because I have seen, I’ve also been in situations where those questions are always there, you just don’t realize them until you’re really in the thick of things. And then it’s much harder to meet everybody’s needs, not hurt any feelings, and do what you can do to help people get what they want and what they need if you’re aware of those beforehand instead of being in the thick of it and going, “Whoa wait a minute.”

LEAH: Yeah. So the title of this podcast is Good Girls Talk About Sex. I would love to know what do the words “good girl” mean to you.

AMY: Interesting thing. For me it actually has a context that’s very BDSM related.

LEAH: You have mentioned to me and I don’t know any of this story, so I’m excited to hear it. But you have mentioned to me that after a long time together, you and your husband made a shared discovery and I would love to hear that story.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Part of that opening up was we kind of acknowledged to one another that we both had an interest in BDSM, specifically the DS the dominance and submission kind of angle on it. Now I am a very outgoing, very self sufficient, very “you don’t tell me what to do” kind of woman.

But that’s exactly where the interest in submission lies because that’s a lot of work to be doing and sometimes it’s just really nice to just let go of all that. Well, we together over the years, we were in college, we were involved with a local group. They held erotic balls. They gave some education about BDSM for the community, very light stuff. So we had a knowledge, we had an interest with impact play like with floggers and paddles and stuff but that was really all that we did together and it never really seemed to really blossom.

And what we found out about a year and a half ago was that we both were kind of harboring feelings on both sides of the coin. I was wanting more of this type of interaction and he was interested in that as well but there’s this very tricky question, “But can I do that with my long term life partner?”

Those types of actions dig really deep into a lot of soft tissue in the mind. And so we spent a lot of time after we discovered “Whoa, you’ve been wanting to do this and I’ve been wanting to do this” and the things we actually wanted to do dove in together pretty well. How could we be around each other for so long and so much and not know this? And that was part of what we’ were hiding from one another. We were a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, a little scared to come out with that.

LEAH: So how did that conversation happen the first time? Who said it first? How does that happen? Like you’re saying in the context of a long term relationship where you have your patterns and sort of ways of doing things, how did you break out of that to actually admit it to one another?

AMY: For us, there were some things that happened that were deeply personal but I don’t really want to get into, but it was that coming through the precipice where you have to make that decision. Do I go back to what is unfulfilling but comfortable? Or do I just break it all open and go all in? So it’s kind of complicated and I know it doesn’t answer the question but probably it would be impossible to answer the question.

But we just started talking about it, what does that mean? What does that mean to you? What does it look like to you? We started sharing what we liked, videos, stories, or things we found online and then we started clinging gently with one another and trying things and having a lot of debrief, a lot of feedback afterwards. How did you like that? Was there anything you would change?

In going both ways, I think with kink one of the challenges with people is that it’s something that they hide, sometimes even with themselves. I know I went through a period where I would look at stuff and be totally into it in the moment and then afterwards, I’d feel bad about. I’d be like, “Oh, so bad”, even though knowing that this is material created by consensual people who are enjoying it and all that good stuff. But then, just kind of walking that path together with each other because I know that a lot of

people, they look at a lot of the porn online, which porn online is not really a good measuring stick for real life in a lot of situations. And so they think of it almost like it’s something that’s in the movies. And “Wow, this just magically happens and things always go perfectly.” No, it takes a lot more work than that. It takes a lot more sharing. It takes a lot more inspection of what is available and what is possible.

LEAH: So what kinds of conversations did you have to have at the beginning? What kinds of negotiations did you have to have?

AMY: For two people who know each other so well for so long, a lot of it was more about confirming what we thought we knew. And also, there’s always been a very heavy concept in our relationship of that gift of the magi kind of thing.

I want to do things for him in such that I would make sacrifices and he wants to do things for me in such that he would make sacrifices but sometimes we can just cross each other in the dark with the sacrifices that we’re making so that when the light comes up, we’re still on the opposite sides of whatever it was we were on.

So we had to really hold each other closely and accept these are the things that you’re feeling or thinking or wanting and I assure you that I’m okay with those. In fact, I want those too. And between the dominant and the sub, there’s always that possibility that a sub wants to please, a sub wants to do what’s being asked of them but a good dominant needs to know that that sub is not going to go over the boundaries that she has set for herself or he has set for himself that he/she needs. I mean there are certain things that I would do, maybe I’m not really wildly into it but it’s not that big of a deal to me. But there are things that I’ve had to assure my partner, “I won’t let you hurt me.” And that is where the real trust comes in. You have to trust me that I’m not going to let you take me anywhere I truly don’t want to go.

LEAH: How much dose the DS dynamic play out in your relationship? Is it just like you say, I’m going to set aside a couple of hours on Sunday and that is the container, or does it play out in the rest of your life relationship a well?

AMY: So there’s a lot of different terminologies and things and some people will say well, they live this 24/7 which means it is an element of their relationship all day every day. We are definitely the opposite end of that. We say it’s only when we create these spaces. It’s only when we are engaging in these activities.

The reality has been really interesting and this has gone both ways. So the more that we have gone deeper in that, the more that I want to just be more aware of him and his wants and needs, but that works the other way as well. He has become so much more of a considerate, almost doting partner outside of those spaces and we’ve talked about that quite a bit. And frankly, it’s because of the recognition of the gifts that we give each other in that space, the vulnerability that you exhibit in those spaces, whether you’re the masochist or the sadist, can be very, very powerful.

For me, submission is really a gift because it’s hard. It’s really difficult for me to let go, for me to give someone else control because I’m in control of so much the whole rest of the time. That’s my natural disposition. It’s what I get paid to do. It’s so much part of my personality.

At the same time that’s where a lot of the reward for giving it up comes. It’s so nice to just let someone be responsible and take the lead. And most of our play focuses on sensation and I’m the type of person, I don’t like pain, but through BDSM play, I have enjoyed a wide range of sensations that if someone were to walk up to me right now and do it to me, I’d probably punch them in the face because it would be pain. But one of the things that I like about sensation play in BDSM is it’s a gaming of the central nervous system. And if you get someone’s energy up and you stimulate them in certain ways and you hang them on that edge for so long, what they can tolerate and what they perceive as painful versus not, really changes. So for me that’s really been a fun game to play.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: And I think part of it again is I come from a space where I don’t know personal violence. I did not grow up in an abusive household. I have had my Me Too moments but I as a whole, have not experienced that so I truly have a feel that I can play without a lot of triggers. And giving someone the gift of taking you to those places, it’s a huge gift and when the right person is able to receive it, they recognize that and so it’s this give and take. It’s not just the take. It’s the give and take. And at the end, you look at each other and you’re like, “Wow, we actually did that together? That’s crazy!”

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: But there’s this shared appreciation in this mutual appreciation for the other person and I think that’s where that kind of drive to almost treasure the person more is because you can go do those crazy things together.

LEAH: I hear an interesting distinction in your talking between submission and masochism. And I think that the general assumption for people who don’t play in this realm would be that those always go together. But it doesn’t sound like that’s necessarily true like for you, a big part of the pleasure comes from submitting but that’s not necessarily the same thing as receiving pain.

AMY: Absolutely, they’re totally different. One can exist without the other but they often do go together.

[MUSIC]

LEAH: Before we let Amy go, let’s do the Quick Five. Five quick questions that we’d usually be too polite to ask anybody.

[MUSIC]

LEAH: Favorite sex position? AMY: Doggy style.

LEAH: Sex during your period?

AMY: Yes, now that was something that I came into as I got older. I used to be kind of squicky about it. He was always like, “Whatever, put down a towel, we got a shower.” I was always a little more “eh” about it but part of the opening up that my partner and I had was definitely going all in and for me it was dropping some of the kind of shame and worry that I had about certain things and really accepting his acceptance of me. Because it was complete and it always had been, I just wasn’t really able to accept that.

LEAH: I love that. Hair down there or bare?

AMY: Oh, hair down there, all natural.

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: Do you trim or just let it grow?

AMY: I have very soft, not curly, so he actually prefers that I don’t trim it. LEAH: Okay.

AMY: And I’m like, “Fine.”

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: As little maintenance as possible.

AMY: Exactly.

LEAH: Swallow or not?

AMY: Swallow. Cleanliness is important, tidiness. [LAUGHTER]

LEAH: That’s so funny. So I cannot swallow. There’s just something about it that squicks me out. But I really do enjoy blow jobs and so my current partner and I, he has no problem with condoms so he started getting non-lubricated condoms which makes the cleanup factor really easy.

[LAUGHTER]

LEAH: And it lets us get both what we want which is kind of awesome. AMY: It’s a challenge too sometimes because it’s all about timing. [LAUGHTER]

AMY: So normally that isn’t just one squirt, it’s a couple and so it’s like timing, “Okay swallow now, oh no, there’s too much, oh God, no, now I’m going to gag.” And it’s funny because any time I start gagging, we start laughing.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Which for is great. I love laughter during sex. For me that’s just hilarious but for other people, it may take them out of their mind space but I love it.

LEAH: That’s awesome. I love it. How much noise do you make during sex?

AMY: A lot.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: A lot and sometimes the other people are just like, “Uh, uh”, and I’m like what’s wrong with me? [LAUGHTER]

AMY: For me, it’s like a pressure valve. I mean if I’m holding it in, the pleasure isn’t as good and letting it out kind of lets the energy flow and just magnifies that pleasure.

LEAH: Yeah. Amy thank you so much this has been amazing. I’m so grateful to you for being so open and willing to share. So thank you.

AMY: This has been a lot of fun so thank you for giving this place to have this fun conversation. These are all things that I might have talked about with people, I’m a little nervous about talking about it here but good stuff.

LEAH: You were awesome.

[LAUGHTER]

AMY: Thank you. You made it easy.

LEAH: Aww, thanks.

[MUSIC]

LEAH: Thanks for joining me today on Good Girls Talk About Sex. If you have questions or comments about something you heard, or if you’d like to record a voice memo for use in a future episode, send them to leah@goodgirlstalkaboutsex.com. Also, let me know if you’d like to be a guest on a future episode.

You can find links to all of the resources mentioned today in the Show Notes. I’m Leah Carey and I look forward to talking with you again next week.

[MUSIC]

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Host / Producer / Editor – Leah Carey (email)
Transcripts – Jan Acielo
Music
 – Nazar Rybak

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