Enhancing Sexual Communication for Better Intimacy

SEXUAL COMMUNICATION How to enable a better, more informed and more open practise of sexuality. A class by Ancilla of Ancillary Kink Support.

Obligatory Definition of Communication Communication is a composite information given and received out of a learning experience. In this, certain attitudes, knowledge, and skills change, carving with them alterations of behaviour, of listening effort by all involved, of a sympathetic fresh examination of issues by the communicator himself, of sensitive interacting points of view, leading to a higher level of shared understanding and common intention. Ordway Tead

What affects the nature of communication? Goals Mode Interpretation Motivation Clarity

GOALS OF SEXUAL COMMUNICATION - Maximizing the pleasure of all parties. - Creating intrigue, interest or desire. - Enabling the pleasure of discovery. - Ensuring safety and limits (aka the process of negotiation). - Enabling the interpretation of our reactions. - Uncovering sexual subconscious. - Developing a unique language of communication with a long-term partner. - Enriching the experience of sexual engagement.

A Question For You When attempting to convey your desires to another person, what goal motivates the conversation? When are you most likely to bring it up? Do you bring it up yourself or do you wait for the other person to solicit answers from you? Are you sharing your desire or EXPLAINING it?

VERBAL COMMUNICATION - Necessary to consent culture and safety. - Frequently viewed as direct and the main modality of good communication. - Preferable for interpretation to action. - Vitality in the initial and newer connections. - Language as tool and barrier.

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION - How do we communicate through silence? - The human tendency to interpret gestures. - Expanding the realm of communication past consent. - Symbols and association as communication. - The dangers of misinterpretation.

A Question For You. When you re on a date or with a partner, what is your preferred method of signalling or telling the person you are with that you are interested in sexual contact? What do you personally interpret as an attempt to demonstrate your desire? Are there non-verbal cues that you use, or methods of insinuation, that you may have noticed about yourself over time? (PS: In no way does this mean that initiating physical contact without consent is okay, it s about understanding our own languages of non-verbal communication.)

A Few Features of Sexual Communication - Honest - Self-aware - Pro-active - Individualised - Involves confronting your own sexual shame/conflicts/digging deep into yourself. - Ongoing and pervasive.

Negotiation v/s Communication COMMUNICATION. NEGOTIATION.

Feature Purpose Goal Negotiation Goal-oriented To determine what we can do to and with one another. Communication Knowledge-oriented To explore why one another s sexuality functions the way it does. Scope Negotiation is a part of communication. A vital part of it, but incomplete. Sexual communication subsumes negotiation and develops data-points into useable information. Use Vital to establish consent and safety. The goal is to ensure you don t get violated or violated someone else. Vital to establish clarity and security. The goal is to understand how your systems of sexuality function, without which you wouldn t even know what you consider violation and why.

A Question For You. When you negotiate with a new prospective sexual partner, outside of limits and other technical details, what question is most important for you to ask and have answered? What question are you always hoping to be asked, that you are rarely ever really asked?

Some Factors To Keep In Mind. - Communication must be non-performative in order to succeed. - It must not operate in the realm of assumptions. - Ensuring clarity in terms of terminology. - Certain things need to be guaranteed such as: safety, judgement-free zones, discretion, privacy. - In order to create the comfort to allow people to speak freely and share themselves freely, it is vital to remove/be aware of/acknowledge the impacts of the social script.

Hurdles To Communication. Mamihlapinatapai is a word that comes from the endangered language of the Yaghan tribe in Tierra Del Fuego. It means: A look that is shared between two people, each wishing the other would initiate or say something that they both desire, but neither wants to be the first one to do or say it.

The Lack Of Mind-Reading. Where does discomfort in articulation arise? - How the social script and general socio-sexual repression has impacted the way you communicate your desires. - Inability to take ownership of your wants for fear of judgement or exposure. - - The misguided narrative of romance that makes you believe that if a person truly loves/wants/desires you, it is only hot if they know things you aren t even saying to them. - General bashfulness or other features of personality that may make you uncomfortable with self-expression.

A Question For You. If you have ever failed to or deliberately avoided outrightly stating what you wanted or why, why did you do it? What may have gone into making you feel like you could not be direct? (It may have been your own life experiences, previous responses from partners, the extant environment of communication. There is no right answer.)

States and Emotions That Are Antithetical To Good Sexual Communication. The unholy trifecta of feelings that hinder communication and sexual comfort more than anything else: Irritation Confusion Bravado

A Question For You. What causes the most irritation to you during a state of sexual engagement? Do you remember the last time you simply could not go on because there was an unacknowledged irritant? Or you did go on but you could not find your centre? (For instance, for me, as I get older , I realise nothing is more irritating than an uncomfortable room-temperature, I would much rather stop and fix it if I can, because if I don t, all I will remember is being too warm/cold.)

Serving The Fantasy The following are the ways in which the fantasy mars communication in the sexual shift from personal to partnered: - Dissatisfaction with your partner being unable to realise the projection of your fantasy and inability of self to recognise from where the dissatisfaction is coming. - The belief that communication should end before the sex begins. - Being sexually pedantic.

Outsourcing Self-Awareness To Your (Potential) Partner. - An issue that often afflicts s-types because of the interpretation of the purpose of power in a relationship and the onus of responsibility. - Romantic associations with being known better than you know yourself. - Operating out of a social script that has privileged you into believing your emotions should be explained to you.

Inability To Recognise Your Emotional Mechanisms EMOTIONAL REPRESSION EMOTIONAL RESERVATION EMOTIONAL MECHANISMS EMOTIONAL UNAWARENESS EMOTIONAL DISHONESTY

A Question For You. What is an unhealthy practise of emotional communication that you may have noticed about yourself (or a partner)? Eg: A former partner of mine would get very upset when I said no to something he wanted sexually, then he would tell me that it is okay, and he doesn t want to talk about it, but proceed to take it out on me by finding fault in other things I do.)

The Belief That Communication is Only For Long-Term Relationships. - Determining how much communication you owe a person, based on how serious a relationship is. - Viewing communication solely as investment instead of its own reward. - Withholding communication as a means to controlling the outcome. - Believing good communication is something you do for the OTHER person alone.

The Belief That Communication is Boring. - Viewing flirtation as outside the realm of communication. - Viewing communication as cursory and customary instead of as joyful discovery. - Attaching too much or too little value judgement to what you discover for fear. - Suspending observation and interpretation once you feel like you know someone.

A Question For You What is something you discovered about your partner in an unusual way? If you have had a long-term partner, what s something about them that you discovered well into the relationship? How did you find out? Eg: I found out my spouse is ambidextrous after knowing him for 8-years.

Communication Practises To Aid Your Sexuality. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

Emotional Body Mapping Your sexual experience cannot be measured in purely binary terms: Good/bad, fine/not fine, acceptable/unacceptable. Your sexual memory is not purely genital or mental, it is also emotional, and emotions manifest all over your body. Your sexuality is not purely comprised of limits and likes, there is a whole world between those things, body mapping is the practise of understanding the sexual-emotional memory of you body and its formative experiences, and how they evolve.

Is that a feeling from 6-years ago I am currently experiencing in my knee?

Things To Keep In Mind While Mapping Your Body. - It will not be created in a day and it is not static. Body-Mapping is a tool of self- awareness, above all else. You cannot share information you do not have. - The goal is to understand reactions. - It is a tool to be used in addition to negotiation of limits and likes, not in replacement of it. - Communication of formative memories often provides a structured path to being able to delineate the evolution of your sexual memories.

A Question For You. Would you like to share an emotional association or memory that you have with a particular part of your body? How did it form and/or change over time?

Creation of Not Today Spaces. In a sexual relationship, ask yourself: How do you convey that you are not in the mood? Is it clear enough or is insinuation involved? Are your worried that your lack of interest in this moment will be perceived as patterned rejection by your partner? Why is that? Have you created an environment where you can say not today and have that be received at face value? How do you create it?

Indulging The Emotional Urge To Pee. What is it that you are not saying/doing because you are worrying it will ruin the mood or the moment? The mood does not operate like a snitch, and if mood between two people in consistently so fleeting that it can be lost by a two- minute pause, the issue may be something else. Moments are fleeting, even if you ruin one, it will be momentarily replaced.

A Space To Discuss Your Sexuality/Sexual Dynamic That Isn t Sexual. - A lot of sexual communication takes place in the form of sexting and dirty talk, and while that is fun, its purpose is often thrill and not immersion. - A physical space of equality for discussion is particularly helpful in any power exchange. - Negotiation and communication are ongoing process and it is wise to stay away from: Treating the first discussion like the holy grail. Never following up with one another, responding poorly to feedback, treating a space of discussion as a place of blame. Getting caught in the trap of communicating to the goal of how things used to be.

A Question For You. Have you ever had a partner/been the partner who reacted poorly to an attempt to have a sexual discussion/give or receive feedback when it was discussed outside of a sexual space? What was your/their reaction? What caused you/them to react this way?

Micro-Engagement. How do you define sexual activity? Do you base your assessment of whether there is enough of it in a relationship on the same metric that you use to define it? Sexual encounters v/s sexual engagement. Have you developed a joint sexual script in your relationship? Is it deliberate or reactionary?

A Question For You. How do you define what constitutes a sexual encounter with a person? In your head, in your estimation, when has sex occurred? (Any answer is fine, even if it is PIV, the idea is for you to understand what sex means to you so you are able to determine whether you are actually getting what you want or what you think you are supposed to want.)

The Dynamics of Initiation What are you initiating? Innate versus Reactionary Desire. Why do you/do you not initiate and how is that interpreted by your partner? Is it a personality trait to not initiate or an excuse? Factors that impede it: shyness, discomfort with admittance of desire, addiction, image-based concern, social influence, interpretation of roles, definition of what constitutes an initiation to you, fear of rejection, baggage.

A Question For You If you have been in a situation or relationship where your primary complaint wrt sexual engagement was that your partner does not ever initiate sexual contact, what did that make you feel about yourself? Is that what they thought they were saying with the lack of initiation? Was that always the case for them or did it change over time?

De-Bugging Your Communication Practises. The techniques of communication are a framework and when you add the element of individuality to it, there are bound to be missteps. De-bugging your communication is not about finding issues with yourself or your partner, it is about predicting and circumventing breakdowns in your communication with each other, which means evaluating yourself honestly.

Some Tips For Debugging. - Postulate scenarios to mitigate confusion. - Identify breakdowns in the moment that they happen, and take note of the emotion you manifest in response to the breakdown of communication. - Follow productive paths of reasoning instead of finding different paths to come to the same conclusion over and over again.

Tips For Debugging - Focus on taking responsibility for your part, not assigning blame on their part. - Be proactive in predicting issues that may arise from patterns you notice, but do not predict on the behalf of someone else. - Work backwards from action to goal and determine whether the goal you are working on is the one you jointly-decided to work on.

Tips For Debugging - Reconciling the use of terminology. - Often the diagnostic properties you seek to solve an issue reside within the answer to the question why. - If you are in a situation where you believe the problem is that you don t know what to say, you may wish to dig deeper. Most of the time, we know what we want to say to another person, the issue resides in the deconstruction of why we aren t say it. The barriers to saying what you want to say are the bugs in your system of system of communication. Go after those, not the words you are leaving unsaid.

Thats All For Now! We can do some questions and comments at this point. Thank you for your time.