Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. All right, y'all. Welcome back. This week, we are heading into part two of our frankly just so juicy, amazing dive into the book The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward. And in this part two, really getting to dive into more of the deeper personal aspects. Last week was a lot about the history. Now we're going to come into what it actually feels like to live right now in the system. And just like we did with last week's episode, we saw things happen in the US this week with the ice raids, literally watching ice agents walking down neighborhood streets. And yeah, and this episode just, I told Quinn, I was like, I cannot go into this episode without also saying at the start of this, what we're seeing in America right now ties into this whole episode because the heart of what we want this episode to be is a call to how we do it different, which I think Jane Ward's book does so beautifully. This, like, yes, there is all of this pain and dysfunction. And although we are fated to be here at this time, which, like you said, Quinn, like people are throwing around, like, how do we leave the country? I have thought. How do I leave the country? How do we get out? How do we get away from a world that is not aligned with our values? And hopefully this episode being a call to how we choose to ride those waves and step up into creating our collective destiny.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree with that. And I think what I'm seeing on the national level is this desire of certain powers wanting to control intense, intense control of the narrative of what it looks like to be American. And within our marriages and within heterosexuality, there's also a lot of control that likes to happen by certain people in power that this is the way it has to be. And I think both your clients questioning do I stay or do I go, or my clients who are trying to learn to thrive when heterosexuality is what is for them. I hope that this episode we're able to acknowledge this is the system we're in, and how do we best resource ourselves and thrive and move through this? I feel like last episode, it was kind of this gut punch to me as I came to realize the system that had been built that I was a part of that I didn't understand. And coming to that understanding, it gives me different choices and different clarity. And so that's what I'm hoping that our listeners get from this this time. It's like, oh, I do have choices. I can move in this way. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Not only do you have choices, but like, holy shit, this is the time. This is the time here in the US. I think it's definitely for those of you that are international listeners, you're seeing it too. Like, this is a time where we as individuals get to choose either to move more into the heart, into loving ourselves, into loving our neighbors, into loving humans, or further into hate, into the fear and the divisiveness, and really providing in this episode the framework and hopefully the empowerment that, like, yeah, it really is up to us. And there are many of us doing it.
SPEAKER_00So I think one of the interesting aspects that you and I bring to this is that we both came from very conservative, trad-wife, religious backgrounds, politically conservative as well. And we have traversed a journey of opening to the humanity of a diversity of people and ways of thinking and not being as focused on survival of the one, the one family, or the one person. Or the one group of people. Yes, that deserve to live or deserve to have rights. And so I think that we have a unique story to tell as we have walked this path. We didn't start here. No. This has been a process. We were the trad wives, we were the upholders of misogyny and patriarchy, shaking women to keep them in their place. Yeah, that was me. Raising our children to do the same.
SPEAKER_03Yes. You know, on my end, as I've talked about in the podcast before, against gay marriage, just drank the Kool-Aid, bathed in it, brainwashed in it since birth. And in coming out the other side into this other world, the world that I realized that's why I loved Jane Ward's book is the queer world, the world of like embracing diversity, embracing differences. Um, we don't all just have to fit into these boxes and these roles so that everybody can feel safe. Safety comes from within and safety comes from community and loving each other. And I just such an incredible path that we're hopefully going to help now really take you through more of that journey, the ins and outs of what it feels like to be in the system in your personal life, what it's like for women, what it's like for men, because that was the other thing we wanted this episode to do, was to really help us all understand that this is not a men versus women thing, especially in the US right now. This is people who want certain humans to not be considered human, to not have equal rights, to not have some of the foundational things that as we've come out of our privilege, and we're still not even out, guys. We still have privilege and we're still dissecting and waking up to all of that. Um we then get the opportunity to use that privilege for what I consider to be good, to be the collective destiny I want us to move towards too. So I want you to start us with a quote from Jane Ward's book. Um, the first section of this quote. We're gonna give you the first part of this quote before we dive in, and then at the very end of the episode, we'll finish it off.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Queer people and Dykes in particular are keen observers of the tragedy of heterosexuality, and we are already engaged in the work of Alliance as pro-choice activists, sex educators, staff at women's centers, rape crisis advocates, and confidants for straight women in distress. We would not be doing this work if we didn't know that another way is possible.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So why we're starting with this quote, yes, at the beginning of this episode, right? The episode called The Cost of the Light, right, waking up to all of this is starting with this beacon of hope that I felt like I received through Jane Ward's book, especially at the end, of realizing even as I, as someone coming out of a privileged, white, heterosexual world, am feeling like, oh my God, my world is collapsing. There are all these people in the queer black and brown immigrant communities that have already been doing this work. And that gives me so much hope.
SPEAKER_00It makes me like that. I love where she points out how they're doing the work of helping in the tragedy of heterosexuality, but like they are working as allies helping us already, and we may not even recognize it. Yep. They recognize it, and they're there for us already.
SPEAKER_03In our heterosexual programming, we think we need to be helping them. And I loved that in this book, she's like, no, y'all, like it's good over here. We're we're looking at y'all, being like, uh, are you okay? Because it looks bad. Uh, which is another thing that I wanted to start off this episode with and just totally vibe the fuck out on with you, is the movie Too Wong Fu. Have you watched it yet, Quinn? I have not. I love it so much that Quinn hasn't watched this yet because she will now get to, with all the rest of you, get to enjoy this movie. But if you have not watched this movie, Total Magic, it came up in our community this last week. Um do you remember the discussion? It was so adorable.
SPEAKER_00We were like, who's your who's your celebrity crush? And someone said, Patrick Swayze, and you should see him. I mean, the way he moves his body, his mother was a dance instructor, and so he was cast as a drag queen in this film that I had never heard of.
SPEAKER_03I had never heard of it either. One of the women in the community was like, you have to go watch it. I literally watched it that that night, and God, I love Joe so much because I'm sitting next to him, like every other word, being like, Oh my god, I love this movie so much. I love this movie so much. Because it was like, imagine somebody reading the tragedy of heterosexuality and then creating a film to now, granted, hers has, you know, a lot deeper, but just getting to see the way queer culture is so much kinder to women, so much more elevated and nuanced, and this contrast between the women from the straight heterosexual world and the, as we're gonna talk about later in the episode, the just like boringness of that reality. So if you're wanting a fun visual taste of what this episode, these last two episodes have been about, go watch that movie. It will do it for you. So the quote that we were talking about emphasizes that this work is already happening. There, there are people that are figuring these pieces out. But we wanted to start by dropping in to what it feels like for those of us in straight culture, in a culture that is deadening our desire, that is dampening our truth and disorienting us as women to ourselves. Yeah. And really spending some time at the beginning being with you all in what I think for you and I is kind of, it does feel like a lot of our past, you and I live in a very open and more free life now because of the choices we've made. But back when we were in our marriages, the toll that living in a world that was telling you you need to be a certain way and it needs to look a certain way. And no matter what you're doing, it is not looking like that, really kind of dropping back in with you to what it felt like to feel numb and lonely and to constantly be having to take over responsibility for everybody else's feelings, feeling sexually dried up and having all this like, I don't want to be touched, I don't want desire, and hearing other women that do, and thinking, what's wrong with me? Am I broken? And believing deep down there is something wrong with me, I must be too much, and contorting ourselves in that culture to keep trying to be smaller, smaller, smaller.
SPEAKER_00I think for me, one of the most significant messages from that time is the first thought I would have when I would wake up in the morning is I wish I was dead. Not that I wanted to kill myself. I just wish I hadn't woken up. And then I would go back to sleep. I would try to sleep as much as I could. I mean, my life was so deeply exhausting beyond the physical labor of it. But now that thought sometimes comes up, but now that's a tell that I'm under-resourced. Now I know what that is. But I will go months and months and years without having that message just spontaneously pop up in my mind. And now I know what to do with it. At the time, I thought I must be genuinely doing something wrong because, especially within Mormonism, they have what's called the plan of happiness, which is essentially give us your money and fuck your husband and raise children, not like fuck your husband, but like fuck your husband, and have a bunch of children, teach them to do the same. And the breaking point for me was really when my children were starting to leave the house. My oldest son was serving a Mormon mission, and I was like, this is the future in store for my children. And I'm supposed to think that this will be a good thing for them. And I could not, body and soul, say, I want this life for my children. Like independent of my marriage, I didn't want the tragedy of heterosexuality. I had different ideas of what my son was capable of doing and what I wanted for my daughters. I wanted my daughters to get married and have more children, and I want my son, you know, he had a scholarship, he's gonna go, and I want him to do this, and then he's gonna find a wife. And, you know, it was all very laid out as to what was okay, what was not okay. Very scripted. Yeah. Yes. And nobody asked for consent. It was just already the system that was in place. Oh, yeah. That was a lot of this tragedy, is yeah.
SPEAKER_03No questioning. No, like slow down the car, let's check the destination. Do we actually want to go to Ohio? Uh-huh. Yeah. For those of you living in Ohio, I love you. I don't particularly want to go.
SPEAKER_00I love Ohio. I have lived in Ohio, so I'm sending love to Ohio. I want to go to Ohio.
SPEAKER_03For me, Ohio is not the destination. And and, you know, pick pick anywhere that you're like, where do I not want to go? That's what I'm talking about. You are on a road trip to somewhere that you just haven't picked. And you are headed on a one-way ticket there with nobody asking you. And for me, it's very interesting thinking that like it was also a bit about my children. It was, but not for the like, this is gonna be their life. I didn't even have that much perspective. It was who I am for my children right now is not who I wanna be. I was so, I was so angry, I was so exhausted, I was yelling all the time. And that just compounding shame of what is wrong with me, that I can't get my shit together, that I can't be a happy, delighted mom. This is the plan of happiness. Surely I should be loving this. I have everything, I have all of the heterosexual checklist, right? Um, while not understanding, and this is what Ward talks about in the book that straight people, especially women, are often cut off from their deepest truths. Truths like, what do I actually desire? What do I want most? Women are cut off from admitting their exhaustion. They are cut off from being honest about their rage.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so much rage. And it comes out sideways on.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And being cut off from dreams. That's the other, that's that is the the piece. And maybe that's why I picked Ohio because it was like, that is just not that nowhere, not on my bucket list, not in my dreams. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna have to take to Ohio now.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful. And I'm like really hoping when we do, I then come back and do an episode where I'm like, everybody in Ohio, I love you. I'm really sorry. So, not the best example. Okay, we can all agree. I should not have just picked a random state. You could pick Florida. I don't want to go to Florida. Actually, this is true. I I'm like, Florida right now, not my favorite with all the white Christian nationalists. Okay. Um we digress. So the point is we are cut off from our deepest truths and we are on a track. And the track is just like, this is your life. And no, you are not stopping to go, what kind of life am I actually living? And if this is a life where I can't even be honest with the people I love most or myself, like what are we even doing? Right? That is what, right? I think so many people will relate to on this episode, is the feeling of like, why am I doing this?
SPEAKER_00Yes. I think there's a normalization of women lying both to themselves and their partners within these dynamics of heterosexuality where there's generally like a power over dynamic. So, in order to stay safe, in order to not be at the receiving end of his wrath or disappointment or whatever. And this is this is generational. I mean, we're so early on in this in this experiment of women having the right to vote and the right to have access to money and divorce and all of these things. And so I think we have some generational things we're still working out. So even if you're with a you know, quote unquote good guy, women still struggle tremendously with putting words to what do I desire? If he knows this about me, would he still love me? Do I care if he loves me or not? Maybe I I married for the wrong reasons or need to get out of this relationship for whatever reason. But the dishonesty within ourselves and the misogyny that tells us people shouldn't change their minds. And women, they're so emotional, they're so flighty, they change their minds all the time rather than seeing the beauty that we get new information and we change our minds.
SPEAKER_03Yes. That has been a recent development. Yeah. Recent development for you and I learning the beauty of like, I'm an adult. I can change my mind. I can say, we were gonna do this and now I'm not feeling this, I'm gonna do something else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I wanted to add when you said, you know, fearing his wrath or his rage, I also wanted to add his disappointment. Because that's the whole thing, even if he's a good guy, if you are with a partner who is blind to the system and really does just, we just gotta stay married, leaving is it disappoints them. The sadness, them going through their own sadness of losing the privileges that they had within that system, which we talked about, you know, men getting to feel good about themselves because there's a woman that's married to me. So the takeaway from this section, right, is acknowledging for many of you. Yes, we talked about it through a historical context in the last episode. But make no mistake, this is real present day experiences. Like this is impacting your life right now, if you are in a traditional heterosexual marriage. And in those marriages, we are often having sex we don't want. My God, Quinn. That I'm like, like, that is our favorite thing that we do not have to do anymore. I know. So in these marriages, we are having sex we don't want. We're saying yes to things that we don't actually feel. There, like you said, the lying and the dishonesty that hurts at a soul like integrity level. Um, we are muting parts of ourselves just to keep the peace. So much of the like, I'm not gonna speak up. And on top of all of that, we take all of that and we call that love. So we already talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but the show Dying for Sex, I think, I and I want to vibe with you a little bit about this on this episode because we haven't gotten to. Um, I went and watched it after Quinn recommended it, and I was like, oh my God, this in so many ways also ties in to the tragedy of heterosexuality and really showing how much the main character has so much in her, so much she wants to feel and be that she cannot even acknowledge to herself at the beginning of the series and the journey she goes through, which fascinatingly enough is not possible with her husband, and instead is facilitated actually best through her best friend.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the main character's name is Molly, and we open with Molly being in a counseling session with her husband and receiving a call from her doctor that her breast cancer is back and it has metastasized. And the husband's like, okay, I got this, like, I will do this. But there's also the fact that he does not want to have sex with her anymore. She very much wants to have sex. She has never had an orgasm with another person. And her best friend, Nikki, oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I mean, just a beautiful, messy human shows up for her and they go through this journey where Molly separates from her husband. They stay married, he keeps her on the insurance because the US has a fucked up medical system, and so that she can get the care that she needs. But it's Molly's process of coming to know herself. There's a little bit of queer play. There's definitely non-traditional sex as she's meeting these men, all of these really interesting ways of being that I didn't know about, but which is not saying that much. But it's so beautiful watching her grow through all of this.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And in the end, like her path, she wasn't willing to die before she had to die. Like she knew her body was gonna die. And so she was like, fuck it. I'm gonna live. I'm gonna live.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and she wasn't willing to die without knowing herself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That is what that show is about, is it's about I don't want to go out having never known and understood what the fuck I am. And that is the tragedy that you and I felt. So we didn't know it at the time, but now what? I'm like almost six years out. You're five, four, four and a half, yeah. Yeah. Looking back now, right? Oh my God, Quinn, what a tragedy. If that had been the amount that we knew ourselves, like the amount of life lived in this last five years has been insane. Like I've told you, I feel like I've lived multiple lifetimes. And that is an incredible gift that when we are put into the narrow lane of this is what's expected of you, this is what the world needs from you, this is what your religion and your country and what you need to do as a good wife and a good mother and a good woman, we miss out on so much that thankfully, as we're going to get into more, Jane Ward brings forward by being like, this is what queer people are understanding is so crucial to life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because what the queer community is doing is unpacking all of those societal expectations. And it is a process. I think that for some people, they see a gay person or trans come out of the closet and they're like, oh, that was so all of a sudden. But no, it was a process. I have a trans and non-binary niece, niece and nephew. And it's so interesting watching their process. Who they are now is not who they were through the process. And it's the same with you and I in our journeys in our lives, like where I am now. I hope in another year I don't even recognize who I was, you know, now in the future. You know, I hope I continue the process of unpacking and looking at myself and growing.
SPEAKER_03Yes, absolutely. And it's this acknowledgement at the heart of it of just like the incredibly complex vastness that is a human being. And that is what we are seeing being stripped away in the US right now, politically, this idea that only one way, only one type of person, the narrowing down and into who gets to exist and be seen as a full human. Yeah. Y'all, that is a really fucking boring, awful world.
SPEAKER_00I do not, I did not think you were gonna choose that word. I thought it would be like, that's cruel, that's evil, but it's just boring.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And the reason I use the word boring is because that was a word that Jane Ward uses in the book. And I thought it was just such a good mind flip for me to hear that what we've been trained to think is the gold standard of relationships, you know, a heterosexual marriage with children, and you get to be the wife and he gets to be the husband is actually really boring. And why, as we're talking about the dying for sex piece, right? That's really what most of us are not acknowledging in our lives, that we are just robotically getting up and going through the motions. Yeah. And not really feeling alive in our experiences.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think that it is true for men and women. And I think the the ice cosplay Gestapo thing happening is men trying to feel alive. Uh-huh. Like, we're patriots, we're the good guys, we've got big guns. And on the other side, for the work that we're doing within our communities, we see that hunger for I want to feel alive. I want to feel alive in my marriage, or I want to feel alive post-divorce. Like it is our birthright. We are here on this earth, and we can do a lot. We can do practically anything, any color of hair. We can have children or not. Or I mean, you and I, there's not the not option. We're they, yeah. We that we have the children. But we get to parent in a lot of different ways. And yes, this hunger for life, for more, for something, something.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I love that sound. And and what women are trained to do within the heterosexual world is to hold on, to wait it out, to try another strategy, like just the hoping, the sitting and waiting and hoping that one day he will see you, or one day there'll be progress, one day he'll see you as a human, or one day the spark will come back. And that, at least I think for both of us, and I want to just normalize it for so many women. You are an incredibly vast internal universe being told, hang in there, hold on. It's a very disempowering place to be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the point is that we want to encourage women, including ourselves, to be intentional. There's lots of reasons women stay. And staying because this is the work that you want to invest in on purpose. That's a different kind of staying than different energy. Yeah, it's it's a different energy because there is consent. There's I'm going all in. It is choosing life. So it's not about staying or going, or, you know, for my post-divorce folks, it's it's really not about what you choose as much as it is, are you bringing your full self to it, or are you just following the prescription and the rules that someone else made up, literally made up and told you to do.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And I think this comes to the heart of what you had said when we were discussing the outline. You'd said we, you know, while we didn't actually create this system, right? We don't want through these episodes falling into the victimhood of like, oh, oh my God, well, I'm part of the system, right? While we didn't create the systems, we do have the responsibility now for how we respond once we start waking up and seeing the system for what it was. And I feel like you and I can own clearly that like you can respond and change your fucking stars once you start seeing the system for what it is. And that's really the power of coaching. That was what we learned through learning how our minds work, how to notice our thoughts, how to notice the feelings, how to notice the actions, to build awareness. Then you can start taking responsibility for the results you're getting in your life and move into something different. Yeah. And speaking of Ohio, we have to. I'm gonna get so I hope I get so many emails. I would love to get if any of you are in Ohio, just email me. Talk trash to me, tell me how great Ohio is.
SPEAKER_00We have to accept where we are. So if we are in Ohio and we want to get to New York, we can't be wishing we were in Texas and saying, I wish I was in Texas. I should be in Texas. It's not fair that I'm not in Texas because you'll never get to New York until you accept the map and where you are right now.
SPEAKER_03And so I I hear you saying why would we want to be in Texas if we wanted to go to Texas?
SPEAKER_00We don't want to be in Texas. Don't go to Texas, don't go to Texas. You want to get out of Texas and you want to go to New York. No, I have no idea. But a big part of coaching is like, let's be honest. Like, this is the system. This is what was built. Women have been given by our culture the responsibility of heterosexual repair. This just is. And fighting it and thinking it's unfair or it shouldn't be, it doesn't help us move forward. And so when we're just honest, this is where we are, we're in Ohio. What's the next step?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And this takes me into Jane Ward, what we brought up earlier, just saying so clearly, like not mincing words, when she was like, straight culture is boring. It is emotionally starved and it is erotically boring. And can we all just have like a sigh? For me, that's actually like a huge sigh of relief because when you finally can sit with understanding, like it's not built to be emotionally connective, it's not built to be erotically engaging. Then you stop spending all that time trying to explain and really ultimately pathologizing yourself as a woman into, well, I must be messed up and I must be crazy, that this is not actually satisfying for me.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. And I'm glad you use the word erotic because I think we're taught in the system that, oh, women need to safeguard sex, men want sex. And we never talk about arrows and erotic energy. And so much of erotic energy is a feminine, wild quality that all of us have access to. But I mean, her quote and this idea that heterosexuality is boring, and I really enjoy heterosexual sex, so it made me kind of excited. I'm like, I like the boring stuff. Well, I can't wait to see what's next. Like, what's there's a secret menu? I wanna, I wanna see.
SPEAKER_03Yes, no, that for sure. Yes, that is what I mean by like holy shit, y'all. Whoa, there is a whole other secret menu out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And her just really being very clear around heterosexuality being a place of performance. When you said Eros, erotic energy, the thought that came to mind was like, oh my God, this is what men think they're getting when they get a lap dance. And I have learned so much about the inner workings of what strippers, what it's actually like for them, and what you're actually experiencing. That is not true Eros energy. That is a performance.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03Eros energy, you know what I'm talking about, Quinn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a it cannot be commodified. It can't be sold for a lap dance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, it's not. I mean, maybe there are people who I'm not gonna say never, right? That's a people pay for for Eros energy. I've I haven't experienced it. My Eros energy has come out of deep soul knowing and like being safe with another individual and feeling totally able to open to my desire and my pleasure. And that's what I talk about in previous episodes when I'm like, patriarchy has fucked over men as well, because it's given us this menu of like three things, and they're all phallic-centered. Like, you know, you can suck his dick, you can put it inside you, you can grab it with your hands.
SPEAKER_00Then when I was in college, maybe this is a Utah thing where they called it a titty fuck, where the guy would go.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, you can put it in between your boobs.
SPEAKER_00Boobs, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And and her just calling out that like it's about performance. It really is not about pleasure. And especially when it gets into the realm of what many of us were experiencing in our marriages, a sense of obligation. You know, it's not about pleasure. And I think this is where we go into the like rabbit hole story that you and I wanted to explore a little bit, which was that here, you know, gosh, before I started dating my partner Joe, we would have thought I was having, I thought I was having pleasure-centered sex. Like mainly, I think, because I was having sex outside of the the marriage idea and the I have to do this because I'm with my husband, and there's this power dynamic inherent in like, well, I'm the only person he can have sex with. So, you know, I was actually getting to have sex only when I wanted it. I was not having coercive sex post-divorce. And so that felt really good. And it was like, this must be pleasure-centered.
SPEAKER_00I don't, I don't know. I want to push back on that a little bit because you you've mentioned that he still kind of felt entitled to your body and would use you in the middle of the night and interrupt your sleep. But yes, in my marriage. No, no.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you're talking about my partner.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I'm talking about your partner. Oh, this is such a beautiful moment.
SPEAKER_03I love watching my internalized misogyny just be exposed on our podcast. You are welcome. I'm like, no, no, no. That was only in my marriage. No, that was absolutely okay. So this is a beautiful, this is why we have Gwyn on this podcast, y'all. She remembers Gwen remembers my life better than I do. And I do have this habit of my brain, yes, thinking the best. No, you're right. So I had a, I did have a lot more sex that was consensual. Yeah. But in the partnership that I had, that I have mentioned on the podcast, there absolutely was coerciveness, misogyny through the pressuring, the um, we're gonna do an episode on that, the sexual coercion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Through the not wanting to disappoint him, knowing that this is something he wants, it's harder to say no than to just say yes. And maybe I do want it because he kind of wants it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And in that relationship, too, that's a actually a perfect example in that relationship of how I thought I was getting really great sex that was pleasure-centered. And now, as we were doing the outline for this episode, in my partnership with Joe, we got to see, you got to coach me through what it actually looks like to start healing. You know, my whole vision of what my pleasure was was male-centered. And with Joe, that was not the case when we started dating. And even to this day, it it needed to be for various reasons more centered on my pleasure and how difficult and uncomfortable that was for me. Yes, Quinn.
SPEAKER_00Right. Because you would think that, I mean, now you'll say, yeah, I have 12 orgasms in, and then blah, blah, blah. And you had this idea uh with previous partners that you had difficulty coming, that you couldn't come unless it was in a very specific way. And now that you've taken a partner that is able to slow way, way, way down. So slow. And use that to his benefit rather than I think that men of a certain age, since that's the age group that I date, they get to a point where phallic-centeredness does not function in the same way that it did when they were 20. And some of them automatically want the blue pill and want to, you know, have a hard dick, and that's how they're going to please you. But there is also this group of men who've been to like, oh, now I want to pleasure you. I I'm so into you that I want your pleasure. I don't want to watch you giving me my pleasure. That that they ride the pleasure wave a little bit differently. And I think it's beautiful because it it's a way of maturing and growing. And if if hard dick is really important to you, that's available pharmaceutically as long as it's consensual. I don't think men should be doing that without talking to their partner first because it's a different kind of erection that lasts longer and it can be painful for the woman. And so I do think that it needs to be discussed in a relationship and also to consider that the way the queer community defines sex is so much more vast and varied, and you could ask. Two different people, what sex is, and they may have two different answers. And so it's it's just this it is the secret menu. Like, oh, there's that, or and I didn't know I could feel pleasure like this. But I think it's important to acknowledge what you went through, which was to access that other menu.
SPEAKER_03It was like Joe was presenting the menu and and was like, we're this this menu doesn't work. Like yeah, that the hit hit a dick, feel good about yourself. Cause a lot of my pleasure was from getting my partner off. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I didn't realize how much I was not actually in my body, experiencing my pleasure. Right. And it did take a lot of working with myself, uh, learning how to be in my body, learning how to shed getting my self-esteem from those heterosexual ways of this is what we do. And I get to feel good about myself afterwards because I did the thing. Yeah. And what a and a big reason why we wanted to do this rabbit hole, why it was important to me, is because I talk a lot about mine and Joe's relationship. And really being clear at this point in the podcast that Joe and I do not, I now realize, have a stereotypical heterosexual relationship or sex life. Like we have, I now understand, a way more queer way of, and by queer meaning we treat each other as full vast humans. We are not playing roles within sex. We are not performing for each other within sex. It really is truly just body sensation pleasure based connecting with another human, not you're a dude, I'm a girl, let's have sex.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So even though it's a man and a woman, so even in a male-female dynamic, you can be opening to having different kinds of experiences at different speeds. And what you said, I think was so important, how you used to kind of disassociate during sex. Absolutely. And it's been this process of you speaking up and saying, hold on, hold on. Like I just popped out of my body.
SPEAKER_03I'm not in my body.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That and that even that process is a a new experience of starting to realize even in all the pleasure that I thought I was having previously, I wasn't entirely present with my body as much as I was maybe doing from some of my childhood sexual trauma, a go out of my body. I'm still experiencing pleasure, but I'm not really present with you, my partner.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I mean, as we talk about this, I'm just like, yeah, y'all, I am so glad on this episode. Like, we are letting you glimpse into the vastness of what you are. Like, I keep discovering more and more and more layers of myself. Like, here I thought, you know, Joe and I had the amount of layers we had uncovered and the amount of new menu items and pleasure, it was like, holy shit, this is a whole different world. Like, we're on, you know, several different planets. And even still through the process of increased safety and coming to understand myself more, there are new doors and new rooms in my world of eroticism unlocking. Yeah. So as we say all of that, that is to come back to the statement by Jane Ward that straight culture is really boring in a lot of ways that many of us may never have even realized. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we have to think about where did it come from, particularly in the religions. It was the dudes and it was the rules. And within Christianity, you know, it came down through Catholicism mostly and and in other religious faiths, you know, it was the dudes. It was all, and it was never, sex was not about never female centered. Yeah. Never.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00Because it was always property.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Phallic-centered, male orgasm-centered. So can we all as women just take a deep, like, oh, I'm not broken moment because you watched me, Quinn. I did have so, I had a lot of internalized shame around not being able to come with partners. I never before I met Joe had a partner who made me orgasm orally. Yeah. Like that was just, I didn't understand what people meant when they said oral was so great because all the dudes that had gone down on me didn't know shit. Right.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03You know? In playing with this thought that straight culture is boring, the door opens to walk out of our world of self-hatred and shame for us as women in being so confused about why I feel so emotionally starved and erotically like numb or bored in this situation.
SPEAKER_00We've been talking a lot about women and women's experience in all of this. And I think it's important to recognize not just men's role in what's happening, but the tragedy for men, this prison that we built around them and the rules and the box for them.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yes. Because, you know, this is the part where we get into, you know, you and I thinking about our sons. You know, there are men out there that are like actually a lot of men that are coming to this system honestly, like uneducated, not knowing what is going on, and don't even realize the water they are swimming in, don't even see the misogyny that is a part of them. That if you came to them and said, This is what you're doing, they would be like, it's not me. This is not, yeah, this is not a part of who I am, but it is. And in it being a part of them, it has impacts for them as well. One of the first that we had talked about is that men are severely cut off from intimacy with women and also with other men.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think it's important that we look historically how men used to have these homosocial organizations. And now a lot of it, especially with video games coming on, it's it's a lot of virtual homosocial. So they're not like in person. I mean, they're still the football team and things like that, because it used to be far more normalized for men to have physical contact with other men.
SPEAKER_03And this is this is where you talked with me post-our first part of the episodes about this brilliant insight that you had that World War II was like this giant homosocial experiment.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. These men, I mean, we're in the depression in the US, really tough economic times. Men are, you know, a lot of them, this is the hobo culture where men are leaving their families trying to find a way to support the families. World War II happens. A bunch of them go off to Europe and and to the South Pacific. And they're with men like 100% of the time, very few women involved, right? So that, I mean, the question I was asking myself was why was it post-World War II that women's personalities became a problem for men? And I really think it was because they had been receiving so much of this homosocial, masculine culture. And then they come back in to a heterosexual.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Like, and when we say civilization, the norms that we have all agreed we as humans should be living by that as we're starting to expose aren't actually natural. Yeah. In a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00So my former father-in-law, he served in World War II, never spoke about it. Never. Definitely had trauma around it. And I think as we see our veterans coming back from other wars, we see that you can't go and kill people and see people killed and your buddy dying next to you in a foxhole and not experience something from that. But these men come back and they're certainly not going to talk to their wives about it. So these wives and their little problems. And no support for it either.
SPEAKER_03It's not like in the 50s men came back to massive support groups. It was like you did what men, you did what men do. You know, you went off to war and now you come back and you're going to provide for your family. And this is I love that this is what we're talking about because this exposes the prison that men live in of I'm expected to go witness horrors and then come home and just pretend like the trauma and the PTSD that is living inside of my body isn't there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then they raise the boomers, and the boomers learn the same lessons. And so we come to where we are now, where a lot of women are doing a lot of work. Yeah. And they're not wanting to date men who aren't emotionally available or able to express themselves. But generationally, men have learned that that's gay and that's not masculine. Like they should carry all of it themselves. And I don't think that's what a lot of women are looking for right now. We want the full human.
SPEAKER_03This is really tying in to that diabolical lies episode talking about, you know, are the men okay kind of bit. We'll link it in the show notes. We've talked about it on the podcast before, where she drives home that patriarchy, contrary to the idea that it's great for all men, it actually only concentrates power in the hands of a few men at the very, very top of the hierarchy. And so that leaves the rest of the men that are trying to live this standard for themselves, right? Of hold it all together, be the provider, don't have any emotions, don't acknowledge your trauma. I mean, when I think of that for my sons, I mean, I was telling you, Quinn, I was like, I don't want them in a heterosexual world. Yeah. Where I see my teenage son right now so close with his buddies. It is so allowed and so welcomed. And I'm realizing with sadness that once he gets up to a certain age and once he gets married, that will become like a source of divisiveness potentially in his relationship. There's only so much I can teach him to be prepared to emotionally be able to connect with women when that is the very thing. He would get teased and ridiculed and mocked for right now. So we have them in this tight double bind of what am I really supposed to do? I just see it as them like there's not much wiggle room there either for men who are gonna come through like with mental health intact.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And again, it comes back to intention. There are gonna be some men who are gonna be intentional when you, as a partner, come and say, Hey, I see this bind. I want to invite you to relax into a new way of being with me. And some men will be all for it, and some it's just gonna scare them and they're gonna double down on no, this is the way I need to be. It gets to be a process.
SPEAKER_03And knowing the majority of them are probably gonna be in the scared realm. Yeah. Because they are really in a world of where do I go from here? And also in aligning with more of the feminine approach, they risk the exclusion from the masculine. That is the like, oh God, we have got to change this, which is what Jane Ward at the very end, when she talks about deep heterosexuality, she's like, we have to make it where, and I do see this in small ways in the culture around men of this, like where you love women so much that it becomes a like, and this is by the way, this is Pedro Pascal right now. This is that comment of when women are talking about like men who really love women. Yeah, that's what we're wanting to see grow. That those are the men that get the parts in the movies, those are the men that get that to be celebrated because they are the men moving through the world showing masculinity can be different. It can look a different way. And oh, you can actually love and celebrate and treat women as equals and still be respected.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. I thought it was really fascinating where Jane points out that a lot of gay men will communicate that if they could choose, they would not choose to be homosexual because of the privilege that they see heterosexual men experiencing. But you talk to homosexual women and they're like, uh no.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00No. We like the water here just fine. And so there may be different experiences for the men and the women based upon the expectations that society has placed and the privileges assigned to the roles. To the roles entirely. Entirely.
SPEAKER_03I'd love for you to read the quote that we discussed from page 172.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03That also drives home, and I just loved that Jane Ward showed this because we've seen this resurgence of men really are so different and need to be more masculine, and women need to be more feminine, and and us not realizing, like for so long, I've said, like, Quinn, I don't think that's the answer, and she finally put into words why that is not the answer.
SPEAKER_00The normalization of violence and mutual dislike was central to straight culture from its modern inception. And even when this was recognized as a problem, efforts to address it simply reproduced the same binaristic subject-object frameworks that undergirded the problem in the first place. The important point here is that while many people remain attached to the notion that embracing men's and women's purportedly unchangeable and complementary differences is the key to heterosexual harmony, this framework has never made a dent in the violence and misogyny that caused straight people to suffer. It is an unworkable foundation on which to build sexual orientation. The suggestion I offer here that straight men consider woman identification or subject-subject eroticism is one alternative.
SPEAKER_03She is calling out so loudly for all of us that this repackaged game that is very big right now in life coaching and in the self-help sphere of men just need to be more masculine, women need to be more feminine, that that is actually the very thing that keeps perpetuating the violence that normalizes it and the misunderstandings because, oh, we're just so different. And you emphasizing to me that what we need more of instead of, oh, men and women are so different, is we are all human.
SPEAKER_00We are so much the same and have a lot of the same needs.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Core needs of being seen and understood and having our feelings acknowledged, um, which is gonna take us later on into I'm thinking of nonviolent communication. Like exploring that this summer has opened my eyes to like, oh wow, we really are not all that different. We all have needs that we need met, we all have feelings, and we get so caught up in focusing on the differences that we miss, what can bring us together in the humanness of both men and women.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think in the book, Nonviolent Communication, the author he doesn't teach it one way for women and another way for men. This is human communication, where if we can learn to communicate without judgment and more observation and self-focus of this is what I'm experiencing, this is what I'm feeling, and what I need right now is this, and making a request of our partner. I have been astonished to see how it has changed how within my family, as well as me reflecting on past interactions with partners where I didn't realize it at the time how violent I was being in my communication, or that I was projecting things onto them. And if I could have said, when you I've observed that you are this way or you communicate in this way, and I feel afraid when you do that, and I need a partner that I can feel safe with and could you and make a request, I think it would have been a game changer, a game changer. I think this is one of the core skills we need to learn.
SPEAKER_03Yes, because I think most men would say in most marriages, they don't know what to do. They they are just like, I know she's upset, but I don't know what to do. So that is another aspect of you know what we're discussing of like what is the prison that masculinity that men are being put into in the system of heterosexuality. So, to recap a little bit and ground us into this, like the biggest focus coming off the episode that we wanted was like the system is what's not working. We gotta stop focusing on the people within it and attacking the people and understanding well, and here's the caveat the system is working the way it was designed. Yes, yeah. Exactly. It it's if if you want it to be working so that you're actually living a happy, real, like in-depth, fulfilling life, just know that's not how the system was built because it was not made for the people within it. It was made for those structures we talked about in the previous episode. And when we realize that, we start to see the costs for both, that for women, there is these massive amounts of, you know, unpaid labor that we are doing in heterosexual relationships that ultimately props up capitalism and allows people in the hierarchies at the very top to profit off of that unpaid labor. There is emotional labor for us as women. There is isolation for both individuals in a heterosexual typical marriage, being cut off from community. You know, the other thing that we wanted to mention was men's suicide rates being what they are, the men's loneliness epidemic, because they cannot have that homosocial support that they have in the past. And men's self-esteem in the past being from being able to consume and control or own women through marriage, that is now being taken away through women not subscribing into those systems. And that's where we get the incel cultures, the radicalization of men that we're seeing right now. Like you said, the ice going to the streets dressed up, what are we doing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you mentioned that, you know, these men, they can't go have these homosocial relationships. There's no place for that. I kind of question that because I think they could, but they're going to have to do something. The women aren't going to organize it for them. So, like men complaining about they're so lonely. We have in our mind, well, then go fix it. Go be with men. But the culture has shifted to where that's that's not typical unless it's queer culture. And so, yes, men need to be with men, but not the kind of go to the Elk's Lodge and get drunk. Yes. Don't go out on the golf course. Like the family needs community. And yes, men can get support from other men, but it's not, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna leave all of this extra labor for my partner and the children. It's it's a different way of looking at all of the dynamics. Like, okay, if this human needs contact with other men, let's get him that and let's bring in community so the woman is not, you know, isolated. Am I making sense? Like it needs to be a new exploration. I don't have the answers.
SPEAKER_03And this is the gift inherent in the terrifying experience those of us in the US right now are in. Of we are watching the system collapse. And the way forward from that is to go, whoa, this wasn't actually working. Because exactly, it's like, where are men actually? What men need is places to feel and talk about trauma and to actually rehumanize themselves and get back in touch with their feminine sides and become full humans. They are not gonna get that in a system that's like, go out with your buddies, go to the football game. We are all waking up to the capitalist consumeristic society that told us this little unit of you, your husband, and your kids living in a home with all your shit is gonna be enough. And realizing we have replaced the village and communities with that. And really, what that's led to is not genuine happiness or mental health or actual connection. It just has created a machine that makes people buy more things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I mean, here you and I, we are capitalists, as in, like we are owners. So we own the goods of our labor. And this is the system that we're in. Like we are in Ohio. And so here we are, but for years now, you have been obsessed with this idea of creating conscious community.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That the challenge of you trying to raise your three boys on your own or even with your partner, it wasn't something that was sustainable for you. You needed more support. And so you started looking at what's a different way. And you found there are a lot of people, not necessarily in the queer community, but in the world at large that are creating conscious communities. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And this is where we get to the heart of what we're gonna dive into with Jane saying, you know, this is what queer communities who have had the that world stripped away through the lack of the privilege, through the attacks, through the othering for generations, decades, and us taking on the individual roles. And that's the potential with your partner of going, neither of us are happy. This system was not built for our mental health, for us to thrive. It was built for us to be sad, locked in our homes, and buying a bunch of shit. TVs and cars, and and do we want to do it a different way? And this is where we get to talk about the beautiful experience in the book of Jane Ward talking about really giving us a peek into the queer outsiders' gaze, of letting us see in that chapter where she talks about their experiences, of their, you know, their sadness watching straight people's lack of emotional honesty, their sadness in watching the lack of real connection and the types of performative interactions and parenting. You know, they talk about how the worst thing possible is going to like a gender reveal party with a bunch of people in the burbs. And I couldn't do a baby's genitals. Like, what? What? Like that was just so refreshing to me because I was like, oh my God, I agree. Like, that's what I've emerged into is like I cannot do the like super lame small talk where we're all just smiling and pretending, where there's no truth telling, there's no realness, it's all a performance. And them really, and it's into Wang Fu. It's the same thing in that movie where they see these women in abusive relationships, disconnected, not living full lives, and they are like, hey, let me help you. And this is wink wink. Once again, I'm gonna refer back to Glennon Doyle and Abby Wombach. This is what Untamed is talking about. That there is this world of living wild and living connected and living where your people are your people, right? I love the way she talks about how Abby and her are like um this island with their family. And then I just saw on Instagram that they were like the parade heads for a pride parade. I think it was in Denver, maybe. And I just was like, oh, or that um, she had a reel where she was in like the lesbian bus with all the other lesbian women. Did you see that one? Yes. And I was just like, oh my God, like they are not isolated, they are not alone, they are in a community and a world that celebrates them, that celebrates expression and that celebrates freedom. And having Jane talk about it that way, the the amount of queer wisdom, right, that is already here and the alternate paths that are already crafted, that we now as individuals get to realize oh my God, there's another way out there. And I am an adult and I get to choose again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think it's interesting that Jane Ward herself, she would not consider herself like born queer. She cultivated her queerness. And when I read that, and and the same with Glennon Doyle, there's a chapter in Untake where someone refers to her as having been born that way. And she's like, you know, I think it's it's a little bit different. Like, why can't we just say the system that and the way I want to express myself, this is what I choose. And so it's been interesting, my own path choosing to cultivate my own queerness. I'm self-partnered right now, but unlike having looked at the tragedy of heterosexuality and starting to normalize and think about what it would be like to love a woman or to receive love from a woman in the way that women love each other. Like there's a whole way of being. Like, I don't want to try and convince you to stay in relationship with men if that doesn't feel good, but I'm I'm also not here to convince anybody to be in relationship with women if that doesn't feel good.
SPEAKER_03It's us talking and using the word queer as a contrast to heterosexuality's system. And it's it's so much bigger because I do want to respect that queer people like as much as we're saying like they have the answers, they have the system, like that does not mean we go to all of them and we're like, and no, teach all of us. Like, no, you know, this is the same thing with like not going to people who are black and being like, teach me about racism, teach me how to treat you right. Like, no, we all have our own personal journeys to go on to open to what I see as this like this vision of interacting from the world from these things that she lists she lists as the queer wisdom, which we'll dive into right now because I think we got to kind of explain like what the queer culture offers when we're we're talking about it in this way. And one of the things she mentioned was that it offers emotional negotiation, a communicating of needs and desires openly and reducing shame.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's just like such a sigh of relief at this.
SPEAKER_00Yes. To let go of the idea that there's a right way, a right way your body should look or be a right or wrong way to have sex, or what feels good to you that shouldn't feel good to you, this should, to let go of that. Yes, sink into curiosity.
SPEAKER_03And not only, like you said, open to all body types, but I loved that part where she's like actually for she was talking about specific lesbian women who were writing about like loving their partner's scars, loving the weight on their partners' bodies. Like, what an incredible world to live in a place where a human is not just a sum of parts that hopefully fits the prescribed mold and instead the humanizing. Um I love when she talked about their the non-binary ways of loving. It is not a either you're a man or you're a woman. It is that you can play with those roles all you want. And I love when she's like, we definitely get kinky with our own, like we love playing with masculinity and femininity and trying it on, and but we don't have to live in those roles. We understand it is not about the genitals, it's about the energy. And that just opens up the amount of expression and experiences that you can have because you're no longer just shaming, shaming, shaming.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. You can let go of the need to judge. I just want to take a bit deep breath when I think about that, since I was raised in such a judgmental culture that said it was, you know, all loving. And so to come out on the other side where it's like you don't need to judge anybody else. You don't even need to judge yourself. We just look at what is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Taking what I think is just a way more humanistic approach to people. Yeah. You and I discussed some of the things we loved about it is that, you know, there's so much more range for what masculine energy gets defined as, right? In the world, often masculine energy is like the mansplaining, the alpha male, the violent, the overbearing, and this contrast, which we noticed recently on one of our community calls, right? That actually what women were talking about liking in some of the masculine figures was this more calm, grounded, like integrity, loves, loves the humans, um, can also be sensual and sexy and dropped into his body, knows how to move his body, right? That was the Patrick Swayze part and the Pedro Pascal. Like rather than being forceful, he can do both. And you know, that's what I've been the most obsessed with in my partnership with Joe, is that I have found for myself I can no longer play a binary role just to make my partner feel good about his masculinity by me always being in the feminine. I'm way, I am way too, I've got a lot of fierce, fiery masculinity that likes to come out and play. And if I have a partner that needs me to always be in a role for him to feel safe, that's just not gonna work. In the queer culture, there is more creativity, there is more expression, there is more honesty, more aliveness, more color, more glitter.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it all is this self-expression. It's again releasing the rules. And this isn't, I mean, we're painting with kind of a big brush, the quick. Big, big brush.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because there are others that are very understated, or the the women that, you know, cut their hair in a certain way and they're not flamboyant.
SPEAKER_03And I love you bringing that in because that drives home the point even more. That makes me think of uh a reel I'd seen the other day of two more masked lesbians, like, you know, being like people telling them you don't look gay because they don't dress, you know, in more flamboyant stuff, and them owning and kind of being like, this is what gay looks like. Like it's this kind of radical acceptance of your self-expression, is what it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it gets to change, it gets to grow with you. Yes. I love opening the gates to what's possible. What's possible if I wasn't worried about what other people thought? What's possible if I didn't have the rules? Like before I knew the rules of how to dress, how was I dressing? Before I knew I was supposed to be quiet, how was I speaking? How was I moving? What was I naturally drawn to?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00And I think those seeds are still there.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I mean, you and I have been through incredibly intense oppressive systems, as have many people in the queer community. And in that space, having those seeds tried to be squashed out and ultimately, as we've both realized, oh no, they're still there. They may be buried pretty deep, and you need to bring them out in the sunlight, but they will blossom with the nurturing. Yeah. Which takes me to where I want to kind of close out and end the episode, which is giving these four areas for those of you listening to this episode that are like, oh my God, you know, yes, I want this. How do I move? What are the next steps? Like clear areas to really, I'm thinking of it as like these are the exit ramps.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. From the highway of heteronormative, just play the roles, be part of the system, keep it going. How do we change that, especially right now in America, when I hear so many people saying there's so much fear? What is going to happen next? Um, how can I help right now? We felt like these were four areas that are incredible. So the first is naming the system.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And in naming the system, you reclaim your personal sanity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We we really claim the knowledge that this system was not created for us. It was it was created with this power over functionality, the assumption that women are property. And then it was given the stamp of approval from these religious structures. And even if you continue to live with religion in your life, you get to grapple with that, but to be really honest about this is what is, and it's not, I am not the problem. I'm not going to take on the problem of the system. I'm going to own my response to the system.
SPEAKER_03Yes, beautiful. The second one is in owning your response, you got to learn the skills, the tools to be able to call out the system without destroying the humans within it. And this is non-violent communication. This is the book by Marshall Rosenberg. I decided after doing our summer camp this summer, I was like, this is what I'm going to do every summer in the community. It will be diving. And even for those that have had it the years before, it will be diving back in because as you said so poignantly when we were discussing this earlier. I was like, oh, we've really lost the ability to communicate nonviolently. And you said, we've never had it. We, and I was like, oh my God, you are so right. We in a at least in the US, we have never had the ability to speak nonviolently in this country. And once you read the book, you'll understand what it looks like. It's so wild, right, Quinn? It's so simple and yet so not how we communicate in our world.
SPEAKER_00Right. It has rocked my world in the best of ways. I am questioning so many things, wanting to apologize from the bottom of my heart for the times that I've spoken violently when I thought I was just speaking my truth. I think this skill is really, really important. And another author who does this really well is Adam Grant, and he has a book called Think Again. And it's all about talking to people who you disagree deeply with from a place of curiosity rather than trying to give them more information or more research or more facts, because we all know that in this moment, facts don't fucking matter to the people that want to believe certain things. But what does matter is when they feel heard, they feel listened to. Yes. And you have a relationship of trust to use the Mormon missionary term, having a relationship of trust to ask them to take the next step, which is to be open to a different way of thinking about things or to think critically about things that perhaps they're not thinking about right now. And that's true for, you know, the things we're going through at in our country as well as the things you're going through in your relationships.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And trust is what is being obliterated right now. Trust in our systems, trust in each other. Um and I've really seen how how do we build that? How do we rebuild that? How do we, you have to have the language to be able to de-escalate the violence of all the fear happening from the destruction of the trust.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Our third exit ramp is letting go of the script, making room for something truer for yourself, and doing that through, as you said earlier, you hinted at the getting curious with yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yes. We have been raised to devalue what we bring, quote unquote, to the table in a relationship. And a woman Yes. But when a man partners with a woman, he lives longer, he makes more money, he's healthier. I mean, so many good things. And it doesn't come from her bringing a paycheck or something that can be put into an accounting system in a business. But what you bring that has been termed weakness, or they are entitled to your magic and your energy, they're not entitled to it. And it is so valuable who you are, your wild woman ways of being, our deep intuition, and as and our willingness to heal. Because women don't just heal themselves as we heal, we heal the collective. Absolutely. And I think it will be we've seen it time and time again in different wars where I mean it was the truth in Liberia and Somalia and Rwanda, where horrific things are happening, and yet at the end it's the women that are able to metabolize. And I don't understand fully the magic of being a woman, but it's fucking incredible. So when we start taking what we are and self-centering and asking ourselves, what do I desire? What feels good in my body? How can I awaken pleasure? How can I heal myself? I mean, everyone thrives. Everyone thrives. Yes. You need to thrive. Yes. It is imperative that the women thrive. Imperative.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And that's really what when we're saying let go of the scripts, it is let go of all these expectations and standards that you were taught to have for yourself through heterosexuality and instead re-center yourself as the very center of your life. Where so many of us as women, especially raised in religion, have been fucked over, is men need to decenter themselves somewhat. Like it's for men, it is a moving out of that privilege and seeing the humanity in women and being able to focus and like hold space for all of that. But for us as women, we are so good at decentering ourselves, at being everything for everybody else but ourselves. And the answer in healing this system is that we step in, we step up, we go, what I have is so important. I'm not going to let it just get buried or slip away. And that really comes to this point that for so many of the women listening that are in the stay or go space, right? Of understanding, some men will rise to this call, but you cannot make that your strategy. And that is why this work right now of considering divorce is in so many ways so important because right now, and this is like catching the vision of doing this work of figuring out this piece when people are saying, What can I do in the world right now? This is a huge piece of it. Is navigating. And if you are with a partner that does not want to rise, then leaving, like Quinn and I did and building a new world, which we have done for our children, for ourselves, we have become the change we want to see in the world.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think for some women who don't have community and aren't sure if they can rise, one of the ways that I've been able to build myself is getting out into the community and volunteering. Whether it's handing out boxes of food that's going to go bad from a food rescue or volunteering in the ER, there are places that you can discover more of yourself by having it reflected back to you by the people that you go out into community and support and serve. And that has been a way that I build the community. But being in the community shows me so much more of me as I try to become more and more full of myself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And that takes us to our final exit ramp, which is kind of this culmination of having humanity for all humans, ultimately, including ourselves. And I loved you bringing in the community piece because how do we do that? We get out there and we get to know the people, we get to know the humans. And within the heterosexual tragedy, right, it is very isolating. You're not, it's just you and your partner and raising your kids and maybe the people you see at your kids' sports events. But more now than ever, I think for many of us that were raised in this, that find ourselves in this system, tapping into the community and volunteering in the ways that you can is it's a double piece. Not only does it, like you said, show you more of yourself, but it also shows you the humanity in the people across from you. Going to the protests that I've gone to this year has strengthened so much my belief in humanity, my trust that there are actually thousands of people in my city, in my country that believe in kindness, in love for others, in letting others have full expression. We also wanted to plug here at the end, you know, many of you may not know, but there is a what would you call them? The working family party? What would you call it, Quinn? A third option?
SPEAKER_00Political party that is trying to get the politicians to listen, but to focus on working families and small donations, not billionaire funding. Because both parties here in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans, they're being funded by the same people. And they have co-created the shit show that we are in.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00And so we are trying to find new kinds of community. Neither one of us have been to one of their gatherings, but there's enough interest and spark in it that we're gonna go and check it out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And seeing who the people are that are involved, I'm like, oh, these are the people that it's diverse. It's people that understand and are talking about what it actually feels like to live in this system. They are still in it, they are not removed. So we wanted to put that out here because I have been trying to look into more options to actually politically become involved. I'm actually signed up for a couple of theirs, have a working families um welcome intro thing that's happening this month. So we'll be reporting, I'll be reporting back a little bit about what I'm seeing there. But that has given me a lot of hope because I do think we need a third party. I don't think, I know. We need another option on the ballot. Also, within this having humanity for all humans and talking about community. This is such an incredible opportunity to talk about my community, the community that Quinn is a part of, and how in that community we have been able, it's I'm so excited to announce it's been like eight or nine months now that we've actually had the community going, which has allowed me the opportunity to see women who came in months ago really watching them go through their journeys and watching us heal together as women in that community. Yeah, the programming and the lies and the internalized misogyny, it's it's shedding, like right, Quinn, like right in front of our eyes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we get to call it out in each other because it's one thing to say, I want better friends or I need more support, but to go out and cultivate those friendships and then what do we do? What do we spend time talking about? We need to, are we gonna go bowling? Are we gonna go for a drink? This is a beautiful place where you can drop in, you're immediately welcomed, you're working on the same thing everybody else is in a way that is expressed in so many different ways, the way everyone applies it, the way we come together to celebrate each other. It's an easy up level without a lot of effort.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and just an incredible way to, if you find yourself unable to, because I remember being a stay-at-home mom, you know, getting out in my community would have been a thing. So there are options. There are online places, there are ways to connect in with community. And I love that the way, you know, when you say that, calling it out in each other, what we mean by that is the the misogyny doesn't just keep playing between us, like we talked about in the last episode of women, you know, whining and being upset about their husbands, but never actually doing anything, getting together and talking about it, and then just everybody stays married. No, this is a community where and the calling it out is is when we see makes me think of a woman who this week um was going through something really difficult and posted and was really getting down on herself, and the other women being like, We know you, you know you. She'd gotten kind of sucked back into the pain of her husband not liking her decision and believing the self-hatred and it's it's me, and having those women be like, no, no, we know you, we've seen you, this is who you are, and calling her back to herself. It's an incredible thing to witness.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I do want to point out that there are women in there who are months out from their divorce and they still find fellowship in this community because this is this is no small thing to walk away from a heterosexual partnership. And so it's pretty significant that some of us do that. And for those of us in my sphere of influence who have made that choice to leave a marriage or our partner left us, I think there's still a great deal of healing available in the skills that we're learning in there, the coaching, the community, the friendships, the love, the support. There's so much there for lots of lots of different kinds of women. I want to make sure that you tell them how to get more information about that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the easiest way is to text stay or go community, all one word to 3377. I also just have to say, when you said it's, you know, no small thing to leave a heterosexual marriage, I realized it's I like had this like, oh my God, because for the women staying that are in the community, I was like, it's no small thing to stay in your marriage and and move it out of the heterosexual binary, we are just roles as well. So this is like an area where it's not just a stay or go thing. It is all of us acknowledging that the heterosexual tragedy affects us whether we stay or we go. And if you're staying and you're seeing this and you're seeing how it is hurting both you and your husband, the two of you leaving it, also you are gonna need a lot of community. Makes me think of the women in the community now that are staying and receiving so much support as they are navigating. Yeah. That we had a woman this week, just went in with a new couples therapist, and I'm thinking one a couple weeks ago where they went to a big couples event. And yet, here is where they feel the connection with other women moving out of the programming, right? The women in this community are really shedding the programming of what the heterosexual normative way of being is. Yeah. So this book was incredible, y'all. As you can tell, we took two fucking giant episodes to just really dive into it. There's so much more if you loved the episodes. I cannot recommend enough going and getting the book. Jane Ward has the most amazing analysis and really manages to bring it all into that message of hope at the end that I loved. This message of there's a different way to do it, and there are these communities and worlds already built that are doing it. So yeah, so so happy we got to talk about this. So grateful to have you on the podcast for two full episodes. Quinn, you spoil us. Oh, oh, oh my God. Thank you.
unknownThank you.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Um, for those of you listening on Quinn's, just so you know, she is soon gonna be off the market for coaching. I just have to vibe about her because she is about to dive into her schooling. You got accepted.
SPEAKER_00Yep. I'm gonna be starting my nursing degree this August. And, you know, it was in talking about community to you a few years ago. I think it's been two or three years ago now, when I realized the thing that I would want to bring to community is care for people at the beginning of life and at the end of life. I wanted to be standing at those portals. And that's what that and the shit show of female reproductive health is what finally pushed me into I'm gonna stop complaining. I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna do the thing. I and I don't know where this path will ultimately lead me, but let's just stop fucking around and just do the thing. Each one of us knows our next step. It doesn't have to be a big thing, whether it's a conversation or a decision that we've been putting off that and we know what we want to do. You know, let's just let's let's fucking go. That's my best friend, y'all.
SPEAKER_03I have her private number. Yeah, so immensely, so immensely proud of you. So grateful to be going through this journey with all of you. Like I said, she will soon be off the market for doing one-on-one coaching because she's focusing on that. So if you've if you are one of our post-divorce women looking for a coach that is gonna rock your socks, Quinn is your woman.
SPEAKER_00You can email her at Quinn, Q U I N N at postdivorce glow up dot com.
SPEAKER_03And for the rest of you that are still in the thick of it, know that I am excited and ready to meet you on the 90 minute sessions or even on one-on-one deep dive coaching with me. You can go check those out on my website, stayorgocoaching.com. All right, y'all. Take care this week.
SPEAKER_01All right, bye bye.