Do we let the dogs out? Keeping pets in the bedroom

It sounds funny, but for many couples, pets in the bedroom can spark real tension around intimacy. Do you let them stay? Do you kick them out? And what does each choice say about us? Figs dives into our desire, boundaries, and relationship with pets in “Do we let the dogs out?”

citations and things read in preparation for today's episode:

Bancroft, J., & Janssen, E. (2000). The dual control model of male sexual response: A theoretical approach to centrally mediated erectile dysfunction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(5), 571-579.

Boddi, V., Fisher, A. D., Maseroli, E., Rastrelli, G., Corona, G., Jannini, E., ... & Maggi, M. (2014). Lack of sexual privacy affects psychological and marital domains of male sexual dysfunction. The journal of sexual medicine, 11(2), 431-438.

Butterfield, M. E., Hill, S. E., & Lord, C. G. (2012). Mangy mutt or furry friend? Anthropomorphism promotes animal welfare. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 957-960.

Coombe, J., Kong, F. Y. S., Bittleston, H., Williams, H., Tomnay, J., Vaisey, A., ... & Hocking, J. S. (2021). Love during lockdown: findings from an online survey examining the impact of COVID-19 on the sexual health of people living in Australia. Sexually transmitted infections, 97(5), 357-362.

Eleuteri, S., Alessi, F., Petruccelli, F., & Saladino, V. (2022). The Global Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals' and Couples' Sexuality. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 798260. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.798260

Janssen, E., & Bancroft, J. (2007). The dual control model: The role of sexual inhibition and excitation in sexual arousal and behavior. The psychophysiology of sex, 15, 197-222.

Nagoski, E. (2015). Come as you are: The surprising new science that will transform your sex life. Simon and Schuster.

Panzeri, M., Ferrucci, R., Cozza, A., and Fontanesi, L. (2020). Changes in sexuality and quality of couple relationship during the Covid-19 lockdown. Front. Psychol. 11:565823. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.565823

Roy, D., & Srivastava, S. (2023). Environmental Factors: Sexual Desire. In Encyclopedia of Sexual Psychology and Behavior (pp. 1-7). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Servais, V. (2018). Anthropomorphism in Human–Animal Interactions: A Pragmatist View. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 401521. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02590

cover art: @bofenglin

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You have to understand, I am an amazing house guest. It comes from years of experience of being that one Latino family that the whole extended family from Colombia would stay at for months at a time. Okay? We were the host family. We would host the afters. After La Quincenera, the quincenar was even my quincenera. After the weddings, and we would have La Caja China, which is it's a Cuban thing. It's a discussion for another day. Okay. We were the family that got the noise complaints. We were the family when the cops showed up. We gave them food. We made them dance and we hugged them because you know what? They're family now. I don't make the rules, your family. You dance with us. Your family. That was my family. So because of that, not only I became so attuned to what guests need when they come over, but also I just know what makes a great guest. So I would clean up after myself and whatever you need, I'm there. Handyman, interior decorator, I've been in party favor sex therapist. Yeah, listen, I need a free place to stay. Right now in my life, I am couch surfing. I've been couch surfing for a couple months around the US. I'm just trying to figure out where I'm gonna spend the rest of my life. And now I'm going internationally. It helps that I have a lot of friends that love and care for me and take advantage of the fact that I am yeah, I'm a sex therapist. Go ahead, use that. I go on to say this. So last month I stayed a week in Miami. I'm originally from Miami. I was at one at one point 305 till I died, but it really fast became 305 until gentrification priced me out of paradise. I love you, Miami, but please become more affordable. I miss your cabecito, I miss your croqueticas y paselitos so much. Okay, I miss las ventanitas, but I it just became overpriced. So I was only able to stay for a week. And I stayed at my friend's house with his wife and their beautiful, cute, adorable puppy. It was amazing. He was adorable, he was playful, and he was attached. I mean, attached. This dog could not be by himself. The dog slept with them on the bed. I get it, I'm attached to my cat. As much as I'm traveling, I'm also traveling with my cat. Totally understood. But I was there for a week. I was in the guest room. I didn't hear the dog near the guest room. The dog didn't stay with me at all. Where was this dog when they were having sex? Just curious. I was just curious. And I got the guts to say it and asked it on the last day there. I'm just like, you know, where does where does the dog go when you guys have sex? The silence was the answer in itself. But I waited and I got it. My friend smiles and says, Oh no, he stays in the bed and watches. He stays in the bed and watches. What do you mean he stays in the bed and watches? I I just I couldn't. I just can't.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

My cat's family. I'm not naked around family.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

I'm I'm just not. That's just the way I was raised. Even with him by myself, I take the cat to the bathroom. You know, a couple minutes later I let him back in. I said, sorry, mommy was busy. Mommy was feeling a little lonely, was feeling some type of way. What do you mean? The dog watches. What do you mean? And that was the end of the conversation. So after that stay, I when I met up with other friends, it was just so split in opinion. Some friends were totally okay with it. And some friends replicated my sentiment that, like, no, he knows exactly what's going on. Right? So, because of that, I dedicated this episode to privacy, pets, and context that impact desire, why some are affected by pets in the bedroom, and why others are not. Welcome to Things I'm meant to say naked. A publicness of meant to health, desire, intimacy, and the truths that we carry in our bodies. If you find yourself struggling, please reach out to a licensed provider in your area. So in the 1990s, there were these two researchers by the name of Eric Jansen and John Bancroft. They were developing a model to best understand individual differences and desire, which is a fancy, I guess not so fancy word of saying, like our sexual appetite. Like what turns us on and what turns us off? How do we get turned on? How we get turned off. Very interesting. It's interesting, but it's also overcomplicated. So I'm gonna simplify it. And I'm gonna use a metaphor that was used by Emily Nagoski in her book, Come As You Are. If you are female assigned at birth, if you haven't read it, read it. I it's one of I read it every two years as a refresher. It's part of my sex library. Above my head, if you see my video, I have a sex library. I, in good faith, can never recommend a book to a client if I have not read it myself. And I like the idea of having some kind of like green library above my head. So that being said, it's a great book. I'm actually gonna reference it a little bit today. So the dual control model, again, which is to understand individual differences and desire, talks about how there's these two forces at play constantly in our subconscious, which is our sexual exciters and our sexual inhibitors. Emily Nagoski refers to us and metaphorizes us like a car. Our inhibitors are our brakes and our exciters are is our gas pedal, right? Exciters are sensations, contexts, psychological factors, cultural factors that turn us on, that say it is sexy time. This is sexual. It can be for many people, uh turning down the lights, uh putting on your sexual playlist. Big booty girl 23. For some, it can very much be I go to the bar with my partner and I watch my partner get hit on, and that turns me on. In a sex therapy office, when I'm working with clients and I'm working with a low desire, I often ask, Do you know what turns you on? If you don't know what turns you on, how do you expect your partner to know what turns you on? That's literally half the mission. So it's exciters. We're in our environment, cues us that we are able to, capable, wanting to have sex, right? Our inhibitors is like our brake pedal. So we have, and they split this into two. So we have something that's like a parking brake. If you drive a car, you'll know that there's two different brick brakes. There's the parking brake, and then there's the foot brake. I'm not gonna assume everybody drives. I actually don't drive. That's a conversation for another day. But the thing about this parking brake, right? The one that you pull, is that the car can still keep going, but it will use up a lot of gas. So this can look like a parking brake inhibitor can look like, and I hear it all the time in my office for my clients. The date was amazing. The chemistry was there, the conversation was flowing. I wanted this man to rip my clothes off. I would hear that, but they're like, but then we had Italian food and there was so much garlic, and their breath smells. I would say that would be a parking break situation, is like you can still keep going, but maybe you'll hold your breath a little bit. You know what I mean? There won't be that much kissing involved. A footbreak situation or inhibitor, these are contextual um factors, sensations, psychological things that really turns us off and turns something into a hard no. So this can be STI risk, no one broad a condom, right? This can be contextual factors, as in like maybe you're in a community where premarital sex is not okay, and the uh opportunity for it to happen just turns you off cold. It can also be like maybe you're in a community in which there is a lot of stigma towards your sexual orientation, right? These are hard no's. It can also be someone's just not safe and you need to get out. So these things are happening all at the same time. We have breaks and we have exciters. And while I'm talking about this, is and this is why I find this topic so interesting about pets, is that privacy can be all three. Yes, privacy, or rather, the lack of privacy, can turn some turn on some, can really stop others, and some of us uh can be a little reluctant. And I will go into it and reference a couple studies. I am an academic at heart, I just I was in academia for a while, so we'll get into it. So, one of the things that came up during the pandemic, and I'm sure a lot of us felt the same, is that I was in grad school in 2020. When we were in lockdown, I felt it in my bones, or I was so convinced we were gonna have like another baby boom. Everybody was in lockdown. You are stuck at home with your partner. A lot of us did not work. We were stressed out, you know. I mean, we were so stressed out, we were inside, and I knew sex was a coping skill. So I was expecting babies. That didn't happen. We were actually a lot of us were actually surprised. So a lot of studies actually happened, and there's a lot of publications, and you can look it up on Google Scholar, looked about the frequency and the satisfaction of sex during the pandemic when everybody was in lockdown. And one of them was actually this study from Australia back in 2021, and they were researching the frequency of sex, and what they found was about 53.5% of people in their study saw a reduction in stress in sex. Not stress, we were very stressed, and sex. Only 14.3% of participants actually saw an increase in sex. And a lot of the reasons why they were seeing or why they speculate why there was such a large drop, why so many people were having less sex was because of closed quarters and lack of privacy. That's not all. What we also saw was that one of the another research study that looked at the quality of sex, the satisfaction of sex of Panzeri and all 2020, found that one of the reasons and factors that impacted or reduced the satisfaction of sex was also a lack of privacy. And another study back in 2014, so a little, so a little over 11 years ago, one of the factors that was associated with uh ejaculary dysfunction and erectile dysfunction was actually a lack of privacy. Okay, there's all these studies about the lack of privacy, and then there's you know, that 15%, near 15%, 14.3% that's that had more interest in sex from the lack of privacy. Let's go into that. I mean, you have to understand during the pandemic, while we were in lockdown, a lot of us, yes, moved in with our partners. I moved in with my ex before I was ready. Okay, listen, desperate times calls for desperate measures. You know what I mean? But a lot of us also lived with our family, our in-laws, roommates. We were stuck. We could not leave the house. And the only times we were able to leave the house, if you were lucky and got a pandemic puppy, you can walk the dog or maybe go for a run. Otherwise, it was just when you would get groceries. I would not feel comfortable having sex if I knew between our bedroom was this thin wall and it was my in-laws. I I I would be, I would just say, like, I couldn't be loud. You know, if they spanked me, I'm like, hey, turn it, turn it down. And what how can I look that them in the eye? I I completely understand. But how does this apply to pets? This is not an in-law, this is not a roommate, it is family. But how does this apply to pets? So I looked this up, and there's actually not a lot on this topic in particular. So, researchers, if you ever listen to my podcast, if it ever blows up in that way, let's look this up a little bit. So, one of the things I found, which is called anthromorphism, which is the conscious attribution of human characteristics to non-human beings. Okay. This can look like I've seen her all the time, guys who name their cars and give it like a personality. I'm also one of those guys in a sense that one of my cars, her name was Pearla. Pearlie. We used to name her Pearlie. This can also be like seeing human attributions to your pets. How many times do we talk about cats? Like, for example, like we talk, we're I refer to my cat as sassy. He's a kleptomaniac, you know, he's misandrist. I I give him he he my cat can't be a feminist, but for me, he is. You have to understand that's what anthromorphism is. It's not bad. Uh, one of the studies I was able to find about anthropomorphism is that if you have anthropomorphic views, you're actually more likely to care about the welfare of animals. Makes sense. I mean, if you're caring for something so much about its well-being, not just his physical well-being, but emotional well-being, you're going to start to relate to it and see it as a human being. So when we're looking at anthemorphism, desire, the dual control model, and we just put it all together, it just makes sense. Why someone like me who sees my cat as my son, that is my son. I couldn't have sex around him. I'm a little uncomfortable of him seeing me naked, but I, you know, justified a little bit that, you know, he's naked around me all the time. It's only fair. I need to make him comfortable. Or, you know what I mean? It's something like that versus someone that maybe doesn't have as much anthropomorphic views. Maybe it's like it's a dog. You know, it's nature. Um, just doing what nature desires. Six. It can be like that. And so, and maybe some people even see like a quirk of it, like, look, they're mimicking me. You know, it can be different for each person. So I think this is like a good understanding of like maybe someone is totally okay with pets in the bedroom and someone like me is not. So in the end of the day, there's no right or wrong answer. It doesn't matter if the dog's on the bed, in the bedroom, or outside of the bedroom. What matters most when we're talking about desire and the quality of sex is what feels right to you. How do you feel comfortable? What makes you comfortable? What turns on the ons and what turns off the offs? And so before you get into an erotic space, before the heat of the moment, before we have our pants at our ankles, and we're doing that little weird waddle towards the bed like Patrick Starr, like that in that in that one episode, SpongeBob. Before all that, it's a good time in a non-erotic space to journal, to think about it, introspect. And so I ask you, you know, what does your pet's presence make you feel? Does it make you feel like family? You know, does their presence make you anxious? Does it distract you? Does it make you self-conscious? Or are you like my friends who just shrug it off or maybe even laugh at it when they join in? Or are you like me that if my cat gives me a side eye, I go through this whole moral complex? I want you to just think about it. And after you think about it and know where your boundaries are regarding sex. And since we are talking about context, I understand not all of us have the privilege of being able to have a pet in the other room or outside of the house or outside of the bedroom. I get it, I live in a studio apartment. So keeping that in mind with what we have, it's great to think about solutions to our problems, to our, you know, inhibitors and exciters. And then talk to your partner. Partners, potentials, what do you need to get in the mood? And then let's talk about who is going to let the dogs out.