It was a very nice hotel we were meeting in.

The “lobby,” for example, wasn’t just a big room surrounding a check-in stand. It was exactly the opposite: a maze of intimate, elegant meeting spots. Tiny tables nestled against artsy wallpaper, thick walls carved out for special benches, a nook-filled cave of modern chairs and nice upholstery. A waiter took my coffee order, and by the time he came back, my name was memorized.

“Can I get you any cream or sugar, Tolly?” he asked. Even the sugar cubes were bougie. Charmingly uneven brown lumps, like there was a monk in the back chipping off pieces just for me.

“This place is always winning awards,” my boss remarked, and I could see why. Everything low-lit and exclusive-feeling. They let you simply walk in and work?, I marveled. I’m always talking shit about the gentrification of Austin, but even I get seduced by surfaces.

Our meeting guests arrived, and we relocated to the more brightly lit dining room, where we felt each other out in conversation. Work meetings are a little like dates sometimes. You’re making eye contact, deploying small talk as needed, assessing the energy. What do you want? What do I want?

Everything is subtext. Until, that is, someone announces their intentions, and the ones who do it best make it seem like everyone’s intentions.

I have to modulate my energy in situations like these. Fifteen years in aerial dance – my ongoing lark – taught me to perform. To convey something on my face that is different from what I actually feel, which is terror. I’ve never been a good actor, but I’m a decent performer, and work requires a bit of conversational choreography. When to look directly at someone with a steady line of sight, containing and training my attention so as to read the other person. Or more precisely: so that they feel read.

But I feel myself getting intense sometimes, my gaze aggressive if it becomes too directional. So I rein it in, soften the eye contact. I take a breath, sit back in a more curious posture, assume gentle nodding. My energy diffuses from a laser beam to a lantern, recalibrating the space to make room for the other person’s wishes. Whatever it is they want to get out of this interaction, and capitalism would have you think it’s money. But on a more microscopic, moment-to-moment level, most people want tension and release. That could be a “yes, here’s a check” or it could be “yes, let’s embark on this project together” or it could even be “yes, you can write me an email about your idea because I clearly see you’re passionate about it.” Very few people want to walk away from a meeting without a sense of resolve.

Right before I sat down to write this essay, I opened an email from those meeting partners we saw last week.

They requested a proposal for an idea I floated in that pretty dining room, where the server knew all of our names.

Two types of gazes

I’m always thinking about the hidden forces of human connection, obsessing over them really, and Instagram has figured this out. My Explore page is a wall of attachment styles and shame explainers, relationship models and protection mechanisms, the odd heels dancer or celebrity speaking out against Trump or Heated Rivalry fan service. Welcome to my brain.

For months, IG’s been pushing Kasia Urbaniak on me, a self-styled power practitioner. What is that, you might ask. Well, Kasia’s bio is that she is a former Taoist nun turned New York dominatrix. I don’t know if these things are true, but I respect a cool origin story even if parts are stretched or lightly fictionalized. Former English major reporting for duty.

Kasia hooked me months back with a series she did on gazes: the penetrating gaze and the receiving gaze. Is there science on this? Some. I try to find reviews on these types of things, rather than single studies, but the review I just linked is almost 20 years old. Something tells me that if we’re cutting USAID we’re probably not funding gaze research. Still: they’re fun concepts to play with, and gaze is one of those things I’ve started to become more aware of in myself. Especially as I study my own selfies – more on that in a moment.

Penetrating gaze

A penetrating gaze (according to Kasia) is focused, direct, one-way. It makes the other person feel seen, like you’re reaching inside and getting to the heart of them. This is the gaze we use to land an important point, to be taken seriously, to show a little dominance.

This is also the gaze I use most often in work meetings, and I know this because I’ve had to train myself to do it. It doesn’t come naturally. My jobs up to this point have allowed me the freedom to hole up in my house, clacking away at my keyboard and pausing only to put on a collared shirt for Zooms, but my current job is highly relational and in-person. On any given day, you can find me values-aligning. Finding a win-win. Saying the kinds of things you do during the dance of transaction, which isn’t as cynical as you might think. I like my job a lot, and part of that is because I get to do this dance: discover what the other parties’ motivations are, and see if I can come up with something to suit them. And by extension, myself.

Because I was a friendly at-home gremlin for so many years though, then had to larp as a polished person, my professional energy changed. And so did my gaze. I did want to be taken seriously, so I started looking at people in a more deliberate way. Started getting comfortable with conversational tension, rather than snuffing it out with a joke. None of this was super conscious, by the way. If anything, meeting people who were better at this than me – focusing all their way to a goal – became a way to grow beyond my own social instincts, which is to listen and giggle and relate and make you feel safe. I liked meeting folks with good penetrating gaze, largely because they were so exotic.

But because it creates pressure, penetrating gaze can also feel threatening. An “I see you, motherfucker” type quality, used to ferret out and expose.

Times I’ve walked alone on a city street and felt someone behind me: I wheel around and shoot this gaze like an accusation.

A penetrating gaze also exerts itself in conflict. Think about the last fight you had with someone: the way you felt cornered, the darts coming out of their eyeballs. I once dated someone conflict-prone, and when they were mad at me, their eyes became snipers, like they were trying to catch me in a lie. “There’s nothing here, I promise!” I wanted to say, hands held up in surrender. His gaze felt like entry without a search warrant, used to imply wrongdoing or guilt. Which worked quite well on me.

But a penetrating gaze is not always accusatory. It can also relax your audience, because it immediately establishes certainty. An “I’m in charge” vibe that makes you want to be on your best behavior. Think good public speakers, the ones who don’t have to say sheepish things like “I’ll wait…” while everyone pipes down. Kasia uses the example of Michelle Obama, who I doubt has ever had to use the phrase “I’ll wait” in her public life.

Even when she’s smiling, and she often is, Michelle’s gaze has a boss-like quality to it. I rarely say the words “yes ma’am,” but if Michelle were here, I absolutely would.

So penetrating gaze isn’t inherently good or bad, just directional. Because it’s more focused, it can be used to evoke obedience. It says, “I’m looking for what’s true or vulnerable,” and in that way it can feel very clarifying.

The power of penetrating gaze is that it reduces ambiguity. It narrows the focus visually and psychologically: you are in their crosshairs, you are the object of attention, you are very specifically being chosen.

The key for the person with penetrating gaze is the intent behind it. We all have the ability to use it, and we all have unconscious tendencies towards it or the other kind, receiving gaze.

When is someone giving you penetrating gaze? Common tells:

• When they speak to you, you feel like you’re the only person in the room

• You find yourself agreeing with them almost intuitively

• You feel slightly intimidated…but also slightly excited

• The strange sensation they know something about you that you don’t

• It feels like you’re being tracked: prey being toyed with by a predator

• You feel exposed; “did I accidentally share a secret?”

• You feel relaxed: “this person knows what they’re talking about…I trust them”

• An erotic power differential: “they’re leading, I’m following”

Receiving gaze

On the flip side of it all, we have receiving gaze. The warm meadow of eye contact.

This is the gaze you can stretch out inside of. Here, you can be totally yourself, because you will be accepted. You have room to take up space, tell your life story, even stumble while you make your point. It’s ok, sweetheart. I got you.

Receiving gaze is spacious but still attuned, and it often feels deeply caring. That’s because it softens social tension and signals a willingness to connect: it helps someone feel met, not consumed; invited, not indicted.

This is all, again, according to Kasia. But as soon as I heard her talking about this one on IG I was like…“um…yes. This is me.”

Outside of work, receiving gaze is my personal go-to in conversation, and I know this because I overwhelmingly prefer being a listener than a deliverer of information. I imagine it feels nice on the other side. And of course, I’ve often wondered how gendered this is: the degree to which girls and women are raised to be the emotional custodians of the world. My mom was her father’s ultimate listener, the one he poured out his problems to even when she was a small child. She learned this skill early, and maybe passed it onto me, one conversation at a time.

Like penetrating gaze, receiving gaze isn’t inherently good or bad. Where penetrating gaze is directional, receiving gaze is wide open, lowering defenses and settling the other person’s social anxiety. It says, “I’m here, I’m taking you in,” and creates room for them to slowly reveal themselves. Think: relaxed eyes, mirrored nodding, leaning in to absorb each of their words. If penetrating gaze inspires trust, receiving gaze suggests trust. “I believe you,” spelled out in big doe eyes and a kind smile.

More than once, I’ve had people tell me I feel like their best friend. Or, that I know them better than their actual, declared best friends. This feeling sometimes bubbles up after a handful of conversations we’ve had together. I’m not their emergency contact, not on their child’s school pick-up list, might not be woven into their existing social fabric at all. But what they’re picking up on, I think, is emotional intimacy – which I love – and receiving gaze is a conduit of that. The sense that you could tell this person (me) all of your secrets.

I pride myself on being curious, and genuinely enjoy it when someone feels my interest. But I’ve also come to realize there’s a dark side to this instinct: poor boundaries.

When you’re curious about everyone, you have a tendency to wander away from your core. I’ve had to learn (am still learning) to self-author my life, rather than constantly follow the interpersonal cues of others. Receiving gaze has a radical acceptance quality, and that is indeed the energy with which I try to meet the world. But, there’s a time to shore up that interest, and save it for those who’ve actually earned it. There’s also a time to think about what you want and then go do that, rather than having everyone else set the interactive agenda for you.

If penetrating gaze asserts power, receiving gaze neutralizes it. It’s a little beta, it draws you in, and it probably soothes your nervous system.

I’m making this all sound very sweet, but used too freely (raises hand), receiving gaze can also feel vague – even distracted. Like in a networking situation, when someone is sort of talking to you but also glancing around for someone more important. “So tell me what you do…yeah…cool…uh huh…” – this type. So again, receiving gaze doesn’t always feel great. When it’s too unfocused, it doesn’t feel like connection at all.

Receiving can also make you seem kind of passive, like you don’t have clear intentions. I’ve known people with fake receiving gaze, accompanied by empty social gestures. These are the folks who toss out questions for answers they aren’t really interested in, just filling the air with words because silence is uncomfortable for them. Which is probably my #1 turnoff.

Ideally, receiving gaze feels invitational because it actually is. You’re being drawn into a genuine field of curiosity and care, because the person looking at you with it wants to hear your story.

When is someone giving you receiving gaze? Common tells:

• They ask “so tell me what’s been going on?” and lean forward while you answer

• The energy between you is quietly intimate, emotionally safe

• You feel seen without feeling pressured – you can be your real self here

• You walk away feeling a little more whole

• You say things like “God, you could be my therapist!”

• They actually are your therapist

• Your body relaxes when they look at you

• Conversations with them feel calming, even if you don’t exactly know why

We are all (according to Kasia) wired to be more external or internal with our focus, to assert ourselves or take others in. And while you can use both gazes to achieve the social effects you want, the point is not theater, but intentionality. What do you want, at any given time, in any given interaction, with any given person?

Hopefully our social dynamics don’t feel like calculus, but gaze is something within our control. And when we have a little more self-awareness around it, we start to understand which gaze we’re more prone to – and how to weave in the other as-needed.

*

As I left the hotel last week, jiggling my keys and walking to my car, the server from the dining room ran out after me onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, is this your charger?” she asked. It was – it must have fallen out of my laptop bag.

“Thank you SO much,” I told her, and I meant it. MacBook chargers are so stupidly expensive, and my battery was probably low already. Thank God she caught me.

“It’s ok, I’m literally always leaving things places,” she said, quickly adding: “have everything?”

I checked my stuff: all good. She nodded and walked away, but not before smiling, not before raising the inside corners of her eyebrows, not before making sure I was ok and actually I did feel more ok, watching her go.

What kind of gaze do you think you tend to use more often? Also: thanks for reading Sumit Here! I promise I won’t go this long between posts next time. :)

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Listen to this episode.

“My decision” is how so many texts to me begin these days. And I must be a marketer’s dream, because I always open them. What has Alex Vindman decided? (To run for senate. Surprise!)

It’s the implied intimacy that gets me. The confessional opening, the hard-won resolve. It’s as though 99% of me clocks it’s a political fundraising text, while 1% of me can’t resist a secret. Like, wait – is Alex about to really get something off his chest? Pity the fool who doesn’t open this one.

“My decision – Alex Vindman,” is the top line, and against my better judgment I click it all the way open. Several paragraphs of storytelling, a link to become a founding donor to his campaign, “Stop to End” at the bottom.

I never text “Stop” back. Too lazy about text hygiene. And maybe – maybe – the simulacrum of secrecy is a little dopamine hit for me.

Elissa Slotkin likes to send me her decisions too. Same with James Talarico.

It’s as though I can’t resist intimacy, my favorite drug!, even when I know it’s fake.

Simulated intimacy always sounds hollow

This has been on my mind lately: simulated intimacy. I recently heard someone on a panel remark that if smartphones colonized our attention, we’re allowing AI chatbots to colonize our attachment. Uh, guilty?

Because it’s not just those “my decision” fundraising texts. It’s how friendly and comfortable I got with ChatGPT last fall. Got, past tense, because I deleted my account and don’t have the app on my phone anymore. I felt myself getting addicted to it, and the longer our conversations became, the more I felt my creative output waning. My artistic spirit dissolving into vapid you-go-girl! exchanges about…nothing.

Maybe it’s just me. But, I’m wondering if more of us are experiencing something like an AI hangover at the moment?

The tech is here to stay, obviously, quietly melding into the background, becoming the default operating system for how we live. However, for every big tech wave – and we are certainly in one now – there’s always a human-y backlash. A reassertion of our fleshy selves.

For example. Do you remember the late 2000s/early 2010s trend of handmade, DIY everything? Home brewing. Bee keeping. Vegetable pickling. Typewriters. Toy cameras. Suspenders. Mustache wax. Girly vintage dresses. Brooklyn. Portlandia. You remember.

The iPhone came out in 2007, and as everything sped up, a counter-movement arose to celebrate – at times, fetishize – slowness. “Oh, this soap? My girl Sophie made it. She sources her own lavender.”

I loved this time. I so got this time. I’ve always been a bit of a Luddite, and this posture suited me. This was when I first heard the word “bespoke.” Yes, I want it handmade. Yes, I want whatever I buy to be as inefficiently produced as possible. Small batch? Perfect. Micro-brewed? Even better.

Back then, it was exciting, but also a little weird, that we could Google anything now, at any time. Commonplace in 2026, zippy and exotic in 2008. We needed analogue mystery inserted back into our lives. The touch of human hands. The romance of slow things.

Now, I’m hearing words like “attunement” and “resonance.” Words that connote feeling. Reading someone’s energy. Vibing with someone, purely based on how it feels to be around them.

A new craving is bubbling up and this time I don’t think it’s for human slowness. I think it’s for friction: the snags that suggest a person is on the other end.

2025 = AI, 2026 = humancore

If 2025 = AI, I predict 2026 = humancore. Activities, trends etc. made for IRL interactions with zero purpose other than the raw pleasure of mixing it up with other people, and experiencing their gloriously messy energies. If AI is a never-ending feast of pattern recognition, it leaves us starving for exactly one thing: idiosyncrasy.

At least, I’m speaking this prediction into the universe in the hopes that I’m right. Willfully manifesting it for you and for me.

I saw this on Instagram the other day from On Brand, and damn if it didn’t feel like the same argument I’m making with a different lens. No more “clean girl” (curated, controlled, optimized), Alex is saying – now, the vibe shift is “party girl.” Joy and self-expression for their own sake. Hanging out because it’s genuinely fun, NOT to create content or network or whatever bullshit capitalistic impulses have been hard-wired inside of us lo this past insane decade.

Curation = out, connection = in

I don’t have a lot to say on the clean girl v. party girl front, except that it’s a metaphorical bellwether. That collectively, what we want is the joy of real interaction, even if it’s unpredictable. Especially if it’s unpredictable. Because that is the hallmark trait of humanity: our capriciousness.

Bold argument, but I think the impulses that drive clean girl are the same impulses that drive incels. Both put an extremely high premium on comparison, control, and market valuation. Sure, clean girl is wellness-coded femininity performance – but incel thinking is “women only want rich tall Chads” masculinity performance. Ideas of the thing (gender) that are discussed and rendered ENTIRELY ONLINE, rather than the far richer experience of the thing itself (another real human that you get to interact with).

In both cases, it’s less the gender dimension that troubles me (although both are troubling), it’s the me-me-me focus driven by the idea that if I perform well enough on the market, through clicks-to-shop or social likes or the perceived status of my partner or whatever, I’ll be happy. When really, happiness comes, I believe, from the invisible thread pulsing between you and another person. Romantic or platonic. It’s not entirely you, and it’s not entirely them. It’s the third thing: connection itself.

But to experience connection, you have to actively resist the tech forces in your life that seek to eliminate friction and instead, go seek friction out.

Humancore, as I’m starting to define it, is any context where the point isn’t self-optimization, but that third thing between us—the unpredictable field that only exists when two humans are paying attention. Less Black Mirror, more Martin Buber.

Where I’m finding friction

Since November, incidentally around the same time I deleted ChatGPT, I started going to this thing in Austin called Latihan. I find it sexy, although sexiness is not the point. “Sexy” in that it’s very spontaneous. Spontaneity as a spiritual ethos.

What happens is:

Fifty to sixty people show up to a large yoga studio, and are given a brief talk. It is explained that you and everyone else are about to put on blindfolds, and then music will begin. Your job is to attune to yourself, and allow your body to move with the music. Which could look like slow modern dance, or, bending forward at the waist and waving your ass back and forth in the air. Who cares? Everyone’s blindfolded.

But. As there are so many people, you will inevitably touch someone. So now, your job is to attune to yourself and to the other person.

“You want to listen for the yes arising in the moment,” says our teacher, “but you also want to be listening for the crescendo.” She demonstrates what that looks like with another woman: a gracious parting, where their forearms glide along one another’s backs, then necks, then smoothly float away.

“If their body is a lake, think about entering and exiting without making a ripple.”

This was the first time I touched someone:

I was lying on the floor, vibing to the bassy, flute-y music. But moving super slowly – really starfishing away – so as to attune to myself without kicking someone in the neck. That’s when I felt fingers on my calf.

Which, admittedly…was a bit of a thrill. Here I was, focusing SO hard on attuning to someone else should I brush against them, but instead – I was being touched. I was being attuned to. Did I want this?

I did. Curious now about what this mystery person would do.

I took an audibly deep breath and relaxed my body, trying to channel permission through my very essence. Slowly, they ran their hand up my calf with the backs of their fingers, landing on the back of my knee. I reached down and found their hand, feeling their fingers part to make room for mine.

We laid like that for a while, fingers intertwined. Tiny questions and answers with each squeeze, each release.

I traced the webbing between each of their fingers and when I got to their pinky, we both felt the crescendo then gently…rolled away. Just two blob people on the ground, disentangling our energy. That was nice, thank you! Goodbye.

I’ve had so many interactions like this at Latihan, but every encounter is a little bit different and that’s what makes it interesting. At the same visit, for example:

I was on the floor, kneeling in a crouch. Reaching one of my arms in the air while twisting my torso, a pretend sprinter stretching before the whistle. Suddenly, another hand caught mine in the sky and squeezed: “want to…?” the squeeze seemed to ask. I squeezed back: “sure.”

The hand pulled me up decisively.

Their energy was palpable, almost like we’d instantly slipped into a D/s dynamic. I dipped my shoulder down so they could catch and support it with their other hand, testing them. Feeling for that engulfing attention, the kind that tracks everything. Yes: they had it.

I guess this is why I find Latihan sexy, if not sexual. The erotics of unpredictability. The experience of living inside a fleeting, co-created moment. We didn’t interact for long – I slithered back to the ground after a minute, as is my wont – but I loved tasting their energy, never finding out who it was.

“Latihan is not about connecting to other people,” says our teacher, “but it will make you a better friend. And a better lover.”

It’s one of the ironies of this time, if my prediction is right. That just as AI chatbots dangle us over a chasm of flattery and loneliness, human beings may get better at reading each other. We may experience a collective values shift, one that prioritizes actual…vibes.

How it actually feels to be with our fellow humans. The simple pleasure of experiencing friction rather than constantly erasing it.

I still don’t know anyone at Latihan, except for an old friend I ran into there who just so happens to be a copper worker. The first time we saw each other, he tied my blindfold for me.

“I recommend the middle,” he said.

“Where is ‘middle?’” I asked, now effectively blinded.

He gave my back a nudge forward. “That way.”

I crawled until I felt like stopping (“my decision – lying down”), stretched out my arms and legs, felt the song’s stringed bass creating floor vibrations on my back, curved to my side so even more of my body could experience them, felt those first fingers on my calf and wondered if they could feel it too, the low hum of the song running along my foot and now up my leg and into my shoulder and out through my fingers where I reached for theirs, completing the circuit.

Listen to this episode.

These past few months, I’ve become very interested in chemistry: the shared recognition that you and I are connected now.

I think of chemistry as somewhat conspiratorial. An energetic thread neither of us can see, only feel, and that feeling drops us down deeper into the body.

It started when I told R that a really good conversation and really good sex exist, for me, on the same spectrum. When authentic, both are exercises in connection. When not authentic, these things feel like a split, where my external self is doing one thing, my internal self another. I walk away feeling a bit lost, like I have to go fetch my other self.

But when the connection is genuine, I feel not only whole – internal self shining unmistakably through my external self – but as though new, personal depths are reached that are a surprise even to me.

I started to form a theory around chemistry. Not just the spark you feel with someone interesting, but the way certain people act as a compass to unknown parts of you. Their full-bodied yes (during conversation, during sex) isn’t a radical acceptance of everyone and everything – it’s a discriminating yes, and that’s why it feels special. Specific to you. A ‘yes’ attentive enough to sense interesting turns in your psyche, if they pay enough attention.

Attention is currency – pay enough, you’ll get something more valuable and rare from the other person – but it’s also directional. Because when someone is paying attention to you, whole other internal regions can emerge. Like those secret rooms-between-rooms in old hotels, or the 7 and ½ floor in Being John Malcovich.

I think this is why chemistry feels so good. Why “being seen” has caught on as a collective longing. But since so many of us crave it, it begs the question – are we in a chemistry deficit?

Put another way, do we pay enough attention to each other?

Do we still flirt? Tease? Play with tension and release? These words don’t have a lot of gravity, but I think the abilities they suggest are essential to being human.

I started asking around. Mostly with my friends, but also with a few open-minded strangers. The two questions I asked were:

1. What does chemistry feel like for you?

2. Where do you think it comes from?

The answers to the first were all over the map (and I will share some of them because they were really cool). But the answers to the second had some common themes, and in 2025, these themes seem instructive.

Your ability to feel chemistry is proportionate to your ability to pay attention

When I asked people where they thought chemistry came from, admiration was a starting point. A reliable hook for attention.

“I really wanted you to like me,” one guy said to another when I threw out this question. He’s a student at the gym where I work, the other is his gymnastics coach.

“I wanted to kick it, and I hoped that eventually…you’d think I was cool enough for that.”

I was so touched by this? Not only because here we were, kicking it – proof he was cool enough for the coach – but because he was so honest about it. We were a group sitting on a towel-and-blanket island at Barton Springs, so it worked out for them. And by the way, none of this was romantic: just a dude admiring another dude, openly.

But circumstances are important here. The student was paying attention to his coach partially because he’d paid money for a class. Admiration had a built-in power differential, which can be fun, but it’s not chemistry. One-way admiration (crushes, thinkers I admire, various teachers I’ve had) fulfills a different need. Chemistry turns on mutuality: the energetic thread pulses because we’re both holding it.

Still. The ability to pay real, deep attention to anyone at all is crucial. And more noticeable as time goes on, because it’s a pro-social ability, and our current technology creates and exacerbates anti-social tendencies.

Now of course — you can use tech to connect. I blithely throw out a text in the group chat, and I’m halfway to weekend plans. So much easier to socialize as an adult now than it was for my parents, who had to make individual landline calls to potential cool hangs. (Can you imagine?)

But the more technology “innovates,” the more it drains life of natural, human friction. This replaces awkwardness and serendipity – the nectar of connection – with ease and convenience.

“Our social fabric is being designed by people who do not have social skills themselves,” said Sigin Ojulu in this post which you should absolutely watch (the irony I know but trust me).

“We’ve built systems optimized not for empathy and connection, but for control. People who want control over an environment they may not be able to dominate in real life.”

A) she speaks the truth, and B) friction is taking micro, interpersonal risks. Will you save my place in this grocery store line so I can run and grab dental floss? Watch their laptop at the coffee shop so they can go to the bathroom? None of this is control – it’s cooperation – and I’m starting to really think about the personalities who prefer the former to the latter.

If life is the easiest and most convenient it can possibly be, then it’s ultimately not very human. Life requires dealing with other people and ideally, tuning into them long enough to figure out how you can both navigate an unpredictable moment. Also: what is the endpoint? I think all the time about the ship of fools in WALL-E, people rotting in easy chairs while AI screens cackle “YOU’RE GORGEOUS!”

That’s the thing about frictionlessness. It’s a real value for the people advancing this technology. Frictionlessness is great for capitalism, but terrible for chemistry. And I (perhaps you, too) want chemistry. Like, all the time.

But OK. Let’s say you’re already skeptical of too much tech. Let’s say you already bend humanist, you enjoy paying attention to people. What makes another person look back at you? When do things go from admiration, to recognition?

From “I really wanted you to like me” to “we like each other?”

You feel more chemistry when you have interiority

I’m trying this new thing when I’m on an elevator, or standing in a line: I don’t look at my phone. This makes me feel at the very least less basic. But it also strengthens my highly atrophied muscle of noticing, of feeling more somatically connected to the flow of the world around me, as Yumi Sakugawa puts it.

Sometimes I look around to see if anyone else is also doing this experiment. My people: the willingly bored. So far not many, but, maybe it’ll catch on.

When I reflexively pull out my phone, my mindset is more consumeristic, more controlling. I have an end that I want to achieve (hearting clothes on Poshmark so the sellers will offer me 20%-off discounts) and I do it. Zing, dopamine. But getting out of the goal/achievement frame of mind and into the open/discovery frame of mind is the second step towards experiencing more interpersonal chemistry in your life, I think.

Not because only because putting your phone away increases your odds of human interaction. But because this subtle yet powerful thing happens: you get more comfortable with your own company. And your interiority naturally enriches itself.

“I think chemistry depends on how YOU show up,” said D when I asked my questions. “It’s a reflection of where you are in life and the kind of people you vibe with.”

I pondered this for a while.

This idea that the better I know myself – the more comfortable I am in my own skin – the more legible I am to others.

I say this as someone who used to be so pleasantly vague. Generally appealing to almost everyone. I remember being 22, having a conversation with my co-workers (also in their 20s) about what desserts we would be (again, 20s). S looked at me, cocked her head, and said,

“You…are banana bread.”

“Banana bread?” I asked. “Because it’s comforting?”

“No,” she said. “Because everyone likes it. Even people who don’t like bananas like banana bread. It’s warm, it’s sweet, it’s good.”

In other words: generic. Nothing bitter or sour. Nothing challenging or strange.

I realized this was a great way to make tons of acquaintances and few if any real friends. I realized I had a pattern in life of becoming socially popular wherever I was, but carrying almost zero connections into the next phase of my life. The only ones that lasted were the ones who carried me, the people who at least knew themselves well enough to trust there was potential here.

As I started following my instincts more, my people-tastes started sharpening. (“The kind of people you vibe with.”) And my interpersonal connections lasted longer.

The cute girl I met on 6th St. in sartorial suspenders and shorts, alone in a sea of chunky Kendra Scott necklaces and high heels? Still one of my best friends to this day. I’m a reader at her upcoming wedding. The decision to take my first aerial silks class, despite being neither graceful, nor strong, nor flexible? My first few months of class were hilarious and unnerving, but that choice led me to other movers. Who turns out are very much my people.

Every little yes, even if it didn’t make immediate sense, was – unbeknownst to me – creating a map. Both to other people, and for other people back to me. Yes, yes, yes: here I am! No, no, no: wrong way. That’s what following your instincts does. It constructs an inside you that eventually matches the outside you. And natural, intuitive chemistry with others tends to follow this synchronization, because now others can read you better.

Unmistakable signs of chemistry

People-attention and self-knowledge: these are two essentials for feeling more chemistry in your life. But what does chemistry feel like for you?

Here’s what some people shared with me:

“I was in fifth grade, walking next to my friend on a field trip. We were carrying our backpacks, and had just gotten off a bus. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but all of a sudden I felt this warm sensation in my stomach. A welling-up. It started to rise through my chest, my neck, my face, and then out through my arms and fingers. Like electricity. I almost cried. In that moment I knew this girl was going to end up being a really important person in my life…and she was.”

A stranger told me this at Kinda Tropical, a bar in east Austin. She told me that ever since that day, she’s experienced this same feeling again with other important-life-people. Both romantic and non. Her body’s preview of personal significance, early threads of attachment being stitched in real time.

I also loved this one:

“To me chemistry feels like ‘oh, it’s you.’ Like we know each other already. Past lives? Maybe we met somewhere before, in different forms? To me it feels less like we’re introducing ourselves for the first time, and more like we’re meeting back up.”

–My friend B, over generously nutritionally-yeasted tacos at Bouldin Creek Cafe. She also said how relaxing it feels to meet someone like this, how much less explaining is involved. You vibe because you get it, even if you don’t know what “it” is. Doesn’t matter.

Sometimes, the people I asked turned the question back on me:

Maybe it’s a funny place to start, but the first thing I thought of is what it feels like to not have chemistry with someone. Especially with people who, for whatever reason, you have to regularly interact with. Like dancing with someone over and over again who’s just standing there, waiting for the song to end. It’s like hey, I get it, but we’re both at this wedding and “Uptown Funk” just came on and could ya at least move your arms a little? I look dumb too but c’mon, let’s be dumb together! (You say, as they look over your shoulder at canapés.)

That abject lack of presence completely sucks. But you know what feels amazing?

When you’re talking to someone and (to continue the song metaphor) it’s like improv jazz – that giddy feeling in my chest of being inside a moment both temporary and alive. Unpredictable but harmonious.

People who make me feel safe also conversely make me feel excited, like wherever this conversation (/sex) goes is OK, because what matters is we’re both genuinely collaborating. We’re building something that didn’t exist a moment ago.

Which reminds me of something I read the other day.

An article about EEG scans of people deeply engaged in conversation. As they got into it, their brain waves started syncing up, vibrating in similar patterns. Or, what musicians call resonance.

I shared this with R, who incidentally is a musician. Told him that’s what chemistry feels like for me. A syncing up, a noticeable drop in effort, because we’re both being carried along by the way we naturally are around one another. The waves are carrying us, we’re just showing up. We’re compelled enough to be present, the mysteries of the other more fascinating than the contents of our own minds.

He looked into my eyes a second longer than he normally does. Smiled.

The check came, but he didn’t flinch.

Listen to this episode.

Those might have been the first words that hooked me — the words in the title of this piece. They were written by Abigail, the writer of Happy Endings: a Substack about marriage. That’s right. Marriage. 

But once upon a time, Abigail was a relationship anarchist. Now, she’s a born-again monogamist writing about her fights, sex life, and normal everyday moments — rendered in achingly beautiful tenderness — with her husband Joe.  

“Fascinating,” I thought, scrolling post after post, a trail of clicked hearts in my wake. 

I get a kindred spirit feeling whenever I meet a woman like Abigail. A mid-life woman like me, who’s lived in both the marriage and family world, and (for lack of a better word) the alternative sex and relationships world. They’re not oil and water – I like to think the future of relationships could be a blend of both and some data suggests that – but it can feel vulnerable. A foot in each, a poseur in both. Stop me if you’ve ever asked yourself: am I actually traditional enough to be a wife and a mom? Am I actually brave enough to live and love outside the pre-fab templates? 

Am I weird for wanting both?

I know a handful of women (and have met more writing this Substack) who started their lives in the traditional wife-and-mom way, only to eventually feel frustrated that they couldn’t experience more connections. Monogamy may in fact be a tighter shoe for women than it is for men, though we’ve been taught to believe the opposite for decades.

But, now that sexual health research and primatology have more women in the field, science is looking rather more nuanced when it comes to gendered attitudes towards sex and connection.

Feminine promiscuity is common, not an exception to the rule. Females also make active decisions about reproduction, coupling, and resources. Sex fulfills functions that go beyond reproduction. And even among species with apparent masculine domination, feminine strategies can be determinants of reproductive success and social organization. 

–El Pais, “Darwinist feminism: Dismantling the myth of female sexual passivity”

It’s true. In this species, plenty of married, monogamous women secretly or openly want promiscuous sex. I promise you know one.

Maybe you are one. 

But it’s more rare when I meet a woman who’s gone in the opposite direction. Diving headfirst into non-monogamy, or any relationship structure that explicitly makes room for sexual variety, then settling down with a husband, kids soon after, the house, the preschool drop-offs, the snacks shaped like happy faces and stars.

I love reading Abigail’s Substack, because I yammer all the time about “conscious monogamy,” the idea that we try or at least consider without reflexive moral judgment all the various relationship models on the menu, before (if ever) landing on monogamy. The opposite of this — the thing most people my generation and above did, and continue to enact — is compulsory monogamy.

And compulsory monogamy is what Abigail did not do.  

But you know something? Relationship talk aside, Abigail is just a gorgeous writer.

I know. I’m sighing too.

Abigail works for Make Love Not Porn (shoutout Cindy Gallop!) and here is a quasi-NSFW link to MLNP. Once again, Abigail scrambles the mental picture of wife and mom by way of her job and I love that, I love it when a mom adores the hell out of her kids, adores sex for pleasure, adores helping people get more introspective on these fronts, the fronts of human connection, and embodies such a refreshing blend of female myths that we’re reminded things aren’t so binary. Truthfully, they never were. 

Enjoy this conversation between me and Abigail, then find a quiet place where you can treat yourself to Happy Endings. Or gorge, like I did.

1. Abigail, I think what strikes me most about your Substack is this: among mid-life women, there seems to be a big, giant split in the collective attitude towards monogamy – and even heterosexuality. And yet, your Substack feels different than either side of the split. 

On the one hand, we've got trad wives, Ballerina Farm (avatar for trad wifery), and a real longing – however performative – among some folks on the right for 1950s-style gender roles. Husband works, wife takes care of home and children. 

And then on the other side, we've got Miranda July’s All Fours, a slew of divorce memoirs by women, increasing discourse around non-monogamy, and what feels like much more fluid female sexuality. But Happy Endings, your Substack about being a born-again monogamist, defies both of these cultural flash points. It feels truly, actually subversive and I love reading it! Why did you start it? 

Well, this insight makes me feel right at home. Thank you for kicking this off here. I started Happy Endings for partly this reason. We (the universal one) talk about coupling styles. We talk about fucking styles. But love – the actual point of relationships, to me – isn’t as discussed.

I wanted to talk about love. Not in the Raymond Carver “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” way of pointing out the ways love has contradictory connotations in society. It does. But I wanted to talk about actual love.

Mostly because it’s what makes me happiest. I like writing. I like loving. Writing about love makes my life better. I was already writing about love, so in a personal challenge to make myself visible as a way to encourage myself to love myself more, I started publishing.

I did have a subversive goal, too, as I am a feminist activist at heart. I hope that if this spreads, we’ll see more love in the world – real love with compassion, understanding, and a willingness to overlook difference for the collective good, which improves life for everyone of all genders, in my opinion. 

Now, of course, as with trad wifery and divorce novels, what gets notoriety isn’t always representative of life, but of controversy. This project might be too tame for the algorithm, but I’m not writing for the robots anyways :)

2. I just finished reading "Hot Potatoes," which moved me terribly. The way you describe Joe, your conversation about potatoes, him rubbing your feet, you rubbing his hands...I'm tearing up a bit typing this question. Which is this: 

You used to be a relationship anarchist. Can you explain that term first for those unfamiliar? And second, can you explain why it was your preferred relationship vibe for a long time?

Relationship anarchy is a rejection of the traditional, normative style of loving where one’s partner is above other people they love. Instead, relationship anarchists consider all their relationships, no matter the conventional ‘importance,’ to be nonhierarchical. Their neighbor has equivalent value to their roommate to their sexual partner.

Before I discovered RA, I had just rebuilt my sense of self after a codependent relationship in which I tumbled head first into conventional expectation, and lost myself. That codependent relationship had been monogamous, but before and after, I’d been in nontraditional setups. So RA wasn’t totally new – it was just a step further, deeper, into unraveling tradition, for me. Which, I needed. I was worried I’d ‘cheat on myself’ – that I’d lose myself all over again in someone else’s story. Practicing RA altered my understanding of love, and helped me become a more conscious lover. I actually think about this life phase as a bit of a rumspringa – a chance to break free from the love doctrine I was raised within, build my understanding of the world in my own way, to then more consciously choose what really worked for me (which, as people do, can (and will) change). 

I really believe that living with this world view for a period of time is a lesson in respect and would benefit all of society. It was an unlearning of the individualist, family-above-community, American mindset. The majority of my time as a relationship anarchist was also spent living in Europe, in more collectivist countries. In Spain, in England, the greater cultural consideration of public good is expected. Interpersonally, I had friends with de-centered nuclear pairings, which helped me reframe how love could look. That’s where/when I met Joe, in London. He’d too had a codependent relationship before me, and we both, as I think you can tell in Hot Potatoes, understand how people can help each other in long-term, committed relationships but have a sense of dogged independence that I’m very grateful to be near.

As you and your readers know, commitment isn’t exclusive to monogamy, of course. I do believe love is an unlimited resource. But I’ve seen a lot of death in my life, and what that’s taught me is that time, unlike love, is exceedingly limited. And right now, I’m a parent to young children, so time is even more in demand. Monogamy is the only arrangement that makes sense for Joe and I right now. We’d discussed, before committing to each other, that since I am bisexual, I wanted to know if he was open to being open. We’d had what I like to call ‘the oral surgery of conversations’ to really go deep into our needs, preferences, insecurities, etc. I know, if I ever want to date women, we can have that chat again.

3. Most monogamy is compulsory: people do it because that's what they know. And it might be the best fit for them, in the end, but then again…maybe not. 

Enter conscious monogamy. You tried out several different ways of being in sexual and romantic connection, including your relationship with a married couple. As a result, you came to monogamy with Joe having already been in the alternative-relationship world. This might be difficult to answer and totally speculative, but what if you HADN'T had those earlier experiences when you met Joe? Do you think it would feel different being with him now, had your previous relationships all been more traditional? 

Definitely! If it wasn’t for my time learning love anew, I wouldn’t have had those important ‘we are choosing monogamy now’ conversations with Joe. I’d have followed the path of expectation — just becoming monogamous — without discussing my whole truth.

Now, I wouldn’t say everyone should have a love rumspringa. Some people don’t have the call to ‘explore’ or have first-hand lessons, even, right? But knowing myself, I’m sure that without the life I lived before Joe, I wouldn’t have shared my whole truth before choosing monogamy, and I wouldn’t feel the joy, ease, and gratitude I do now. I’d have resentments based on my own choice not to pursue life experiences I felt called to explore, and that would make me a less happy person.

That being said, I’m also glad I didn’t wait a day longer to begin my life with Joe and our family. This is my best of the best of the best. I’ve never felt such love – such depth – such joy. And, from my view of the distant future, I’m excited for what’s to come. Growing old, and whatnot. 

It’s funny, I suppose, but this is the dream I wasn’t brave enough to dream. The nontraditional life felt more accessible to me. It also felt safer to me. A conventional ‘happy ending’ seemed far-fetched. It scared me. But here we are. And as I said, I don’t think that if I’d had the life I’d had before, that this ‘happy ending’ would look happy.

4. Relatedly, you've got a whole post about becoming a born-again monogamist. Abigail, I love the concepts you're playing with here...control vs. vulnerability (specifically, the vulnerability of being all in), mind-rooted fuckers vs. body-rooted fuckers a la All Fours, and in the background of it all: monogamy vs. non-monogamy. 

But what I loved about this post most is that it didn't feel totally resolved to me? Social media encourages everyone to be didactic and expert-like, absolutist in their points of view, but what I got from your post was -- "I'm all in with Joe. AND I feel somewhat ambivalent about one dick, forever." 

AND you've got that line, "I trust that we’ll head where we need to go." Can you say more about that line? Did you mean something like, "if the time ever comes where openness feels right, we'll cross that bridge when we get there?" 

Well, I think certainty is foolish. I am a fool sometimes, but I do know people change, and relationships, being made of people, must too. I’ve seen path-altering growth and death. I know this love will shift, and that shift might be apart.

With that perspective, some might argue it’s foolish to marry at all, and foolish to share about your marriage online, but given we never know what's to come, stopping yourself from enjoying this moment in fear of the unknown future is equally foolish.

I like to relish life. Really soak it up. Writing about my marriage – an unreliable institution – helps me savour the moments in the marriage.

In the born-again monogamist piece, I talk about my control issues and how those manifest in commitment, for me. The day before our elopement, I did have the cliche’d “one dick forever” thought, and I worried, knowing what I know about change, that this wouldn’t be satisfying. But in letting that worry seep into my contented now, I would let the unknowing stop me from celebrating love.

And, given those oral surgery convo’s, I’m deeply aware of our true commitment – we’re willing to go through with the ‘tough’ things for each other – which tells me (more than our legal marriage) we can make it through future tough conversations with our vested interest in each other’s wellbeing.

So, yes, that was a winding answer. But, I believe certainty is silly. So how could I be certain monogamy will work for us forever? Or that we will last forever? And honestly, can I even expect Joe’s disinterest in extramarital dicks to last forever? (I do, of course. But still. We’ll see, right?)  

5. Moving out of relationships for a bit, you've got some insights on sex that I want to print on t-shirts and plaster on billboards. I loved this one from this post: "People's sexual interests are not as private as many would like to think. Sexuality is downstream of self. Naturally, it just takes a bit longer to notice your own self down the stream."

Can you say more about that?

Hahaha, I’d love some sexy Happy Endings merch. 

So, some people are highly intuitive, right? They can sense people’s feelings from their body language, or ‘vibe.’ I’ve had a knack, for as long as I can remember, to sense how people are sexually. That’s what I was briefly writing on in the paragraph of this quote.

Maybe I’m just picking up on vibes, bodies, expressions, communication styles, values, an understanding of archetypes, etc. Or, maybe it’s neuroscience. There’s something referred to as the ‘Four F’s’ – feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fucking – which are the basic survival functions all governed by the hypothalamus. It’s the animal brain. So fucking, or the instinct to fuck, is at the core of who we are. But then the amygdala processes arousal, emotional meaning, and other functions process pleasure. Then our higher brain, the cerebral cortex, overlays fantasy, social meaning, etc. Desire comes from below, but it’s narrated, edited, and sometimes censored from above. All of who we are interacts with our sexuality.

In this line about sexuality being downstream from self, and that it takes ourselves longer to notice, I’m referring to our own inability to see ourselves as clearly as others sometimes can. It has been more challenging for me to notice how my control issues have impacted my sex and love life than it was for my partners. For example, even my favorite sex positions have shifted with my seasons of self. Desire is a mirror.

6. You and I both work/worked for sexual health companies, I worked for Sex With Emily for four years and you work with Cindy Gallop of Make Love Not Porn. I'm a big Cindy fan and recommend her StyleLikeU interview to everyone I know (or at least everyone I know who would be open to it.) What's it been like working at MLNP? And can you describe the company and its mission?

I feel incredibly lucky to have a job that’s aligned so perfectly with my values of love, where every day I can say, What's the thing I could do that could genuinely make an impact, and then, do it. 

MakeLoveNotPorn (pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-knowing the difference) is a place to view and share real world sex – the sex everyone is really having, not scripted, not performative, but what real world people are enjoying. It’s changing people's lives – showing real intimacy, real world bodies, and the endlessly varied ways people have sex whilst living their real, messy, beautiful lives. You’ll find people navigating sex after birth, after divorce, through grief or chronic pain. And mirroring back those experiences to others experiencing the same. It’s real. It’s revolutionary.

Plus, I get to work for an icon. Like I said, I feel lucky.

But the industry is a challenging one – we’re underfunded, we undergo censorship. It’s a scrappy, small team with a lot of barriers. But I like a challenge. So it’s fun for me :) 

7. Getting back into monogamy and your relationship with Joe (and your kids together), your last post on dancing really got me thinking. You said: "There’s this feeling when you’ve let go of your mind enough to let your body breathe. And then you start breathing. Really, actually breathing, not that surface level shit we do to get by while we’re living in our mind...Dancing with Joe always cracks me out of my mental bullshit and brings butterflies back to my body." THIS SPOKE TO ME. 

We're in a dance drought right now as a culture, but maybe the flip side is we're in a thinking-surplus. And it's killing our eroticism. Does dancing with Joe get you back to that body-rooted-fucker state, to borrow the All Fours frame one more time?

Yes, I think Western society has a control problem. It takes one to know one, maybe ;) The mind and body were never meant to be separate. But we’ve overvalued thought to the point we forgot how to feel.

Dancing helps bring me back into my body, yes. And being in my body brings that body-rooted fucker state, which makes for much better sex. We also wrestle occasionally. That’s truly a blast, and always ends sexy. But it’s a regular practice. Movement is one way to do it, but stillness is another. Now that I’ve become aware of my tendency to get stuck in intellectualizing, and have found and practiced my preferred modes for coming back to myself, it is easier to snap back. 

Joe helps, too. He’s so balanced. Joe’s the smartest person I know, and he’s incredibly body rooted. Aptitude is genetic, obviously, but I don’t think he’d reach his potential if he weren’t so balanced. Being in our bodies makes us smarter than staying in our minds ever could. So, even though society is mind-focused, it doesn’t make us smarter. I think we can see that, too. 

8. You're clearly not just passionate about Joe, but passionate about connection -- so it doesn't surprise me that parenting is very important to you. This might be an out-there question, but do you think alternative relationships informed your approach to parenting in any way? 

This is a good question. It isn’t something I’d considered until now. But, yes, of course, my alt relationship past has informed my parenting. 

Every part of my history has shaped my parenting. Like, I weirdly think my sales job was very useful both in the reframing of the mundane as positive, and in my ability to notice the communication styles that best suit other people. 

My previous alternative relationships, and my time unlearning normative love, have taught me that love is a choice. I don’t expect my children to love me, but I hope they do. So I work every day to show them that I love them, and hope we’re cultivating a love that will last. Not through the force of blood, but chosen devotion.

9. Lightning round questions:

--Last sexy show/movie you watched?

The last show/movie I watched that truly moved me with its sexiness was The Handmaiden. Park Chan-wook’s 2016 thriller/romance. 

--Favorite current sex position? (I just read our post on The Mermaid)

Hahaha, right now my body desperately wants to get pregnant (though we’re trying not to), so my favorite positions are super skin-to-skin chest-to-chest missionary-adjacent with a dream of the forbidden cream pie.

--Best piece of fan-mail / feedback / comment you've ever gotten on Happy Endings?

Gosh, I’m a fan of so many quotes. I have a folder in my phone that I save them in in case I ever need a pep talk. I think my favorite is “[Happy Endings is] like a chill party that after you leave, you say I enjoyed the people I met and want to hang out with them again.” because it was one of those moments where I felt genuinely surprised. If I think about what I’m most proud of in life, it’s usually what I never dreamed I would have (circle that back up to earlier questions, eh?). 

--What does Joe think of Happy Endings? 
Joe likes it. He sees how it’s serving my artistry, and he feels it’s good for our relationship because it brings things “under” the table to the surface. Joe’s so comfortable with his sexuality that he’s confused when people wonder how/why he’s alright with Happy Endings. He assumes everyone knows we have a great sex life just by looking at us.

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Listen to this episode.

I got into a little sex-scenes-in-literature debate with Liza Libes last week at Republic of Letters, and – honestly? Had a fun time. 

Liza was a good sport, and while we have wildly different opinions on the subject, I enjoy intellectual sparring almost as much as I enjoy good sex writing. And, good sex. 

But the comments section on both pieces (mine, hers) made me want to write a follow-up piece on kink. See, I represented the pro side of sex in literature, when it makes sense for the characters and story. I did however venture out of a purely craft argument into my own version of a moral argument, which is that literature can normalize kink and sexual self-awareness. 

Now…I’ll be honest (I can’t be anything else): my piece would have been stronger had I stuck to craft only. But, bygones: like sands through the hourglass, so are the opinions of Internet writers, and because I’ve been so busy IRL I relished the comment convo. It pulled me back into the marketplace of Substack ideas, which I hope lasts as long as possible. It’s a rich environment right now, not too big or too small, a party where you can pull away to the couch with a new friend and say “so you’re ALSO into autofiction?” and they say “YES” and soon four-five autofiction nerds are on the couch with you trading numbers and next thing you know you’ve got a group chat titled 📚🔥Auto Sluts🫦📚 and a summer reading list. Fucking great. 

But I digress: here’s what some of the commenters said about my normalizing-kink-and-sexual-self-awareness point. I’m excerpting these comments to keep this essay readable, but their whole, contextual comments and thoughts can be found here on Liza’s piece: 

One last note on "normalizing kink." Let me say first that people may do what they please as long as they go into it with their eyes open and it is their free choice. However, I think that normalizing kink is not the way to go. Let it be divergent, and let there be "normal." The real goal should not be to normalize kink but to stop valorizing normal.

I think if you "normalize kink," you really destroy it. If your view of sex is that everyone needs to walk around with a list of kinks in their head ("sexual self-awareness"), and sex is verbally exchanging kinks with your partner and carrying them out, well, that sounds pretty algorithmic to me. 

Sorry, I entirely agree that the harmful, misogynistic and degrading portrayals of sex in books, films and TV is harmful. If you and your man want sadistic acts in your sexual encounters that’s fine, beatings, extreme use of implements in the sexual organs, binding and humiliating behaviours, that’s ok if it’s in private. When you begin normalising these behaviours and listing them as a genuine mainstream part of everyday sexual encounters it is not good.

These comments inspired this very essay, and you know…they’ve got range. 

But they also made me want to dive deeper here into the sexual self-awareness aspect of my argument, and how that informs your kink. 

To me, that’s infinitely more important than acts or props. To me, that’s where kink begins. To me, this is how we stop disappearing when we have sex, even though you don’t have to be stereotypically “kinky” to be sexually present. 

Because kink is also a state of mind. So I think it’s worth venturing into the deep end–the emotional side, the EQ side–because acts glide on the surface. The real stuff is underneath.    

The Textbook Definition of Kink

…is vague, because it requires a collective agreement of convention. And sexual conventions are always shifting. 

So when someone says, “kink is anything outside of conventional sex,” it requires you–the subject–to conjure an image of that very thing. The definition isn’t wrong, but it’s also highly subjective. Sixty years ago, oral sex probably wasn’t conventional. Thirty years ago, being queer and out wasn’t conventional. Ten years ago, “yes Daddy” wasn’t conventional. All of these things might be peak-normal to you now, or, still a little exotic. My point is: transgressive sex feels private, but it gets its frisson from gently breaking public agreements. We are culture, culture is us: no way to escape the matrix.

Still. I worked at a sex podcast for four years, enough to know what people usually mean when they call themselves vanilla. I do not say that in a patronizing way: some of my personally hottest sex has been vanilla, with a little finger-sucking thrown in because I like it. (More on this later.) But vanilla (/conventional) sex is usually shorthand for a specific, hetero sex script, which goes:

• Foreplay

• Oral

• Penetration 

The last step is where resentment can build, because it’s often penetration until he–the cis male partner–comes. The script is still a little patriarchal, which should surprise no one. 

Tangent incoming: orgasms aren’t the point of sex. But people with clitorises enjoy orgasms just as much as people with penises. And speaking of convention, sex toys in bed are still considered—I think—a little edgy (kinky?) for the general public. Which is a shame, since clitoral nerve endings are tucked deep inside the body: a toy’s vibrations simply reach in further to stimulate them. No knock on a partner’s penis, tongue, or fingers, people with a clitoris just need that subterranean depth. Not always (we’re all different), but often. Sex toys: forever teammates, never competition. Also: this is why it’s healthy to question sexual convention. 

Truth? I think the conventional/vanilla/hetero sex script remains useful, because we all need a place to start. But it’s also easy to disappear inside of. To check out, to sub in an imitation you, while the real you goes elsewhere. Fantasy? Resigned patience? Masturbating, but with another person’s body? Sounds dark, I know. But when the commenter above said “The real goal should not be to normalize kink but to stop valorizing normal,” this is what I thought about.  

Normal sex can flatten your complexity, if you let it. You don’t have to. But this is why I think kink can be better understood as sexual self-awareness, rather than a set of freaky sex acts. You don’t have to engage in the extreme use of implements in the sexual organs (my last time was a cervical exam at my OB-GYN’s), unless you’re into that. You don’t have to suck fingers, unless you’re into that. 

The keyword is “you.” “That” comes later. 

Kink is Play, Kink is the Subconscious 

I was talking to my friend Kelly about this over the weekend. Kelly, like me, is a former performer in a sex positive storytelling show here in Austin, and we were driving away from the most delicious, rainbow-filled sunset—incidentally at the birthday party of the woman who co-founded the show.

I was telling Kelly about my debate with Liza, and about how I wanted to write about kink, but felt a little nervous. I’m not a kink expert. 

“I think if someone tells you they’re a kink expert, run in the opposite direction,” Kelly said. “Because it’s play, and like, how weird would it be to call yourself an expert on play?”

Kelly knows what’s up. Self-professed kink expertise is cause for suspicion. Anyone can look up shibari knots on the Internet, but not everyone is good at trust-building. Or reading the room. Or being introspective. 

Or—and I feel like this is the most important ingredient of kink—having enough conscious self-acceptance that your subconscious begins to emerge in tiny flashes. Nearly imperceptible, you might have to squint. At what?

Fears. The ones tucked inside your deep shadow, animal self. Or: emotional hot spots. Things that feel shockingly good, but also things that feel too weird to talk about in public. Why do you think “good girl” is so Internet meme-y right now? Yes, it’s in pop culture, but also yes, a huge swath of us want to be praised like we’re children. And like, how the fuck do you talk about that at brunch? Church? “When he says good girl, you’re so slutty for me in just the right voice, it reminds me of getting a gold star for my painting of the Alamo in second grade?” How many of us can make that conscious leap?

We can’t. But our subconscious can send up flares. It can toss memory and emotion into a shaker and serve it smooth, a balanced cocktail. But it’s a thousand times easier to taste your subconscious in a state of play. And play is hard for most adults. 

It can also feel uncomfortable to talk about child-like anything when we talk about sex—sure. But the most emotionally mature people I know intuitively understand that even if you’re 43, your younger selves are still in there. I am 43, but I’m also 5, missing my parents at kindergarten. I’m also 12, wondering if I’m pretty. I’m also 18, amazed a teacher is taking my mind seriously, maybe for the first time. I’m a kaleidoscope, as are you, because the subconscious composts memory. It never really disposes of it. 

Kink is Presence, Kink is Going There

Speaking of things that are hard for adults (including me): kink is the ability to tune into someone. Feel for their insides. 

Most of us walk around with devices designed to shatter our attention spans—it’s more countercultural to not have a smartphone than it is to be kinky. Which is why attention, when you really feel it, or at least when I really feel it, feels as satisfying as sex itself. 

I’ve told a handful of people in my life that conversation and sex exist on the same attentional spectrum for me, separated only by degrees. This is where vanilla sex can get you into trouble, because it’s so easy to loan out your body while your soul floats elsewhere. Same with talking, but the other person isn’t really listening. So fucking annoying, right? 

I live for the click. For the nodding and mirroring, the eye contact, the felt sense of getting it…all that stuff. I like to lock in HARD, to match frequencies in the conversation or the sex. I realize this is getting rather woo, but hear me out, and let’s take the opposite. Do you too clock it when someone looks at you like a cardboard cut-out? Isn’t it the actual worst? To not get the click, to get the absent nodding instead…? Repulsive. Worse than bad EQ, it feels dehumanizing. It feels like: why am I even here? Here’s the cardboard cut-out, you two have fun. 

Let me make this more literal. I say “kink is presence” because when you go off-script, sexually-speaking, you have to pay attention. And it’s vulnerable to go off-script. You’re doing improv. This is why trust is the foundation of kink, and why kinky people talk about safety / consent / negotiation so much, because without trust, you can get well and truly hurt. Physically of course, but also emotionally. 

Like, imagine if someone spanked you, but you weren’t totally prepared for it. Your body would seize up. Now, imagine if you whispered something a little unusual in their ear, a little edgy, “I worship your pussy” or something, and your partner…snickered. Laughed. Your heart would seize up. And how deflating that would feel, how disappointing, that they couldn’t go there with you. 

I had dinner with my friend Micah last night that tied these thoughts up in a bow. Because ultimately, the ability to go there with each other IS the submerged iceberg of it all. 

Kink is Alchemical, Kink is Who You Really Are

“I’m not trying to shed my trauma, I want to become friends with it,” Micah said, turning his hands into friends while he said it. I asked him to riff on kink, and he explained how we all have darkness. The goal isn’t elimination, but integration. 

“Trauma, darkness, the shit you don’t want to face because you were taught not to, that is what kink can help you with,” Micah said. “Your darkness is just YOU and that’s ok.”

“Kink is a portal to self-acceptance!” I said, really feeling where he was going with all this. “It’s like the further you move from external sex scripts, the more you get to your internals, where all your real stuff lives.” Loud high-fives. 

I wish you could have been in this bar while Micah and I were in this state of conversational ecstasy, because it wasn’t just high-minded sex nerd shit—Micah told me a couple of amazing stories of what this actually looks like in practice.

“I get jealous, yeah? I’ll never get rid of it. But one time I was with my partner at a play party, and her other partner was also there, and at a certain point I saw them cuddled up on the couch. And I walked over to them, and was like, guys I am feeling so much jealousy right now. Seeing you two like this is bringing up all this negative shit in me. So I was wondering if I could just…lay down beside y’all?”

They said yes. So he did.

“And the jealousy fucking washed through me yo,” he said. “People think jealousy is a bad emotion, it’s not! You can be FRIENDS” (hand-friend-shape) “with your jealousy, and use it for kink. It’s really just about being honest and not denying any part of you. You can work with whatever you have in there and turn it into connection. With other people and also with yourself.” 

“Kink is alchemical!” I said. More high-fives, I’m sure the neighboring table thought we were insane. 

Of all the friends I talked to for this essay, Micah had the most overtly positive attitude toward negativity itself, and how that can fuel kink for healing. Probably because Micah doesn’t live with regret. 

“I mean I’m trans, right? And even I voted Republican once. We all do fucked up things! Like make mistakes and move on homie,” said Micah. “I’ve had jealousy come into my kinky sex, hate come into my kinky sex, and we just transform it together. Kink is less about sex than it is about honesty.”  

Micah walked me to my car, we took selfies, hugged in that tight, loved-up way. I came home and told Ross, my husband, all about the conversation. I suck his fingers often during sex, and I’m not even sure why. I did not do this when we first met, 20 years ago. There was so much about bodies that still freaked me out back then. We’ve both changed a lot over the past two decades, and sure, you could point to obvious signs of our evolving kink dynamic: the finger thing, the restraints we sometimes play with, an extra full-length mirror we occasionally drag in. But really, all that stuff is just an outcome of us learning to become more honest with each other. More self-accepting. 

And I think that commenter is right, in a way, that walking around with a list of kinks in your head could get algorithmic. Nothing more than tags on a Feeld profile. But I still think there’s beauty in doing one’s own sexual self-exploration, which often, inevitably leads you to slightly kinky lands.

To the people and communities that can extend a gentle hand and say, “hey! You in there? Who are you really? Can I get to know you? Here are my fingers. Want to suck them?”   

As a matter of fact, I do.

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Listen to this episode.

A few weeks ago sitting in my driveway, I got an email from my submission form.

“Hi there! Soooooo I’m a non-monogamous mom” it began, and off the radio went. Terry Gross could wait.

“Since I’m divorced, it plays out differently for me,” she wrote. “Forgive me, but when I read about non-monogamy and non-monogamous moms it’s nearly always from the couple’s point of view.”

Truth! I thought. Somebody somewhere was listening to Billie Eilish chuckle with Terry. But alone in my car: the nuances of polyamory discourse. Like being at a bookstore with the hum of commerce and conversation, then someone’s voice breaks through and instantly, you agree with what they are saying. “Cats exist in all seven dimensions, you know that right?” I overheard recently, at a bookstore, and while not addressed to me — I nodded. Truth. It continued:

“This results in the non-Primary partners feeling resentful, and like we’re a vehicle for the Primary relationship to grow stronger- like we don’t have merit of our own.”

How fast can you hit reply to an email?

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I started interviewing non-monogamous moms a year ago because I was curious about their lives, curious how it all started for them, curious about their conversations with their partners. I wanted to know things like: who broached it first, you or your partner? Did you tell your kid(s)? Was it scary, the first time you had sex with someone else? Awesome? How “out” are you? Do people judge? Do you care?

You can see even in the way I framed questions that I too was coming at this largely from a couples’ point of view. And indeed, that is who I attracted. I interviewed five non-monogamous mothers, all coupled, all having opened up their marriages. Here’s what I asked (watch this, Terry):

“When you opened, did you have someone in mind you wanted to date?” (Jen’s story)

“Was it an adjustment for your relationship for you to date other men, in addition to women?” (Tanya’s story)

“Do you interact with your husband's partners, and vice versa?” (Molly’s story)

I hadn’t gotten the opportunity (until now!) to talk to a single, non-coupled, non-monogamous mom. “Thanks for making space for these conversations. -Amy” her email ended.

Reply window, cursor blinking, “would you be up for an interview?”

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Like all my interviews, Amy and I talked on Zoom, and the Q&A below echoes the stuff we were talking about. Speaking only for myself: this was such a cool conversation to have right now, at this very moment. It’s very moving to me when people find liberation inside their own minds, one place laws can never reach. And when I say “liberation,” I don’t mean being liberated from monogamy or from marriage (although in Amy’s case, she did both). I mean liberation from life scripts that seem so intractable you can’t imagine alternatives, they function as reliably as gravity or the sky, but then one day the sky tears open to reveal a completely different color and quality. You’re going, wait…hang on…is that — pink glitter??

Amy found her pink glitter sky after she divorced. She found non-monogamy yes, but she also found a huge love for her friends, refined discernment in who gets her time and attention, and – though I suspect she was already on her way here – an exit ramp off binary thinking.

“The future is fluidity” she said on our Zoom, and besides the fact that that would make a fucking great t-shirt, it’s a call to action for self-awareness. To slosh around in introspection. If relationship structures were truly fluid, gender truly fluid, and desire truly fluid (lol three good reasons to paywall this), that might feel destabilizing to you – or – it might feel kind of imaginative and neat.

For example. Desire. I truly used to think that the sole pleasure of sex, as a woman, was simply in being wanted. Wanted very badly. Being the object. I really thought this.

It wasn’t until I stumbled into more queer spaces frankly that my programming started to change. With the prey/predator dynamics of hetero dating in absentia, new vistas of desire started appearing inside me, surprising me. Watching other people kiss: hot. Watching shibari: hot. Watching my partner play drums, which he has always done, but lately I can’t get enough of it, a full-on erotic sound bath while he plays along to Doja Cat or whatever: super fucking hot.

“Watch” is the keyword here, and I don’t mean to imply that I suddenly became a voyeur (although not not saying that) or that I don’t enjoy being beheld by certain people (depends on the person, but yeah, of course). More that, about a decade ago, I started regaining command over my own eyeballs and imagination, after decades of seeing myself through the eyes of others. Feeling their eyeballs, assuming that as someone attracted to masculine energy this whole dance was kind of one-way, and that was that. Turns out — no — that’s absolutely not the case, and female pleasure = solely being desired was just a pill I swallowed without reading the label. Fuck being watched, I’m watching you! (Still workshopping this t-shirt.)

Enjoy this conversation with Amy and her endearing love of exclamation marks, and if you know a person who’d love this but can’t afford the paywall, DM me and we’ll make it work. The future is fluidity, cats exist in all seven dimensions, liberation starts in the mind. Let’s go:

1. Thanks so much for writing to my submission form first of all, and telling me your experience in non-monogamy. Let’s ground this conversation in a few biographical particulars. How did you enter the world of non-monogamy?

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This is one of those topics where I feel one of two things.

Either everyone already knows and I have been living under a large rock, or no one knows, and I’m bringing you shocking, new information. 

But I’ve settled on a third thing: that you’ve probably heard rumors. 

Unconfirmed of course, because who can confirm …

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By now, it is abundantly clear that I have a preoccupation with non-monogamous moms. 

I think moms are interesting in general, because I am one. So I relate. Relate to what? To every mom’s internal wrestle. We are all the time asking ourselves, is this something a good mom would do? 

And by “this,” I mean any action that falls outsid…

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“I’m thinking about getting back in the saddle with this guy, but I’m scared because it’s been 3 years.”

That was my friend Katie, texting me last Friday. “This is delighting me,” I replied, which was true. Love it when I get a juicy morsel like this. 

She wanted to clarify the locus of her nerves though. Explain where she was confide…

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The last time I fainted and fell straight to the ground, I was with my boss Emily.

I had just shown her a video on my phone, a documentary short called Sweet Sweet Kink: A Collection of BSDM Stories by my friend Maggie Bailey. 

When it ended, I rose to stand, murmuring “wasn’t that great…?” The s…

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Like so many good relationships these days, mine with Jen Salerno began online.

When I kicked off this non-monogamous moms series last November, it wasn’t long before Jen reached out. She wrote something simple and kind on my Submit Here Instagram, after I interviewed Tanya, my first Q&A.

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I spot it almost immediately. A gem among Target rejects. Sky blue and long-sleeved, it’s got white stripes, a loose fit, and an uncanny similarity to my mom’s wardrobe in the ‘80s. There’s even a little breast pocket, a detail that reminds me as much of my mom and how she dressed back then as her old tinted eyeglasses. I loved those glasses. I cried wh…

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A couple of weeks ago, I performed my first strip tease. In public. While wearing a Michael Myers mask. Sure, we can pause a moment to take that in. 

It was for an Edgar Allan Poe-themed show at a bar in downtown Austin, and peeking out my mask’s eye holes, I saw people from various chapter…

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