jealousy

4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Jealous of Your Partner’s Sex Toy(s)

Kate Sloan

Having written about sex toys for as long as I have, one of the most common complaints I hear from readers about toys is that they’re nervous their partner will react poorly to them. Either they already know their partner has a bad attitude about toys because of previous conversations they’ve had, or they just have a sinking feeling about it, and are therefore hesitant to incorporate their favorite pleasurable gizmo(s) into sex.

I also sometimes receive questions from the jealous partner themselves, wondering why they’re experiencing such irrational jealousy and resentment about their sweetheart’s Fleshlight or realistic dildo. After all, a lot of times, when we feel intense distress about someone else’s otherwise harmless choice, it has to do with underlying emotional issues that we may or may not be aware of – and when we’re not aware of them, it can seem like there’s nothing we can do about them.

With that in mind, here are 4 reasons you shouldn’t be jealous of your partner’s sex toy…

 

You bring so much more to the table than a dildo or stroker!

It might sound obvious, but it’s true: you are a human being, and so you are automatically capable of doing many, many, MANY things that sex toys alone cannot do! And I say this as someone who is, obviously, a huge fan of sex toys. They can’t whisper cute/hot things in my ear. They can’t remember what I like and do more of it (seriously, even the A.I.-influenced toys that claim to be able to do this are nowhere near human-level good at it). They can’t tap into the fantasies and archetypes that turn me on and play those out with me. They can’t replace the feeling of a warm, soft, touchable person in bed next to me. They can’t make me laugh, or hold me when I cry.

If you truly believe that a sex toy has the ability to replace you or upstage you, I would (lovingly) invite you to consider that you might have some self-esteem issues that are worth working on, so you can be happier in and out of the bedroom. (More on that in the last point on this list.)

 

You can use sex toys with/on your partner!

Toys are just tools. As the classic analogy goes: if you use a hammer to build a house, it wasn’t the hammer that built the house, it was you! And by the same token, if you give your partner pleasure and/or orgasms with toys, it was still you who did that. You just used a tool to do it – and using tools and technology is quite literally part of what makes us human, part of what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. You wouldn’t consider yourself a failure for needing to wear bifocals, or for cooking on a gas range instead of over an open fire, and for the same exact reason, you shouldn’t consider yourself inadequate for incorporating sex toys into sex.

Besides which, using sex toys together can be a really fun adventure, and a way to infuse some novelty and variety into your sex life.

 

Pleasure is a good thing!

You want your partner to experience pleasure, right? Because you like them (maybe even love them) and want them to be happy? And it’s very likely they want the same for you.

More pleasure is a good thing, period. Sex is (for most of us) primarily about pleasure and intimacy. Sex toys can help you in your pursuit of those goals.

If you find that maintaining a sense of yourself as sexually indispensable is more important to you than your partner’s pleasure, well… I think that’s worth examining.

 

Slapping a Band-Aid on your insecurities isn’t the same thing as addressing/healing them

I’ve learned this in so many different areas of life. Our fickle human brains like to come up with “logical” solutions to emotional problems. This is why, for example, some monogamous straight people will insist that their partner “can’t” have any friends of the “opposite sex,” because to do so is perceived as a threat to the relationship even when it’s obviously not. These people are trying to “legislate away their feelings” through rules and “boundaries,” in the same way that a person might “forbid” their partner to use sex toys in order to avoid facing the insecurities and anxieties that sex toy usage might bring up for them.

What I have learned is that you cannot outrun or “logic away” these issues. They will keep coming up, in various different forms, until and unless you face them and heal them. And when the issues in question are related to your partner’s rights and freedoms, oftentimes they will manifest in very problematic and perhaps even abusive ways.

The fact is, you don’t get to impose coercive rules on your partner just because you are insecure and anxious. Your partner may want to help you with your insecurities and anxieties, which would be very nice of them, but they are not obligated to, especially if the “help” you are requesting amounts to them making their life smaller, less joyful, and worse just to appease you.

But here’s the really important point – and I say this with love: you will be happier if you address your issues head-on, rather than trying to re-route your discomfort onto someone else. Whether through therapy, journaling, cognitive-behavioral exercises, Internal Family Systems exercises (which have helped me enormously with my insecurities and abandonment anxieties), or any other method of investigative self-reflection, it’s important to figure out what you’re so afraid of, why you’re afraid of it, and whether your fears have any basis in your current reality. More often than not, these types are fears are founded on false beliefs you’ve picked up from past experiences and/or cultural influences, and you don’t need that shit floating around in your brain – it’ll only cause you pain, and cause your partner(s) pain by proxy.

You deserve to live a life of happiness and pleasure, and so does your partner. And that’ll be much easier to achieve once you truly believe, in your very bones, that you are worthy, you are enough, and you have more to offer than a phallic piece of silicone.

 

This post contains sponsored links. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Do Dildos Feel Better Than Dicks?

Kate Sloan

There are many annoying questions I face on a regular basis as a result of being a sex toy reviewer. One of them is, “So you just get paid to masturbate all day?” (Hahahaha, no.) Another is, “And your spouse is okay with that?!” (Um, yes; it’s part of why they married me!) But that second question is usually just a precursor to a third, even more irritating question: “So what’s better – a dildo or a human dick?”

Trust me when I say that this is like asking if a cold bottled Coke is more delicious than a hand-mixed cocktail, or like asking if I’d rather watch a movie cozied up at home with loved ones or tilted back in my chair at an IMAX theatre, or like asking if I’d prefer to see Shakespeare in the park featuring local actors or Shakespeare performed in a high-budget movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Which is to say… there is (for me at least) no clear, definitive answer, because comparing the two in the first place is an erroneous thing to do. They are simply not comparable. Each exists to address a particular mood, or need, or whim. I wouldn’t say it’s a choice between “apples and oranges,” exactly; it’s more like the choice between a fresh juicy apple pulled straight off the tree or a simmered and spiced apple crumble prepared by a skilled chef. It really just depends on what you’re craving.

Dildos can hit some spots dicks can hit, and some spots they cannot. Dicks are warm by default, unless you’re dating a vampire; sex toys are not, though you can pre-warm them if you want to. Humans can cuddle you, talk dirty to you, make you feel loved and appreciated; dildos simply can’t. You wouldn’t ask a human being to punch a nail into a plank with their bare fist; you’d use a hammer. Likewise, you wouldn’t use a hammer to play the piano (I fucking hope); you’d ask a human, one with graceful fingers and a musical mind, to play instead. Hammers and humans do not have the same skillset, and neither do dildos and dicks. It’s a fool’s errand to expect one to be able to do all the things the other is capable of.

I’ll say, too, that this question – “Are dildos better than dicks?” – is posed almost exclusively by people who apparently haven’t realized you can combine sex toys with human penises. Sex toys are still too often framed in mainstream sexual discourse as something a person (typically a cisgender, heterosexual woman) uses alone, often as a direct result of finding human sexual partners unsatisfactory or unattainable.

But this just has not been my experience of sexuality at any point in my life, whether I’ve been fucking men, women, nonbinary people, or some combination thereof. I’m deeply turned off by people who find sex toys threatening or distasteful, so the people I end up sexually entangled with are usually quite enthusiastic about incorporating toys into our play, particularly since I have so many of them. I would say sex toys are a part of literally about 98-99% of the sex I have these days – and rather than ever being a replacement for a partner, they tend to supplement and complement a partner’s skills, making touch more pleasurable and orgasm more attainable.

In every case, my partner is still present and engaged in what we’re doing together, so it would be inaccurate to say that the toy gave me an orgasm when in fact it was the toy in my partner’s hand that did so – or the toy in my own hand while my partner provided the psychological context that enabled me to get off. In many cases it doesn’t even matter if the toy is automated, as with vibrators with pulsing patterns, pressure-wave toys that suck my clit in rhythmic waves, or thrusting dildos like these ones; it was still my partner’s presence that made the sensations hot in a different way than they are when I’m alone, and so it was inherently a partnered experience even if my partner played a role closer to narrator or observer than direct participant.

My inboxes and DMs will probably always abound with messages from people who envy their partner’s toy(s), and people who resent their partner’s toy envy. While it’s tempting for me to tell the latter type of person to “dump the motherfucker already” because toxic views of sex toys are a red flag in my mind, I know that not everyone feels that way, and some people are willing to put in the work to help a partner become comfortable with toy usage. For those people, my advice would be:

  1. Emphasize what your partner brings to the table. Make it clear to them that they are providing value that goes above and beyond (or is simply different than) what a toy can offer.
  2. Emphasize, too, your own pleasure and how much you desire it. Presumably one of the things your partner finds hot about fucking you is seeing/hearing/feeling you experience pleasure, and toys can amp that up. (If they’re not that interested in your pleasure, well, maybe they’re not a good person for you to be sleeping with.)
  3. Maybe don’t skip straight to huge, hyper-realistic dildos if your partner is sensitive about their dick size or prowess. Small toys might be easier for those folks to handle initially. (But also, your preferences matter here too, so if you’re all about huge dildos, don’t let a partner shame you out of that perfectly valid desire.)

My hope is that toys will someday be so utterly un-taboo that they will easily become part of the sex lives of anyone who wants to use them. We’re not quite there yet, not only for the reasons outlined in this post but also for cost reasons, health and safety reasons, geographic access reasons, and more – but I’m holding out hope for shame-free, pleasurable, technologically-enhanced sexuality for all who desire it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

2 Psychological Tricks For Conquering Hard Feelings in Polyamory

Kate Sloan

I’m a psychology nerd. I minored in psych at university, and have seen various therapists over the course of my life to help pick apart my tangled psyche. After all this exploration, two of my favorite psychological frameworks are dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

I’ve found these methodologies especially useful in dealing with difficult polyamory-related emotions lately, so I thought I’d write a bit about the two key strategies I use when those feelings rear their head.

Emotion regulation through opposite action

DBT teaches us that when you’re feeling an emotion that’s irrational (i.e. it doesn’t fit the facts of the situation you’re in), you should do the opposite of whatever that emotion is telling you to do.

I find this helpful in polyamory because my most difficult poly feelings are, frankly, irrational. Fears that my partner will leave me for someone else, that him dating someone else means I’m unattractive, or that I’m being rejected – these all go against the higher-level decision I’ve made to be polyamorous, based on my ethics and ideas about relationships. These fears are holdovers from the monogamous culture I was raised in, and they neither make sense nor serve me now that I’m practicing polyamory. So it’s often helpful to do the opposite of what the irrational feelings are telling me to do.

Some examples:

  • When my partner is out on a date with someone else, a feeling of betrayal or rejection might come up, and it might make me want to push him away or say something mean to him. I could do the opposite action by writing him a love letter to show him later, mentally reviewing some of my most romantic memories with him, or texting to say “Have a good time!”
  • When my partner is infatuated with someone new, it might make me feel rejected and alone, especially if I’m not dating anyone else at the time. The emotion might tell me to self-isolate, stay home, and cry – so I can do the opposite action by making plans with friends, taking myself out to a restaurant, or watching a stand-up comedy special on Netflix.
  • When hanging out with a metamour, I might feel inferior or anxious, and it might make me want to avoid interacting with them. I can do the opposite action by striking up a conversation with them, being nice to them, and looking for their likeable qualities.

These “opposite actions” can often feel totally artificial, and it can seem counterproductive to do the opposite of what an emotion is telling you to do, without actually dealing with the emotion. But in my experience, a “fake it til you make it” approach can actually be really helpful with these types of feelings. If I find that being nice to my partner when I feel rejected creates an equally good or better result than not being nice, I’ll be likelier to want to be nice to him the next time that feeling comes up. It’s a way of teaching my brain the appropriate responses to these situations, and learning to trust that positive and proactive action is good for me.

Refuting your own thoughts

CBT offers us the technique of making “thought records”: you write down a situation to which you had a strong reaction, identify the emotion(s) it triggered, determine the thoughts or beliefs you have that are related to that emotion, and then look for evidence for or against those emotionally-charged thoughts or beliefs.

You don’t have to actually write out a worksheet every time if you don’t want to; you can do an abridged version of this process mentally. When I have a strong, irrational feeling, I look for the thoughts and beliefs supporting that feeling, and look for evidence for or against those beliefs. There’s always more evidence against them, because they’re irrational.

Some examples:

  • If my partner is on a date with someone else and I get sad and scared that he’s going to leave me for that person, I can review text screenshots, love letters, etc. to remind myself that he’s committed to me for the long haul. (It’s often helpful to collect these positive reminders in one place, like a box on your desk or a folder on your phone, so you can look at them when you need them.)
  • If I’m worried that my partner’s new crush means he’s not attracted to me (or has perhaps never been attracted to me), I can review old messages that dispute this, look at my sex spreadsheet to see all the times we’ve fucked, and mentally revisit the look in his eyes when he sees me naked.
  • If I’m worried that my partner’s new relationship will prevent him from spending enough time with me, I can remind myself of other times he’s juggled multiple relationships before and how well he did it. I can also reach out to gather evidence against this belief directly from him (e.g. “Can you promise me we’ll still have at least 2 dates a week?”).

If you encounter evidence supporting your irrational belief (e.g. “A partner left me for someone else in my previous relationship”; “My partner has seemed less attracted to me lately”), I would strongly recommend bringing up that stuff with your partner(s) so they can offer some kind of refutation or explanation. It will put your mind at ease and is much better than obsessively ruminating on these thoughts by yourself.

Do you use CBT and/or DBT skills to support your relationship(s)? I’d love to hear about it!

Sex Sells, Part 3: Being a Sugar Baby

Kate Sloan

This week’s mini blog series on my sex work experiences is coming to an end. For this instalment, I’ve partnered with Rachaels London Escorts to tell you a story I’ve never really opened up about in detail before: that time I was a sugar baby for a little while.

I used to dream of having a sugar daddy who would buy me lingerie and handbags and luxury sex toys. I mean, who hasn’t had some version of this fantasy at one time or another? Though I played around on SeekingArrangement (the best-known “sugar dating” site) and mentally mapped out how I’d spend a generous benefactor’s money, I didn’t think I’d ever actually have a sugar daddy; men with the means and desire for this type of relationship are usually inundated with fit blonde conventional beauties in their early twenties, and I am… none of those things, so it seemed like a long shot.

However, one day in 2017, I got a cordial email from a man whose name I didn’t recognize. He introduced himself, heaped on compliments about my blog and podcast, and asked if I’d be open to a (paid) phone-chat session with him sometime, as the phone “happened to be a favorite play medium” of his. He attached two photos of himself, serious black-and-white formal portraits in which he smouldered at the camera in a suit. I was intrigued.

I was used to charging in 15- or 30-minute increments for such services, so I was surprised when he wanted to book a whole hour. “Please let me know how to render the honorarium and I’ll handle immediately in good faith,” he wrote – music to the ears of someone who so often has to harangue potential clients to finally, reluctantly pay. We agreed on a price and a day and time, and he sent the money promptly, in advance. What a dream.

He opened our first phone call by telling me he planned to approach it as a “first date” of sorts – i.e. he wanted us to chat and get to know each other, hopefully as part of an ongoing connection, not just a one-off phone-sex encounter. That first night, chatting is all we did: he complimented me and my work profusely, told me about his career and interests, and explained his own journey with non-monogamy and kink, which had led him to me. He had a wife, but they both dated and fucked other people with each other’s full knowledge; he, however, preferred to pay dates rather than seek them out organically for free, because he said it simplified the process. He was a highly busy small-business owner and didn’t have the spare time and energy to trawl Tinder or OkCupid, besides which, those sites rarely connected him with the open-minded, kinky, smart women he was seeking. Hence paying me by the hour for a phone date.

We enjoyed our conversation so much that when the hour was up, he asked if I had time to stay for another – with proper compensation, of course. When I said yes, the amount landed in my account almost immediately, and we carried on chatting about our lives. I was amazed that I’d just made the equivalent of 20-30 hours of minimum-wage work for a two-hour phone call that hadn’t even felt like work. He was eloquent and charming and I’d enjoyed our chat. I’d basically been paid to be complimented and flirted with for an evening. Pretty ideal.

I took myself out for a fancy solo dinner the next night, spending some of his money on pasta and cocktails I worked my way through while leisurely reading a book. The decadence made me feel guilty. This wasn’t my life. But maybe it could be.

We continued having these get-to-know-ya phone chats on and off for a few weeks. I learned that he lived in New York, that he had followed me and my work for quite some time, and that some soul-searching on the topic of kink had brought him to the realization that he was a daddy dom. That role spoke to him because he liked guiding the action of scenes and having consensual control over sexual partners, sure, but also because he longed to give guidance, structure, and wisdom outside of the bedroom. I warned him that I wasn’t comfortable calling anyone “daddy” just yet, having recently had my heart broken by my first daddy dom, but I could open myself up to a new dom by another name, perhaps.

We had phone sex for the first time late one night, once he’d established I wanted it, and had (of course) paid for my time. It was long and slow and lovely. I felt guilty taking my time to come as I listened to him spin sentences about giving my clit and labia lots of attention, but he assured me repeatedly that he liked the arousal process, he liked listening to me getting closer and closer to orgasm, and he intended to pay me for any extra time we spent because he wanted to hear me come. He was true to his word.

Sometime after that, he floated an idea he’d been pondering this entire time but hadn’t felt brave enough to bring up yet. He wanted to work out an “arrangement”: he would pay me an agreed-upon monthly allowance so we could talk and text and email organically as our schedules allowed, in lieu of paying by the hour to talk only at certain times. He offered, too, to cover my airfare for all trips I took to and from New York while we were “a thing,” even if I only saw him once during the entire trip. This especially excited me, as my best friend lives there and so did a new person I was flirting with and potentially wanted to date. I’d been wishing I could afford more NYC trips, and now here was a person offering to fly me there once every month or two. How perfect!

The arrangement began; the money flowed in. I bought a Coach handbag and a microwave. I stared at my bank balance sometimes, half-bewildered, half-turned on. I felt better about my financial situation than I have ever felt in my life.

We started planning our first in-person date, slated for mid-December. Pasta, musical theatre, a night in a hotel. I mentioned casually in passing that I’d also be seeing my new beau while there, and I heard my sugar daddy’s voice waver a bit. He told me that, despite having been non-monogamous for years, he still struggled with jealousy occasionally – and this situation triggered it especially, because the other person was “right in [his] own back yard.” I was confused, because he’d known going into this that I had other partners, but I told him I was sure he could work through those feelings and that I could provide some poly-newbie resources if need be.

However, just 10 days before I was scheduled to fly down to see him, he called me and confessed that his jealousy had gotten the better of him. He wanted to “bow out” of our arrangement. He’d thought he could handle me dating another New Yorker, but he couldn’t. I was disappointed – not just because of the money, and not just because it was another rejection in a year that had been full of rejections for me, but also because I had grown genuinely fond of this man. Hearing his supportive voice over the phone had become a comfortingly dependable tradition, and I was sad to lose that. I went over to another partner’s house later that day for a scheduled date and he held me and consoled me and got me high and fucked me well. (Good poly is so good.)

I’m still sad from time to time about the loss of that arrangement. It fulfilled so many of my core desires: to be cared for, and appreciated, and listened to, and pleasured, and spoiled. It topped up my bank account while also topping up my self-worth and my sense of being supported by someone who wanted the best for me.

But there is also joy to be found in making my own money, treating myself to nice things when I can, and developing relationships with people who aren’t threatened by my other potential paramours. I like having people I can depend on, and I also like feeling independent to some extent. This foray into sugar dating taught me more about my ideal balance in between.

 

Thanks to Rachaels London Escorts for sponsoring this post! They’re open from 10AM to 1AM (amazing!) and are available for a range of booking opportunities, such as dates, massages, parties, and naughty nights in hotels.