557 - Is Sexual Rejection Hurting Your Relationships?
Nobody likes rejection
Rejection sucks, whether it’s from a partner of twenty years or someone you just met. But when it comes to sexual rejection, in relationships, sometimes it’s not always about sex, it’s about a bid for connection and how we respond to that bid can be critical for building trust and strengthening connection. How we respond to rejection is also an important part of building or losing connection. When a “no” is met with pouting or anger, it’s a turning against the partner’s reality, whereas an understanding response is a form of turning towards them. This concept of bids for connection comes from the Gottmans, who also point out that defensiveness is one of the most destructive reactions to rejection, because it sends the clear message that “It is not always safe to be honest with me.”
According to an article on SimplePractice.com by counselor and sex therapist Lisa Elieson, there is often a Pursuer-Distancer dynamic in relationships, where a cycle occurs of the Higher-Desire Partner pursuing and the Lower-Desire Partner distancing, which increases the HDP’s insecurity and fuels more pursuit.
“I often ask my clients, “Do you want your partner to have sex more often? Or do you want them to be interested in having sex more often?” Doing it and being interested in it are two different things. Most of the time, my clients recognize that the high-desire partner isn’t looking for duty sex, but rather just want to feel wanted and desired… Sex may be an effort to manage emotional experiences—such as to lower stress levels, improve self-esteem, or validate an identity… The low-desire partner focuses on meeting their partner’s needs, instead of their own internal feeling of pleasure. Sex becomes work instead of play, an obligation to someone else’s sexual demand—another item on a to-do list. However, as the higher-desire partner grows lonelier, their need for togetherness only increases.”
Lisa Elieson
Why do we struggle with sexual rejection?
According to Emily Nagoski’s book Come As You Are, there are different systems of desire and sexual excitement and she calls this the Dual-Control Model:
The Sexual Excitation System (SES) is the accelerator. It represents all the cues and contexts that send a "yes" signal to the brain, turning on arousal and desire. These are highly individual and can range from physical touch and erotic imagery to feelings of emotional intimacy and safety.
The Sexual Inhibition System (SIS) is the brake. It represents all the cues that send a "no" signal, shutting down desire. Common brakes include stress, fatigue, anxiety, body image concerns, and unresolved relationship conflict. For sexual desire to emerge, it is not enough to simply press the accelerator; the brakes must also be released.
Spontaneous Desire is the experience of wanting sex seemingly "out of the blue." It is desire that arises in anticipation of pleasure. This is the style most commonly depicted in media and often mistakenly believed to be the only "correct" way to experience desire, a pattern more frequently associated with men.
Responsive Desire is desire that awakens in response to pleasure or arousal that is already occurring. A person with this style may not feel any desire beforehand, but once they engage in pleasant stimulation like kissing or cuddling, their body and brain respond with, "Oh, right, I enjoy this," and desire emerges from that experience. This is an extremely common pattern, particularly for women and for individuals in long-term relationships.
The Aggressive No-Seeker is based off of the Aggressive Model. The Aggressive Model encourages you to keep pushing or escalating until you force the other person to say no. The rejection is treated as a hurdle to overcome or a sign that you’ve found their limit. This tactic is adversarial and manipulative, and it erodes trust and ignores consent. It is a common tactic taught in sales and among pickup artists to intentionally set up a situation where saying no feels difficult, either out of fear, losing out, or fear of losing face.
Instead, we flipped this model to become the Aggressive No-Seeker Model:
This model encourages you to find the no as well, but from a different approach and philosophy.
The goal is to make saying no as easy, safe, and low-stakes as possible for the other person. Instead of pushing for a no, you’re creating an environment where no can be given freely, without fear or coercion.
This is a consent-focused and collaborative approach that builds trust. An easy no makes for a meaningful yes, and when someone learns that they are safe to say no, it makes it easier to say yes, because there isn’t as much fear of things going too far or creating an obligation.
How to become a master of no
We have some different tools to share that can help foster a better environment for rejection, which in turn will create a stronger partnership and make saying yes more meaningful and increase connection.
Tool #1: The Gracious No (for the person declining)
Validate and appreciate the bid. “Thank you for asking,” or “I really appreciate you initiating.”
State your reality kindly. Use “I” statements, like “I’m not in the right headspace for that tonight.”
Offer an alternative, if appropriate. In a relationship, this could look like “But I’d love to cuddle,” or something similar. When dating, something along the lines of “I’m not feeling it tonight, but I’d be open to seeing a movie next week.” Or, if not interested, a simple “no thank you” is complete and sufficient. The other steps are useful for maintaining connection if that’s something you want.
*If you find yourself apologizing when saying no, test breaking that habit.
Tool #2: The Generous Initiation (for the person initiating)
This is about making your bid in a way that makes saying no an easy and acceptable answer.
The Connection Menu in relationships is useful for this, for example, “I’m feeling really close to you. I’d be open to anything from holding hands, to cuddling, to sex. What feels good to you right now?”
Low-Stakes Check In for dating/hookups: Frame your initiation as a question, not a demand. “I’m having a great time and I’m feeling drawn to you. How are you feeling?” or, “Would you be open to a kiss?” This explicitly invites a yes or a no and gives them full control. It replaces ambiguity with respectful clarity.
Make it clear that saying yes to one thing is not saying yes to everything. Ask and check in along the way.
Tool #3: Respect a no without creating distance
If your partner or date says no to something, make sure to react respectfully and don’t pursue it further or ask again during that interaction. Let them bring it up if they want to change their decision.
However, try not to pull away. For example, if you were cuddling and brought up sex but they said no, keep cuddling and make it clear that your affection isn’t conditional on getting sex and that you enjoy what you’re doing anyway.
This can be difficult at first, especially if you haven’t practiced it and all the people involved aren’t used to it or don’t expect it. It becomes easier over time and the trust it builds is incredibly strong.
Transcript
If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Dedeker: So I co-led a women's sexuality workshop several years ago now, like 2018. And a huge topic of conversation in that workshop was, we called it the mid no, right? The idea of if you're flirting and if maybe foreplay is happening and then suddenly you're not feeling it, like how to do that, right? How to give the mid no. And something that was so surprising that came out of that conversation in this workshop was the realization that a lot of women who have sex with men, we've been taught from a very early age that if he has an erection, that's it. You have to keep going. Like he's gonna die if you don't follow through. It's gonna be a huge imposition. And I find that's work that actually often comes up with my clients of even just having to go back to this fundamental of like your partner's gonna be okay. And that goes for everybody, regardless of what your anatomy is that your partner's gonna be okay.
Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.
Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're tackling one of the most painful and universal relationship challenges, sexual rejection. We're going to explore why a no can feel so personal and how couples can get stuck in a painful pursuer-distancer cycle when one partner feels constantly unwanted and the other feels constantly pressured. We'll dive into the science of desire a little bit and give you some practical, compassionate tools to help give and receive no's more easily, which in turn makes it much easier to say yes. Whether you're in a long term relationship or you're navigating the dating world, this episode should give you some new frameworks for turning moments of rejection into opportunities for deeper trust and connection. If you're interested in learning about some of our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. Which covers some of our most used communication tools in all types of relationships, many of which are useful in these sorts of situations we're talking about today, and you can find links to buy that at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold. With that, Emily Dedeker, have you ever been rejected for sex before?
Emily: Yeah, but I think I've done a lot more rejecting in my life than rejection.
Dedeker: Yeah, I've definitely been rejected for sex before. I mean, when you pose it like that, it makes me think I just hit up some random stranger in a bar for sex and did they reject me or not? That's not something I'm doing very often. You mean in the context of an ongoing sexual relationship, yes?
Jase: I think that's part of the question here is that for a lot of us, when we think about sexual rejection in the abstract, we think about that, I've asked a new person to have sex with me and they said no, versus where I think it actually is more likely to show up is with partners that we have ongoing relationships with, where it's that kind of, Hey, do you wanna, oh, I don't know, I'm not feeling good tonight, or, oh, I don't know about that. That kind of thing probably happens a lot more often in most people's lives over the course of their life than that hookup rejection. I guess unless you're just a pickup artist, and that's what you're doing all the time, I suppose.
Emily: Have you ever been rejected for sex ever in your life?
Jase: Oh, yes. Many, so many times in established relationships, as well as new relationships. Or anything like that.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Yeah, of course. I would bet basically everybody has at some point if they've had a number of sexual relationships, right? If they've had a number of relationships, they've probably experienced this. And something that we hear often is this one of two narratives. Either my partner keeps turning me down for sex, and I'm upset about that. I feel bad about that. Or, My partner keeps bugging me to have sex and I feel pressure from them and now sex feels like a chore and I don't want to do it. I think also we'll hear about the anxiety of misreading signals, fear of making a move, something like that in more casual dating. But interestingly, I feel like that version of sexual rejection is at least we're aware of it and we talk about it a little bit more versus that one within a relationship. There's almost kind of this taboo to bring it up. Feeling like, if I admit that I reject my partner for sex, does that mean I'm a bad partner? Or does that mean I don't love them? And vice versa? We're going to talk about both on this episode, but that's definitely something worth noting right up front.
Emily: Well, and that creates a lot of resentment, I think, potentially over time, that there are moments where you just get in these cycles, and I'm assuming we're going to talk about that, of somebody being the primary person who asks for sex, the other person rejecting them, and then kind of feeling guilt on both ends and potentially getting to a place where neither person wants to bring it up, nobody wants to engage necessarily, or they think that if they do, they're constantly going to get rejected.
Jase: Boy, yeah, I've been there. And I think it can also ebb and flow within a relationship too. I've definitely had relationships where I wouldn't think of that as defining the whole relationship, but where there have maybe been significant periods where it did kind of feel like that of like, oh, well, we don't want to I don't want to bring it up or talk about it, but it's a problem, but no one quite knows how to move forward with this.
Emily: Can I ask you two a question, because we have all lived with partners. Do we feel like sex tends to decrease the minute that you start living with a partner? Or not always.
Jase: It's hard to tell what's from living together and what's from having kind of a more established relationship that you'd be at the point where you'd be more likely to live together. So it's harder to say because those two tend to go along with each other. Even if you move in while you're still in NRE and you're having a lot of sex, very quickly you're kind of settling into a more established relationship and you might be doing it less. I don't know. Because I do feel like those tend to go hand in hand from my past experience.
Dedeker: Yeah, that's hard to disentangle. I do think that when you're not living with somebody, even if it's still a more established relationship. I think there's something about it almost being a ritual of like, if you're going over to somebody else's house, right? Maybe you're stepping away from your work or stepping away from the obligations at home that I know for me sometimes helps me to get into a more sexual mindset, right? Versus when you're living with somebody, sometimes it's kind of like that all is the same space. And especially if you're not necessarily going out and having date nights or creating a container for sexual play. That I think it can then be hard to shift into that.
Jase: Yeah, I think that makes sense. There's sort of more of a special occasion around seeing each other if you're not living together. That's, yeah, it's like harder to differentiate, what's a special sexy night and what's a normal night when you live together?
Emily: Well, and I think of that Esther Perel thing of distance creates desire, and that if you're not living with someone, there probably is going to be at least some distance between the two of you for a time within your week, for instance. And therefore the desire or the excitement about, oh, I get to see this person and then maybe make love to them is a little bit higher than it might be if you saw them on a daily basis and you're like, Ah, that old chestnut over there.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: That said, I have also had some longer term relationships where we never lived with each other, but there still was that thing where sex became less a part of that relationship. And it was a struggle, right? It was a bit of a point of contention of kind of who wants it more than the other at a given time, or who feels its absence more acutely than the other. That was definitely a point of contention in that relationship, which was several years long, but we never lived together. And so, that can happen too. This is definitely not something that's exclusive to people who live together. One thing I wanted to start us with here is looking at that sexual connection and looking at it not just about getting sex, but about the rest of it, right? If it's just about getting off, that's easier to do on your own. It's more convenient for, you can figure out what works for you and you can just do that. And so clearly there's something else. There's something special about having a sexual experience with somebody else. And if we look at this first through this lens of the Gottmans, where when they're looking at relationships, they have this concept of turning toward or a bid for connection. And this is a bunch of things, right? This isn't just sex. This is like, I make a little joke, or I try to get your attention about something. These are various little bids for attention. And if you respond by turning toward, that's like engaging with it and receiving it well. And you've increased connection. You've won connection points. And then the opposite is, they try to do that and you kind of reject it or turn against it or find some reason why we shouldn't do that. That kind of feels like a break in connection and you lose some connection points. And so when someone's initiating sex with a partner, that could be thought of as one of these bids for connection, right? It's like, I want to have some kind of connection with you. And then we could look at it as, well, if you're, rejecting that, then you're kind of losing some of that connection. You're turning away. But there's also this other lens to look at of when you do, if someone suggests something, turning toward doesn't always just mean saying yes to it, but it means responding to it in a positive way. On the other hand, the way that you receive that person saying, oh, thank you, that's so sweet, but I'm not really feeling it, or I'm really tired, the way you receive that is also in turn another chance to turn toward or turn away. And I think that's where we get lost sometimes, is that when the partner says no for whatever reason, or they're tired, or they're just not feeling it, there's maybe anger or pouting or kind of like, okay, fine, whatever. And there's sort of this instant feeling of turning away or disconnecting from the partner. Is this, I see some nods from the two of you. Is this kind of resonating with experiences you've had?
Emily: Of course. Absolutely.
Jase: And that that reaction is defensiveness, which is one of the Gottmans for horsemen, right? At the end of a relationship, then basically you're saying, it's not safe for you to be honest with me. And so now we end up in a problem, right? Where we get to that thing of, well, I don't want to ask, and you don't want me to ask, and you'll shut me down sooner so that you don't have to say no, or you'll, make it really clear you're not interested. So that I don't ask so that you don't have to say no, right? I think that's an example of that cycle we can fall into. And if we're not thinking about the Gottman bid for connection and turning toward, it's really easy to just, for both people, to feel so trapped by that and not understand what's going on and be really frustrated by it.
Dedeker: So it was in the sense that, I don't know, that's really interesting because I haven't really heard defensiveness described that way of like, it's not safe for you to be honest with me. And it seems like in this particular interaction we're looking at with a sexual bid for connection that that could go both ways, right? That if you reject in a really harsh way that tells your partner it's not safe for you to be honest when you're feeling sexually attracted to me or when you're feeling like you want to be sexually close to me. And if the person takes that rejection in a poor way, they're also saying it's not safe for you to be honest that you're not feeling it.
Jase: Right. Now that's interesting because when I was thinking about this, I was thinking more often the kind of like, oh, no, no, I'm not really feeling it. Trying to be a little bit soft about it or even a little apologetic about it. And then it feeling very personal, though, to the person who got rejected of like, I essentially took a risk trying to communicate this to you and wanting to connect with you, and now you've shot me down and I get defensive. So I feel like more often I've seen that step be the really negative one, but you're right that also the way you do that rejection could be part of it.
Emily: Yeah, I've definitely heard of people discussing instances with me where their partner says, Ugh, no thank you. I really don't want that right now. Or they do something that shows the partner, wow, this is almost so off-putting to them that they do not want to engage in this with me in any way. Even if that happens a number of times throughout the relationship, that sticks somehow. We create these sort of narratives and stories over time that maybe that's going to happen again. And I do think that that's where, again, that resentment can build over time. And if I look at my very long-term relationship, I think on either end sometimes that was what was occurring. It was this defensiveness. It was this. Sort of stonewalling. It was this, I've got to get away from this as quickly as possible. And also sort of using sex as a weapon in many ways, that, okay, there's something fundamentally wrong with you or wrong with the relationship because you don't want to do this with me, or there must be something fundamentally wrong with me because my partner keeps rejecting me, for instance. It creates a really toxic cycle. That I know for myself personally, as time went on in my last big relationship, I just, I didn't even want to broach the subject at all. And it became a source of great discomfort for both me and my partner at the time.
Dedeker: And not broaching the subject, do you mean, like, not even wanting to, you didn't want to initiate sex either, or you didn't want to have a meta conversation around the ways the two of you navigated sex?
Emily: I think both. I think my partner got to a point where he was like, you need to be the one to initiate it because I feel like I'm doing it all the time, which I think is fair. But I think also for a number of reasons, I just didn't really want to have it with him anymore. And I think that if you get to that point in a relationship, it can be really hard to come back from that. And like you said, things ebb and flow. I do think that, people like Emily Nagoski and various other people out there who are very well versed in this subject specifically, their work is to try to get you back from that place. But at least in that particular relationship, it was not a place that I could come back from easily by any means. And I think to my relationship now, where I love having sex with this person, and I can say no and he can say no and it's not a problem, And it's just so, so different and creates such a wonderful container for possibility to be there. And it's just the exact opposite of how my last relationship was.
Jase: Well, so this actually is a nice segue into the next thing I wanted to bring up here, which came from this interesting article from Lisa Elieson, a counselor and sex therapist writing for simplepractice.com, and this is just a quote from her article about this subject that I wanted to read. And she says, I often ask my clients, Do you want your partner to have sex more often, or do you want them to be interested in having sex more often? Doing it and being interested in it are two different things. Most of the time, my clients recognize that the High Desire Partner isn't looking for duty sex, just sex out of obligation, but rather they want to feel wanted and desired. Sex may be an effort to manage emotional experiences such as lower stress levels, improve self-esteem, validate an identity, and the Low Desire Partner can end up focusing on meeting their partner's needs instead of their own feelings of pleasure. And so sex becomes work instead of play, an obligation for someone else's sexual demand, another item on a to-do list. However, as the Higher Desire Partner grows lonelier, their need for togetherness only increases. And I feel like that's kind of getting at the heart of what you were talking about there, is that that cycle then gets worse and worse. The need from that higher-need partner goes up as they feel like they're not getting it, and the other partner wants it less or feels more pressure, and it becomes less fun 'cause it feels like an obligation. Even if that wasn't really what either of them intended to go into that interaction with, if you rewind earlier in their relationship, but it can really easily end up there.
Emily: Well, and I think that brings up another part of this, which is scheduling sex. And I think a lot of people schedule sex because we lead busy lives, especially if you have children, if you have assets, if you have a lot of obligations. It can be almost like a nice ritual to put on the calendar to be like, okay, this is our date night, this is when we're going to have sex. But again, if it's that obligation part, then it can feel like a chore, and it can feel like I'm only doing this to check a box and not because I really want it to happen. So I think that there's that kind of fine line between, let's do this so that we can engage with one another and build and foster that togetherness versus I'm just doing this to kind of placate you and to make you feel like, well, at least we did it this week.
Jase: Yeah, I guess you could end up in a situation where for both people it feels more like a to-do list chore. Even if both people in general would like to be having more sex and feeling more connected, you can still end up in a situation where it feels a bit more like a chore. Yeah, like, oh, we just have to do it. And then it becomes more about doing the thing rather than the result of the thing, which is feeling more connected and all of that.
Jase: We're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of the ways that sexual desire comes up and understanding that in a way that might help us to navigate this in our relationships before we then get into some practical tools that we can start applying. But first, we're going to take a quick ad break to talk about some sponsors of this show. Thank you to all of our sponsors, and thank you to you for taking a moment to give them a listen. If any seem interesting to you, use our links and promo codes, check our show description for that. That does help support our show. And of course, if you would rather support us more directly and get access to ad-free episodes released a day early and our amazing private communities, you can go to multiamory.com/join and sign up there.
Jase: Emily, you brought up earlier Emily Nagoski's way of looking at this as more of an expert. And so I actually did want to talk a little bit about some of her writings from her book, Come as yous Are. And One of the things that she talks about in there is this thing of rather than thinking of sexual desire as just you have desire or you don't, that instead there's two systems at play. There's this sexual excitation system, which is like the gas pedal, and there's the sexual inhibition system, which is the brake. And if you push on the gas while also pushing on the brake, you're not going to go anywhere and you're probably going to damage your engine. And if you're not pushing on either of them, like you could take off the brake. But if you're not putting any accelerator on, you're also not going to go anywhere. So you need to do these in coordination with each other. So just to kind of recap a little bit of that from her book, the sexual excitation system is the accelerator. And so that's all of the cues and the contexts in your brain that send that yes signal to say like, yes, I can be aroused. Yes, I can have desire. These are very individual. This could be physical touch. It could be the smell of a partner or of a certain perfume that they have. It could be erotic imagery or feelings of emotional intimacy and safety, anything like that that kind of gets the motor going. But at the same time, we have this sexual inhibition system, which is the brake. And that's all of the stuff that sends our brain the no signal. And so that's things like stress. Fatigue, anxiety, body image concerns, maybe performance anxiety, unresolved relationship conflicts, like chores, the fact that the house is dirty and you still need to clean it, anything like that. And so in order for sexual desire to emerge, we can't just push on the gas. We also need to make sure we're letting go of the break.
Dedeker: Yeah, of course, this lines up with the really popular model of spontaneous desire versus responsive desire. Spontaneous desire being a desire for sex that seems to come out of the blue, right? Sometimes it can arise in anticipation of pleasure being on the way. And this is what's most commonly depicted in our media. Sometimes we mistake it as the better way to experience desire. And then we also tend to associate this with a male desire response that we just kind of assume that all men are either horny all the time or horny at a moment's notice. And therefore, it's just gonna hit them like a lightning bolt, and then they're gonna be ready to go, which is painting with a really broad brush. And then there's responsive desire, which is desire that awakens in response to the presence of pleasure, right? Or arousal that's already occurring. And so you may not feel any desire beforehand, but then once you start to engage, right, once you start to feel your partner's skin or you start to cuddle or getting close, that then your body is able to wake up and remember that you enjoy this, and then desire emerges out of that.
Emily: Right.
Dedeker: And it's also a common pattern. Again, usually we associate it with women, with people in long-term relationships. I will say that, I don't find it very helpful to, to make it so gender binary, honestly, even though, yeah, sure, I think we're trends. Some of this is also how we're socialized to deal with our own, natural sexual arousal responses. But I found from working with people, people from all across the gender spectrum, very different response patterns here. And also sometimes can embody both as well.
Jase: Absolutely. I think that where the gender thing really shows up from my experience is, in male-female identifying heterosexual partnerships, however I want to say that, where there's a man and a woman involved, that the kind of social assumptions that we put on one It's not about them actually having very much truth to them, but that they add a different kind of pressure. And so one way I've seen this is that if a female partner in a heterosexual relationship feels like she's rejected by her male partner, it can land more personally. Like this, oh, they must think I'm ugly, because I've been socialized to think men will sleep with anything that's not completely hideous. And so, right, it's like easier than to go there to this place of taking that extremely personally. And I think sometimes gay men can fall into this same trap, right? Because there's this assumption of like, everyone's down all the time, so I've got to be really ugly if this person doesn't want to have sex with me, right? And I know I'm not that bad, so what's wrong with me? What is it about me? Rather than thinking maybe they're more responsive desire or who knows what these other things are going on for them. And then I think similarly, there can be shame around having spontaneous desire. As a woman, where it's like, you're socialized to think you wouldn't do that. Or there's this thing of men might hope, oh, well, if I just found someone who did have that spontaneous desire for me, like happens in the movies, that would mean she's really into me. It's more about all this baggage that we put onto those ways of experiencing desire for us or for someone else.
Emily: Do we feel as though desire that men and women have changes and has changed with age? Because I would argue, at least for myself, when I was younger, didn't know really what it was that I wanted necessarily, and who I was as a sexual being. And now I feel like as I'm older, that has changed. And the opportunity for spontaneous desire is more present just simply also because I know who I am more.
Jase: Or hold ourselves back from feeling that desire if we feel like that's something that's wrong of us. Sure. Yeah.
Emily: I mean, does that resonate at all for either of you?
Jase: Oh, definitely. I mean, there's the clear part of age and just general physical condition, emotional condition, changing that over time. I mean, I feel like compared to my peers, I've always had, I guess I would say less of a feeling of my sexual interest controlling me. Than my peers, however, that was still much stronger when I was younger, and much less so now. So that's interesting. I think for you, there was different stuff going on that makes it actually stronger, more spontaneous desire now. Yeah. So I'm curious, Dedeker, what you've seen with clients or yourself or anything like that.
Emily: Dedeker, do you feel as though you have more potential for spontaneous desire as you've aged? Do you feel like your sex drive has gone up? Down what exactly, where is it currently, I guess? Because I feel like if anything, mine's gone up.
Dedeker: Yeah, I think as I've gotten older, more it's connected to just being more familiar with my body, I suppose, and being more in tune with it, or maybe a little bit more sensitive to it, right? I think that sexual desire feels a little bit less like a black and white binary to me now, and I'm a little bit more aware of it's shifting and changing, right? And for me, also, a big part of that is really riding the waves of my own menstrual cycle, right? And being really aware of how that influences me on a day-to-day basis.
Emily: Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense.
Jase: Yeah, I think that the responsive desire thing is something that I've become much more attuned to than I think I used to be. It used to be more like either I'd assume I would have the desire pretty quickly, or I just wouldn't have it at all for this person. And I've definitely come over the last several, quite a few years, to understand how it's like sometimes, I might not feel for sure that I want that. But once you kind of get in that situation, you're kissing a little bit or you're touching the skin, then, oh, yeah, okay, no, this is nice. And I feel like that's actually been really nice to understand that there's that way in, too, that you don't just have to kick in the front door, that you can also kind of slide in sideways and kind of find your way to arousal this other way. I do think that's something to go back to your point, Emily, about scheduling sex and how that can add this feeling of pressure. I think that's especially true if it's we've scheduled sex and we assume it has to be spontaneous desire that makes sex happen.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Because that's hard to do on schedule, right? That's not very spontaneous if you're using the term spontaneous desire, literally. That instead it's kind of, I found that if sex is scheduled, there has to be more of this, okay, both of us are not quite in the right headspace for this, but let's start to move ourselves in a direction of opening up that possibility, right? Of kind of cuddling a little bit or kissing or let's just relax a little bit first and then kind of see where that goes along with the possibility that we might still not. And that's also okay. Taking rain checks on sex also, I think, important so that it doesn't fall into the that pressure of like, oh, it has to be now. And so now it's not fun. Now it's just checking a box.
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: One thing I wanted to hit on before we move on to some of the tools that we've come up with for this is this concept of getting a no from somebody else. And this is something that comes up in a number of different contexts, right? So within kind of the play party consent culture, world. There's this idea of, unless I can trust you to say no, I can't trust you to say yes. There's that idea of, I need to know that you're able to say no before I feel like I can get an enthusiastic yes from you. But then in other areas, like in sales, which is where I first encountered this in my retail job while I was in beauty school becoming a hairstylist, in my retail job reading this book about the power of no, And it was all about this thing of keep asking for more until the person says no, or keep offering more, I guess, would be the nicer, euphemistic way to say it, until the person says no. The idea of being in retail, it's like, well, you don't know that they've bought all that they want to buy until they tell you no. That we're not assuming for them, oh, they probably only want to get two things. And sure, that's all nice in theory, except it leads to this thing of, well, I'm gonna keep pushing you. I'm gonna keep pushing you until you eventually say no. And then I have this sense of, that's as far as I could get you. And now that's where we'll stop. And I think we see this also in pickup artistry, this idea of both, I'm gonna keep pushing until I get a no. And then also I'm gonna do things to try to make saying no harder, which, if we look at the situations we talked about earlier about one person in a couple wanting sex and then the other person saying no, and then they try to make it difficult for them to stick to that no by feeling upset or being sad or being defensive or whatever, that you've actually just made that problem worse. And that I think if we let those kind of cultural ideas from sales or pickup artistry or whatever, even if they were presented in an innocent seeming way, can actually drive us into that cycle more quickly into that idea of, oh, well, I have to push for a yes as much as I can. That's how I'll get what I want. And ironically, by actually making it much easier for the other person to say no at any point and, building up a trust that they can say no anytime, then it actually makes it much easier for them to say yes. It makes it more comfortable for them to say yes because they know at any point they could say no, and that's okay. Versus, like you were saying, Emily, where if you have a partner who you feel like just hounds you for this and you you don't want to, and it feels bad, that it's like you don't even want to flirt with them. You don't even want to kiss them or hold their hand because they might think that's an invitation that you want sex. And so now you don't want to do that. I know, this is one that Dedeker and I have talked about a lot in talking about relationships and Sexual Dynamics, where that shift between when do I feel safe to flirt? And it doesn't mean I have to have committed myself to having sex right now versus. When that isn't the case.
Dedeker: Well, the thing I always bring up, so I co-led a women's sexuality workshop several years ago now, like 2018. And a huge topic of conversation in that workshop was, we called it the mid no, right? The idea of if you're flirting and if maybe foreplay is happening and then suddenly you're not feeling it, how to do that, right? How to give the mid no. And something that was so surprising that came out of that conversation in this workshop was the realization that a lot of women who have sex with men, we've been taught from a very early age that if he has an erection, that's it. You have to keep going. Like he's gonna die if you don't follow through. And you're gonna feel like really, really bad. It's gonna be a huge imposition. And I find that's work that actually often comes up with my clients of even just having to go back to this fundamental of like your partner your partner's gonna be okay. And that goes for everybody, regardless of what your anatomy is, that your partner's gonna be okay, right?
Jase: Change your mind, you stop at any point.
Dedeker: Yeah. Or if you need to adjust at any point, it's gonna be okay.
Jase: Something that I have found has shifted for me is that in relationships, often I will be the one to be the voice of, oh, it's okay if, you know, if you're having sex, especially if it's, with a newer person, but not necessarily where it's just like, it's been going, it's good. And now it's kind of like it feels like it's not quite clicking anymore or like maybe people are getting tired or it's just like, this seems like maybe this needs to wrap up and everyone's just kind of waiting for the ending of kind of being the one to come in and be like, Hey, this is cool. This is a great place to leave it. We can stop here because we have more to look forward to, like kind of this idea that we don't have to get every single need met right at this moment forever.
Emily: And it's- We don't necessarily have to ejaculate. It's gonna be all right.
Jase: Right, or have an orgasm or anything like that, right? That it's like, okay, if that's not in the cards today, we still had a good time, and we can still see this as a positive experience. But I think that thinking is not something we're taught early on. Like, I certainly wasn't taught anything of the sort, were you?
Emily: No, I think most of us are told that you have to go to completion in some way, For it to be a positive experience, for it to be worthy of our time, or just something that the guy or whomever or you are gonna look back on and say, yeah, I had sex with that person and it went well. That it can still go well, or it can still be an experience that you recall and remember and be like, yeah, maybe completion didn't occur, but it doesn't matter. Like you said, we have something to look forward to next time.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: So we're gonna go on to some tools here and some ways to look at these things to have more positive interactions. And we're gonna take another quick break first to talk about our sponsors for the show. And of course, if you'd love to join our community, get access to our discord and Facebook group, as well as things like our video processing groups where you can talk more one-on-one in real time with other people in the group, we would love for you to go to multiamory.com/join and sign up there on our sliding scale. And then in the meantime, take a listen to our sponsors. And if any seem interesting to you, use our links or promo codes. And check out our show notes for those links.
Emily: So to finish this off, we are going to talk about how we can become a master of the no.
Dedeker: The knowniverse.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: It's the knowniverse.
Emily: You can master the known universe.
Jase: There you go.
Emily: The knowniverse.
Jase: I don't know. We'll have to workshop that.
Emily: Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. This first tool is called the Gracious No. So this is for the person doing the declining. I think I personally could have been better about this in my last relationship, and hopefully I'll use this tool for if I ever do decline, which, you know, I have. It happened once in a while. It happened every once in a while. Not as often as it used to, that's for sure. So step one is to validate slash appreciate the bid. So you can say something like, Thank you for asking, or I really appreciate you initiating.
Dedeker: Let's say make it your own though, right? It doesn't have to be like a therapy textbook.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: I appreciate your expression of interest in myself and in others.
Dedeker: Unless you're doing some kind of sex robot role play.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: That could be fun.
Dedeker: Then you can do whatever you want. Beep boop. Yes.
Emily: Step two is to state your reality kindly. You can use I statements and say something like, I'm just not really in the right headspace for that tonight. I had a really long day at work. I'm pretty exhausted, and my body, myself, my emotions, they're just not feeling in the sexiest place right now.
Jase: Something that I found has been really good in my relationship with Dedeker is that it can often just be as simple as saying, My heart really wants to, and I'm also just so tired right now. Or, I'm just-- I don't feel it, even though, I want to. Like, my mind knows that I would like having sex with you, but I'm just not feeling it. There's different variations on that. Variations, but of kind of this acknowledging both sides of it while still being clear of, I just don't think I'm feeling it. Both of us have taken that route at different times of just like, ah, yeah, I know that in another moment I would love that. And just right now, I just can't get myself there.
Emily: Step three is to offer an alternative, if it's appropriate to do so. In a relationship, you could say something like, But I'd love to cuddle. I'd love to maybe sit on the couch and watch a silly YouTube video with you. When you're dating, maybe you could say something like, I'm not feeling it tonight, but I'd be open to seeing a movie next week. Or even like, But we'll see what happens when I see you on Friday. Something like that.
Jase: Right. I think the key there is showing that you still have an interest in connecting with them as a person.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Even if this sex is not what you want to do right now, I think that's where we can get stuck in that sense of the rejection is personal. It means you don't want to connect with me, and so I'm also going to pull away from you to protect myself.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: So it's kind of making sure that's not what you're communicating by very literally communicating. But I'm really excited to see you again, and I'm looking forward to more chances for us to fool around or whatever it is, right, in your short or long-term relationships. Unless, of course, you're at a point where you actually just aren't interested in this person anymore, in which case there's something else to do besides just rejecting better and better. It's like, no, you should make a change in the relationship.
Emily: Definitely. And sometimes you may just not be interested in general. And so you can just simply say, no, thank you. That's complete. That's sufficient. The other steps that we talked about are for maintaining some connection if that is, in fact, what you want to do. Now, this is a good note for me, and for all y'all out there who love to apologize, if you find yourself really prone to apologizing when saying no, maybe just try to break that habit a little bit. Just test it out, test the waters.
Jase: There's an exercise that I've done in a few different workshops that I've attended, and also one that I've hosted in the past, one that we all hosted together, which is just practicing saying no. And so the simple version of that would be everyone who's participating, you get up, you kind of wander around, you find somebody, and then you ask them for a hug is usually how this is done with. Like, is it okay if I hug you? And the game is that that person has to say no. Everyone has to say no to this. And it's so interesting that even in that structure where you know that you're supposed to say no, it's hard to do. It feels weird and you feel bad about it. I actually still, years later, feel kind of bad about one person in
Dedeker: In particular, I said, oh my gosh.
Jase: I know, it's so weird, but it's, and I think that in itself is so illuminating of like, yeah, I could probably still use more practice at getting comfortable with that, saying no without needing to apologize or go back later and try to make it up to them or something like that, right? It's a really illuminating exercise. If you've never done it before, I do recommend it. If you've got some friends you can try it with or something, really, it's a silly little game. The harder version of the game then is, you play it and say you're going to go around for a while and do this a few times and be like, of all your interactions, you have to say no at least twice, but you don't always have to say no. I found it's even harder because then you're not just saying no because you have to, but some part of you chose that that's the person you're saying no to. And it's again, it's a way to confront that weird feeling of, yeah, ah, like, should, ah, I'm having a hard time saying no. And a lot of people, apologize. And that's a good clue of like, ah, I see I have that tendency. I should be careful with that. And with that, we'll move on to tool number two, which is the generous initiation, or maybe the gentle initiation could be another way to say that. You could put in whatever G word you want there.
Emily: Gargantuan.
Jase: You may like that.
Emily: Gregarious.
Jase: Oh, that's fun. So this is about making that bid for connection, for sexual intimacy. In a way that makes no obviously an easy and acceptable answer. And again, that goes so counter to what we're taught in sales or pickup artistry or how to meet women or whatever it is, whatever resource. Or just in general, if someone's learning in business how to get what you want, there's often this short-sightedness to get the yes now rather than thinking about how do I make sure I build a good, trusting, safe relationship moving forward? I would argue in all relationships, even sales ones, but right now we're just talking about relationships. We want to build that. We want to create that. So we want to make sure it's really easy for them to say no or to offer something else. So one option for that is to present a menu of connection rather than just asking for one thing. And so that's like the, Hey, you're looking really cute tonight. Would you be open to some cuddling or maybe kissing or sex if we feel like it? To kind of put those options out there while still expressing that you're you're into it, you're feeling it, you're vibing. What feels good to you right now? Or if this is more of a dating situation, a newer relationship, then stating it more as a question rather than a demand, we're kind of making it clear, that no's okay, and that doesn't mean date's over. And that's sort of like, I'm having a great time and, you know, feeling really drawn to you. How are you feeling? Just start a conversation there. And maybe they're like, oh, wow, me too. Or maybe you get some vibes that they're not feeling it so much. Or, Would you be open to a kiss? And it invites this kind of explicit yes/no, but it also gives them control, and it's doing it in a flirty way where it's not like killing the mood to say like, okay, let's lay out which things we do and don't want to do. It's like, no, let's have an ongoing communication about this. And the big part here is to make it clear that saying yes to one thing doesn't necessarily mean saying yes to more things. And so that's why it is really important to check in along the way. And I think this is the one that people who criticize consent culture will often say, you're taking all the fun and spontaneousness and romance out of it. And I just think those people have never known someone or never tried being flirty about asking. Because there's a way you can communicate those things both verbally and non-verbally that is flirty, that is cute, it is sexy. It's like, I love that. Would you want to kiss a little bit? Or, you know, can we just kind of just hold you for a second? The kind of gauging those things can be flirty and fun.
Dedeker: And the last tool is to respect and know without creating distance. I guess I'd maybe I'd call this like the close no, the closening no.
Jase: The closening no.
Dedeker: I don't know, man.
Jase: Okay.
Dedeker: I mean, it goes along with all the stuff we've already been saying, right? It's this idea that if a no happens, whether you're the one giving the no or you're the one receiving the no, that that's not the breaking point where you're suddenly no longer close, right? Or where you pull away from each other or where you put in more distance, you know? So it's like if you're cuddling and trying to initiate sex, but the person was not into it, that you stay with them and you keep cuddling, right? And you make it clear that your affection isn't conditioned on just getting sex, right? And that you do enjoy being close to them and staying close to them. For some people, this can be difficult at first, especially if you just have a hard time with rejection or if it's hard to not take it personally, right? That if you're feeling a little bit hurt or lonely, that it can feel like you want to sort of retreat and lick your wounds and things like that. But really, I think that really the closeness needs to be your guiding light here.
Jase: I found that for me, this is one that I tried to build up kind of this reaction or this reflex, I guess I could say, where if my partner or the person I'm dating kind of seems like, ah, I don't know, like even a little hesitant, right? Should kind of be like, oh no, that's cool. Like kind of to build this reflex right away of, you know, smiling and like, oh, that's completely fine. Even if part of me is a little disappointed, right? If I'm like, oh, I'm really feeling it, I'm excited about this. But I found that by trying to cultivate that reaction right away, that it also makes it easier for me. And makes me less likely to take it personally.
Jase: It's kind of like in those saying no exercises that I was talking about, that one of the things that I was taught in that exercise is that then when the other person says no, that you respond by saying, Thank you for taking care of yourself. And again, it's this similar thing of like creating a reflex or sort of a script that changes it from, oh, you rejected me, to, oh, you took care of yourself. And yeah, maybe I'm disappointed that I don't get to hug you or whatever it was that you were asking for, but that it's not about you as much. It's like, oh, they're just doing what they need to do. Thank you for taking care of yourself. And I found that script too has been super helpful, not just for being more respectful of other people, but also for my own feelings of kind of reminding myself, yeah, this is about them. This isn't actually about me. Maybe they're not interested in me, but that's still a them thing. That's not a me thing, right?
Emily: That's great.
Jase: Our question of the week this week on our Instagram stories is, what was the best no you've ever received? And that might sound like a weird question, but I'm excited to see what y'all do with it. I definitely have some that were memorable for me where someone said no in a way that was just so clear but compassionate that I just came away going, wow, okay, that was great. Like, I felt, I feel clear. I'm not sitting here second-guessing it. So I'd love to hear from you about what's the best no you ever received? If you want to talk more about this episode, the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram.
Jase: Multiamory is created and produced by Emily Matlack, Dedeker Winston, and me, Jase Lindgren. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode’s page on multiamory.com.