Challenging Our Narratives On Finances, Power, & Relationships
Note: While this is a G-Rated Newsletter, it does talk about sex, sexuality, kink, queerness, and non-monogamy in an educational context. Consider yourself warned.
If you appreciate my work to create accessible sexuality and relationship education, now is a great time to donate! Your donations help me provide sliding scale coaching to other members of the community and help me keep my workshops affordable!
Welcome to November! I had a pretty turbulent October, with some serious illness keeping me feeling like garbage and making me fall behind on all of the life things. If I owe you an overdue email, please know you’re not alone there! I’m really focusing on trying to provide myself compassionate care these days, and sometimes that means I fall a little behind. I hope you also extend yourself what care you are able.
If you follow me on Fetlife, you might have seen me talking about the finances of dating. I started off the conversation by saying “If you’re dating someone, you’re probably spending money to do that. Have conversations early & often about the role spending money, differences in income, lifestage, and money narratives can have on your relationship. Money can impact how much agency we feel we have, the choices we make, and the pressures we feel. If we talk about it, we can navigate it!”
This lead to some really interesting conversations offline and online about the role money plays in our relationships. I spent many years dating and loving folks who made significantly less money than me. When I went back to school a few years ago and my income dropped, I had to then navigate dating and connection where it was likely that my date made more money and had more financial stability. This really opened my eyes up to the role money has in relationships and how it can impact our consent in those exchanges.
Money and finances have so many dimensions to consider when we talk about their impact on our relationships and consent practices! For example, we might think splitting the bill is fair, but is it actually equitable? $20 might be a lot harder for one person to come up with than the person next to them. And if we’re the person with more financial resources, it can be tempting to think that the answer is to treat everyone the same when in reality true justice requires equity. Equity only comes when we get curious about our relationship with money and have difficult conversations with the people we’re in connection with. It’s an ongoing process that requires honesty and good-faith communication.
Money and capitalism can create all kinds of challenges for our consent practice. For folks who are spending money on someone else, some good questions to ask ourselves might include:
Am I spending based on the assumption that this person will pick up the check next time? Does the next meal/event/etc. need to be of a similar amount for it to feel equitable?
Do I feel like this person spending time with me is contingent on my picking up the tab today? (I honestly don't think there's a right answer here, but knowing your answer here and how you feel about it can be vital)
If this person doesn't want to see me again after this date, will I feel like I "wasted my money"? How about if they don't want to play or have sex tonight?
It’s really important to consider these types of questions if we want to add more nuance to our consent practice. Unlearning the lessons of patriarchal, colonialist capitalism requires ongoing work and care. It’s helpful to recognize that many pressures can result from living in a rape culture that hands us narratives about what we're supposed to do in specific gender roles to earn sex, connection, and love. We address this cultural influence by first recognizing and naming that influence.Always something new to uncover!
This is a bigger topic than I can get into fully with this newsletter, so expect a future class to come out on this topic in 2024!
In lighter topics, I really enjoyed this oral history of one of my favourite movies, The Emperor’s New Groove.
If you need to get in touch for any reason, please drop me an email darren@learngrowrepeat.ca.
Gumroad Recorded Workshop Sale!
Did you miss one of my previous workshops? You can buy recordings through my shop on Gumroad of several of my recent online workshops! And if you use the code NOVNEWS23 from noon November 1 through noon November 4 you’ll automatically get 30% off the price of your order!
Upcoming Winter Online Events!
Continuing Our New, Online, Queer, Neurodivergent Community Space!
In October we had a great turnout for our Rainbow Skies support group! We’ll be continuing my partnership with Blue Sky Learning to support this monthly space for neuroqueer discussion, reflection and collective care. Kim and I are so excited to be supporting these connections around these important identities!
We’ll be meeting on the third Thursday of every month, with the next meeting November 16th! Register here if you would like to attend! (Note that you’ll need to register with Blue Sky Learning through Jane.) If you have attended a previous month, no need to jump through these hoops again, we’ll already be emailing you the link!
Workshops for Kinksters
I have lots of workshops left before we close out the year! In November, I’ll be hosting 3 workshops
November 2nd will be Pick-Up D/s: Power Exchange on the Fly, which is a great workshop for kinksters who are interested in playing with power exchange with new partners and dynamics. We’ll give you the building blocks for how to be more intentional in creating these kinds of connections.
November 23rd I’ll be offering my Creating Personal Protocols workshop, which is always well-attended. In this workshop we talk about how to add elements of protocol to our relationships and play. Yes, I know this one is on US Thanksgiving, so it won’t be accessible for all the folks celebrating. I have an international audience and wanted to give folks outside of the US or folks who don’t do Thanksgiving an opportunity to have some kinky learning & fun! A reminder that you can always buy a ticket to access the recording afterward!
And finally on November 30th, I’ll be teaching my Getting A Little Dirty workshop, which is a workshop on age-based roleplay, which is often referred to as ageplay in the kink community. Note that ageplay describes roleplay between consenting adults and does not involve any discussions of interacting with minor children.
In December I’ll have 2 workshops available!
On December 7th I’ll be presenting my workshop Intentional Surrender. This workshop was popular earlier in the year when I launched it and I’m so excited to bring it back after making a few tweaks based on feedback! This workshop is open to all attendees over the age of 18 and is open to folks of all power orientations and dynamics, but will focus primarily on the experience and perspectives of people who play a submissive role in sex and/or relationships. We will spend this workshop taling about exploring surrender and devotion with thoughtfulness and intentionality. There are many, many skills that are involved with creating and maintaining a healthy power exchange, and this work cannot be done exclusively by the dominant.
To wrap up the year, I’ll be presenting my brand-new workshop, Practices For Mindful Submission. I’ve been contemplating this workshop for a long time and consider this to be my most practical workshop for other submissive-oriented follks. In this workshop we’ll go through some exercises that can help us be more in the moment when submitting. We’ll talk about creating personalized transition rituals and asking for what we need to reinforce our connection to self and partner.
Support & Connection
If you would like to connect with me for coaching please do. Sliding scale is available and I am happy to have a free consultation prior to beginning our work together.
As always, I appreciate your donations toward my educational & community work.
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