Intimate Interactions

Hi, Intimates! We talk with Yana Skorstengaard again today about her thesis in art therapy. Her research reveals great results from programs for incarcerated folks. Programs involving art can create the kind of self expression and other communication skills necessary for functional relationships. Outside of programs within incarceration, there are also alternatives available to a very small number...

This session discusses group sex while Jazz Goldman and I are walking around at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary feeding ducks and getting accosted by gaggles of geese. Nerdy aside - Occasionally those gaggles would form a skein or two, the word for a gaggle of geese in flight. Of course, both gaggles on the ground or water and skeins in the air can be called flocks of geese correctly. Back to group sex...

Happy Two Year Anniversary of Intimate Interactions Podcast! This is the current episode I'm publishing to my patreon feed that I decided I'd publish to my free feed early! ^.^ Remember all of my content publishes free but as a thank-you to my patreon subscribers, I offer early access to great content. What does it mean when you feel a sense of intimacy that isn’t reciprocal? Today I’d love to foc...

My soon-to-be 70 year old father visited from India and had a trans-ischemic attack while here. He’s been sick for about four weeks since he got here and was sick before he came, so I felt a sense of urgency to get to know him better, document for my nieces, and to ask what questions I had. He speaks well and often chooses only to highlight predominantly`the positives which could be seen as editor...

Jazz and I drive to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary for a fun day out and have a conversation about their experiences in group relationships like the Triad they were in during college. They discuss the needs of the individual versus those of the group (a la Spock, or if you prefer, the Three Musketeers or … insert maybe whatever French philosopher that inspired themes in that book here). They also discu...

Happy New Year, Intimates! It’s 2020, the year where “partying like it’s 2020” will likely mean turning in around 10:30 pm so you feel rested the next morning. Just kidding - it’s the year of hindsight, and even with perfect hindsight, people stay up later than they say they want to and experience more motivation to commit to hard things the further away they are. I’ve always found that a bit emba...

Do deterrents work? If you make a deterrent awful enough, does it stop crime? Has capital crime ended where the death penalty exists if you don’t count executions as murders? Yana, a criminology researcher from the University of Ottawa is here to help us unpack these things. Since it’s six figures per prisoner per year in our current system, and if these very expensive, punitive deterrents don’t s...

My father visited from India recently. He turns 70 in 9 days. With chronic fatigue, heart attacks, and trans-ischemic attacks - they’re like ministrokes - I felt a sense of urgency to connect with him. I invited him to podcast about his childhood as it seemed like a good way to learn more about him, and I think it’s important to humanize a parent as just another person where you get the opportunit...

Because giving anal sex is my primary form of penetrative sexual expression, it became essential for me to make it easier and pleasurable for others. Coaching someone who is receiving anal sex is more an art than a science, but there are certain skills that are useful. You can also coach yourself while you’re receiving anal sex, something I do frequently given my experience coaching others. Anothe...

Life Interrupted. I think that’s the title of the chapter of the memoirs I’ll never write about 2019 and 2020. The novel coronavirus has probably produced more global anxiety, depression, stress, and grief than just about any other single event I can think of right now in my lifetime. It has brought so many in the global community together in our isolation from even the closest neighbours. Yana is...

Today, Yana Skorstengaard, a masters candidate at the University of Ottawa in criminology discusses how we relate to crime and are intimate with the criminal punishment. It has the power to come into our lives and take everything we have. We trust that it will be just and fair with us even though we know it isn’t like that with lots of other people. Why do we assume we’ll be treated fairly? Is it...

Trauma is everywhere, even in power exchange. Relationships can be traumatic, and total power exchange is no different. Healing can take years and adversely affect relationships, kink, and sex. When processing trauma, I think it’s important to work through any mistaken beliefs first, and to come to different conclusions about yourself before moving on. I’ve found cognitive behavioural therapy to b...

What cultural change would improve the health and wellness of your society? Today we chat with Yana about cultural ideas such as retributive or punitive justice - Yana is a criminology researcher after all - and discuss social leadership. When I’m gaming and see anti-social or harmful behaviour from a teenager, what responsibility do I have to intervene or improve the culture? We ask important que...

This month we’ve focused a lot on two alternating threads in the show: more talking about sex, and more talking about the relationship to oneself. As I try to tackle harder concepts and try recording more outside and in less ideal environments, I’m continuing to experiment with different kinds of show ideas. Let me know what’s working for you and what isn’t by commenting on https://facebook.com/in...

Anal sex is one of my favourite topics because I enjoy giving anal sex, and have recently been attempting to enjoy receiving anal sex with limited success. Jazz Goldman is also a veteran of giving anal sex to others but they have recently become quite successful at enjoying receiving anal sex. We discuss our bodies, our strategies, and our outcomes. If you wanted a high level conversation about th...

“If you say mental wellness three times, some asshole in a ‘Live, Love, Laugh’ t-shirt will appear and tell you to go outside.” - sign at BitF 2019 Relationship to the self is critical when considering mental wellness. Often we think of that relationship being purely a mental one, but many things comprise one’s relationship to the self including sleep, hydration, diet, and exercise. Dax is my gues...

Hi Intimates. Today we’re talking with Yana, the criminology researcher, about why it’s important we start looking at issues like homelessness and the conditions in prisons. If we each of us is to be safe in our quarantine from COVID-19, the sooner we reduce the number of new infections, the better. So, let’s talk about why keeping ourselves safe means taking care of social issues we’ve ignored wi...

Alternative relationship spaces like polyamory groups or kink organizations sometimes struggle to see when Racism is going on in the space because it tends to be more subtle than traditional violence. Jazz Goldman is a mixed Black-Jewish American, and I’m a mixed British-Indo Canadian. We bring our mixed experiences of our heritages to this conversation about Racism. I try to document how Racism l...

Note: This episode published a day early so it could be in time for Halloween even though it's focused primarily on Diwali. As time goes on I'm going to continue to try to rush themed episodes to you in time for the appropriate dates but may not always be able to do this.  Hey Intimates. I wanted to do a Hallowe'en episode because it’s such a popular holiday and I’ve been challenging myself t...

Race is a complicated topic to discuss, because there are quite a few misconceptions out there. I want to tackle how white a lot of alternative spaces are because of how inhospitable they can be for people of colour. This episode discusses what races are, how eugenics impacted ideas that we internalize today, the supposed scientific basis of eugenics, and who gets to be white. Despite our best eff...

Person on the internet: “Wow you’re so mature for your age.” Other person on the internet: “Thanks, it’s the lifetime of depression and self-isolation.” Intimate Interactions is about relationships and intimacy. I can’t think of a more important relationship than the one to yourself. Some educators talk about self relationship from the perspective of being your own partner first and foremost, befo...

Have you ever heard of non monogamous people having “comet” partners? Today we’ll discuss what that means and how it’s different from long distance relationships. Jazz Goldman and I talk about what a comet partner relationship might look like between the two of us. We talk about sustainability, and make a distinction between being community-oriented non monogamous folks, and being individual-orien...

Maita is a men’s coach living in Victoria who teaches healthy relationships between men. We talk about emotional labour, exercises you can do with your friends or at home, strategies with intimate partners, socially acceptable ways men share intimacy with other men, and about the challenge of restoring intimacy between men if they’ve received gender messages that have poisoned their relationships...

Relationships can be thought of as strategies for meeting our human needs with each other. They can also be thought of as the sum of our interactions. That might sound complicated - and it is! That’s why it’s much easier to think of them in cookie-cutter, pre-set ways. We are given scripts and categories. This is what “friends with benefits” looks like. This is what “getting serious” looks like. T...

Welcome to the second session of the Tillie-Victor Friendship Project - or TVFP. We’re recording outdoor sessions documenting our friendship as it progresses. This is a continuation of our first session and as such it was accidentally recorded on our H1N Zoom recorder as a low quality MP3, but we solemnly swear to be up to higher fidelity good in future sessions. Today we chat about Liminality, po...