Romance, Arguments, Sexuality, Child Rearing and Other Marriage Experiences
Today we’re doing a little audio. Neither of us can seem to get the whole looking at the camera thing down. We recently happened upon a video by Tawney Seren regarding some comments she was getting from men intimidated by sex toys. This is a long one, so we recommend enjoying this while working on something else, going for a hike, or a long commute.
This is the video we were responding to.
Hey everyone. It sure has been a while hasn’t it? A couple months now by my count. There was some personal stuff responsible for the initial break, but I can really only chalk that up to two maybe three weeks of absence. That was pretty awesome though, see my wife and I hadn’t had a honey moon and we decided to do one ten years later. Due to the nature of what we had going on those two weeks and to protect the anonymity of some very special people, I can’t share the details of that trip with all of you. Trust me, that’s difficult on this end.
The rest of that break came from some creative emergency brakes that seemed to seize up around the question of form and function. I wasn’t hitting targets and living up not only to the things I’ve promised myself but content I’ve teased to you. It turns out very young children created more scheduling difficulties with audio and video formats than I had anticipated, and I still stand by the idea that they’d be largely pointless without Emily present. Emily has her own projects that are suffering from the same issue, so we had a serious talk today about arranging for the children to be watched more frequently. The written blog is easy enough to do with children, and sneaking a few pictures for banner images is pretty easy. Getting good audioscapes and framing that survives for more than a minute or two however isn’t. Compounding that issue, our eldest has gotten old enough to be much more curious about things he’s not allowed to see and he can glance over a screen and read it much more quickly than he used to.
On that last point I’m pretty happy all things considered. Just earlier this year he was hardly able to consider reading a book with chapters in it and now he’s got the first Harry Potter book under his belt and is a good way through The Chamber of Secrets. He starts 3rd grade later this year. His reading had always felt a bit behind to me not even a few months ago, and I’m very relieved.
As for getting bigger blocks of time for our projects we are going with the tried and true child swap. We get a night of unrestrained adult time far more frequently and so does some lucky other parent. The price of that for both parties is having a house full of 6 kids all under the age of eight far more frequently. Ah well.
This is a follow up to our intoduction to Warchest building. On more expensive sex toys we often issue the warning that you should be covering your bases before indulging unless you’re absolutely sure. A reader engaged us and asked what covering the bases looked like. Sure enough I went back and read that old post and while it talked a lot about the things you ‘could’ get we never went as far as making specific recommendations. So without further ado, here are our warchest basics. Some of these items are available through our affiliate link at Peepshow Toys. If you like this content and want to support us, using that link is very helpful.
Lube
Nothing puts a damper on fun time like dryness. Whether that’s parts that should be lubing that aren’t, or parts that can’t lube themselves, nothing says party pooper like too much friction. We recommend having at least a water based lubricant handy for a few reasons: they won’t damage your body safe toys, the good ones come in all natural body safe formulas, they work with your bodies natural lubrication, and they are easy to clean. I’ve reviewed one of our favorites in the past, but we have three go-to water based lubes.
The first on the list is Sliquid Naturals H2O. We’ve been using his lubricant for years and it is excellent. We’ll go into more details when it gets a proper stand alone review later, but the basics are it’s a medium thickness all natural water based lubricant that is Glycerin and Paraben free.
Next up is System Jo Agape. Yeah yeah, we snickered at the name too. Just like the Sliquid, System Jo Agape is free of harsh chemicals. Agape goes one step further on the marketing however and claims to be perfectly pH balanced for especially sensitive vaginas. So if you have had issues with sensitivity to lubricant before you may wanna stop here first. For our use, it’s a bit thinner than the H2O and whether or not that’s a good or bad thing is up to you. We use both regularly.
Our next favorite water based lube, and the one that gets the most use out of us by far is Bad Dragon’s Cum Lube which we did a full review on here. TL;DR, this ultra thick lubricant is a go-to when having back-door fun with toys that can’t be used with silicone lubricants. It’s got excellent staying power but can be hard to work with.
If you’re into anal play that doesn’t involve silicone toys (glass, metal, fingers, dick) we also highly recommend getting a silicone based lubricant. There are some drawbacks related to the strengths. Silicone based lube really goes the distance in anal applications as it won’t be absorbed by the body, and it stays put, but that strength also makes it difficult to clean. It’s a trade-off we feel is worth it to avoid the hassles of re-lubing. We’ve had that happen just as an orgasm was building and Emily lost her hard earned build up as a result. Don’t let that happen to you! Our go-to for silicone lube is currently Gun Oil.
Clitoris Time
The next base we need to cover is external stimulation with the clitoris in mind. Unlike lubricant, which is widely needed regardless of situation, this is one of those things you have to judge based on need. Do your hands got you fam? What about your partner? If availability and effectiveness are satisfactory you can skip this and cover gaps in the warchest that would do more good. But if you’re looking for something more out of your clitoral experience we have a few products we highly recommend.
The Shibari Mini Halo offers broad area coverage and decent power in a compact cordless format. We haven’t done an in depth review of the Mini Halo yet but we’ve owned it for quite a while and it is due. Spoilers, we like it. You can pick one up at the affiliate link above.
Also available from Peepshow is the Satisfyer Pro Penguin, an absolutely adorable entry in the air pulsation category of vibrators. These vibrators offer targeted intensity that’s a little much for some people, but we find immensely pleasurable. Its less cutely shaped but otherwise identical cousin, the Satisfyer Pro 2, can sometimes be had for less depending on the sales going so check that out as well.
Pentration
Toys that you stick into things are the bulk of what we review here but it needs to be said that this is only one piece of the warchest puzzle. Some women just don’t respond much to penetration and others, like Emily, basically can’t get off satisfactorily without feeling a bit stretched. Here are two basics to help you cover this base, but there are many more out there.
Recently reviewed, the Vivo by Uberrime is a great way to start on a body safe penetration journey. It safely covers G-spot and P-spot play and comes in at an affordable price for 100% body-safe platinum cured silicone.
If you’re a little more adventurous with designs, the illithid by PleasureForge is also a very affordable way to get into body safe penetration play with a large degree of texture, and PleasureForge does some amazing pours.
Advancing
Those three areas will largely cover your basics. Once those are settled I recommend getting into mood setters, like music, candles, incense, lighting, soundscapes, or whatever it is you can think of to create atmosphere. We’ve also covered several advanced penetrative toys at higher price points, so check our post history. Once you have these basics covered you can start drilling down into getting specific features for specific needs. If your spouse travels a lot your needs are going to be different than if you see them every night. It’s just the way it is. Build your warchest to suit you.
Boy has this review been a long time coming. Several weeks ago I went to check out the Uberrime studio in Orlando Florida to see first hand how the silicone dildo manufacturing process went in detail. I’ve aluded to this visit before in previous blogs and on twitter but enough of what I saw fit the category of trade secrets and other confidential items that there hasn’t been a story on that. Suffice it to say however, I learned a lot and the visit has been a great asset in informing some of my critiques. At the conclusion of the visit I was presented with a surprise bag containing a Vivo and I’ve been eager to review it ever since. I also left my backpack behind, but some weirdo named Peter Parker was kind enough to ship it to me. (Seriously though, thanks Marco and hilarious shipping label)
Vivo is one of a set of three themed dildos: Spiro, Vivo, and Amo which mean “I breathe”, “I live”, and “I love” respectively. Vivo was the first sculpt in the set. Vivo is directly advertised as designed primarily for harness compatible G-spotting and P-spotting, which makes my job a whole lot easier. We typically buy and review toys that are deep into the fantasy genre, and many of these toys have no stated design goals. You’ll see in most of our reviews an exhaustive enumeration of the ways the toy can be used—that comes from no stated design goal, we have to work that out. We will still be going over the ways we enjoyed using Vivo, but at least I have a hard design goal to measure it against. Let’s take a look at Vivo.
The most striking feature of Vivo is the head, which makes total sense for a G-spotting toy. The head is prominent compared to the shaft, which you will be able to see reflected in the measurements section. The best feature of this rounded and somewhat triangular head has to be the “flat” side pictured both below and in the banner image.
This is the feature that does the most work on Emily by far and the experience matches the design goal. Emily has always had trouble finely manipulating toys to hit certain areas—her arms just don’t quite reach out far enough to get that kind of control—but as her partner utilizing the flat head and upwards curve of the shaft made hitting her G-spot effortlessly effective. That fact should not be overlooked by potential harness users. On that note, Vivo is approximately shore 8A, and as you can see in the photos, stands easily and doesn’t droop easily, which is also important for harnesses. I also used that flat bit of the head to smack Emily’s clit around a bit, because I have something of an obsession with re-purposing design elements. Just under the head are some slight but definitely perceptible ridges, followed by a very smooth shaft that tapers slightly wider as it hits the harness friendly base that also lends the Vivo anal use safety.
I do have to address a bit of an elephant with the review though, as the colors I got are very non-standard. That’s not a big deal to me per se, in fact I think I’m more fond of those pearled transition pours from a daylight viewing perspective, but mine came with glow pigments, and not just a little bit either. These are some of the brightest glows I’ve seen in the industry and I can actually see the toy casting light onto my hands from a decent distance once it’s fully charged. The only toy I have that comes anywhere near this is HodgePodgeEntourage’s Sylph. That leaves me in a bit of a pickle because Vivo isn’t normally available with glow pigment. It’s not to say I’m not appreciative, quite the opposite, I enjoy this light show immensely, and that’s exactly why I’d like others to be able to have it. So I’m gonna post that glow picture and implore Uberrime to find a way to make a glow variant as a standard option.
With that out of the way, lets get into one of my favorite parts of this gig, measurements and charts! Lengthwise, Vivo is 6.5 inches usable and 7 inches total length, the rest of the measurements are in the table below.
| Vivo | Circumference | Diameter | D-Score |
| Head Measurements | 5.75″ | 1.83″ | 1.6 |
| Mid Shaft Measurements | 4.5″ | 1.43″ | 1.0 |
| Lower Shaft Measurements | 5.25″ | 1.67″ | 1.3 |
Quick Reminder: D-score is a measurement that essentially gives us the number of median sized dicks to equal the girth of a toy. You can read D-Score more easily as “This is how many dicks this is worth in girth”. So a D-Score of 2.5 would be 2 and a half dicks of girth, to make it simple.
For those of you paying attention, you’ll remember that Emily is something of a size queen. Measurements like these generally strike us as ‘beginner’ in feel and that holds out here. That’s not a sleight though, it just reflects Emily’s niche tastes. I’d be hard pressed to come up with measurements more suited for mass market than these given the design goal. Remember, that D-Score of 1.0 on the mid shaft isn’t “small’, it’s a full size average dick. It is however small in comparison to the toys we most frequently use, which swing around D-scores of 2.5 or more. This just reflects her preferred play style, which is full of stretching, knotting, and grinding. What these measurements reflect is ease of use in thrusting applications, harness compatibility, and targeted play—hey that sounds familiar, design goals. Reviewing Vivo seemed an excellent opportunity to point out how these measurements influence use.
Now let’s get into another great feature, the price. At 59 dollars, either from the Etsy shop or straight from Uberrime’s website, I don’t have to caveat or walk back recommendations on Vivo around a mid 100’s or higher price tag the way I generally have to do when reviewing fantasy toys. Just like those fantasy toys, Vivo is made from 100% body safe platinum cure silicone. Vivo is an excellent and affordable way to introduce someone to body safe products without chasing them off with features like suckers, huge sizes, and animal-like profiles. That’s exactly what I recommend Vivo for; an affordable and effective entry into body-safe materials that makes good on its advertised design features.
Boy has it been too long since we’ve done one of these. Took a hard turn to family/relationship segments and book reviews, and while I certainly missed focusing on those after the rapid fire series of sex toy reviews, it’s long since time to get back to it.
Today we’re looking at Chance (unflared), manufactured by Bad Dragon, in a large size, medium firmness, and equipped with the cum tube accessory. There, that was a mouthful. First we’re going to take an overall look at Chance’s design and aesthetic, and then were going to go over how each of the options selected for ours affects its use, what adjustments to that formula could mean for you, and what preferences this toy gels with.
Overall Design
First lets address the most obvious part of Chance’s design, it’s hung like a horse. I’m not exactly sure what the motive was behind that; I have several plausible ideas but I didn’t reach out and ask so I won’t pontificate. It’s ultimately not important and I’d rather deal with the reality of the design rather than the motives. Chance is one of Bad Dragon’s most prolific and popular models if its prevalence in independently produced pornography or conversations inside the fantasy toy community are in any way representative of the market interest. There are always questions about Chance, what size should I get?, how big is it really?, and so on. When Emily showed interest in one she was afraid I’d not be open to it, she was embarrassed because even though it’s a fantasy genre toy it has roots in reality that she was afraid I’d judge her for.
That confusion isn’t unwarranted, it’s a reasonable thing to be cautious about revealing in my opinion. Now in our case, I thought it was cute that she’d think I’d judge her for that, but it’s definitely not the first thing I’d own up to in a new relationship, that’s for sure. More important fish to fry. Point is, I thought her apprehension was cute, but it was definitely understandable and I don’t want to downplay the apprehensions others reading this might feel about it. On to more design elements!
Chance has a large length to girth ratio and has a large heavy base which lends itself to several types of play. Chance, especially in large size, is a good toy to lower yourself onto from an ergonomic standpoint—there’s not as much squatting involved before you get some reward; you don’t have to completely touch your thighs to your calves to hit your limit either. This removes some of the need to set up on things like chairs, or to hold the toy—which is good because it’s quite heavy—and reduces maneuvering in general. In partner play the high length ratio lets your partner be farther away and take more comfortable postures themselves. I’ve mentioned the performer Keri Berry before in my first list of people I follow, but she has several works that highlight this feature far better than I could describe it—there’s one in particular you can check out here where even the preview video shows a lot of these benefits in action.
Other design features of Chance include the slightly flared out head with bumpy textures—there’s a version of Chance that is specifically flared more (this is something horses actually do), but both versions have a pronounced head feature. The head is one of Emily’s favorite things about Chance. It’s got pop and is aggressive. The flared version is somewhat notorious for being hard to insert, and even the unflared version requires some coaxing and/or working up with another toy to accommodate the blunt head. Between the two pictures you’ve probably noticed the vein texture added to the shaft, along with the ring towards the middle. Though some of you might manage it, don’t look forward to feeling that ring on a large—at least not vaginally—it starts approximately six and a half inches down and that’s deeper than many women can go total. Fortunately, the shaft is plenty textured and that texture is very perceptible.
The Size Factor
We ordered our Chance in large which comes with 12 glorious usable inches. The girth of the head is 7.25 inches in circumference, with the shaft clocking in at 6.75 inches around. This gives head and shaft D-scores of 2.6 and 2.2 respectively. That’s not anywhere close to the very large range but it’s also nothing to sneeze at. However, most toys that get to this length are at least 3.5 D-score somewhere along the length and that makes Chance slender by comparison.
Quick Reminder: D-score is a measurement that essentially gives us the number of median sized dicks to equal the girth of a toy. You can read D-Score more easily as “This is how many dicks this is worth in girth”. So a D-Score of 2.5 would be 2 and a half dicks of girth, to make it simple.
So what in the world are we going to do with all that length? As I mentioned before, at least vaginally, most of that length is going to be sacrificed on the altar of ergonomics and aesthetics as I mentioned above. Anal use is a different story. Though we haven’t worked up to attempting it yet, it’s no secret that Chance is a fan favorite for deep anal exploration for the brave, well beyond the sigmoid. I’ll say this explicitly, this is very advanced use and I can’t recommend trying it to anyone who wasn’t already considering it and very experienced with anal play.
If you want to get to a smaller size in the context of anal play we could see that for sure, we’d definitely have tried a medium by now, but vaginally we think going below large loses much needed girth.
The Firmness
There are a few factors playing into our choice for medium firmness. As slender as it is, Chance has some difficulty holding itself upright even at medium. I couldn’t recommend using soft even on the large, for that reason. However, if you went to firm and were using Chance for anal play, it might not comfortably follow your contours. That said, the firmer you go the more pop you’ll give the head and the more you’ll feel that shaft texture. You’ll also be making insertion easier as you go firmer. We however, think medium is the perfect firmness for a large unflared Chance.
The Cumtube Accessory
I find this accessory to be a mixed bag that largely depends on what toy you’ve paired it with. Sometimes a cumtube can be an excellent addition to play and other times it just gets in the way. We feel like a large Chance benefits greatly from the accessory. As I mentioned before, Chance is a heavy toy that stays where you put it, and although it isn’t suction cup compatible it’s easy to arrange things such that you have one or maybe two hands free to enjoy the accessory with. On smaller toys and without a partner, utilizing a cumtube can require you stop the action in a way that kills the moment. This is entirely avoidable with Chance. Chance is somewhat girthy and also well suited for depth play and the cumtube fulfills an important and practical role in keeping things lubed up without having to break the action up. A cumtube is a solid recommendation for Chance.
Purchasing & Cost
Our Chance was a Black Friday steal at 80 bucks but the normal cost for what’s pictured above is approximately 150. That’s high enough to issue our “bases covered” warning. What’s that mean? Well it means that before you drop that much cash on a toy this niche make sure you have your basic kit essentials covered. Have you found the lube that suits you yet? Do you have a more basic dildo? A strong vibrator? A womanizer perhaps? (We are in that price range after all). We absolutely adore our Chance, but we would not pay full price for one if we didn’t have all our kit needs covered first for sure. We’re passing that practice as a recommendation on down to you.
As for purchasing itself, due to current wait times for customs (dead on the edge of the terms of service limit for the bulk of people discussing such things with each other—4 weeks), we highly encourage you to watch for new pre-made inventory that suits your needs, as it drops 3 times a week. If you follow Bad Dragon’s twitter account you can be notified of drops that way. They’re usually on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the afternoon (from an eastern time zone perspective anyway, GMT -4), and there’s always a mad rush to grab them. 12 drops is an awfully long time to go without seeing a suitable Chance in my experience. I will say however that I am generally able to browse drops as they happen. If you cannot you may not have as much luck scoring a popular model in the configuration you want, but you should at least give it a try for a week and see how you fare.
Final Thoughts
We absolutely adore our Chance and it’s one of our favorite toys in our entire collection. While solo thrusting can be a bit awkward and clumsy due to the weight and size of a large Chance, the advantages in other forms of solo play and in couple play outweigh the downsides for us. We can simply reach for a different toy more suited to the one task Chance doesn’t do as well if we want to. While we do have large caveats on a purchase recommendation, which we mentioned just prior to our conclusion, if those aren’t deterrents for you then our recommendation to take a chance on Chance in this configuration is very high.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for forever, and it occurred to me that I’d probably be refactoring and making adjustments to my approach on raising my daughter from now until she’s well and truly independent. I figured that waiting until I’d figured that all out wasn’t worth the 15 year plus delay. So I’ll just put these ideas down as I have them now, as I’ve already shared them with a few other fretting dads with daughters, on edge about their girls coming of age in 7 or so years and wondering how to deal with suitors and other dad fears. I’ll present this as I worked it out in my head.
First was addressing the visceral fears, and accepting them. No, I really don’t want my daughter to grow up and to meet boys and god forbid have sex with them. At least, that’s the self-centered emotional state. To be more accurate, I don’t want to deal with the emotions that will come from those phases of her life, which make me dread the events themselves, but you’d never hear me saying I don’t want her to grow up and live her own fulfilling life. I put my entire life on hold for my children, I took a different path. Rather than work our asses off into our thirties and then have children in the house until we were collecting social security, we decided to have kids sooner and then tear into our careers after they left. So I’m as motivated as any parent for the children to grow up and leave. Yet, even with the internal inconsistency, the universal dread of fathers remains, and it has to be dealt with in a healthy way. I thought about the options, I tried to pin down the components of that fear. After all, I wasn’t fearful about ruining Emily’s life when I pursued her. Conversely, all of my daughter’s pursuers, as imaginary as they are right now, are imagined with contempt and suspicion. Perhaps that’s because I know that there’s only one motive I can count on from those suitors, no matter which other motives they may have, good or bad. That’s when it hit me. That’s what I’m dreading. What if she makes bad choices? There’s no way I’m going to let her wither on the vine if she does you know?
So the internal conversation shifts. How do I maximize my daughter’s chances of making good choices? I started considering the common options, and discarding the bad ones. I certainly knew some things that just don’t work. Sheltering is a big no-no. Wrap your kids in bubble wrap and they never grow up. This is the method of people who, having their dread of the future, simply and futilely try to prevent it. When your teenager hits their rebellious phase, what exactly is it they’re going to be rebelling against? Something to keep in mind. Sheltered girls seem to get into trouble, for two reasons that conspire together to form tragedy. The first is ignorance. Ignorance of sexuality, sexual health, anatomy, and the consequences of sex. These are the girls that fall for ‘just the tip’ and the pullout method for birth control. They’re naive and that’s bad enough on their own, but it’s made worse by the fact that naivety attracts the very people predisposed to take advantage of it. Ignorance also leaves a person ill equipped to resist peer pressure. Secondly, the shelter method can and often does produce an impulse to go taste forbidden fruit, usually indiscriminately, and that indiscretion is specifically what we’re trying to avoid when it comes right down to it. These two combine, the eagerness to seek the forbidden thing, and the ignorance of its dangers, to make for a really sad ending.
I briefly considered the other extreme, very early education. It’s something I’d seen talked about in passing, but the more I thought about it the less it made sense to me personally. At this age, kids are just absolutely curious about everything, and they don’t make good decisions. First of all, I’m a firm believer in letting your children enjoy their time as children for as long as is healthy. Second, simply knowing about it could be a motivator for premature and ill-considered exploration. Three yearolds aren’t exactly good at things like delayed gratification, curiosity deferment, or taking into account the consequences of actions. So all the curiosity would penetrate, but none of the warnings would, is what I considered a very likely outcome.
So what other methods are available? How do we encourage our daughters to grow without throwing them to the wolves? I watched my three yearold. I took in her personality, which I was always familiar with, but I really sat down and watched it, and I noticed a few things. Aside from being utterly adorable, smart, and especially precocious, she’s quite picky. Heh, now there’s an idea, what if she was as picky with her boys as she was with her food? That’d be nice. She’s also somewhat athletic. She loves climbing and shamed her much older brother into going up a faux rock wall because she was going to do it first. I got this image in my head of a strong athletic woman that didn’t take crap. That’s when it hit me. Confidence.
I figured the best thing I could do for my daughter was build up her sense of self-worth. Spend time with her, be a father figure, be a role model. No really think about those words, role model. I am her model not just for what a father should be but also for what a husband should be, right now I’m the only one she knows. I’m pretty sure Emily would tell you that while I’m not perfect, because who is, I’m already a pretty darn good role model as a husband. But my daughter doesn’t really see even half of those moments, I didn’t think osmosis was good enough. So I started setting aside a little time once in a while to take her on little dates. That reminds me, we’re a bit over due. I already do this with my son, that is, I make one on one time for him away from his mother and his siblings to just spend a bit of time together and learn how I tic. That relationship comes a little more natural, it’s not a conscious thing. All I have to do around my son is do dad stuff, it’s a direct relationship, I’m a man and that’s what he’s wanting to grow up to be, simple, intuitive. What I didn’t realize was it was just as simple with my daughter, I just hadn’t considered my status as a role model. Simple, just less intuitive.
So I took her on a date, and what a nice time that was. We went for ice cream and I took her to the new age store to pick out a pretty rock to display in her room. She set her eyes on a nice gypsum sphere and she admires it regularly. We’ve been on a few more since, and she’s been increasingly sweet on me, which, that’s just kryptonite, it’s something I can’t explain to anyone without a daughter. There’s a few things going on here that I think are going to be very positive for her long term. One, I’m setting a positive relationship as our base state, which helps counterbalance the hard-to-do but absolutely necessary regimen of my role as a disciplinary figure, this is going to help me convince her to confide in me later, so I know when she gets into trouble before that spirals out of control into worse trouble. Second, it’s helping her sense of self-worth to get dedicated one on one time. Third, I’m teaching her the standards by which she should expect to be treated by men through my behavior. Fourth, I’m decoupling the idea of having a good time on a date with a sexual payoff, and I think you’d be surprised how entwined those concepts have become—consider what tinder has done to the expectation of dates.
I’ve been enjoying employing this method, which I’m hoping accomplishes my goals in raising my daughter, but only time will tell. To make that more clear, here’s what I’m hoping I’ll accomplish in the long run. I’d like to foster her sense of self worth, which will hopefully allow me to explain the consequences of sex without seeming adversarial or sex negative—this is a sex positive household after all. It’s not the idea of sex I want my daughter to devalue, it’s that I want her to value herself highly enough to be in charge of her sexuality rather than carried by it. I’d like her to be able to be mature enough to acknowledge her desires as healthy so that she can process them in a way that allows her to make good decisions about who she shares that with, and I want her to feel like she can confide in me and her mother without fearing the consequences more than continuing down a bad path, because ultimately it is her decision making skills I’m going to have to trust and rely on later on. I can’t do it for her. On that note, it’s also important to make sure to pass on skills that increase her independence; from how to get and hold down a job, cooking, financial skills, and employable skills, one of the easiest ways to end up in a bad situation is to be dependent on someone else for your care and contribute to a sense of inability to walk away, and that goes for sons and daughters alike. The ability to walk away is the strongest position of negotiation. Competence and confidence surely is the best defense, therefore.
I’ve shared these thoughts with other concerned fathers, and though they experience the same apprehension and dread as I do about witnessing the future, they like the idea of my method. After all, they all know too, from experience, how inadequate alternate methods were when they were doing the chasing. They also remember how scary and intimidating the collected and confident girls were. Ultimately, it’s not me I want potential suitors to fear for disrespecting my daughter, it’s her. There, yeah, I think that’s the point of this method summed in a sentence. As I said before, these thoughts don’t really feel complete yet, and perhaps they’ll change over time, but until then, that’s my current thinking. ‘Til next time.
Or weeks, or years, or whatever period of time is bad. Let’s get one thing out of the way right away. This post is about how I handle things and how I cope, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know what works for you. Maybe you can identify with some of the methods and techniques I use or maybe they’ll be something that you’d find willing to try, but I’m no snake oil salesman, and I can’t promise these things will help you through. I just hope they will. I’d rather you never need to know how to get through tough times but, that’s just a fact of life.
Don’t Change Who You Are
It’s tempting, after you’re hurt or you go through a bad time, to discard everything associated with that memory even if they’re a critical part of who you are. A favorite song, a hobby, a core behavior, a belief system, an entire city, they’re all things people can ditch in an effort to quickly relieve themselves of reminders of bad times. I can’t deny that these things can seem to help in the short run but I don’t think they’re good long term. Throwing these things away just gives power and legitimacy to the people or things that hurt you. If I could draw a familiar parallel, it’s a lot like the security theater that comes after a horrific attack on innocent people. We tell ourselves that changing our behavior is how the terrorists really win, and then we go and radically change our behavior in an act to make us feel safer. For bonus points, the things we change don’t seem to make us any safer at all when push comes to shove. Changing who you are won’t stop the future bad times that you’re going to go through, that everyone goes through. Bad times are a fact of life, and changing yourself in a fruitless attempt to avoid them does nothing but give them power over your life. Security theater for the soul. There is one exception to this advice though. If you get hurt in the same ways over and over, and the hurt has something to do with a life goal, like holding a job, retaining friends, or building meaningful relationships, it’s definitely worth taking a look at yourself, and you should do so with a professional. The scope of this blog however, is for those unconnected bad moments that aren’t part of a larger pattern. Sometimes bad things just happen. This is about those times.
You’re Not Alone
While each individual’s suffering is unique, suffering itself is universal. Everyone goes through tough times, everyone suffers, but life goes on. That’s not to diminish your suffering, quite the opposite. Your suffering is meaningful, it may even redefine you going forward if it is profound enough, but if you let it keep you from moving, from going forward at all, you can make it worse for yourself. Like it or not, the Earth doesn’t stop spinning when you hit a rough patch and neglecting yourself and your commitments can make a bad situation much worse. You haven’t hit bottom yet, don’t aim for it. Someone, somewhere, even if it’s just the person in the mirror, is counting on you. Don’t let them down. Friends are good to have in times like this, good friends, the ones that don’t get upset when you have an emotional load you need help carrying. You’re about to find out who your real friends are, and which ones are fair weather. That’s useful knowledge to have. Just remember, being under the microscope is often the price you pay for this sort of help. Your real friends don’t like seeing these things happen to you just as much as you don’t, and they’re going to try and help you prevent repeating mistakes, and that might mean they have to know things. They might have to see you ugly cry into a beer, they might have to learn that you did something awful, or that you were the victim of something awful, and either of those things can be painful to share, or to see, but real friends will listen and help you through, now isn’t the time to push them away.
Avoid Isolating Yourself
This is related to the preceding paragraph, but it’s important enough to reiterate. Isolated people are vulnerable people. Now isn’t the time to shrink from your friends. You’re emotionally vulnerable, there are predators out there who will exploit that, try to make themselves out as your savior, make promises to provide whatever it is you think you need, and then trap you with it. Whether it’s rushing into a rebound, getting in with the wrong crowd, putting yourself in a dangerous situation, or ceasing to bring in income, real friends are going intervene when you’re being self-destructive. All predators, four legged, winged, or the worst of all, two legged, prefer isolated and weak prey. Don’t make yourself attractive to them.
Joy Is Contagious Too
One of the most common excuses I see for people withdrawing from their friends and family when things get tough is not wanting to be an emotional burden. Sorrow is contagious, and you don’t want to spread it. That’s a reasonable concern to have. Negativity actually is contagious. One couple divorcing often results in a rash of divorces throughout their social circles, but having a baby is contagious too, and that’s because Joy is also contagious. First of all, you’re not sparing your friends the story of your hardship by radically changing your behavior in a way that I guarantee you is going to alert your friends to something being wrong. Spare yourself the fantasy that by vanishing suddenly you can spare people some worry, that behavior is worrying in itself. Your friends and family however, will try to get you to have fun and get over it. Let them. Let them take you to a movie, to the beach, to your favorite bar or hangout. Joy is contagious too.
Over the course of this blog we’ve reviewed a bunch of indie-made dildos and I’ve reviewed a fair few books. Today I’m reviewing my first indie-published book, Open Bobs BB volume 1. There were some small challenges in reviewing Open Bobs BB—I’ll just call this OBBB from here on out—that I think are useful to go over. I was asking questions that didn’t have obvious answers, as I typically review from the point of view of the self-help genre with questions like, Who is this book for? What use is it? What’s the value proposition? We’ll be covering answers to those questions where they’re appropriate, but OBBB isn’t strictly, nor is it billed as, a self-help item, it’s a collection item which happens to contain some self-help segments.
Let’s start straight away with one of the most obvious things in need of an answer, what does that title mean? Funny enough, you won’t find that answer in the book, I think there’s an assumption that anyone reading the book will be familiar enough with the blog already to know. Well, I hope that changes, because I think more people should own a copy, but we’ll get to that later. So the short of it is, “Open Bobs BB?” was the first message performer/sex worker/author/more Tawney Seren received when she started working in the sex industry. You can learn more here. I do wish OBBB mentioned that in the introduction though.
From there we work our way through a curated selection of works from the Open Bobs BB blog itself. The formatting of this book really shines here, credit to Harper the Fox. The text is easy on the eyes, the breaks feel natural, and the design lends a sense of flow to the reading, which is very nice to see in a collection type book. As I alluded to earlier, the content itself runs quite a wide gamut of topics. There’s serious practical advice for removing cum stains but also interviews with mothers about their sex lives and body image and how they’ve coped after children, a topic that really hits home here and that I’ve written on at length. There’s windows into the lives of sex-workers and fetish practitioners. It’s not really possible to convey the range of topics here without kinda spoiling the contents in their entirety, so I won’t, let’s just say I found the change of pace from piece to piece enjoyable but formatted in a way so it wasn’t jarring. My favorite bit was the interview with the moms though, for the record.
So, there’s a good question some of you may be asking right now and it’s one that deserves an answer. Why would I buy a book that contains a collection of blog posts I can go read for free? Glad you asked, because while there are some answers to that question that are easy, there’s one I came up with that I found pretty surprising, and all of them fit into a general theme of the benefits of a physical item, though a digital version is available. One of the easy answers is as a show of support that gets you something a little more concrete than a thank you. I also have a thing for physical media, always have, I’m biased towards it, but that’s because of things like the next reason. This is a great book for what I normally consider to be a book graveyard, the coffee table, but this time we’re using it to start conversations instead of to sit unused. My self-help books really don’t accomplish this well. Many people avoid the self-help section of book stores specifically because being seen there means, to many people, that there must be some large flaw with them or something wrong with them, and maybe that’s true, but it’s a tough thing to admit in public for anyone. Draping that on your coffee table comes with similar concerns over the message you’re trying to send. Why would I keep She Comes First on my coffee table? What message would I be sending? Not too keen on telling my guests that I might just have an oral edge over them.
But let’s say I’m really high in openness and really need to be explicitly told borders early in a relationship of any kind. Let’s also say for a moment that people who have low openness are really terrible at communicating things like that. If I leave OBBB on the table, odd title and all, with that cover—getting to that soon—I’d find that to be a more subtle and at their own pace way of getting to know someone’s limits. It’s a world apart from sending them a direct link to the blog via text or something, that would be me shoving the conversation on them, but when you enter my house it would be hard to object to seeing the material there, this is my space. So yes, I’ve finally figured out a use for the coffee table as something other than a place where unwanted magazines go to die. Thanks OBBB.
So about that cover. Despite it’s usefulness in the prior scenario I have to give it the same minor ding I give the rest of the books I review that have the “I will never read this is a coffee shop” cover. I should call this the e-reader award honestly. Damn me and my need for physical items that cover sex but that I’d also like to read in public, or at least away from my utterly lovable but very distracting family.
Let’s get into another use for putting this sort of thing into a collection piece and the value that can bring. Another artifact of doing a lot of book reviews on sensitive topics, and being as in the IT biz as I am, is that a lot of this stuff is not safe to link to or from work. Networks are increasingly monitored and even if you’re on a personal device you may be on monitored wi-fi. Your workplace, if it isn’t already, is getting increasingly invasive into your browser habits for reasons both good and bad. Passing someone a physical book removes these considerations.
I’ve spent a lot of time so far weighing on the pros and cons of physical versus electronic media, where that could have been it’s own post, and maybe it will be, but in light of what this product is, it seemed the right and necessary time for that topic to be covered. Also, this book is a short and quick read if you’re going to be doing it cover to cover style. I managed it with child distractions in about 2 hours, 137 pages.
So would I recommend Open Bobs BB volume 1? Absolutely, but excepting rare cases, my recommendations always come with a few caveats in the form of “if you are looking for X”. Let’s start with a recap of the stats. OBBB is a collected works style book with a great format, layout, a short length that lends it to casual reading or busy lifestyles without much opportunity cost for your time, and is inexpensive. Aside from my specific boundary probing scenario above, this book also serves the purposes of anyone who is even passingly curious about the lives of online sex workers, fetish practitioners, or people who are just curious about sexuality and the forms it takes in general—that’d be me. This is also the time to get some disclosures down. I normally have some boilerplate for these reviews, as I’m typically never tied in any way towards the source of the content. The ties here are really loose, but need disclosing. I have had some of—one actually, as of this writing—my content featured on the Open Bobs BB website and intend to submit more. I purchased this book to read out of my own volition and curiosity and Tawney was blindsided by the news that I’d be reviewing it. So there you go.
If you’d like to pick up Open Bobs BB volume 1 you can get a physical copy like I did—the most recommended option—but you can also pick up the digital version, both are available here.
I’ve often been described as a very passionate man, whether that comes to my work, my relationships, basically anything I do—provided of course that I care about it. I really care about the quality of Emily’s sex life. I cared about that for my previous partner as well. That sort of passion is something that always came easily for me, and the idea of men could be selfish in the bedroom was something I actually had to be introduced to later as an adult. That was down to my father, and some critical decisions he made in regards to my sexual education. Dad isn’t a particularly open man, at least, he can’t really do that directly, but what he did have was a sexuality section is his library and when I came of age he mentioned that he had books on the subject, and that I was free to read them. It didn’t escape my notice that of the five books he had on the art of sex, four of them were dedicated to a woman’s pleasure and only one to his own. That sort of set the stage for me with regards to expectations of what is meant to happen in the bedroom. In many very old and primitive cultures the inability to please a woman was seen as catastrophic enough to prevent conception itself. As for me, even before I started my reading, I didn’t see the point without making an emotional connection, and I assumed, quite correctly I might add, that the quality of each encounter would be directly related to the emotional purpose of it. I’m setting this scene up not to pat myself on the back or brag, but to give context to my perspective of a plight affecting many marriages. For many, some time after marriage, whether that’s years or immediately, there seems to be some sort of lost magic, and further still many couples defeatedly accept this fate as an expectation long before they tie the knot. What to do about that exactly requires explaining some deeper held meanings of what marriage is, so we’ll be taking the long way round.
Esther Perel calls this problem a lack of desire, the flame going out, and in her view this can only be solved by creating some sort of distance in the relationship. Apparently many people view the flame dying down as a necessary stage of marriage. I think that may have been the most shocking thing about reading Mating In Captivity. I wondered why that was such an accepted presupposition, the thought never even occurred to me that sexual desire would naturally wane over the course of a relationship, hell, I consider that a sign of a relationship that’s starting to fail. If anything, I consider the separation of sexual health from marital health to be an issue all on its own and it’s rare that I see the former fall apart without the latter following suit. Clearly though, there’s a problem with fires going out. I think I could even accept Esther’s position more readily, if I assume that the relationships she’s talking about are built on a foundation of pure Eros, or what we refer to as romantic love and lately even lust. To me, this would be akin to lighting the flame of a relationship, having no fuel available but pine straw. At the very beginning of Mating in Captivity, Esther talks about how there are actually couples that have no trouble keeping that flame alive, but she talks about them like they’re weirdos, and she certainly points out their rarity. Esther makes no further mention of these people, and is quick to point out her material isn’t directed at them. I have to assume this lack of ability to explain the perspective is borne out of the fact that she isn’t one of those weirdos. Well, Emily and I are those weirdos, and perhaps that’s some perspective I can and ought to give.
Perhaps if we kindled relationships with better types of fuel than pine straw we wouldn’t accept it as fate that fires would dwindle and extinguish over time. Have you ever tried to keep a fire going with nothing but kindling? It’s something to give a shot, even to just capture the symbolism with experience. You’ll find yourself expending energy, rushing around in a never ending panic to keep the fire fed. Any interruption, no matter how needful, and the fire dies down if not outright expends its fuel. Plato describes a situation wherein lovers are also friends. In Plato’s view this transforms Eros into something more substantial than romantic lust and keeps the passion of a romantic relationship perpetually fed. Eros and philia are transformed by one another, and feed one another, creating a positive feedback loop that endures time and hardship. This lines up a little more closely with my experience. Not to undermine the importance of Eros however, I find when that flame dies down the marriage soon follows. Perhaps it’s a mistake to view those things as separate. Those fires are one in the same. We do not replace Eros with philia, one modifies the other. We can even find some pointers towards this in biology. When you have sexual relations you release oxytocin. This neurotransmitter is responsible for a lot of things but the two we’re interested in at the moment is pair-bonding and trust. Mothers release a ton of the stuff when they give birth, and when they nurse. In fact, any stimulation of the nipples of women seems to release it. Oxytocin also regulates uterine contractions, it’s what’s in Petocin, and it’s why women close to term are encouraged to have regular sex (as it releases oxytocin and helps move labor along). Oh yeah, did I mention it promotes pair-bonding and trust?
Trust has been fingered as a key predictor of divorce by Dr. John Gottman. In his book What Makes Love Last: How To Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal—reviewed here—Dr. Gottman lays out his case and his research, showing that low levels of trust are a highly predictive indicator of a doomed relationship. He also goes over the behaviors outside of sex that build trust and behaviors that erode it. Extremes of either seem to be self-reinforcing. So let’s put that together a bit. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter released during sex that influences trust and pair-bonding. Low trust is a strongly predictive indicator of relationship failure. Behaviors outside of sex influence trust levels higher or lower. High enough trust begets itself, damaged trust begets mistrust. The idea that a romantic relationship reinforced by a genuine connection outside of its sexuality is stronger than one based purely on Eros is supported by modern scientific literature. Plato figured this out a long time ago. Relationships that merge Eros and philia feed each other sustainably and are the most durable.
If you’ve followed this far, you may be thinking I’m making the argument that the die is cast, that relationships started in the wrong way are doomed to failure and that there’s no helping it. You’re either doing things the way I did or you’re screwed. Nah. What I’m saying is that you have to be more than your spouses provider, or nanny, or babysitter, or any other major marital function you can think of. All of those functions after all are merely temporary, or at the very least, replaceable. Sexual satisfaction is likewise replaceable. A good marriage however, isn’t, it provides a critical function that I think is well summed up by a quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson in one of his recorded lectures. He says on marriage…well actually I was going to put a quote here but he’s damn wordy, but the expressiveness is useful, so I’m just going to leave a clip here.
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It’s often extolled in the virtuous theater of social media that a friend is someone who will support you but a true friend is someone who will tell you you’re screwing up and it’s your fault. This is a sentiment I agree with but in my experience no matter how much people talk about wanting one, most people can’t handle having a so-called true friend. I don’t think that’s an inherent flaw, I think that’s why we take marriage vows. This is the aged oak that is lit by the kindling of Eros. Oak burns hot, and it burns long, hot enough and long enough that you need not constantly rush about to refuel it the way you have to in a relationship built on pine straw. In this sort of fire, you may actually take a moment to enjoy the light it gives and the warmth it radiates before you have to give it more fuel. You may be in one of those pine straw relationships, and you may believe everything is fine, and hey maybe it is, but don’t be surprised when you find out just how much upkeep you’ve been doing on that fire when something else interrupts you; hardship, children, a new job that requires relocation, longer hours at work. I’ve been through all those things with Emily, and it was never the sex that kept us together, good as it is.
Now, that was the long way round to get to it, but I think all those details are important, because it is for those qualities of my marriage that I do not have to think about keeping our fire stoked—that is something that happens mostly on its own. Yes, there’s some effort involved here and there, the small reminders of physical affection, the occasional date night, and other romantic gestures, but it’s not something we fight with or struggle with. It’s what makes us those weirdos where the flame doesn’t just die on its own unless we create some sort of contrived distance between us or other strategy for tricking ourselves into being sexually attracted to each other again. I never fell into the trap of thinking of my wife as only a mother or only a caregiver or as adopting any other sort of single identity that reduces her sexual or romantic value to me because our relationship is deeper than her utility—which by the way, are the situations Esther Perel deals with in her book. If you want to call that ‘keeping distance’ you go right ahead, I call that proper togetherness. I call that knowing without a doubt, that come praise or criticism, the things Emily says to me and about me are coming from a position of my long term well being.
Hey, maybe that does actually make us weirdos. Maybe you take a look at the words I’ve written and say you couldn’t live your life that way. Totally valid. I can tell you one thing though, I don’t mind being in the position of looking at people who can’t seem to make the time for intimacy, or are in a marriage of utility, and can’t seem to wrap their heads around where all the magic and love has gone, and thinking that they’re the weirdos. I don’t mind that situation being alien to us. If that situation isn’t alien to you, perhaps it’s time to be a weirdo.
So I saw a pretty interesting question posted on Twitter the other day by a fellow reviewer. She goes by the Backwoods Bedroom handle on Twitter and she’s definitely worth following, but on to the question itself.
“I just saw a tweet, and it got me thinking. I want to try one of the silicone penis extenders so bad, but don’t know how to broach the subject with my partner. So my question to those of you with a penis, would you be hurt if your partner asked you to try a penis extender?”
This question was issued as part of a poll, which you can reference here if you’re interested. I personally did not feel I could adequately express the potential brier patch of this situation within the limited confines of Twitter, so here we are. While this is a response to the question and its author, it is not a direct one, and I’ve had to consider everyone that may potentially read this. Let’s also keep in mind the kind of space the review community is. Seventeen percent of the respondents indicated they absolutely would not want their partner to approach them with this question, and even in a vacuum that’d be a significant portion. This is sex review Twitter space though, and I’d bet my less developed nut that as you leave that relatively sex positive place that number would climb precipitously. However, for the purposes of this piece, I’m going to deal with that number as is, I just thought that context was needful to establish.
The original question is multi-parted, even if it doesn’t look that way at first glance, and we’ll need to deal with those parts one at the time before we bring them all together for approach. Part one…
I want to try one of the silicone penis extenders so bad,…
Okay, but why? There’s nothing inherently wrong with that statement, or even eventually wrong, but if you don’t know exactly why you want to change things up in the bedroom you may answer a sensitive follow-up question clumsily and that can lead to hurt feelings. I will however go over a red flag answer to this question. If the reason you want to try a penis extender is because you find your partner inadequate, you probably want to stop right there. Why? Well let’s explore the nature of what a penis extender actually is at its core.
Unlike dildos or vibrators or a myriad of other sex toys a penis extender isn’t confined to being an experience add-on, a penis extender changes your partner. Sometimes these changes can be fun and obvious, like say with a french tickler, but in the case of extenders the message is clear, I want you to be longer/girthier/whatever. Adding inhuman textures and features is one thing, and I’ll actually circle back to that point later, but there’s an inherent declaration of inadequacy in using an extender. Let’s turn the tables on this a bit with a hypothetical. What if your partner got you a sex toy and this sex toy was widely known as a she-tightener. Imagine this as a penetrable toy that is designed to be inserted into the vagina, the net effect being you’re vagina being replaced with a different one. Your partner would on some level be telling you that he wanted you to have a different vagina wouldn’t he? As an aside, this is called vagception—because of course there’s a name for this—and it has a small subreddit, because of course it does.
…would you be hurt if your partner asked you to try a penis extender?
Now, I can hear a very reasonable objection here already. What if that’s very different from the message you’re trying to send? Well that’s why we started with the “why?” question, and that’s why in the hypothetical I gave the toy is named she-tightener. Be careful about using the accepted labels for these toys if those labels don’t match your intended use. Penis extender is a name that is likely to be reacted to negatively. Understand that the nature of these toys is an especially sensitive one, you’re asking for their body to change. Be prepared to answer questions like; “Why not a dildo?”, “Am I not adequate?”, “What’s the draw for you?”, and that’s already a relatively calm and cool reaction. Heaven forbid the extender be realistically styled or resemble an ex or some equally potentially emotionally hurtful thing.
You may be wondering why I’m focusing so very hard on the change side of this. You may be reasonably thinking, “Well yes, this is like a dildo, and you’re okay with those right?”. You may be thinking that it’s like a thrusting dildo that is self-guiding and self-powered—probably a good point to make honestly. What’s the big objection here?
Well the big point is your partners feelings, and some insecurities they may or may not have, insecurities you need to be aware of if they do have them. Keep in mind, many men struggle with and fail to disconnect their partners sexual satisfaction with their own sexual performance. That is to say that there are many men out there with the idea that their value in a relationship is highly or entirely sex based, and that they should be sole provider of their partners sexual satisfaction. These tend to be the men that aren’t okay with women having sex toys at all, it would depreciate their value, you may have met some of those before. Ultimately remember, that as toxic as these ideas may seem to you, underlying them is a concern that they’ll lose you—that’s the consequence of losing your worth as a partner. It’s the reasoning borne of inexperience and insecurity, but it’s rooted in the idea that they don’t want to lose you. Most can be gently educated out of this. On the one hand, you have the sexual insecurity creating insecurity about the resilience of the relationship but that also works the other direction if your partner isn’t convinced that you aren’t going to leave and it can reinforce or even create the sexual insecurity in question.
Reinforcing these ideas is an entire industry revolving around “correcting” penises that are less than magical. Everything from pumps to pills are thrown at the insecurities so predictable and universal they can be targeted for profit. You too can have the magically satisfying porn star penis that you’ve been convinced is the minimum standard via the same, if only you would use this pump or take this pill. There’s a large market targeting female insecurity and falsehoods about tightness or moisture too, and perhaps that may be the singular best thing I can reference to bring this issue into focus. When it comes to sexual insecurity, the targets of that exploitative market indicates we are universally affected. Fortunately, that means you have a valid frame of reference. Now you take the pills, you take the pump, at least those act directly on the body, dangerous as they may be, and the object of pleasure is still his penis. Imagine for a moment the feeling of dejection that would come from such a lazy solution as a sleeve, if not carefully considered and not wanted for the exactly right reason.
More secure men aren’t immune to this either. Security too is a spectrum, and it comes with experience, and is often a journey. Many men have learned that their partners sexual satisfaction belongs to them. They have learned that their partners sex toys can provide sexual experiences both when and where they can’t, and they enjoy the awesome benefits of those feelings of security in their sexuality and their relationship. In the particular case of the penis extender, they are available both at the time and capable of providing the type. The penis extender therefore targets the very last island on the road to sexual security, it targets the place where the last bit of insecurity is most likely to reside. Your partner, as I do for mine, may have a large collection of toys he enjoys you using and enjoys using on you. Have you ever expressed before how none of those things could quite replace him? I’d wager that’s come up. How do you follow that line of reasoning in the case of the penis extender, as you inherently ask his body to change, as you inherently replace the one thing you have been telling him was safe from criticism?
“…how to broach the subject with my partner.”
The answer to all of these rest with you and your partner. Each answer is going to be as unique as your relationship, and I could never give you a blanket answer on how to proceed with this question and how to make this approach. What I can give you, hopefully, is a map of empathy that has all the minefields and treacherous roads clearly marked, and I hope that’s what I’ve done today. I know that the tone of this article so far has been, perhaps negative, and that’s because of the weight of the consequences of getting this wrong. I am in no way suggesting that wanting to use one of these extenders is in any way inherently bad, I just think it wanders into an especially dangerous mine field that may even include fears of being replaced. There are however, perhaps some positive ways to broach this, and there I have a few suggestions.
First and foremost, make sure you’re protecting his sexual value to you. He is sexually valuable to you right? Beyond the specific subject of extenders, this is the most basic and fundamental rule to introducing anything to the bedroom, and it works in both directions, just as applicable to men as women. Make sure he knows that he’s sexually valuable as much as you feel he is. As I mentioned earlier, you have to get to the bare-bones of why you want to introduce this kind of toy. Perhaps it’s just one more tick-box of things you haven’t tried yet. What if you just wanna see what all that fuss is about? Maybe you’ll use it once and maybe you won’t even like it. Make sure he knows that. Maybe you really want the fuck machine experience without the cost, also, maybe he’s a damn good fuck machine—compliment opportunity there. Maybe you could even make that part of play earlier in the day. Tease him with a hearty dinner, your fuck machine needs good quality fuel after all. Maybe he likes when you take charge occasionally, I know I sure as hell do. Sometimes Emily forcefully tells me that I’m her toy tonight, and I enjoy that, not the least of which because she literally has a few grand worth of other options—an example of preserving and protecting my feelings of sexual worth.
I hope that with these examples I’ve given you the start of an empathetic map that will allow you to broach this subject safely and with minimal risk of hurt feelings . Whatever you do, make sure your reasoning is at least as clear as it is honest. Good luck.
