Intimate Interactions

Tim is the CEO of CLICKr digital, a pay-per-click and Analytics agency. As a business strategy coach, he teaches sale and marketing and help entrepreneurs scale and grow businesses. So what is he doing on an intimacy podcast? Well part of exploring human intimacy is my curiosity and fascination about different kinds of people. Tim, while very business oriented, also loves free health care and describes himself as a centrist. In Canada, I would be considered a little left of center and Tim would be considered a little right of center, so it’s always fun to chat with him and we both enjoy each others’ company. As I’ve watched him change and grow, I’ve wanted to bring him on to chat about relationships: how do you build business relationships? Why is learning to build relationships important for people who run businesses? What are some take-aways we can learn about relationships from business? How has business changed Tim’s life? We’ll explore these questions and others today with Tim, here on Intimate Interacti

Juniper is a woman who had a severe and serious chronic illness for many years. We met at an after party and had a one night stand once. Since then we’ve met once for coffee briefly many months later but have mostly been distant friends. Today we’ll talk about ADHD and Juniper’s journey to try to figure out if she has it or not. None of this is medical advice and I’m not a doctor. Still, let’s chat with Juniper here on Intimate Interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Today, Robin Beach from sexwithrobin.com talks jealousy. As a sex educator, radio host, relationship consultant, and more, she brings all the experience of her coaching practice to the show just for you! Well actually it’s for a lot of people but I didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t special too. You can see how this stuff gets complicated - but let’s hear from Robin directly on Intimate Interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Tillie, a queer community member, suggested a long time ago to start a project to develop our friendship in a recorded, progressive fashion. They’re back to draw on their chronically ill experience and share all about social support. This is an episode about support from your social network when your society has failed to provide for the most vulnerable. For those of us who have mobility restrictions or can’t afford winter tires or a vehicle at all, food access can become a thing. This is especially true if you’re struggling with funds. So what does that look like in your circle of friends or found family? How does your community support those who need support? And while others are using what resources they have to help their loved ones, how do those most at risk cope with anxiety and try to stay functional? Quick note: part of my ongoing growth to work with my ADHD involves lots of timers all over so I can set louder alarms enabling me to put wet laundry in the dryer or leave my house on time. This is my lif

Tim is the CEO of CLICKr digital, a pay-per-click and Analytics agency. As a business strategy coach, he teaches sales and marketing and help entrepreneurs scale and grow businesses. So what is he doing on an intimacy podcast? As an acting student, he started out specialising in emulating human interactions, vulnerability, and intimacy. Today we’ll chat about relationships in business and the distinction between acting and forming real relationships. When you’re bored of conversation but you’re with someone you care about, is it relationship-forming to smile for them? Is it acting? Is it inauthentic? Tim and I try to figure at least some of that out. Hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe. Enjoy the sessions here on intimate interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

What can we do to help make the world we live in a more consensual place? How can we reduce the immense damage suffered by humans daily? Sar Surmick, the marriage and family counsellor who was the director of the Consent Academy for quite a while and still teaches with them joins us today to chat about ideas. Let’s try to pick one thing that sounds doable to us and try to practice it in our lives together. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Tillie is back to talk about working from home as a chronically ill person during a pandemic. The more stuff changes, the more it stays the same. Content warning for chatting about no longer feeling suicidal. For all my chronically ill fam out there, we love; keep going. For all you folks working from home like me, two things: we’re a lucky bunch to be able to support ourselves while the economy is so messed up, and many of us living without space for an office are struggling to come up with original solutions. I currently work out of a curtain surround in my dining room. It’s functional. Stay mentally well out there as best you can. We’re stronger together. I hope the session is helpful. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Last session with Matt Sinkovitz, we talked about his story and I gave some examples from literature about my position around pornography abstinence. Since I did my degree in molecular genetics and not sex research, I first looked up journal impact factors which is how you can tell how important a given scientific publication is. The average journal is below 1, a good journal is anything over 3 but it depends on the discipline, how popular it is, how many journals there are, etcetera. And the gold standard for excellence is anything over 10. As a brief recap, I cited the Archive of Sexual Behaviour (JIF 3.458) where Zimmer and Imhoff in 2020 wrote this article, Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality. It states a “lack of evidence for negative health effects of masturbation” stemming from “perceived problems with pornography” and “from a psychological and behavioural addiction” where addiction is in quotation marks. It stresses that “higher abstinence motivation was related to a higher perceived impac

If we know what consent is and how to do it, why is it so hard for so many? Does what I think consent is match what you think consent is? If not, why not? How does this impact how we negotiate our agreements, and how can we get a little better? Marriage and family counsellor Sar Surmick joins us today to chat about how his time leading the Consent Academy and now teaching for them impacts those questions. Let’s see what answers Sar has for us here on Intimate Interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Matt Sinkovitz overcame a 20+ year long compulsive relationship with porn, and helps similar men do the same through his online Facebook support community, ‘Porn to Purpose’, and the ‘90-Day Liberation Boot Camp’, as well as the ‘7-Day Porn Abstinence Challenge’. First, Matt’s a really nice guy. I enjoyed our talks even though I’m strictly evidence based and Matt is far more experiential in how he approaches helping. According to a paper published in the Archive of Sexual Behaviour (JIF 3.458) by Zimmer and Imhoff published in 2020 called Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality, there is a “lack of evidence for negative health effects of masturbation” end quote where they suggest these stem from “perceived problems with pornography” end quote as well as notion these perceived problems “[stem] from a psychological and behavioral addiction” end quote where the word addiction is used in quotation marks in the paper. Here’s the crux: the same paper goes on to say “higher abstinence motivation was related

Today, Robin Beach from sexwithrobin.com talks metamours. She’s a sex educator, radio host, former stripper, former dominatrix, and current mom. How do you relate to the partners of your partners? Is it like sibling rivalry? What does it mean if love is unlimited but time isn’t? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

As a twice diagnosed ADHD person, I adopt the social model of disability where rather than see a person as disabled for having a different human experience, I view the centering of certain types of people in society and the construction of society around that supposedly ideal person to be the thing that is disabling. ADHD can cause horrific executive dysfunction and can absolutely be a detriment, especially when you consider Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, a deeply upsetting experience similar to social anxiety. This is to say nothing of the actual social stigma. So there’s the social piece: there’s social stigma around having ADHD. According to WebMD, children with ADHD receive about 20,000 additional negative messages about themselves, something sure to impact self esteem. It’s no surprise then that embarrassment and rejection sensitive dysphoria happen. Today we’ll be talking with someone who does not have ADHD as I figured it would be a better introduction on the topic than two people with ADHD though that

When you’re not talking about sex, how do you negotiate consent? Why is talking about how we make agreements a useful thing to do? Former director of the Consent Academy in Seattle and current marriage and family counsellor Sar Surmick joins us today to chat about this and more. If consent is important to you, let’s talk about it. If it isn’t important to you, it might be worth reflecting on why. Do you feel like you’ve mastered consent for your purposes? You totally might have the skills you need to get by or even thrive. I would encourage you to ask what a deeper understanding might gift you or your relationships. Content warning for brief mention of the damage nonconsent can do. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Reinventing oneself is no simple process. Ragehell has done it a few times. Today we chat about self deprecation and self sabotage but also self reassurance, cuddling, group massage, and the supports that often help with reinvention. Ragehell also was highly motivated to reinvent herself each time, and finding a deep sense of why you’re doing it can help a lot. While there are episodes coming up about psychedelics and the use of them to encourage reinvention, I wanted to record some drug free episodes to talk about doing it manually, a very possible and in my experience very rewarding way to go about it. Let’s let Ragehell tell us herself here on Intimate Interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Rage Hell is here to talk to us about facing fears, living your life, practicing comfort with discomfort, embracing awkwardness, supporting each other, and playing roller derby. Lots about roller derby. I’ve been peripherally familiar with roller derby as I have a friend on a national team, but do my best to let Ragehell tell the story here on Intimate Interactions. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Emotional labour and blindness are two important topics when discussing how men find themselves after lifetimes of being subjected to toxic masculinity. Whether we owe our fathers, mothers, or societies isn’t really the point. Given how high suicide rates are among men, the need for more of a nurturance culture for men and breaking the silence around mental illness is great. Today I chat with my cishet friend William who discusses emotional labour and how it is gendered in heterosexual relationships. We talk about shame, defensiveness, and cultivating a language of emotions. We talk about gratitude and the debt we owe to women who have done emotional labour for us in our lives. Content warning for parental abuse, especially fearing a parent, and people socialized as women putting up with people socialized as men as we slowly learn basic lessons we probably should have learned in childhood. If you’ve ever dated a person socialized as a man and that person felt like you were more of a parent than an equal… we

William chats today about sleep-walking through life. We discuss his separation from his wife, the need of purpose or meaning in life, confronting fear, how we spend the time of our lives, mindfulness, and ptsd. Content warning for near death experiences, and if relevant to you, two assigned-male-at-birth people talking about toxic masculinity. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

What does health and wellness look like if you’re trying to just get your body moving again after a long period of being sedentary? Many of us post COVID-19 vaccination are grappling with the cost of life-saving inactivity? Well, we’re fortunate to have Lisa Tamati back, our Maori ultramarathoner extraordinaire. You don’t have to run the equivalent of the circumference of the Earth more than once through over 140 ultramarathons like she has to understand that human fight between wanting to give up and practicing a small victory of resilience. Today Lisa discusses protecting your mindset while recounting a mountain pass marathon that awed me. If you haven’t checked out her book Relentless yet, you can find it on her website at lisatamati.com. She also has a great podcast out, Pushing The Limits, where you can listen to experts discuss tips and strategies from elite performers to you. Remember to resource yourself for this conversation. Pandemics, depression, and sedentary lifestyles are intermingled for a lot

Today, I continue my conversation with William. If you recall, he’s the cishet man who had a near death experience forcing him to confront addiction and other dysfunctional coping. We chat about intellectualizing feelings as a form of avoiding feeling them, inner child therapy, reconciling with parents, our stories we tell ourselves about our lives, reframing, and the role family plays for us now. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Lisa Tamati, our Maori ultramarathoner friend who has competed in somewhere around 140 marathons, is back to chat with us about doing the impossible. A mistress of mindset, Lisa chats with us about belief - belief ourselves, but also in people who believe in us. With the feats of stamina and endurance she’s achieved in her life, I can think of few better qualified to speak on the topic. Also plenty of companies and elite athletes pay her for coaching so she probably knows what she’s talking about. Lisa’s book Relentless goes into more detail if one session leaves you wanting more. You can pick it up on her website at lisatamati.com. You can also get her podcast for free, Pushing The Limits, everywhere podcasts are found. Have a listen! She’s quite good! Wait - let me channel my inner LeVar Burton: but don’t take my word for it - decide for yourself here on Intimate Interactions. Pushing The Limits (Podcast) https://lisatamati.com (“Relentless” book) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-i