Not saying ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘yes’ – Danielle

Danielle is a therapist who has also graduated from the school of life. Her earliest sexual experiences were non-consensual and impacted her for long after the events happened in implicit, explicit, and confusing ways. She found healing within a happy marriage, then suffered a miscarriage with its own series of impacts. She’s doing well now, and still loves a Reverse Cowgirl.

Danielle is a 35-year-old cisgender female. She describes herself as straight, monogamous, married, and pre-menopausal.  She describes her body as athletic.

Bookmark moments:

• 3:10 – Danielle shares her first memory of sexual pleasure, watching Cinderella at age 4-5 and being sucked in by the “will they/won’t they” and the power of the first kiss. She recalls being seeking dedicated attention and commitment, even in pre-school.
• 8:00 – She has her first kiss. It’s magical until she finds out he’s kissing other girls too.
• 11:40 – She meets her first bad boy – a tortured-artist type. Non-consensual intercourse occurs. A lack of “no” is not a “yes.”
• 20:30 – The body can still have an autonomic pleasure response when there is abuse or coercion.
• 24:00 – Danielle talks about her first real love, her college boyfriend who is a deeply good human dude. A lot of processing of her past experiences ends up happening on his time. The Kobe Bryant assault coverage triggers her in the breakroom at work; she spontaneously recalls an assault by a group of boys at age 7. Waves of memory and pain break over her for a while.
• 33:27 – She opens up about what sex was like while she processed her trauma. She reclaims her sexuality within the safety and intimacy she finds with her husband.
• 38:10 – Danielle talks about experiencing miscarriage last year, her hopes for having children, and their marriage bed turning into a micromanagement project: how to make a baby when great sex isn’t enough, and how to prevent that from spoiling the great sex.
• 47:10 Danielle is curious about how people function in non-monogamous relationship styles and what this means about our ability to love and connect across the commitment and desire spectrums.

The Lowdown (53:22)

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EPISODE CREDITS:

Host / Producer – Leah Carey (email) Audio Editor – Gretchen Kilby Administrative Support – Lara O’Connor, Maria Franco

Transcript creation – Jan Acielo Music – Nazar Rybak