How to Not Kink Shame Your Partner

As a child of the 90s, my first exposure to kink and kink shaming was the Sex and the City episode "Politically Errect" The second episode of the third season sees Carrie dating a politician played by a pre-Mad Men John Slattery. After their first sexual encounter, he discloses that he has waterworks kink:

Carrie: Is there anything you want or need that I'm not doing?

Bill: No... well, maybe one thing.

Carrie: What?

Bill: Well, I would love to get you in the shower.

Carrie: Mmhmm.

Bill: And get each other all fresh and clean.

Carrie: Well that sounds nice.

Bill: And then...let you pee on me.

We get a brief look at Carrie’s expression of stunned disbelief, and the scene cuts away to her discussing the interaction with her friends. Later, Carrie expresses her reservations to Bill:

Carrie: Bill, can I talk to you about something?

Bill: Yeah, ok.

Carrie: I’ve been giving this peeing thing a lot of thought and while I think it’s totally fine that that’s what you’re into, I just – It’s just never really been my thing

Bill: Oh yeah?

Carrie: yeah, so I thought instead, um, maybe you could close your eyes and I could dribble warm tea on you. That might feel good. Or maybe you might think it’s fun to hear the sound of running water when we have sex. And if things got really serious between us, I could maybe even leave the bathroom door open sometime, although, honestly I’m not really sure how comfortable I would be with that either.

Carrie’s efforts to find a kink compromise are interrupted by Bill telling her that his campaign advisors don’t think it’s a good idea for him to be dating a sex columnist, and he breaks up with her. This leads Carrie to write a thinly veiled article about him in her next column, titled “to pee or not to pee?” and the episode ends with Bill’s look of mortification as he reads the article.

Re-watching the episode I was struck by how quickly Carrie shifts from trying to find a way to honor his interests and her own boundaries to “outing” his kink, which the episode seems to consider a justified act of revenge for getting dumped (sidebar: knowing you’re going to break up with someone, and waiting until just after you sleep with them again is a dick move, but we don’t kink shame here)

As a pleasure-positive and kink-aware therapist, I couldn't help but wonder

How can we treat ourselves and our partners with compassion when we uncover areas of sexual incompatibility?

Especially for those of us that consider ourselves open-minded, or kinky, it can be a surprise to hear our partners mention something that it turns out we aren’t into.  We may worry about what it means for the state of our relationship, and we may feel a surge of icky emotions like guilt, shame, or even disgust.

How can we be honest about our boundaries without veering into kink-shaming?

In Stella Harris’s book Tongue Tied: Untangling Communication in Sex, Kink, and Relationships, she gives some concrete suggestions for how to respond if a sex partner shares something with us that we aren’t up for. She recommends starting with expressions like:

“I really appreciate the vulnerability it took to share that with me”

“I appreciate you trusting me with that”

“I’m so glad you feel comfortable sharing with me”

“Thank you for telling me”

And moving towards:

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it isn’t my cup of tea”

“It doesn’t bother me if you do that, but I don’t want to participate”

“I don’t think that’s for me, but I’m glad you told me about it. I love you” (Harris, p. 129)

But what if you’re struggling not to yuck someone's yum?

Return shame back to sender

Remember, we exist in a sex negative culture, even if we personally have sought out a more pleasure positive existence. If hearing about someone else’s kink invokes a feeling of shame, it’s a good bet that this shame is something we were taught, not something that we consciously picked for ourselves. Understanding the origin of these biases can help us to uproot this shame.

In this episode of Sex and the City, discussing Bill’s kink highlight’s Carrie’s own discomfort about urinating in front of a partner. It may be that Carrie’s own internalized shame about her body’s elimination processes interfere with her ability to see the potential for intimacy and sexiness.

Get curious

Education is a great antidote to shame. Maybe part of our initial *shudder* reaction is that we don’t know very much about that specific kink, and in the absence of real information, we’ve made assumptions, and you know what they say about those. Learning what our partner likes about their kink, how it makes them feel, how they discovered this was something they were into can help demystify. This doesn’t necessarily turn a “no” into a “yes” but it may help us be more supportive of our partner’s interests.

Carrie could have checked out this Allure article A Beginner's Guide to Golden Showers and Piss Play Fetishes or this Esquire article Why Some People Enjoy 'Watersports' - And What It's Really Like and asked Bill about whether or not his interest in getting peed on was connected to an interest in BDSM or a particular desire to feel humiliated by his partner. Learning more about what turns him on about this sex act, might have helped Carrie continue to brainstorm ways to participate that were not only acceptable to her, but potentially sexy. Or maybe not.  

If it’s a “no” say “no”.

Later on in Tongue Tied, Stella Harris argues that telling our partner “no” is actually a wonderful thing: “I’m excited when someone says no to me, because it means if/when that person says yes to something, I can believe them. Being able to trust that someone can and will say no means that I can try more adventurous things and know that the other person is doing them because they really want to, and not because they’re trying to please me (Harris, p. 130)

What Next?

Carrie and Bill’s relationship begins and ends within the confines of the 30-minute episode, but what if they had decided to stay together, what then? Would there be enough sex acts in the “enthusiastic yes!” column for both of them? Is Bill’s interest in watersports something that he enjoys but could do without? Or does it feel like a necessary component of his sex life? Are the compromises Carrie suggested of interest to him? Or do they not quite fulfill what he finds sexy about it? Is there room in the relationship for Bill to meet that desire elsewhere? Through pornography? Erotica? Sex workers? Other romantic partners? I won’t hold my breath that the reboot will do any better of a job of answering these questions, but I love to wonder.

And if you’re a Massachusetts resident wondering how to talk to your partner about your kink, and you’d like some help, reach out, The Pomegranate Institute specializes in working with folx with kinks and fetishes.