Yeah.

Um, but I, I recognize that a lot of my core culture was American.

However, I'm just gonna speak to Australian culture when it comes to shame, because I wanna create context there.

Um, shame is a huge problem in this country.

Huge.

And, and we can do multiple episodes about that.

But I'll speak to shame as far as, um, relationships and, uh, non-monogamy is concerned.

Um, do you think that in relationships, as a rule, I know we were talking about communication and that previously, um, do you think radical honest- honesty is a stre- is, like, a strengthening tool in relationships, or do you think it has to be tapered and, and, you know, um, looked after to be sensitive to the other person's needs, or...?

yeah.

People meet me and they go, where are you from? But I'm from Georgia in the United States.

And I'm specifically from a town called Savannah, Georgia.

And I was born and raised there.

I grew up in a loving family, but it was an extremely religious community.

And the religious aspects of that and the expectations of that and the way that they kind of organized their structure of life, family, community, everything just didn't align with me inherently.

And I didn't know what was wrong or what didn't fit until later in life.

Do you think it's something that it's from what they've seen when they were growing up or is it more of a freedom thing or like in your opinion?

Do you want to answer, do you want to like delve deeper into that one or do you want to answer the other question?

Yeah, I think in relation to what I just said about my previous relationship dynamic being that I think we both had, I think I still had that, you know, that healthy libido present.

But I do feel like that was probably impacted by the fact that his was greater than mine.

And it didn't feel like the spectrum of intimacy was sort of taken into account.

Like sometimes I was just like, sometimes I just want to be able to keep my pajamas on and still feel really intimate and close with you, but not have to be penetrated.

Yeah.

And it's sort of like for him, I think, you know, sex was very like the climax, the apex was kind of always the seeking point.

It's to do with, yeah, the kind of sex they're having and the kind of partner that they've got that's making them feel as though it's this obligatory thing that's their duty.