Polyamory and Kink with @annie_undone
CW: very explicit discussions of sex and kink!
Annie (@annie_undone) is a kinky switch in a polyamorous BDSM dynamic. We discuss:
- How to handle breaches of trust within a polyamorous kink dynamic
- How kink and group dynamics can intersect in fun ways
- How high romance can be kinky!
- How polyamory and kink both teach great lessons on consent, communication, and intentionality, and are both excellent mediums for personal growth
- How polyamory and kink can conflict when negotiating titles, hierarchy, bedroom vs 24/7 dynamics, and mono/poly relationships as a device to dominate a submissive
- How people-pleasing tendencies can be dangerous in a submissive state
- When one’s responsibility over another feels like too much power, and where our personal limits are as Dommes in power exchange dynamics
and much more.
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transcribed by Sydney Lynne
Leanne: Welcome to Happy Polydays, a series of intimate conversations about polyamory, sexuality, identity, and relationships, hosted by me – Leanne Yau of the Poly Philia blog.
Leanne: Hello and welcome to day 2 of the Happy Polydays series. Today I will be speaking with Annie, who runs the account @annie_undone, about polyamory and kink.
Annie, would you like to introduce yourself -
Annie: Hey!
Leanne: - and talk about your platform and what you primarily create content about, just a bit more about yourself.
Annie: Yeah! I’m Annie Undone, I started this platform in a burst to want to get all the thoughts in my head that were going on out there. I kind of came into polyamory by way of kink.
We - my husband and I - had started our kinky journey together. And it was suggested to me, very forwardly, by somebody on Reddit, that he wanted to call me Mommy. And I was like…”I’m really interested in that.”
[Leanne laughs]
And all of a sudden I find myself saying to my husband one night, “There’s this guy and he has suggested to me this thing. What do you think of it?” And he was like, “Let me see this guy’s picture,” and so I show him the picture and he’s like, “Yeah, I would 100% let you fuck this guy.” (laughing)
Leanne: Wow!
Annie: And I was like, completely surprised by this! And that was literally how we got into polyamory. This guy smashed my heart into a million damn pieces, but on the other side of that, I was like, “I think this is really for me.” I’m capable of having feelings for more than one person, and exploring that from a kink dynamic perspective.
That has evolved, very much since that time. I mean for me it just started as a kinky venture and it kind of rolled into polyamory in a more comprehensive way. But that’s how I kinda came in I guess, sort of mistakenly. It was on our radar anyway, we had a couple of friends who were in the swinging venture, so we kind of took a little bit of a chapter from them - like, we can do this, and we can do this. So we kind of started out as kinky swingers I guess, for lack of a better phrase, and then I very quickly developed a dynamic which started as a total power exchange with my partner Sam, who was in the EU, and we fell in love. And that was like a whole other thing.
Leanne: Yeah, I find your story so interesting, genuinely, because there’s such a massive overlap between the polyamory and kink communities. I think that’s a well-established fact. Some people get into kink through polyamory and then some people get into polyamory through kink. And so I guess one of my first questions for you is: how do these two things influence each other, in a positive or negative way? What skills have you picked up from kink that lend itself well to polyamory? And vice versa.
Annie: I think what’s interesting about kink is the kink community is very open-minded and very like, “It’s your dynamic so it can look like whatever you want,” which is so extremely compatible with polyamory and the discussions on consent and how a dynamic should work, lend itself very well to the medium of polyamory. Especially when you’re negotiating intentional relationships, I think that is one of the more wonderful things that kink has given me. Conversation, language to discuss sex, consent, safety, all those things.
The darker side of that, I think, would be that sometimes when you’re in a casual sex place or in a - I would say this is more to the non-monogamy side versus the polyamory side - but when you’re in a non-monogamous sex space, sometimes people use kink moves as sex moves and you’re like, “Woah, what the hell are you doing? This should be negotiated!” I’ve had that happen too, which I think can be a negative side in my experience. But I think in kink, especially for people who find themselves in a switchy space - I’m a bratty sub, I’m also a mommy dom, I have very switchy tendencies - I think polyamory is great for that because you can explore the wide breadth of everything that kink has to offer. Or if you’re into group play dynamics, which are so much fun.
Leanne: Yeah.
(Both laugh)
Annie: You can do that too! We once had a relationship with a couple, and it was just really kinky play and it was so much fun exploring all the ways that comes together.
Leanne: Yeah, honestly I think that we could have a whole other conversation about group play dynamics. And -
(Both laugh)
Because you know I do love a good orgy!
Annie: We have yet to break the four-person. I can’t get past four. Like, how do I get five of these people in a room?
Leanne: Oh man.
Annie: I just haven’t yet.
(both laugh)
Leanne: I think the most people I’ve had engaging with each other on a single bed was probably eight people.
Annie: But you are a megasexual. That is my husband. He is a megasexual. I stray more to - I’m emotional but like I need to have a connection to someone, but I can forge that connection, just give me five minutes! (laughs)
Leanne: That’s completely reasonable. There’s definitely situations where I’m doing stuff with someone and then they engage with another person and because I have that person in the middle as a go-between, then I’m more comfortable engaging with that other person.
I know you had a couple questions from your followers that you collected in a question sticker?
Annie: Yes.
Leanne: And I suppose we can go through those now.
Annie: Yeah, so the one that captured my imagination the most was this one, because I felt like this person looked right into my soul with this question and I didn’t love it.
He said, “How do you repair a breach of trust while not allowing it to negatively impact other partners who are not involved?” So you have a kink dynamic, things go terribly wrong, there’s been a breach of trust, how do you not allow it to negatively impact the other partners who were not in that scene with you in that kink space?
You don’t. (laughs) It’s impossible.
I actually just had something like this happen in September where I had a failed scene with a partner. It was what my therapist might call a trauma. I don’t know that I would like to call it that. But for me it kind of took down my kink, all the way down. And I had to really be honest with all of my partners about that. Even a new partner I have and let them know how it had impacted my kink and how I was planning on working through it. It brought up questions of safe wording, bodily autonomy, all of those things.
I see polyamory as an ecosystem. When one part of the ecosystem goes down, everything is touched. In theory, sure, you can keep dynamics separate, but in practice, if something happens and you need to take this item off the table for a while in kink, of course that’s going to spread to your other dynamics. There’s no way to avoid that. So I guess the simple answer would just be communication.
Leanne: Okay. I think it’s very unrealistic to be able to keep issues within one relationship and not have any of it bleed out at all into the other things. I mean, even with friends, if you’re going through some shit with one person, that’s going to affect whoever else you’re relating to at the time. If something’s going on with your family, then that’s going to affect things with your friends. I think that to say you should just compartmentalize... I do think there should be some effort put in to not explode and create a Domino effect but I think keeping it completely within that little bubble is an unrealistic expectation.
Annie: I mean, it’s hard. I've seen some people do it. They compartmentalize to an astounding degree. I don’t have that in me. I think that’s part of why I’m kitchen table. If someone was like, do parallel poly, I’d be like no - I can’t do it. It’s not gonna happen for me. I have a loose attitude about sharing with my other partners, so I think that feeds in too. I think of kink like a high level sex game. And so I want to involve as many people in that as possible.
(both laugh)
We never quite got there, but with my submissive Sam, I was like, hey, what if I denied you, and you can’t have an orgasm until my husband tells me that I can have an orgasm? He was like, “Would I then beg him to make you cum?” And I was like, “Exactly.”
Leanne: Wow!
Annie: That’s what I wanted.
Leanne: Oh my God!
Annie: That’s what I want to do with my life.
(both laugh)
Leanne: That’s incredible, oh my god. That reminds me of a threesome I had one time with this couple where basically the woman in that couple, she was relatively submissive - or maybe, I wouldn’t say submissive, but she takes on the more passive role in the bedroom. I wouldn’t say there’s a distinct kink dynamic in the same way.
Basically her partner is much older than her, like twice her age. He’s used to kind of taking on the more active and dominant role in the bedroom just because that’s just kind of how it works out. But he had been asking for her to dominate him a little, be a little more assertive and stuff. And I think she was finding it difficult to compute because obviously, she saw him as kind of this figure; obviously, the age thing factors into it as well. So I think she found it very very difficult to dominate someone who is twice her age and who she looked up to in that way.
Annie: Yeah.
Leanne: Which I totally get, right? When I came onto the scene, we had a threesome at one point. And it was really interesting because basically what ended up happening was that she dominated him by ordering him around to do things to me.
Annie: Ahhhh!
Leanne: So she was able to dominate him when he wasn’t actively engaging with her. She was more removed from the situation and she could order him around and tell him what to do and what not to do. And I was just there having a great time!
(both laugh)
Annie: I love that. I have a little bit - cause I’m very switchy - I have a little bit of a guide that I use when I meet people. It’s a little bit of an intuitive guide. When I’m trying to decide what the dynamic might be with a person, if they kind of give me that, “Ooh, I’m kind of scared of them,” then that’s my Dom.
Leanne: (laughing) Oh god, okay.
Annie: If I see that I sort of scare them a little, then I’m the Domme. And if we get in a place and we scare each other, then we switch.
Leanne: (laughing) Oh my god.
Annie: I use the word scare but it’s more like, “Oh you make me nervous, what are you gonna do? Like I wanna know.” So that’s kinda my guide that I use on that.
Leanne: I do have a question though. How do you distinguish between someone who is scaring you in that “oo this is sexy” kind of way and the “this is a red flag” kind of way?
Annie: Oh, that’s a great question. I don’t know. To be honest, I really have only been submissive with a few people. I’m probably a little more selective on the submissive end than I am on the domming end…although that’s not entirely true. But, now that I’m thinking about it - I started out just with my husband. Being submissive to him.
Leanne: Yeah you built up that dynamic over time, there was trust.
Annie: Over a really long time. And naturally, we didn’t know that that’s what we were really doing. I didn’t know I was kinky until Reddit told me I was kinky.
Leanne: What?!
12:47
Annie: Reddit. I was like, what is happening to me? I got on Reddit and it was like, BDSM. And I was like, how did I not know this was a thing? And then I started reading everything about it. And I was like, oh my god, I’m submissive! Oh my god, I’m a brat! Then I read The Brat Guide and this guy was like also…oh my god, all these things! So I kind of started there with him, and we had a play partnership with another couple. The female, Joanna, was very toppy with me sometimes. So sometimes, she and my husband would top me while her boyfriend did a submissive thing. Which is super fun. That was one of my most memorable scenes of life! My husband was having sex with me, and she was pinching my nipples, and he was directing her what to do. And every time it would get too much, my husband would slap me in the face and I would be like oooh!
Leanne: (laughs) Oh my God!
Annie: And then the other guy, Scott, was just rubbing my feet like, “You’re doing such a great job.” I was thinking, this is the moment right here.
Leanne: This sounds scandalous.
Annie: It really was great, I don’t know. That sticks out to me a lot, that one. But then sometimes they would all gang up on me and embarrass me or talk about me like I wasn’t in the room.
Leanne: Oh I have such a thing for that. It’s really bizarre, I don’t know where derogatory things come from. I have a real thing for people doing things to me but pretending like I’m not there, if that makes sense.
Annie: Well, yeah it’s - there’s like a sliding scale, right, from neutral to embarrassment to humiliation to degradation. And it’s such a weird thing. Embarrassment is great, I love being embarrassed. I remember Joanna one time being like, stopping the room and being like, “Get over here and just taste her pussy,” and they all talked about it like I wasn’t – and I was like, oh my god this is so friggin humiliating.
Leanne: (laughing) Oh my god.
Annie: It was very odd. So there was that and then there was like just the most degrading stuff. Which I kind of get, I have a little bit like if I’m gonna do super degrading stuff, I gotta be in role-play for that. Because to me, I don’t want to be like mega degraded as myself.
Leanne: This is so interesting because I dabble in kink stuff, but I actually don’t like role play. Which is very strange and I know that’s not really common. I think people usually take on some kind of persona right, but then I -
Annie: No, I don’t think that - I think it’s totally common!
Leanne: Oh really?
Annie: Some people really have an aversion to it. I have really only had one role play partner.
Leanne: Okay.
Annie: In my kink. Most people are like, role-playing? No, what does that even mean?
Leanne: Oh, I just find it difficult. I just really want to be myself in a sexual situation, right? And also like, I think I take it too seriously because I have a bit of an acting background. I did a lot of acting-
Annie: Me too!
Leanne: - in school and so it kind of fucks with me if I have to engage both of those things at the same time. I have to go into actor mode or into sex mode - and it really doesn’t mesh in the same way.
Annie: For me sometimes, when I’m - I’m like the opposite. To me I’m like, okay if I’m gonna role play I can do and say crazy things that I wouldn't do or say -
Leanne: - It’s like sexy improv! (laughs)
Annie: Yes! Exactly! We would have these role plays we would do, I would do with this partner of mine and we would just - and sometimes the agreement would just be whatever, someone’s gonna say something crazy and we’re just gonna go with it. I discovered kinks I didn’t know I had as a result of role play where like we would go some dark places and I'd be like oh wow, okay, that’s hot, okay -
Leanne: Oh my gosh!
Annie: So, and we did a lot of CNC and things like that. Which for those people who are less kink fluent is consent non-consent. Some people consider it fringe play, I don't know.
Leanne: Yeah, I’ve actually engaged in a fair bit of - not CNC specifically, but kind of - basically I have this one friend who is extremely kinky and also loves to explore their traumas through kink.
Annie: I love to do that too!
Leanne: So one of those things is religious stuff. They have a lot of religious trauma because they were raised Mormon. One time, I participated in this scene that they were doing where I was more like an audience member, but because it was part of the humiliation stuff, they wanted an audience, so I was part of the audience. So, I wasn’t directly involved in the scene in the same way, but I was present. It was like an exorcism type thing. It did get to some pretty extreme levels and I was just there like “Oh my god! What am I watching?” (laughs)
Annie: But that is what I love. That is what I love about kink. There’s always something to explore around the next - to me, everything is a kink. I was having this conversation, ironically, with my mother. Cause we talk about a lot of this stuff.
Leanne: Really?
Annie: Yeah! I have a really unique relationship with my mom. This is like, we just started talking about it but we were talking about the fact that somebody had said to me more recently, “I want to recite soliloquies into your pussy.” And I was like, “I love that.”
Leanne: Oh, gosh.
Annie: And my mom was like, is it though? Is it kinky? And I was like, “Everything’s a kink if you want it to be.” High romance can be a kink. My gentle femdom is how I discover like, holy shit, I'm a romantic human. I had no idea. Or I had shoved it so far down that I was like, “I don’t ever wanna say that vulnerable ass shit.” (laughs) To anyone. But kink gave me a container to say those things within a dynamic, and helped me take it from the container and apply it to my love life, in polyamory and with my husband! My formative myth of how I got into kink was that I was having sex with my husband one day - I was kind of in the middle of this whole life journey at the time, and that’s a separate story - but like I had said to my acupuncturist, he’s like, ‘What do you want to do this week in acupuncture?” and I was like, “I just want you to like pry open my ribs and expose my heart.”
Leanne: Oh my god. (laughing) I have heard similar things.
Anne: (laughing) He’s perfect.
Leanne: Some things can stay in the fantasy realm. There are some fantasies my friends have told me about that they can never live out, and they’re so upset about it. But if they actually lived out those fantasies, they would literally die. So, it is what it is.
Annie: I speak very metaphorically to my acupuncturist and he understands exactly what I mean. But it was like, he shone the light in me that week and I was with my husband, and we were having sex, and I asked him to tell me he loved me, which I hadn’t done in the fifteen-year history of us being married. I was kind of slightly embarrassed about it. And then he said it, and I was like…that was unsatisfying. And I asked for it. And then he said it again, because he wanted to say it, and it was like this invisible wall that I didn’t even know was just like shattered. And I was like, I need this guy. I trust him. And I think it was two days later I was like, “Can you just make me choke on your dick or something?”
Leanne: Oh my god. (laughing)
20:57
Annie: Finally I was like, “Oh! I’m kinky!” And that’s how I got into kink.
Leanne: Oh my god. Look, I’m sure we can talk forever kind of sharing our sex stories and kind of group dynamics and that kind of thing. Honestly, I feel like that’s a whole other thing in itself. But I think we’re gonna kind of bring it back a little bit and talk about what you’ve learnt on your kink journey that’s been helpful to polyamory and just share any personal sage wisdom that you’ve picked up in the past however many years that you’ve been practising both or either of these things.
Annie: You know, I think it’s a constant process. I think right now for me, my biggest thing is consent and body autonomy. Every time I think I have it down, there is something new for me to learn in that space, so that’s been something that I think is always worth an examination. Because those conversations change with age. Also, I should preface that coming from a very monogamous background and moving into non-monogamy brings up a lot of those issues anyway. How can you know that you have consent issues if you’ve been with the same person for sixteen years, monogamously, which I was? So, I think having that language is really important, and it’s interesting because it’s not as easy as it would seem. Things like saying your safe word when you need to. These things really do matter. So I think trust and aftercare and the same concepts you would want in polyamory, right? The ability to communicate gently, to know that you can trust the person you’re with and be honest with them, or that if something goes wrong, somebody’s going to care for you, because these are like really intense spaces you know?
Leanne: Yeah.
Annie: Kink is an intense emotional space. Polyamory is an intense emotional space. And I’m attracted to both of those things because they’re intense but they also require a higher level of communication skills than what you might need in a vanilla relationship or a monogamous relationship. You have to really do your homework on these things. You can’t go in and be like, “Yeah I don’t know I might try to choke you out or whatever!” That’s dangerous! You can’t just do that! And I think the same thing is true with polyamory. These are real people, these are real people's feelings. If you fail to examine your couples privilege, if you fail to communicate properly with a partner, there’s real collateral damage on the other side of that. So I think that they are both mediums for personal growth. You can go as far with it as you want to. But you have to educate yourself and you have to be risk-aware. And you have to be able to do all of the high-level thinking that those upper echelon skills are gonna ask you to do.
Leanne: That’s real. I think the consent framework in BDSM lends itself so well to polyamory, right? You have to negotiate everything beforehand so explicitly.
Annie: Yes.
24:22
Leanne: And if something hasn’t been brought up or communicated then you err on the side of caution and you ask about it. And I think having that framework in place would be really useful in a polyamorous dynamic, because I see so many situations where couples are opening up, and some of them don’t talk about boundaries at all and it goes up in flames. Then other people do have their boundaries talk, they make certain agreements and blah blah blah. But then they fail to account for some things, and say, someone is out on a date and they’re not sure if something is going to make their partner feel uncomfortable or cross a boundary, and they make a judgement call and it turns out to be wrong. And that can be - depending on the judgement call - that can be super difficult to repair.
Annie: I’ve noticed that my best dynamics and my best polyamorous relationships have the same thing in common: it’s intention, that’s it. All the times that I’ve been like, “Let’s just see what happens!” - disaster. You can’t really do that. You have to have some intention behind these things, or at least I do. Maybe it works out for people aligning in those ways, but I think it’s just much riskier. So I think that putting good intention and negotiation behind relationships of any kind really does help. But I think in order to do that, you also have to know yourself, you have to know what your values are, you have to know what your limits are. Really, it’s about knowing yourself, at the end of things. Know yourself, bring your values to the table, and have intention. Whether it’s kink or polyamory, you have to do those things if you wanna be successful. I mean, you can do those things and you can run through as many partners as you like! And some people, that might be what works for them! Who am I to judge?
Leanne: Yeah. Are there any aspects of polyamory and kink that you think clash at all? Are there any bits where you don’t think kink would be so compatible?
Annie: Sometimes BDSM dynamics make polyamory stickier. Like for example, titles. There was a huge - I don’t wanna say dust-up - long-term debate in my polycule for a while. What do you do if two of the men in the quad both identify as Daddy, they don’t want you calling them both Daddy?
Leanne: Oh!
Annie: Does the title go with the Dom? Does the title go with the dynamic? Those are not clear cut things.
Leanne: Yeah. And I think another aspect of it I am genuinely really curious about is there's so much with power exchange and play with hierarchy. In the kink community, that’s very clearly delineated. And polyamory, like the mainstream polyamory rhetoric, is to move away from hierarchy. How do you reconcile that?
Annie: Well, I don’t think kink is necessarily hierarchical. Because it has its containers, right? You can have whatever dynamic you want, but you have to decide where that exists. I’m experience-based so I’ll just talk from my own frame of reference, right?
Leanne: Sure, of course. We can only ever speak from our own experience.
Annie: So with my husband, we have a bedroom dynamic. And sometimes it spills out, but in fun ways. For example, I might call him Daddy in front of my kid, but that makes sense right? It’s more low-key. I might do very service things - I might do things that look like they’re very housewife ass shit, but they’re just me being a service submissive. Like, let me cook you dinner, let me do the laundry, let me vacuum, I’m just trying to get laid. Okay?
28:21
Leanne: So you’re like, “I’m going to cook for your, darling,” and you’re like, wink. (laughing)
Annie: Like the way I fold that laundry, Daddy?
(Both laugh)
There’s a bedroom element and then there’s the home element to it to me. With my partner Sam, who lives in the EU, I might do a total power exchange with him because I’m on top of that dynamic and he doesn’t have any other partners right now. So if we want to do a total power exchange for two weeks where I tell him exactly whatever he’s allowed to do sexually or otherwise, that works for him. Would that work for me to have a total power exchange with Person X? Probably not. Because I’m in charge of someone else and I have a dynamic with my husband, so those things wouldn’t work. But if I want to have a bedroom role play dynamic with Person X, that works great!
Leanne: Yeah.
Annie: Or, if I want to have a switchy dynamic with somebody then I can. I also know somebody in my Discord and she has three partners and they collaborate to give her denial for a complete week. So I think it just depends on how you’re going to go about your kink and how comfortable everybody is with one another.
Leanne: Yeah. I think you’ve made a very clear distinction between something that’s a strict bedroom dynamic and something that is more like twenty-four-seven type thing. And if you have multiple twenty-four-seven things then they’re going to conflict with each other in a bigger way than if you had separate kind of bedroom things. Is that what you’re trying to say?
Annie: Yes! And like, with Sam and I, we started out total power exchange twenty-four-seven that’s what it was. But that, I will warn you, has a time clock on it in my opinion.
Leanne: Really?
Annie: It’s very hard to sustain. We found it unsustainable, even though we really enjoyed it. So what we did, one of the rituals that we have developed now, when we want to do power exchange, we put it in a container and I have him put a piece of paper in his pocket that says “owned”. When the piece of paper is in his pocket, total power exchange is in play, and if I say - like for example if we were in the middle of total power exchange, and he needed to do something else that required him to not be in power exchange, he would just say, “Can I take the piece of paper out of my pocket,” and I would say yes. And then that delineates how that goes. Now, we always have a power exchange in place that is D/s. Like, I’m always kind of on top of that dynamic. But it’s not always total power exchange, if that makes sense.
Leanne: Yeah. That completely makes sense. There are obviously those - there have to have moments where you snap out of the dynamic and go, “Okay, but let’s go back to the real world for a second! There’s something I need to do!”
Annie: Yes. Right.
Leanne: Which completely makes sense right, you need to have an out. Even if it’s to renegotiate something that isn’t working, or if you’re experiencing sub drop, dom drop, whatever.
Annie: Yeah. And then some dynamics can be so casual that they have no definition, and they’re just like a series of voice exchanges, pickup style. Like someone pops in and says, “Hey Miss Annie, can you do whatever for me today. And I’ll be like, yeah I can. Let’s go. And that might be five minutes of my day, but it’s just very pickup style.
Leanne: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I guess it’s how much it bleeds into your life and how that interacts with everything else going on. That completely makes sense.
So, to answer my question about hierarchy, it depends on whether it’s twenty-four-seven, or just in the bedroom. And therefore how much that affects other stuff going on in your life. Like you said, it would be difficult to have a twenty-four-seven dynamic with someone where they were dominant, say, because that would not only affect you, but also affect your husband and your life with your husband.
32:22
Annie: Right, and it’s funny because there’s a natural flow to some of the dynamics too. If my husband is at work and texts me, “Go put in a plug for thirty minutes,” I’d be like, “Okay I’m gonna do that right now.” But he’s really the only person I have that sort of exchange with. To be able to give me tasks like that, which is something I enjoy. I’ve not really had a relationship like that with anyone else, who’s asked me to drop everything I’m doing and go put in a butt plug. (laughing) But I think those things kind of develop organically as well. I have a relationship where I will tell a person to do that. But it’s not a two-way street.
Leanne: Yeah, that completely makes sense.
So what you said just now about how there are conflicts in polycules where you have two doms and they both want to be called Daddy but they don’t want you to call anyone else Daddy. And I wonder…I’m sure there are definitely dynamics out there where a Dom, as a stipulation of being the Dom, will request that their sub not have any other Doms, or be monogamous to them as part of their D/S relationship. So what do you have to say about that, like using monogamy versus polyamory as part of kink? Like, “I demand monogamy as part of the D/S relationship,” or “I’m allowed to be polyamorous because I am the Dom.” Do you know what I’m saying?
Annie: Oof. Like the Dom is poly but he wants a monogamous sub?
Leanne: Yeah!
Annie: He wants basically a mono-poly setup with his submissive. I think that’s abusive. I don’t know. That’s my gut on it. It's like, “I can do this but you can’t,” to me would be a huge red flag. Because that’s removing somebody’s autonomy. And it would be different if - I guess it would have to be highly negotiated, but this is what I find problematic about power exchange. There’s this - and this is also what makes safe wording so hard - when you’re in a submissive position, you want to please the Dom. There’s this very deep need to please that person. It just lives in you as a submissive. So when someone requests something of you that you don’t want to do, sometimes it’s very hard to say no. A loss, or feeling like a loss of status: if you don’t do this, somebody will. Because trust me, somebody will. That’s a hard position to be in. And I personally find my feelings for people in dynamics are very strong. So I think that abuse of power, or the misuse of power -
Leanne: True.
Annie: - it has to be taken very seriously. I take my responsibility as a Domme very seriously. So if I’m in a power exchange with somebody, and I decide I need to end that power exchange, for whatever reason, you can’t just walk away from somebody in that situation. There has to be a certain amount of care behind that. So I think that those kinds of requests should be flagged. And dealt with. And communicated around.
I have a partner, Sam, who doesn’t have any other partners, and hasn’t for a while - he did when we were first together, and now he does not. Even that worries me sometimes. I’m like, “Maybe you should have other partners!” (laughing) Because I don’t want to always - even recently, he said, “Can you help put some criteria around what you would want from me finding other partners?”
Leanne: Oh.
Annie: And I’m like, this is a slippery slope.
Leanne: Yeah.
Annie: I don’t know if I feel comfortable with that. To the point that he reached out to my husband and said, “I need her to help me with this. I can’t do it.” He’s like, “Can you explain to her why I need her to do this?”
Leanne: Oh my god.
Annie: He was like, “You understand that autonomy is so big for her, so she maybe wouldn’t want to do this for you.” It was a round robin discussion, and it still is not a settled issue. Because to me, if I’m in a power exchange with you - even though we are in a relationship and the relationship comes first - I don’t want that kind of power!
Leanne: Mm. Yeah, there’s some types of controls you want and like and others that you’re like - ohh.
This is reminding me - so sorry to interrupt this, just quickly want to put in that - this is like triggering a memory for me from about two or three years ago when I entered into a weird findom relationship with someone. (laughs)
Basically, this person wanted me to take control of his finances. And he was sending me money, and I was like “Oh my god! I don’t know if I’m ready for this!” He wanted me to send - he really liked my voice, he was really obsessed with my voice. He really wanted me to - I would read out a cookie recipe in my accent and then he’d send me money, and I just - I do audiobook narration as a side job, and I don’t get paid that much to read out a cookie recipe. It was a strange time. Eventually, I was like, “Look, you know I’m really flattered but also this is very strange territory for me, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for this kind of dynamic.” So I completely understand what you mean about control that’s like stepping over the line for you.
Annie: I won’t touch people’s medical.
Leanne: It’s a lot of responsibility. Yeah.
Annie: Yeah, I won’t touch medical stuff, their family dynamics - I don’t wanna weigh in on that shit. Those are things that can get very touchy and weird. I once had a submissive who put me as his emergency contact the second week that we were together and I was like, uhhh.
Leanne: Oh my god! Oh god!
Annie: That was not a good one.
Leanne: Here’s the thing about domming - so many people are like, “It’s so fun and sexy to be the Dom! You’re completely in control!” and it’s like, no. You have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders!
38:48
Annie: To me, it’s a way vulnerable position to be in.
Leanne: Really?
Annie: In my opinion.
Leanne: Uh huh?
Annie: As a Domme, I feel extremely vulnerable. Almost more so than as a submissive. It’s kind of hard to explain. And I don’t know if it’s just the way I practice femdom, because I’m a gentle femdom so I am a little bit more… I think that kink, in general, is highly emotional and highly romantic. At least, I find it that way. But my submissive side, when I’m really in it, I can be kinda hardcore. “I can take more than anybody! I can take the most!” And so I think there’s just something different about being the person in control. And I’ll say this too, it takes me more to get there in domming, it takes me a lot more thought and a lot more behind it, whereas when I’m being submissive, especially with my husband, I don’t have to think at all, which is kind of what I like about it.
So yeah, it’s a ton of responsibility. I think everybody who practices domming really does need to take that into consideration when they are doing it. Not so much for pickup style play but for real negotiated dynamics? Yes. Absolutely.
40:12
Leanne: Yeah, I think that’s super real. As long as everyone is actually, properly sitting down and negotiating the consequences of certain powers and responsibilities that someone is taking on, I think most things are probably fair game?… And then there are some waters that I feel are much murkier. Then again, I don’t know. I’ve been actively practising kink for a long time now, but I wouldn’t say I’m super hardcore. I wouldn’t say I’m super experienced or knowledgable, so that’s just my perspective.
Annie: I always find that I’ll be like, “I’m never gonna do that,” and then the next thing I know it’s, “Oh, shit, I’m into it!”
(Both laugh)
Annie: There’s always some new weird shit to get into. Which I love. That’s what I love about kink. I was one of those that was like, “I like pain, but I’ll never give pain,” but then you meet someone you wanna hurt, and there goes the neighborhood.
Leanne: See, I’m the opposite. I absolutely have zero qualms about giving pain but I have no pain tolerance. (laughing)
Annie: No?
Leanne: Yes! My pain tolerance is really embarrassingly low. It’s really funny. Someone hit me with a hairbrush once and I was like, “No!!!”
(Both laugh)
Annie: It takes time to build up, but when I’m in a good place, I can take a lot. We’d have to ask my husband to be sure.
(Both laugh)
I’m pretty sure.
Leanne: So what is your ideal dynamic?
Annie: Oh gosh. I don’t know. I don’t think I have an ideal dynamic. But I would say I have a lot of multi people fantasies that include simultaneous dynamics playing into one another for the purpose of fantasy. For me, the best dynamic is a group dynamic.
(Both laugh)
I think that’s where my brain really gets going. So for me, the ideal dynamic is the one where I’ve got all of these happy little kinksters and they all wanna do naughty things together, in multiple directions. If we wanna rent a van and kidnap my husband off the street, we could do that.
Leanne: Oh my god.
Annie: Or if I wanna be surprised by walking through the door and, “Oh my god what’s happened, I’ve been stolen!” and taken into the bedroom, and there’s a mean one and a nice one.
Leanne: Good cop, bad cop.
Annie: Yeah! So to me, if I was headed to a place, that’s the place I’m headed. Like I want to have a couple of really well-worn dynamics that can start to intercept with one another in some really crazy ways.
Leanne: Yeah, so your partners collaborating to curate something for you -
Annie: I would love to collaborate with a meta to do something nuts to my husband. I would love to do that.
Leanne: (laughs) Ohhh my god.
Annie: Where is she?! (laughing)
Leanne: Yeah. Does your husband have other partners at the moment?
Annie: No, not right now. Well, he has a couple of people he’s talking with. We’ve kind of just had -
Leanne: Potentials.
Annie: Yeah. We had a polycule, things have kind of chilled there. We’re on a break of sorts. I’m not even sure how to explain it right now, so I just haven’t. We’re in a lull. Things are being rearranged, we have some play partners out there that we haven’t seen in a while, but you know how things break apart and then they come back together?
Leanne: Yeah.
Annie: We’re in a transition period.
Leanne: Okay.
Annie: It’s hard. I have my dynamics with my husband and with Sam, they’re well-worn. I can talk about those pretty readily. But the new stuff is always so hard to talk about because you’re like – where does it land?
Leanne: Yeah. (laughs) Okay.
Annie: That’s where we’re at. Do you have kink dynamics? Going on?
Leanne: Oh. I don’t - I haven’t really. Apart from that findom situation, I haven’t ever engaged in a dynamic that explicitly was only kink. Having said that though…
You know that friend I have that was raised Mormon? I have a very deep and complex relationship with them. The two of us are not sexually compatable because they are really kinky. Like hardcore kinky. And I…am not. At least not to that level. So, if it’s just the two of us, we don’t have much sexual chemistry at all. However. In a group scenario, they will happily collaborate with my partners to do stuff to me, or I will collaborate with their partners to do stuff to them. And it’s in that space in which the two of us really shine.
Annie: That’s so interesting.
Leanne: so there’s always someone who is going to be the go-between, bridging certain things. They might be able to do things I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing, but then I’d be happy facilitating stuff like that. So…I guess if I was going to have a kink dynamic, it might be that, but then it’s very indirect. So it’s very interesting, and I guess I never considered it to be a kink dynamic because we’re just really really good friends who love doing stuff for each other, you know?
Annie: But that can be. Sometimes - that’s the other thing - sometimes you just can’t always define what it is. Sometimes I can’t even define it until it’s over.
Leanne: Yeah.
(Both laughing)
Annie: One time I had this really weird online dynamic with this guy and we called each other boy and girl. And our game was, “Who can say the craziest shit and make the other one like…wind them up and then break them down emotionally and cry?”
Leanne: Oh my god. (laughs)
Annie: It was great, I loved it. It added a lot to my on the ground life. I was thinking like, “I’m gonna spoil this emotion now.” It was wild.
Leanne: One final story before we wrap this up, just to further contextualize this funny dynamic I have with my friend. Basically, (laughs) I don’t know if this is way too personal to share, I don’t know if this is massively TMI, but basically, one of my biggest sexual fantasies for a while was double penetration.
Annie: Oh, it’s so great.
Leanne: I had never, but then I had tried so many times, and I had never been able to get it to work with -
Annie: Two men?
Leanne: Two penis owners.
Annie: It’s so hard!
Leanne: Or it’s not hard! (laughing)
Annie: It’s so hard cuz it’s not hard.
(Both hysterically laughing)
Leanne: It’s just cause they always just like -
Annie: One or the other goes down.
Leanne: Yes! And it’s so — I tried, and every time it failed, and everyone is frustrated!
47:32
Annie: Mine was with a woman and a man! The successful one.
Leanne: Same! Right! So this friend of mine, basically they were able to facilitate that fantasy by getting a strap in on the action, and that kind of helped my partner because my partner - who is male - was not necessarily intimidated, but you know sometimes things get weird, right?
Annie: Yeah, the chemistry between the two guys in the DP situation have to be -
Leanne: - on point. Yeah.
Annie: I’ve not met them.
Leanne: There has only been one man, or two men, who my partner has been one hundred percent comfortable doing that kind of thing with and has no erection problems whatsoever, cuz they’re just bros. Unfortunately, one of them is in a monogamous relationship. Sad times.
Annie: That’s sad.
Leanne: But yeah. They facilitated it one time, and they said, “Oh my god, Leanne, I just want to make you happy.” And I was like, “Thank you so much, friend!” Anyways, so -
Annie: Yes!
Leanne: Annie, this has been so fun!
Annie: Thank you!
Leanne: This has been so fun talking with you.
Annie: Yeah, we’ll have to do it again sometime!
Leanne: Okay. So, just a quick one - I know you’re on Instagram, obviously, and you have a Patreon? Are you anywhere else?
Annie: I do have a Patreon. Right now I’m just doing the Instagram and the Patreon.
Leanne: Follow Annie on her social media channels and -
Annie: Thank you so much!
Leanne: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Happy Polydays series. If you’d like to support my work, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com/polyphiliablog. You can also follow me at @polyphiliablog on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, and Twitter, buy my polyamory merch at polyphiliashop.redbubble.com, or book a peer support session with me on my website polyphilia.blog. Until next time!