In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, it’s time for another installment in the Let’s Talk About… series. After the audio issues a couple of weeks ago, the guys are returning to the discussion of their life experiences over the decades in the bear community. In this “redux”, the cubs discuss growing up, life lessons and how it feels to be adults. From finding your tribe to balancing your checkbook, listen in on the ins and outs of being big ole bears.
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LTA… Adulting, Redux
Recently Jeff and Gary had a lovely chat about the passage of time as cubs of a certain age. After quite a few years in the bear community, our journeys through life had been down and up. Do we regret growing up? What lessons do we have for others to consider?
In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, it’s another installment of Let’s Talk About Sex. For this episode, the cubs go way back and discuss their sexual awakenings. Whether it was their first time or their best time, the guys reminisce on that joyous time they discovered themselves as sexual beings. From the birds to the bees, listen in as they share their moments when they figured out what’s going on down there.
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Lets Talk About Sex: Awakening
The hosts discuss when they discovered personal sexual awakenings many years ago.
Urban Dictionary lists Sexual Awakening as: The first time in a person’s life in which they experience a euphoric feeling and desire to be physically intimate with someone.
Sexual Awakening can be defined as when you finally become one with your original essence, your primal energy, and you know your sexual organs.
In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, the guys are joined once again by Dr. Edward Angelini-Cooke to continue our Landscape of Relationships series. For this episode, the guys discuss the potential red, yellow and green flags in relationship and kink dynamics. While a potentially funny meme, these flags are no laughing matter. Listen in as the cubs unfurl some details and give some insight into looking out for the signals of a healthy (and unhealthy) relationship.
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Landscape of Relationships: Red Flags, Green Flags
What are Relationship Flags?
Relationship flags are indicators of healthy, unhealthy, and dangerous behaviors or feelings within relationships.
They can be red, yellow, or green.
Red Flags
Controlling behaviors
Violence
Emotional and verbal abuse
Intentional sabotage or hurting of feelings
Walking on eggshells
Friends and family (support) are not trusting of your partner
Using things against you that were told in confidence
Usually can improve for short periods of time but abuse is usually cyclical
Yellow Flags
All or nothing communication
Pushes boundaries
Codependency or enmeshment
Difficulty with finding things in common
Lack of similarities with goals and values
These can be improved upon in meaningful ways
Green Flags
Healthy communication
Respecting boundaries
Interdependence
Supportive of goals and values
Knowing love languages
Awareness that no relationship is perfect
Let’s Get Kinky
Red Flags in Kink
Expect you to immediately obey them and call them an honorific or title before agreed upon/Call you a title one honorific immediately before agreed upon
Don’t ask you about your hard or soft limits
Tell you what “real” or “true” submissive or a dominant does
Separate you from friends and family or kinky friends
Tell you that they have no limits and expect you to have no limits as well
Expect you, as the Dominant, to take full responsibility for their health and wellbeing, both physically and emotionally
Dismiss opinions
Dictate how your dynamic will go
Green Flags in Kink
Want to get to know you on a deeper level, and have an interest in more than just your kinks and sexual preferences
They won’t do anything without your expressed consent, and will respect your stated boundaries and limits, as well as sharing their own
They’re interested in hearing about your journey in kink, as well as what turns you on and off, along with your opinions on how you’d like your dynamic to grow
They respect your existing friendships and relationships, even if they may not be directly introduced to the other important people in your life
They emphasize the importance of safety, consent, negotiation, and safe words in kinky dynamics
They take responsibility for their actions, understanding that you are not the cure for their problems
If you feel you are in a dangerous relationship situation. Please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233
In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, it’s time for another Let’s Talk About Sex show. For this one, the guys discuss the concept of sex bubbles or sexpods, a safer sex practice of maintaining social/sexy time with a smaller group of people to help keep yourselves protected during the pandemic. Listen in as the guys tell more about “quaranteaming” and debate on its potential effectiveness. When thinking about it, is it really new or just necessary?
“quarantine pods” as aneffective way to get our social, emotional, familial, and sexual needs met without unnecessarily endangering ourselves or others. Pods are small, self-contained networks of people who limit their non-distanced social interaction to one another—in other words, they’re the small group of people with whom you share air without using breath-control precautions such as masks.
Pods (or “bubbles” or “containers” or “quaranteams”) aren’t just ways for people to have social connections within a pandemic. They also serve an important epidemiological purpose—they help limit the size and spread of outbreaks. That’s one reason why in the Bay Area, where the authors live, public health officials recommend that pods be no larger than 12 people who live across three households, and that pods limit their non-distanced social contact to one another for at least three weeks.
Despite the centrality of sex to our lives, many of us are ashamed of having sexual needs. This is tragic, because we should be no more ashamed of needing sexual contact than we should be of needing food. So, be honest with yourself and others: If you want to form a pod to meet sexual needs, say so, rather than concealing or minimizing that purpose.
In this episode of Cubs Out Loud, the cubs are getting OLD! With Jeff’s 40th birthday coming soon, all of the COL hosts will be 40 and up. So, if they are getting old, can they really call themselves “cubs” anymore? Listen in as the guys reminisce on their aged experiences and discuss the good and bad about getting older in the LGBTQ+ community.