Tag Archives: Friends

COL721: LTA… Adulting, Redux

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? 

Wikipedia Article: Adulting

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COL654: LTAS: Awakening

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.

 

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COL649: LoR: Red Flags, Green Flags

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

Resources 

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COL569: LTAS: Bubbles/Pods

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?

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Sex Bubbles/Pods 

  • Definition?
  • Safety?
  • Potential?
  • Interest?

How to Form a Pandemic Pod | Greater Good 

“quarantine pods” as an effective 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.

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COL566: Aging Cubs

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.

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Cubs at Any Age?

  • Definitions vs Labels
  • Loneliness with Aging
  • Health
  • Ageism

Satisfying Mature Gay Sexuality

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