S9E08: Ask a Sex Therapist: What Happens at a Play Party? With Ally Iseman, Founder of Passport2Pleasure

This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. In the last few years, we've increasingly heard couples asking about play parties, sex parties, cuddle parties, and the like. Opportunities to practice touch, sexuality, and play in intentional spaces.

We are thrilled to have Ally Iseman, founder of Passport2Pleasure, as our guest. Ally helps couples and communities organize play spaces, establish clear expectations for what happens at play events, and explore their own sexual styles and preferences in the process. Ally talks with us about:

• It’s All Okay (7:00): Ally kicks us off, “ We're gonna look for the next question. Every question is gonna lead to another question. This conversation is not about answers. We're looking to understand why, where the curiosity is, where the fears are, and the landscape of that. So I have a good understanding of where they're coming from and the most important part of that is regardless of what comes up … It's all okay.”

• Healing Words (7:30): Julia adds: “ Having someone tell me that I am okay. Coming from the background that I had was just healing in and of itself.”

• About the How (9:00): Jeremiah notes: “ We talk a lot about how relationship therapy is much more about the how. How two or more people decide to make arrangements and agreements, rather than the what, rather than the final destination. And I love the idea of curiosity as a driving value for building that with folks.”

• Defining Sex Positive (13:00): Ally defines, “ Sex positive space acknowledges that sex is a perfectly natural part of life. It's something we can talk about, explore, educate ourselves about. Just like any other topic.”

• Play Party/Sex Club (14:00): Ally explains: “ The crowd that you're generally in are people who have an elevated awareness of their own desires, their boundaries. They're able to communicate that they're aware of, you know, your body language and how you're coming across. It's just a heightened level of awareness.”

• No Expectations (17:00): Julia says, “ I'm glad that you gave the piece of advice around going for the first time without expectations, because when I've talked about this with my clients. Sometimes they have the assumption that going means some sort of participation. It isn't obvious to folks who might not know. The expectation is not there.”

• Knowing How to Say No (19:00): Ally notes, “ So really practicing honesty. These spaces are actually really great ways to practice saying no. And that just impacts every area of your life. Knowing how to say that, owning how to say no, and knowing that it's not, there's nothing wrong. “

• Sitting with Assumptions (20:00): Jeremiah checks in: “ Check in and really think about what are the assumptions that you had about sex clubs and about play spaces coming into this.”

• Aftercare (29:00): Ally discusses:  Look at it like a nerd like us. Break it down. What are the elements at play? What can I learn from this? And first and foremost, above all else, know that it is okay and totally common to have that (overstimulation) experience no matter how long you've been in this space.”

• Play Party & Inspiration (32:00):  Ally notes “Really getting that inspiration again, coming from curiosity, knowing there's no wrong answer here. It's just new information like art.”

• Opening up (34:00): Ally says, “ When you're looking to open up, you don't even know what that means. So you might think you wanna open up to include other people in your relationship, but you might just wanna open up more authentically to each other. Learning about this will help you not only figure out which one of those it is, but how to do that.”