Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Description

Despite saving themselves for marriage, Nikki and Daniel quickly recognized that their sexual desires included having additional partners.

“Because we’re so secure in our own relationship, it’s easy for us to break off and try other people.” – Nikki

As expected, Good Sex contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Daniel & Nikki

Nikki  01:21

We had both sworn off relationships. His older sister was teaching at the church that I was attending at the time. And she insisted that I meet her brother.

Daniel 

My sister said I’ve got this girl at church that you got to come meet.

Nikki 

I said fine. I’ll meet him.

Daniel 

I’ll come up there I want to visit and I’ll meet her.

Nikki

But I am not interested in having a boyfriend at all and having any sort of relationship at all.

Daniel 

So yeah, we just got to hang out as friends. I was living in northeast Texas and she was living in Central Arkansas. So we were five hours away at the time. Yeah, put 50,000 miles on my little car that year ago back and forth visiting.

Nikki  02:05

His older sister convinced me to go down and visit them over Christmas break. I went and spent a week we kind of like broke off and did our own thing. I got my favorite ice cream at the movie theater; Chocolate Chocolate Chip ate the whole thing out of nervousness because I’m also a nervous eater. My stomach just immediately started feeling sick.

Daniel 

She just said I gotta go to the bathroom.

Nikki 

I can’t tell this like super-hot guy that I’m holding hands with that. I feel like I’m gonna puke because I’m holding his hand.

Daniel 

So I just stood in line. And apparently she went off and ended up puking in the bathroom.

Nikki 

Yeah, he had no idea about this for like the first six months we were dating.

Daniel  

It was only six months after that. We got engaged. And then we were married. Within a year of that time.

Nikki

I feel like I wanted to marry you two months into our relationship.

Daniel 

The whole ring and engagement I thought was a big surprise to her. But she knew exactly what I was gonna do. And when I was gonna do it.

Nikki 

Hi, I’m Nikki.

Daniel 

And I’m Daniel.

Nikki 

We’ve been together for 13 years.

Daniel 

I thought it was 12 years.

Nikki

I know. But we’ve been together for 13.

Daniel 

But I’m saying I’m married for 12. Okay, yeah, that threw me off. Okay. And married for 12 years. And this is GOOD SEX.

Nikki 

Early on any kind of touch to us felt electric I can remember us talking about touching each other’s bodies underneath our clothes. And it wasn’t even necessarily sexual body parts. It was like you touching my stomach underneath my shirt. And being very turned on by that.

Daniel 

Yeah, we had the whole purity culture of we’re only gonna hold hands. And then we move into a little bit more than that. Okay, well, those of each other’s faces that we’re not going to kiss and then we’d end up actually kissing. Okay, well, we can kiss but we’re not gonna do anything sexual. Then we’ve kind of move into more of doing the hands thing of like, we’re gonna do this, but we can’t do this. We just keep pushing that line.

Nikki  04:25

When we got married, I think that was probably the biggest push even though there’s so much more to our relationship.

Daniel 

Yeah, if we don’t get married soon we’re gonna end up having sex and that is absolutely not okay.

Nikki 

Okay, so how has your relationship with your body changed or not changed since we started having sex?

Daniel 

I would say maybe that I’m not as focused about how my body looks. Coming from my upbringing in my brothers and they’re all body focused. And I mean, even now they work out a lot and put a lot of stock in having good looking ABS or good-looking muscles. And I used to do that not saying that I’m married, I can let my body go kind of thing. But because I don’t do that, I do find myself still looking in the mirror and like, Man, I need to work out. But when it comes down to it, I never do. But I find myself being more okay with that. Not because I’ve got to catch a woman with my body and I got to look good, or I’ve already got a woman so I don’t have to look good. But this, I know that I’m accepted the way I am. And that I’m okay with them.

Nikki 

I like that, because it’s always very important to me, for the people. I’m around to be accepted for who they are. So I like that you feel that way.

Daniel 

I’m going to ask you the same question. How is your relationship with your body changed or not changed since we started having sex?

Nikki  06:04

I think it’s funny that we both asked each other that question. You know, my relationship with my body is crap. At best. I’ve always viewed myself as too big or not small enough or not athletic enough, I was very self-conscious about that whenever we first got married, and even sometimes now I find myself being self-conscious about things or not wanting you to see me at certain angles, which is not something that I’ve necessarily shared with you before, which is kind of sad that I would still feel that way even after being married to you for you know, over a decade. But in other ways, I go back to you making me feel safe. I can remember on our wedding night and you seen me make it for the first time and feeling so worried that you weren’t going to like something and you’ve never given me that feeling you’ve always made me feel very sexy and very accepted. Anytime that I’m with you, you always make me feel confident in my body. And so I guess in a way my relationship with my body hasn’t changed in that it’s still kind of shitty. But in other ways it’s changed for the better because of you because of the security you give me in who I am. How do you think having a child has changed our sexual relationship? Better? Worse? Nothing?

Daniel 

Man, I could talk about this all night.

Nikki 

I know. That’s why I asked.

Daniel 

Yeah, our sex is definitely different, way less frequent. That’s probably the biggest thing is just, we can’t just have sex whenever we want to, or sex as much as we want to. Before a kid. I mean, we were having sex probably four times a week. Now that we have a kid who’s in our bed half the time I mean, we have sex, sometimes only once a week or sometimes once every other week. And the sex that we have is kind of limited. We get in get the job done and get done because we never know when the four-year-olds gonna bust through the door and catch us right in the middle of the act. Not saying that the sex that we have now isn’t good or fun or we don’t enjoy it, but we can’t really spend time and get into what we actually enjoy out of sex. It’s just done sex.

Nikki  11:07

Do you think the actual act and like the actual doing of our sex is better now because of experience? Or do you think it’s better now because we have a closer connection? Because of having a kid?

Daniel 

I would probably say just out of experience and getting older and knowing what we want? And well, from my perspective, knowing how to not come within the first 30 seconds of which was the biggest struggle for like the first few years. Being able to actually last longer, being able to do different things to prolong sex. Yeah. If I can keep going on this and ask a question into this. We have started opening up our relationship to do things with other people. And we’ve kind of dabbled in that in the past before we even had a kid. The way I remember it, and my memory is fairly lapse sometimes.

Nikki  12:08

This has been almost 10 years ago.

Daniel 

The first time we did anything outside of our marriage was with people that we were good friends with. And it all kind of happened organically. As a friend group, as say one night with a sexual tension was kind of building.

Nikki 

Yeah, we joked about it with them all the time, we would make off color like sex jokes and hint towards it. It was another friend’s birthday. And it was after her birthday party. And we just finally were like do kind of actually maybe want to try this. And we did. It was a really weird, awkward first time, as all first times tend to be. But it ended up being really fun situation after a while. I can also remember a time having sex back then before we swung where we fantasize doing stuff with them. We talked about it during sex.

Daniel 

Yeah. My question would be, are we more apt to do open relationship because we have a kid because we know, we’re not really doing as much sexually here. And it’s easier say we don’t have to get a babysitter one of us can go out on a date with somebody, and one of us can stay home and watch the kid. So it’s easier to fulfill our sexual needs, but not do it with each other. If that makes sense. With not having a kid would we actually pursue this as much as we do now that we have a kid?

Nikki 

Oh, no. I mean, I think that we’ve always liked the idea of having sex with multiple people. I think this is kind of a natural evolution of that. I think both of us crave different sexual experiences. At least I do. And I’m pretty sure you do, too. I don’t know we’ve ever actually put words to this.

Daniel  14:00

Different from each other.

Nikki 

Yeah, not saying that, like, our sex isn’t good. If it was the only sex we had for the rest of our life, I think I’d be fine. But also, we’ve kind of come to a point in our life journeys, both with our faith and with our sexual journey where we want to experience all there is to experience and live life as full as we can. For us, I feel like that involves either sex with other people or even maybe relationships with other people maybe down the road. I also know that our relationship is something special. And we both know that and I think that because we’re so secure in our own relationship. It’s easy for us to break off and try other people and try other things because we know that we always have a safe space to come back. And enjoy.

Daniel 

Yeah, no, yeah, that does make sense.

Nikki 

I can’t tell by your face if you agree or if you’re holding something back.

Daniel

No, I mean, I would agree with that. We’ve always been completely open in our communication and communicate more when we’re trying to do open relationship style stuff. We’ve even told each other that if something that we were doing outside of just us two ever started a bother the other person, we would never sacrifice what we have to have something different. And so that’s also what makes us feel safe and secure. And what work do.

Nikki

What attracted you to me?

Daniel 

Well, I mean, really, it was probably just the friendship aspect of it, that connected us and attracted me more. To be honest, I didn’t recognize that you had big boobs pretty early. But I want to say that’s what really led me into the relationship. But yeah, just the fact that we had fun together, and we could talk together and not feel the whole nervous, davey kind of feel that you feel a lot of times when you’re attracted to somebody. Maybe a year ago, I would say it was God, dividing us to be together. And that was our match. But now I mean, I don’t really know that I believe much in a god. So honestly, I don’t really know how people get together and connect and find the person they’re supposed to be with or if there is a person they’re supposed to be with.

Nikki  16:36

It makes me even wonder if a relationship like ours is even typically possible. For most part, our relationship feels very easy. And I mean, I hope that that’s out there for other people. But I don’t really know what caused it or how we got to this point.

Daniel 

Just find somebody you have fun with and do the best not to be an asshole. Thank you for listening to GOOD SEX.

CREDITS

GOOD SEX is a Lemonada Media original. This show is produced by Claire Jones and Matthew Simonsson. Our supervising producer is Xorje Olivares, with Jackie Danziger as our story editor. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Music is by Dan Molad with additional music from APM music. Sound design is by Matthew Simonsson and Elle Rinaldi. If you like GOOD SEX, the show not, you know? Why don’t you rate and review us listen and follow for new episodes each week, wherever you’re listening right now. And if you want more GOOD SEX, subscribe to Lemonada Premium only on Apple podcasts.