Come With Us Podcast

Break Free with Support Pup Cooper: Role Play, Coming Out, and Authenticity

September 20, 2023 Beth Liebling Episode 145
Come With Us Podcast
Break Free with Support Pup Cooper: Role Play, Coming Out, and Authenticity
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

An electrifying journey awaits you as we venture into the enthralling world of pup play with our esteemed guest, Pup Cooper. We journey down the fascinating intersections of the pup community with impact play, unearthing hidden aspects of role play that can profoundly amplify diverse relationships. Listen in as Pup Cooper shares his wisdom on how role-playing can act as an extraordinary stress-buster while also providing a safe and consensual playground to unleash your wild side.

This episode takes a tender turn as we broach the delicate subject of coming out. We explore the vital elements of setting the right environment, establishing your expectations, and coping with the reactions that follow in a constructive manner. Unravel the importance of granting space to the other party to absorb this newfound information, thereby fostering a healthier and more understanding bond.

As we reach the concluding chapter, we inspire you to break the shackles of societal norms and embrace authenticity in your relationships. Engage in a thought-provoking discussion with Pup Cooper on the necessity to articulate our emotions, seek what we need, and wield these tools to manifest the life and relationships of our dreams. Dive into a conversation that explores the cruciality of constructing trust and connection in relationships. So, whether you're seeking a fresh perspective on puppy play or advice on navigating intricate relationships, this episode is your go-to guide!

If you're interested to learn more, check out Cooper's website and his Instagram.

Support the Show.

WANT A GRADUATE DEGREE IN LOVE?

Are you looking for some guidance or direction on taking your relationship to the next level? From love, sex, intimacy, and self-love, Beth can help!

Be sure to go order your copy of Beth's new book "The 5 Kinds of Intimacy: How to Keep Your Love Alive"!

Love, Sex and Relationship Coaching: https://sexyedschool.com

L I N K S & S O C I A L M E D I A - Follow us on social media for updates, Come With Us podcast episodes, Sexy Ed School & more!!

Website: https://bethdarling.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/comewithuspodcast

Coaching: https://sexyedschool.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/comewithuspodcast

Contact Come With Us: comewithusconfessions@gmail.com

Speaker 1:

Are you saying?

Speaker 2:

you faked with me, yeah.

Speaker 3:

I just can't say oh, oh, oh.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'm not wrong Now you're single.

Speaker 4:

What do you know about sexual relations?

Speaker 1:

Is it true that if you don't use it, you use it?

Speaker 3:

I'm a little worried about being a slut. You're listening to the Come With Us podcast Talking the good, the kinky and the ugly. Here are your hosts, beth and Erin.

Speaker 4:

Hello, hello, hello. All you sexy holes and holes, welcome to another episode of Come With Us podcast. We are so happy to have support Pup Cooper back with us today. Hopefully you saw last week where we talked all about puppy play, and I do have a couple of little questions we want to follow up with, or I want to follow up with at least, but we're also going to talk about. Pup Cooper has been a coach for many years in the LGBTQ community, working with people of all different backgrounds and stuff. So we've got a couple of questions for him, or several, about things that relate to relationships all across the board, whatever hetero, straight, anything, whatever creative kind of relationship you've got, and I think he's got some good answers for us.

Speaker 4:

So I'm Beth Darling from BethDarlingcom, here with Erin today. We are very, very excited to help you deal with all the sexy pleasure, get more and more and more of the pleasure that you deserve out of life. I know the lovey-dovey stuff is great. We all like it, but we all want sexy fun any and every way that we can get it. So, all right, about our guest today. He is a sexologist, a teacher. He has a degree in Spanish and literature. He has a PhD in sexual wellness and health. So he is doctor and he is an advocate for diversity and inclusion and is a coach who, again, like our mission, he helps their clients his clients get the most out of their sex lives and their relationships. So he's kinky, he can wag, howl, bark, and yet he's smart and on point as well. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, support pup Cooper. I appreciate it. It was so interesting.

Speaker 4:

On our last episode. I really encourage anybody who didn't listen and watch, quite frankly, to go do so. But I had one more question, if I can, about the puppy situation, which is you mentioned. You're into kink and impact play and that's certainly my deal, that's my turn on. But I was thinking I know that men have trouble hitting a woman and they have to get past that in terms of the kink impact. But I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I couldn't hit a puppy. I don't think I'd want to watch puppy being hit. So how does the pup world intersect with that impact play?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you, beth and Aaron. So the pup community is a part of the kink community overall, but we have people of all kinds into all different things and for some people, wearing a mask, acting like an animal, means like treat me like a bad dog, like treat me like a bad puppy. Or some people like really high power dynamics, where they want to be trained, they want to be taught different things, they want to live in a cage, drink and eat out of a bowl on the floor, sleep in a kennel and they really want to embody that.

Speaker 1:

And for some people, being punished when they're bad is part of that experience and that punishment can look all kinds of different ways. And so I think at the same time there are people who are challenged by that, and I think sometimes out there on the interwebs we get painted as like weirdos, problem people, people who want to have sex with animals, which we're not. We are people who role play as animals, want to be treated as animals, but it's totally part of the community that there are some people that like a puppy is something to love, care for, be gentle and kind, to be sweet to. But oh yeah, there are puppies who like a good spanking, fast for sure, or walking or electro play. I mean, there's some puppies I know who really are into like heavy bondage, where they want to be like strapped into a bench or a chair and, you know, endure torturous kinds of things and like that's a part of their dog profile Animals being like brainwashed or like forced into this submissive dog role.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, there's all different kinds of things out there, so, michael, Vick probably has a really good connection with people, then I like that.

Speaker 4:

But yeah, but he doesn't get consent first.

Speaker 1:

That's the problem, right Well dogs can't consent.

Speaker 2:

That's the whole point.

Speaker 1:

Right the people who role play, real animals cannot consent Real animals cannot.

Speaker 4:

Yes, which is why that's where the line is between people playing and stuff. So, but I guess it is, I guess it's in in Congress, I guess as somebody dressing up as you know, a princess or a king or pirate. I guess Bear Baden, nurse, doctor, yeah that's interesting. Okay, all right, aaron. Any other questions about puppy stuff before we move on?

Speaker 2:

No, it's just. It's all a world to make believe for everybody.

Speaker 3:

It is.

Speaker 2:

Okay, have fun, I guess, Do whatever you want.

Speaker 4:

It's fun. Yeah, like I have trouble with role plays, like I'm not very good at those and I say because so I'm a submissive, but it's just actually who I am, versus trying to be a role. When somebody wants to play like nurse and stuff like that, I'm very awkward. It's I would love to settle in. There are people who do it just beautifully and really just lose themselves in it, and I am. Take an improv class. I'm not kidding.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, take a general improv class or a couple of them, and that will I mean having last episode Cooper and I talked about you know the music and the arts kind of impact on life and stuff like that, yeah, and yeah, I mean, if you're, if you were a musician, if you were ever in theater or anything like that, I mean you've got to know how, if you're a standup comedian, you have to know you cannot be a standup comedian and not be able to roll with the punches with, like, if you just melt down when things don't go 100% according to the script. I mean, going back, athletes do too. The best quarterbacks in the world can see oh shit, this is not the way it was supposed to go. And make it still work. The best comedians can go shit. They did not respond to that joke the way. Okay, let me find a way to make it funny so I can get out of this hole and get onto a different topic.

Speaker 2:

Radio host, do it. I mean that's just kind of the performative aspect of life is you have to be able to adjust on the fly and be able to commit to what you're you know. Okay, this plan A didn't work. I'm committing to plan B. Okay, plan B didn't work. Cool, I'm still gonna commit just as hard as I did to plan C, as I would have to A and B. It's just part of life and improv class can help that.

Speaker 4:

Well, it's funny cause, yeah, as a lawyer, I certainly know that. So it's just this idea that somehow there's still part of me that's so uptight, that has trouble with role play.

Speaker 1:

And for a lot of people like being taking on the role play as a pup is a way of letting go of that day to day life, like I know people who are, you know, in all kinds of really important social roles where they work, with work or with, you know, family or whatever. We're like when they get, when they put on their hood or when they go into puppy headspace. It's an opportunity to like get away from the real world, get away from that stress, that negative energy. And I've had people in coaching say, like through finding my real pup, dog, puppy self, I found my other self. Like this helps me with the rest of my life. I mean, there are people who are like when I get home from work on a really hard day, I go in my house, I put on my hood and I just spend some time just like going into dog brain and then when I take it off, it's like a meditative experience.

Speaker 1:

And for some people in coaching I help them do that right. They're like when I put the hood on, I feel shame, I feel stigma, I feel worried and like I want to do it, which is why I bought it. But when I put it on, I feel weird. Or, like my partner says, they're totally fine with it, but when I put it on in front of them it's really hard.

Speaker 1:

And some of it is just teaching people the tools of meditation, the tools of breathing, the tools of connecting with the rest of their body and realizing that, you know, kink or puppy play can be therapeutic. For a lot of people it's about reclaiming parts of themselves that they felt really shamed for for a long time. I mean, a lot of people who experience abuse as a kid or as a teenager find that like playing in kink is like reclaiming that time and saying like no, I actually get to control this. I get to say how hard I want it, I get to say how soft I want it, I get to say how long we're gonna play or not play, and there's something really powerful about setting limits and boundaries and really intentional ways that changes sex for people in really powerful ways.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think that's true. One of the things I liked most about the kink, the BDSM world was how open they were that in traditional relationships and stuff, typically women are more comfortable talking with their friends and stuff about their relationship and their sexual activities and stuff, but men do so more just in joking, passing way, not in a serious sharing sort of manner. I think that everyone is better when you have people that can talk freely and openly and to be vulnerable about these most important parts of our lives, truly the things that make everything else in life harder or easier or worthwhile. So that's our personal. So what would you say to somebody who has these some desires and they want to try and sort of come out to their partner? How do you suggest they go about doing so?

Speaker 1:

So I actually talk. So I do lives on Instagram on Monday evenings and actually that was one of the topics we talked about last week and it's one of the things in coaching. Often I get asked like people find themselves as a pup. They find themselves comfortable going to puppy things, but when it comes to the broader community partner, family, close friends they're like I'm scared.

Speaker 1:

And so one of the first things to tell people is no one ever has to come out. Coming out is a choice you make and I strongly encourage people, before they do it, to really think about what are the impacts of coming out. I think that in today's day and age, there's a little bit of like it's better now, and so whatever your identity is whether you're LGBTQ plus, whether you're of a certain religious identity, whether you're choosing to get married, like we come out about all kinds of things all the time One of the most important things is to think about do I want to do this and what are the impacts of it? So that's the first thing, and choosing not to is a choice you can make.

Speaker 1:

The next thing is when we decide we want to come out, we should think about why. What's our goal? If I'm going to come out to my partner, is it because I want them to know all of who I am? Is it because I want them to participate with me in this? Is it because I want free time to go do this thing I love doing with somebody else? Is it because I want to incorporate into our sex play, like, what's the goal? Because All of those things can be true. Maybe it's one of those things.

Speaker 1:

But when we know the reason we're coming out, we know what we want from the other person, and so the next part of it is when you then share it. Remember, pick a good time in place, like coming out when you're about to walk out the door to work might be the best time, might be the worst time. Right, think about time in place, think about what you want from that person. You know a lot of times when people come out to us and people come out to me.

Speaker 1:

In my personal life I mean in my work as an educator and work as a coach, as a friend and family member to people come, people come out to me all the time I remember, a close family member shared to me that they were pregnant and it was not expected, it was not planned. That was a kind of coming out and I thought very, very Specifically, like how I respond right now to this coming out is going to have a big impact on our relationship. So I think when we say I want to come out to you and we share and this is what I'm looking for from you we give that other person the opportunity to show up for us the way we want them to. If we don't say what we want from them in coming out, we're gonna get whatever we get right.

Speaker 1:

So I think Thinking about when and how, thinking about what, why we're doing yet what we want from the person, are essential. The last piece of it is we can't control how the other person responds. We want the other person to respond supportively. We want the other person to Respond in a way that shows care, affection and love, but that other person has their whole life around them and behind them and within them and ahead of them. So we also have to be mindful that that person is going to go through their own process of your coming out, and their first reaction Whether it's supportive or not or indifferent is only their first reaction.

Speaker 1:

The One that will matter most is, with some time, how do you then join in a relationship with this new information as a part of it?

Speaker 1:

And again, that's a lot more of goal-setting, asking for what we want and need from each other, giving each other space to grow and change, because sometimes we're like, and that person responded this way and it was awful, or they said they were totally fine with it and then they changed their mind. That's just part of the process. It always is, and so it's relational work that we do, and so a lot of the pups that I do coaching work with or you know I've coached folks who aren't pups but have a pup in their life is kind of working through that relational experience of new information, of something I didn't know before now. I got to incorporate this into our relationship in a way, and you know everybody's on their own journey. So if we come out to somebody and for them this was something really stigmatized they're gonna go through their own journey of coming out themselves to the fact that they have you in their life.

Speaker 4:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's uh, that's big one. I love what you said and I hadn't thought about defining and making it clear from the beginning what what you would like from your partner when you come out right, because I think that most of us, what we're really, what we really want, is immediate acceptance and and Stuff, but that's probably asking too much in a lot of different situations and maybe a much more realistic approach is a recognition of this might be strange to you and I want you just to to Sort of withhold judgment until you have time to process and think about it and please just love me During your process and and give me some space or I'll try and give you some space to deal with it. I think that might be a really good thing to put out there up front.

Speaker 1:

And it's, and it's something as simple as like can I have a hug? You know, like this is a hard conversation, maybe I'll be happy, but can I have a hug? Because that hug might be Something that can get you through the waiting period right, there's so much and we often, when we're coming out, we come out to somebody we have a relationship. We know them very well, so oftentimes we have this set of expectations about how it's gonna go. Yes, but giving some wiggle women space for that and talking about it is really important.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and I say the more we're invested Then the more we have to lose, so the higher the risk, which is why our fear level goes up. It's much easier to come out to people that we don't even know, because we figure we may never see them again and that would be okay exam.

Speaker 4:

I'll tell you I have in my book. I have different intimacy practices and my I have one that's back-to-back, skin-to-skin Conversations that I think people should be having on a regular basis. To me, coming out like this would be a great thing to bring up in one of those, because back-to-back, skin-to-skin, you've got the touch and the support, but you don't have to see every micro expression that comes across somebody's face as they go what holy shit. You know, my whole world is turning upside down there. We don't need to see those things, we don't need to feel them, but people are entitled to have them, exactly giving some space for that, okay. So how do you um, whether somebody is into puppy or something else, how do you suggest Couples or relationships break free from societal expectations and come up with whatever it is that works for them and their relationship? I Mean.

Speaker 1:

I think that's the key. Right is like knowing ourselves, knowing each other. I think that you know, here in the United States, there are a lot of values around sex, that there are a lot of how we're not supposed to be. We're not supposed to be gay or queer, we're not supposed to be transgender, we're not supposed to be too horny, but we're also not supposed to be asexual. We're not supposed to you. There's just layers and layers and layers. You know how our body is supposed to look or not look, and the reality is each of us are who we are. We have capacities to change our body, our attitude, our mindset, but those things take time and so I think, you know, for me and for a lot of the pups I know, embracing puppy play was a way to Opt out of norms. It's like you know what I'm embracing, that I don't do this the way other people do and and now I get to create the life I want.

Speaker 1:

And I think we see that among Swingers. We see that among polyamorous people. We see that among people who are adults and choose not to have children. We see that among Adults who say I am gonna have kids and I'm gonna teach them about sexuality from the time they're, you know, diapering all the way through, because I want to raise them to know we can talk about this stuff, and I think the biggest way To get away from stigma is to name it Is to name that I feel this way, I feel uncomfortable about it, and here's how I want to feel. And when we start communicating about stuff, we take away the power of silence and so much of our culture teaches us don't talk about sex, don't talk about gender, don't talk about vulnerable things, act tough, act strong, and boys are supposed to do that a different way than girls are supposed to, and queer people are supposed to do that a way different than heterosexual people.

Speaker 1:

There's so much expectations, but I think if we each knew ourselves and where you ask for what we want to need and design our lives the way we want it to be, you can live the most traditional life. If you want to live a traditional life because you chose to do it, which is different than doing it because you feel this pressure from everyone to be a certain way. But when you suddenly are having an erection problem or you're suddenly experiencing sexual pain, when somebody penetrates you, now I'm a bad person. This relationship is a failure, it's not gonna work and like that can create them the spiral in a relationship of conflict and sadness and frustration. But if we just name it, this is how I'm feeling. This is expectations I think people want. We can liberate ourselves from those things and collaborate on the relationships we want to have, live the life we want to lead. And that's like the most amazing thing when you live the life you want with people who you want in it and they treat you the way that you want them to treat you like.

Speaker 4:

Pretty simple, but Well, that reminds me of when Aaron Aaron went with me to a naughty in New Orleans a year or so ago. That was 2300 swingers or a hotel takeover and stuff. And and, aaron, you want to tell, like when you were driving home and you like you were happy, which is yeah, just get.

Speaker 2:

I mean, Listeners have known I've told the story right now God knows how many times I Mean it was it's New Orleans to Houston. I drove it's six hours, seven hours, but about an hour and a half back. I just couldn't like. I felt just Happy inside and I couldn't figure out why. And I couldn't wait to get home to my wife because she stayed home and blah, and I started realizing I was like, okay, I would just spent two days or two and a half days around a bunch of people, a bunch of couples who are legitimately happy and legitimately in love with each other, and they are open and honest, they communicate and you can see how much the communication helps in their, their relationships because they're happy.

Speaker 2:

And when you're happy and you're connected and you're in love, you give off a vibe. I've said it before, I'll say it again a smiling woman in a room gives off a vibe that can damp. It can bring the most dour room in the world To some sunlight. I mean, you can take an entire view. Just, you send in a smiling woman who's just in a good mood. Everybody gravitates towards them for a reason, because it's just this magical power that they have of doing it like. So, when you're around that and you're around people who are just radiating Positive energy because they're so in love with their partner, you know whether they bang somebody else the night before or whether they watch their partner get banged, or whatever it absorbs into you and makes you kind of feel this like okay, I feel more Optimistic, I guess.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and that was not what we expected to find with swingers, you know, it was just. It was so eye-opening and and clearly, clearly powerful. So I think that is the joy when people find their their thing, whatever that is, and they can live it and be it and be supported. Um, what if people are as human beings?

Speaker 1:

Go ahead, as, as human beings, our brains are wired for connection. We evolved in a way that we were pretty vulnerable as, like Animals that walk the earth on our two feet and expose our bellies all the time. Like we're a vulnerable species, our intelligence evolved to survive through that vulnerability. We're also a collective species. We we survived because we've learned and evolved to work together and there are chemicals and neurotransmitters in our bodies that go off and make us feel good when we connect. That connection and that feeling can get warped and twisted. And so if, if we lean into vulnerability, connection, intimacy and and the fact that we're supposed to work together because that makes us stronger, then we can achieve great things. But when we manipulate other people's connection to abuse, to harm, to addict, to external factors, we lose the very magic of what it is to be a human being. And I think that when we love each other and we give space to each other, that feeling that you were having going through your body, aaron, that's the oxytocin, dopamine flooding our systems. It's magic, it truly is, and I think for me in the pup community, the kink community, it's what I found is like I can go up to this person who's wearing clothing that, like you know, whether that's leather, whether that's football gear, whether that's a puppy outfit, I go up to that person and I can see who they are and their joy. I wanna spend more time with that person.

Speaker 1:

And it's funny because my sexuality, like I said before, is very demisexual. Like I will see people and aesthetically be like that person is beautiful where that person is not. And once I meet them and talk to them and get energy between us, I can like call full sexual attraction, full in love. And I realized like I feel special that I get to do that. But I also feel like more of us need that in our lives.

Speaker 1:

And when I see people who are unhappy, what I see is loneliness, disconnection, people who've manipulated and exploited them over their life, who've taken advantage of their goodness for bad. And you know, one of my professors used to say the reason we say human sexuality and not just sexuality is because every species that mates with each other has a sexuality. Even plants have a sexuality. Human sexuality is what makes us survive, it's what makes us who we are. It's a unique kind of sexuality and I think for me Can't Puppy Play is. It brought me back to myself. It helped me open up in ways that you know I really struggled for many years with.

Speaker 4:

Thank you. Thank you All right. Well, we're winding down. Time goes so quickly. But I do have one question, which is what do you have advice for couples who have experienced some sort of breach of trust, whether you know it's cheating, it's concerns about cheating, it's breakups. What do you do and how do you help people sort of reconnect? Any suggestions, any advice for them?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so this happens more often than we wish it did. Huh, yeah, and I think that it comes back to this fundamental way of relating to each other. You know, oftentimes we cheat on partners because there's something missing that we don't have.

Speaker 1:

And that might be the freedom to be with other people, it might be the I wish I had more affection. Or there's the sexual thing I like doing my partner doesn't like to do. Connection is about talking about those things, collaborating on those things, and one of the things that I learned in graduate school that I use all the time is this idea of relationships as collaborations. It's a joint project together to heal, to pursue our goals, to be ourselves. It's really hard when our partner sees ourselves in ways we don't see ourselves, and sometimes that's because of them and sometimes it's because of not us, right? But I think when we want to heal a trust wound, a lot of it has to do with really investing the time and energy in connecting and getting to know each other in a new way. The other thing is sometimes we can't and sometimes we have to accept the loss and accept that this particular trust violation, this particular rupture, is unrepairable. But if we're not willing to be vulnerable and try to repair, it won't repair.

Speaker 1:

And so often in a trust wound or after a trust wound, there's so much blame, in finger pointing and that's just gonna make it worse, because those kinds of things usually happen because of a joint failure somewhere, and so it's kind of like looking back to figure that out. When we villainize each other, when we point our finger at the bad person, we abandon them as a complex, dynamic human being. So I think it's really recognizing like, wow, this person is a lot more complex than I'm giving them credit for Really invest time and energy, and that's why couples therapy is a lot of work, it's a lot of time, and when I have coaching clients who are like can I meet with you once a month, I'm like I mean, we can, your progress is gonna be monthly, not weekly, right, it's like what's your investment on your end, in your field.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I like that that people are more complex and our partners. We do get this misguided sense that, oh, we know our partner so well, but the fact is we can't know them better than we know ourselves. And, believe me, we're always learning new things about ourselves if we're paying attention. So but I think it's also true that relationships are more complex than most people give them credit for. It's not just as simple as well. We said marriage vows or we said we committed to each other in a civil union. Whatever that commitment was, there's always more to it. So I like that recognize that there's complexity. It's not just not typically just black and white. That's good Anything yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1:

There's so many social norms that tell us how we're supposed to be and so often we're constantly in this mindset where we're comparing our partners to those rules. And those societal rules are often designed for a very narrow, specific kind of person that we all aspire to be, but most of us fail a lot, and so some of it is just be like okay, the rule is we're only supposed to have sex with one another for the rest of our lives. Does that work for us? And if it doesn't, do we have the vulnerability to say it doesn't? The trust and connection within each other to collaborate on some new rules that work for us, and then the commitment to each other to keep working that out until we get to the magic like this is vibing and it works, please.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, that commitment that, no matter what, we're just gonna keep trying. If the first rule doesn't work, then we'll try a second one, but it doesn't have to work either. We can, yeah, make it our own. Yeah, that's, yeah, very good. Well, I love that. So if people are interested in reaching you, if you're interested in coaching with PupCooper, then you can go to supportpupcoopercom and on Instagram, at supportpupcooper, on Instagram and stuff. So, and again, he's got all sorts of resources out there and different lives and videos and things like that. So I really appreciate you bringing something that is not mainstream at all, not very accepted yet, and being your vulnerable self and sharing yourself with us and allowing us to see you in your happy space, which I think is really good, and I hope all of us aspire to get to wherever our happy space is. So I love that. Now I'm gonna wanna go cuddle up. I just want somebody to pet me and stroke me for hours. That's the best part to me of being a puppy. It would be awesome.

Speaker 1:

Do it, get it, that's it All, the cuddles, the puppy you want.

Speaker 4:

So if people are interested in finding others to play with other puppy play, where do you suggest they go? Would they go to your website and look? Do you have resources on there for them?

Speaker 1:

So it's tricky. Most of the big cities across the US, and even in Europe and Latin America and other parts of the world, there are pup and handler associations or like nonprofit organizations of groups of puppies and handlers and people who support them, who get together monthly, sometimes weekly, depending on the size of the city and the community. Most of those pup and handler associations have Telegram groups, discord servers, facebook groups. If you used to start searching the name of your city, state or region in a search engine and start looking in those places, you're likely to find something. If not, if folks message me on Instagram or send me an email, I'm often able to connect them to a pup in their local community and try to help them find the network.

Speaker 1:

I will say pups are stigmatized. We're a group of people who sometimes people come for, and so we take our safety and community seriously, and so it's always a battle of like wanting to put ourselves out there because we want people to find us, but also wanting to keep our community safe, because keeping our communities a place that's diverse, inclusive, where people feel like they can belong and connect with people who care about what we care about, is really important. But we're all over the interwebs and the social medias, for sure.

Speaker 4:

Perfect, okay, and we'll put that in our show notes too. So people are listening and driving or working out or whatever. They can always go back and find the links to your stuff as well as and I'm at Beth at darlingwaycom. And again, don't wait. As support pup Cooper said, people wait years before they get help, whether they're frustrated, unhappy in their relationship or frustrated with their sex life or whatever. Don't be those people. Don't wait long enough that there's no going back. Get help.

Speaker 4:

I think, again, the best athletes in the world. They have coaches their entire careers because they know that to be their best, they need a coach. So it should be the same thing. There's no shame in doing that, whether it's for our professional lives, our personal lives, our romantic lives, our sexual lives. But get help, and certainly I work with individuals and couples. Pup support pup Cooper is there for you. There are lots of different resources. Find someone who fits what you need and can help you and then be your best, self right, be your happiest, get the most pleasure possible. So, yeah, awesome, all right, aaron, any other questions?

Speaker 4:

No no, you're good, You're good. Okay, all right, well, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being with us, cooper. You are just a pleasure and I appreciate it so much, and I can't wait to follow up with you and have our listeners hear back from them about what they've learned and what they've gained, and I think everybody's gonna kind of go, ooh, what would turn me on today, or at least that's my help. And remember yeah, love and laughter go hand in hand. I think so. All right, thanks everyone for joining us for Come With Us podcast, where you get the bare, naked truth about love, sex and relationships. Of course, you can find even more sexy, fun tips and tricks by following us on Instagram, facebook, twitter. We're at Come With Us podcast. You have to write the whole podcast out and it's C-O-M-E, by the way, so we can't wait to see you online and we'll see you next week. We're so glad to be on your sexy journey with you. Goodbye and thanks y'all.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for listening to the Come With Us podcast. Be sure to follow us on social media at Come With Us podcast and send in your questions, comments and confessions to come with us. Confessions at gmailcom. Until next time, keep it fun, flirty and naughty.

Puppy Play and Role Play Exploration
Coming Out
Embracing Authenticity and Breaking Societal Expectations
Navigating Trust and Connection in Relationships