Quick Fix: Sexual Fawning
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this bonus episode, Dr. Ingrid Clayton discusses another aspect of everyday life where fawning can show up and take over: sex. Ingrid tells How To!'s Courtney Martin about the ways we lose ourselves during sex—and how we can reconnect with our needs.
How To!'s Quick Fix is produced by Rosemary Belson and Sophie Summergrad. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.
This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock this episode—you'll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Visit slate.com/howtoplus to get access wherever you listen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius. |
| 0:22.6 | Talk about generational talent. |
| 0:23.7 | Coming to headphones near you |
| 0:24.8 | on April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:32.7 | Hello and welcome to Quick Fix, a how-to bonus episode exclusively for Slate Plus members. |
| 0:38.8 | Here's more for my conversation with Dr. Ingrid Clayton, author of the new book, Fawning, |
| 0:44.0 | why the need to please makes us lose ourselves and how to find our way back. |
| 0:48.7 | In our main episode, Ingrid and I covered so many areas where people tend to fawn, |
| 0:52.8 | but there's a major topic we wanted to explore in depth. What happens when you mix the chronic fond response and sex? |
| 1:01.1 | So you have this section in the book that starts with this joke about the actual fourth F in |
| 1:07.4 | fight, flight, freeze is fuck. Yes. |
| 1:11.1 | That's not totally wrong. |
| 1:12.7 | Can you explain that to us? |
| 1:14.3 | Yes, I heard that in grad school, and it was like everyone was laughing because we all knew exactly |
| 1:19.0 | what they were talking about. |
| 1:20.2 | The sad thing to me is that we didn't talk about it beyond that joke. |
| 1:23.9 | It was like, ha, ha, ha, okay, let's talk about this other totally unrelated thing. Anyway. |
| 1:29.3 | Anyway, so what I love really about this, this fawning as this umbrella sort of term that |
| 1:35.5 | holds all of these different ways that we manage the relationship in order to stay safe is that it |
| 1:41.2 | also includes our sex lives, right? And it was this other piece of the puzzle |
| 1:46.7 | that again allowed me to make sense to myself because as someone who was being groomed by my |
| 1:52.2 | stepfather who was sexualized at a very young age, I really learned, A, I don't hold any power, |
... |
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