I first heard of touchpoint, a town hall about sex on the Future of Sex podcast. I remember being bewildered by the fact that people would just go to a place, sit with 100 strangers and share details about their sex lives. How does that work? Do you go there thinking “Oh, I have this very important story I want to share with a bunch of strangers and see what they have to say”? Or are you just “What is this thing, what and how do people share?". Soon enough I had the chance to satisfy my curiosity and while in New York I went to one of touchpoint's Town Halls. The subject of this one was porn, and I felt a bit like know-it-all as I was heading out. Running sluttish and researching topics such as porn and how do we watch it falsely created the notion that I understand how humans do this particular activity. But being at the town hall, at this very intimate, cozy, and comfortable space and listening to strangers tell their stories about porn addiction, or the beauty of discovering things through porn reminded me how different and diverse the human experience could be. And that so many times the ultimate reason for telling your porn story to a room full of strangers is to be accepted and to establish a connection. Which definitely happened in the safe space touchpoint is. I sat down with the founder of touchpoint - Jared Weiss to chat about this experience.

How did you start touchpoint, what was the need for it?

I recently have gotten out of a long-term relationship and I just had a lot of questions. It was my sixth major breakup, and I had this idea that “We should create a town hall, create a space where people can talk about these things”. I invited 12 people over and we really just had an amazing conversation.

I often get asked “What made you start this?” and I think I started it for the same reason you want to go to it - I was curious. I wanted to hear other people talk about what they are exploring.

Because love and sex are things that are actually very lonely to explore in many ways. Even though they are collaborative, even when we are in a partnership - that could be the loneliest because you can’t really talk openly about what you are experiencing in the partnership as you want to show reverence and respect to your partner. I think creating a space where we talk about these things and really give people permission and make it fun is important. The first month it was 12 people, the next month 55 people showed up, then 75 people and it just kept growing and growing. And the format evolved tremendously and I have evolved tremendously. I had to grow up in the circle.

How do you make people feel comfortable to share stories about their sex lives?

There are few components to it. The first one is the intention. The intention is very clear - we are here to talk about this openly because we all want to learn from each other. The boundaries are also very clear. Who speaks and when, and if you want to hear this is how you can participate.

I think we go through so much uncertainty, and it’s hard to have intimacy when we are so uncertain. Because intimacy is predicated on safety.

So when we are uncertain, intimacy is often challenged. I think that because there is so much certainty around the intentions and boundaries of the space that makes people feel safe.

We also start off by asking everybody if we have permission to talk to them. “Do we have permission?”. And I think that goes a long way when people hear that. “oh its great yeah, sure, you can talk to me about it”. So often people talk about consent around having sex, but we don’t talk enough about consent just in the space of sex. The space of sex doesn’t have to necessarily be a space where we are physical. It is just when that energy gets cultivated, like are you open to step in that space. Women talk often about men whistling at them on the street. It is cultivating this energy and it is like “I wasn’t invited by you properly and I don’t want to be in this space. I definitely don’t want to be in this space with you”.

So I think that so much from this space comes from setting an intention, setting the boundaries, asking people for permission, letting them know that they are not obligated to share at all, that this is really a safe space to listen. And also I think its fun.

That's probably the most important piece of the promise of touchpoint - the entertainment. The promise is not transformation. If you step into some sort of a support group, you step into it (in some sense) by saying “I'm broken. I have something I need to fix. And that's why I come here”. When people step into touchpoint it’s “it’s Tuesday and this is awesome”. They bring dates, and they bring friends. It's not like “We are going to go to this thing, and we are going to share about our feelings” Its more like ”We are going to go to this thing, and God knows what people are gonna say. It's really great”. I think because the promise is entertainment and people understand the boundaries, and the intentions, and the permissions, and that container is created around “let's hear each other out and get inspired by each other” - that makes people safe. And the upside of it all is that then, sometimes, people do have a transformational experience, which is amazing. And I think that's why they come back. They come back because they find out that they are fine. That thing when they come and they go “oh ok you did that?”, “oh ok”, “oh I’m fine, there's nothing wrong with me”.

Do you feel it was a transformative experience for you?

I think that it started for me at the very first conversation. The first time we did it people wanted to talk about "how do I introduce BDSM into my sex life?". And I was like “I don’t even know what the meaning of this is”. And then this lady shared a story - honestly she didn’t really align with the mental model I had of somebody who is into whips and chains and all sorts of other things that I've seen and read about but I never had in my reality. She told this really amazing story about her and her boyfriend - they are both divorced and they got together and they talked about how they never did anything (adventurously) erotic before and one night she said: “we haven't really done anything erotic, would you want to explore?” They talked about it and went to the sex shop and got handcuffs. And an hour later she said, “I was handcuffed to this kitchen table having the best sex of my life”. And I was like “Why was it the best sex of your life?” and she said “I realized I never trusted my partner the way I trusted this person. I realized I never felt safe with a partner like I felt safe then”. And I think at that moment that was the beginning of redefining what it means to connect with another human being, sexually or otherwise. I was like “wow we are talking about BDSM, we are talking about kinky stuff, we are talking about safety and trust, and emotional safety and self-esteem and creativity! We need to do this more, we gotta talk more about this stuff”.

And that's why I think it is so amazing - it's not in the doing that has actually been so transformative to me, its been in the talking about it. Its been in the finding of what the human condition is really all about. A talk about sex and discovery is transformative. It’s funny, in a less interesting way it's been transformative of my sex life, but in a much bigger way its changed how I show up in the world, the way I interact with people, the way I listen to people, the way I think about it - it is so radically different.

Yeah, I experienced the same thing with the website. When you are exposed to all these stories, to so much diversity of viewpoints you are like oh …

Yeah you heard the people last night, you know they were listening to the stories around ethical pornography and different types of porn, how people use it - as a solo journey or with a partner and you could be wondering “wow I've never thought of that, I never knew that”. And it changes more than your relationship and your sex life, it changes your relationship with humanity.

I can see that. Do you think there is a common threat, the story of acceptance, the story of being ok?

I told this story last night about the questions, and that the 25% of the questions submitted in the first 2 years started with the phrase “Is it ok … “.

I think in some sense we are seeking permission to be who we are. And that permission comes from an internal instrument that we work on constantly and every self-help guru and book will tell you “just believe in yourself” but believing in yourself is hard. It's hard when the messages and the models we see out in the world are not aligned with what we are thinking or feeling.

With all “this is the right way to be” and for any reason. It doesn't have to be some wild kinky stuff, it could be just “I don't know if I want to sleep in the same bed as my partner” or “Some nights I want to sleep alone” and the reaction is “Why would you want that? That's crazy”, or “Why would you want to paint your toenails if you are male” - there are all these norms and constructs and because of them a lot of us feel like it is not ok to be who we are. And so I think touchpoint definitely creates that level of permission, where people hear other things and go like “Oh I'm not crazy, this is great!”.

What is the story that touched you the most recently?

Actually, I think it is the story we heard at our little salon in Berlin. The guy who told the story about his friends being all fetish-y and BDSM-y and he resisted that and wasn't into it. And they are in this polyamorous relationship, and he was talking how his friend invited him to this warehouse and shes got this huge wonderland of all these things you can explore. She walks him through every possible thing you can imagine and she's like “What do you want to explore” and he's like “Nothing. I want to go home”. And I think that I loved that story because there are so many narratives around sexual desire, sexual arousal, what people want, what turns them on, what they “should” want. And I think that often if somebody is not explorative in a really wild sexual way the answer is “oh its because they were repressed”, “They didn't/don't have access to it”. And I think there's truth in that, and there are plenty of people coming from this perspective. There is also a lot of shame and a tremendous amount of personal social resistance to exploring yourself sexually. But there are also some people who just aren't that sexual. And sexuality is a spectrum. And I loved his story because I noticed on this journey that there is a lot of pressure on a lot of people to be different than they are. Especially to be more sexual than they are. Like, let's take demisexuality.

Asexual are people that don't experience sexual attraction and sexual are people that do. And then, there is this whole spectrum. So in the middle, we have this demisexuality - which means “I do experience sexual attraction, but only when I have an emotional connection to another person. And I can't tell you how many times when I share that with people, people are like “that's how I am”.

And there's so much pressure around what the stages are in a relationship and when we get sexual when we don't get sexual and all that. And I thought ”This story really really resonates with me, because I often hear the story about people who discovered their sexuality now, but the story about not being such an overtly sexual being and that being ok is actually really important. There is a big social narrative right now “lets all free ourselves and explore our sexuality!” But there is actually no broader narrative on the other broad spectrum of “Its cool if that's not what you want”

Yeah, I feel like there is a lot of pressure towards people more on the asexual side of the spectrum. Also a lot of shame related to it. While we are still on the story sharing, can you share with us a personal story? You did mention yesterday you had to talk to your dad about anal sex ….

Sure, sure that was funny. We were just playing my card game and we pulled the anal sex card and I was like “dad what does it bring up to you?” and he was like “I don't really want to talk about this”, but honestly that moment! And I never explored that in my life, so I think the one misconception about me for hosting this space is people think that I am much more sexual than I actually am. My mom was asking me a couple of months ago “So do you have the kinkiest, wildest sex life now?” and I was “No, not really”. I think I have a much more intimate sex life. And what touchpoint has taught me is I'm not interested in novelty. I think what I'm really interested in is action. I think the conversation with my Dad is significant because I had to ask my father about anal sex. But there is all sort of research and studies, that say that the reason why its really hard to talk about our parents having sex is that in some sense it humanizes them, it makes them mortal beings and that's challenging.

Where do you want to go with touchpoint?

I think that my mission with touchpoint is to make it easier to love and be loved. That's our mission. And sex is part of that and sex made sense as the place to start because it is something we all have a relationship to.

Whether or not we do it. I think I really want to create spaces where people go learn from each other. And I think we found out that what started as an event in New York in two years grew to a podcast. We are exploring other educational events and conversations, here in the city and I think we are ready to scale to other cities soon. We are launching a card game soon. I'm launching another podcast and its really just me sitting with inspiring, influential people and talking about their sex life. The thing with touchpoint is that there was no master plan from the beginning. Everything with touchpoint has been very responsive. Its been very much like the people kept showing up so we kept doing it. And as the people showed up and shared we learned, and its format has changed so much that it will be fun to really sit down and write how the format has evolved because it evolved so much. Everything has been, “what do people need, and how do we serve that in a way that's really meaningful?”. And because it's not really a business and there is no pressure to monetize it as a brand or as an experience we will just keep going and keep figuring out ways to add value. That's the big master plan.