Pitfalls of "Polarity:" 5 Rules to Avoid Harming Your Sex Life

Applying the idea of "polarity" without full knowledge can actually undermine you and harm your sexual connection. So it's best to be informed. Some people act like the idea of "polarity" applied to relationships is some sort of universal truth, but the reality is that it's just a made-up concept that is really only helpful in. I’m going to break down what polarity actually is and the facts beneath the hype, so you can apply your brilliant critical-thinking mind to decide if you want to play with this idea yourself or not. I’ll also break down the situations where it is and is not useful, give you the knowledge to know when it is harmful (which is really common), and also give you some options for less problematic role-playing concepts to play with, which tend to work better for a larger range of people. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Sex Help for Smart People. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it. Hello, happy whatever day it is that you're listening to this. I am glad you're here. I am hoping you are doing really great. I am. Tired, but also great. I am learning a new sport, which is whitewater kayaking, and it is really exhausting being a beginner, which I feel like is such a good constant reminder to me that --

[00:00:35] I never really forget because I, whenever I work with my clients, I can always see that being new at something, it's tiring and it's okay. It's okay for it to be tiring. It's okay that when you're learning things feel harder at first, and then they get easier, and I'm really hoping that happens to me with whitewater kayaking, it hasn't gotten easier yet.

[00:00:56] It's still super hard. But maybe if I keep at it, it'll get easier, and that's something that I do in my practice with people all the time. Right? Communicating with your partner, understanding your own sexuality, understanding how to connect with somebody else, really like things that improve your relationships.

[00:01:17] Sometimes they feel a little clunky at first, and that's okay. We play through that. We let it be a little hard at first, but we try to keep it on the fun side. So I feel like my whitewater kayaking adventure is a little bit like that. Like it's, I'm trying to keep it on the fun side, and I, I wanna just invite you to do that with everything in life when you're a beginner.

[00:01:38] But don't let it stop. You. Don't let the, like, discomfort to stop you from being a beginner. So today we are gonna talk about the real deal with Polarity, episode 71, all about. How polarity is really useful for some people and can actually be harmful for other people. I'm gonna break down what it is, what the fact is beneath the hype, so you can apply your own brilliant critical thinking mind to decide if you really feel like this is a good fit idea to play with in your relationship or not.

[00:02:12] So I'll break down situations where it is and isn't useful. I'll give you. The knowledge so that you can assess when it might be harmful and give you some options also for less problematic role-playing concepts to play with that tend to work better for a larger range of people. And quick reminder about upcoming Maui retreat January, 2026.

[00:02:35] It's going out on sale for first early bird registrations for women. It's gonna be a small group. Eight to 12 people at a beautiful luxury retreat center in Maui. I'm doing it with Kama Hagar, who's an amazing wellness and really like coming home to yourself. Coach, we're gonna do. A bunch of fun stuff, but we're also just gonna have a lot of chill time and there'll be some free, you know, included sessions with me and with Kea.

[00:03:07] So don't wanna miss it. It's gonna be so great. I'm so excited and we're making it so silly that it's just gonna be impossible for people not to have fun. If you need some more fun and play in your life as an adult woman, this is the place for you. Okay, so let's get into today's episode about polarity.

[00:03:26] Here's the thing, if you've we're gonna define this, if you haven't heard of polarity in the relationship context, you've probably heard of it in like electromagnetism, but you may not have heard of it in relationship context, or it may be like the thing you hear about all the time and the idea of polarity in relationships.

[00:03:50] I just wanna say, look, this is just an idea. It is a concept that someone made up where they decided to use a term, a scientific term, out of context, and apply it to human relationships. Relying very heavily on gender stereotypes. That can be fun to play with if you know what you're doing and you choose it on purpose as a gendered subset of Dom sub role play, that's basically all it's, but it can also be harmful for some re various clear reasons, the, and we'll get into all that.

[00:04:31] But the good news is that it is totally made up. It is a hundred percent optional. It's not actually based in any sort of fact. So if it's useful for you and your partner, and if you both love it and enjoy it, awesome. If it's not, and it's really very not useful for a lot of couples, that's also a hundred percent okay.

[00:04:52] You don't have to pay any attention to it at all. So let's do a definition first. This idea of quote unquote polarity in relationships is generally defined as an attraction or spark that supposedly comes from contrasting or what are considered opposite qualities and energies of assertion and submission between partners.

[00:05:24] So I want you to notice. All this is-- is a dom-sub role play. That's it. But with the polarity idea, what's baked into it is this is explicitly applied as quote unquote masculine and quote unquote feminine energies, where masculine is defined as being assertive, logical, leadership based, purpose driven, and feminine.

[00:05:50] Is defined as being receptive, nurturing, connection oriented, and submissive. So we've defined, so the idea of polarity is defining masculine as the dominant and feminine as the submissive. So first I want you to notice how those gendered roles are in exact alignment with gender stereotypes that are totally baseless.

[00:06:20] So number one, if you do not love gender stereotypes, this can, this is probably not gonna be for you, okay? But if you do, at least under some circumstances, maybe in the bedroom, enjoy playing with gender stereotypes. It could be fun for you as long as you follow some really clear criteria. You can play with this safely in your relationship by which I, and by which I mean s.

[00:06:48] When I talk about safe safely here, I mean not undermining your own wellbeing or your relationship dynamics by internalizing the stereotypes. And it is very hard to do that because of the way these stereotypes in the polarity idea are used as a dominant submissive role play. So here's the criteria I wanna offer.

[00:07:14] For using the idea of masculine feminine polarity, if in your sex life when it can work, you really have to fit these five criteria. Number one, you need to love the idea of mask femme, gender-based play, and your partner also needs to love it, not just because they want to please you. They have to really love the idea of having gendered dom sub roles.

[00:07:43] In your sex life, you both have to like it. Number two, you've actually talked about the limitations of the gender stereotypes and explicitly agreed on how you both enjoy applying them and the aspects you each don't want to include. And look, if at this point you are thinking, oh, but everybody has.

[00:08:03] Masculine and feminine qualities, and they don't necessarily have to apply to your biological sex. Absolutely. We are gonna get to that. I promise that is a valid point if you ascribe to these qualities being gendered in the first place. But when they align. With socially enforced stereotypes, it is a danger zone.

[00:08:28] It's a danger zone for stereotype reinforcement. So that is why I'm being so cautious about this, but I, it's not horrible. Like you can totally play with this if you both love it. If you really explicitly talked about the limitations of the gender stereotypes and agreed how you both want to apply them and how you don't want to apply them, right?

[00:08:50] So you may say, for example. I am a woman who does enjoy playing a sub role, and I do like the idea of like a feminine submissive role. Sometimes I only wanna do it. You know this often, like, you know, once a week or once a month or twice a year or thrice quarterly or whatever, like I only, this is one of my limitations and I, and I only wanna do it with these aspects of submission.

[00:09:17] I don't wanna do it with these other aspects and outside the bedroom. I really want us to stop the play and explicitly acknowledge that I am a great leader and really like assertive and. Not carry this into the rest of our lives, right? Like, so you, that's what I mean by number two. You've actually talked about the limitations when and how you wanna apply them, which ones you don't wanna include.

[00:09:42] All right? Number three, in the criteria you've decided on purpose through open conversation with zero emotional coercion, who is going to play which role, and you're willing to continue having that conversation regularly and letting the roles be flexible. Based on what each person wants that day. So that means if you are a female bodied human who wants to play the masculine in the polarity play, and your partner is a male bodied human, they need to be willing to sometimes play the feminine submissive in the polarity play.

[00:10:26] If. That is not the case. If they are never willing to do that, that should raise some eyebrows. And if you decide that you always wanna play the same roles, at least be sure that you are leaving yourself an out to revisit that conversation. All right, number four. You've agreed to keep the assigned gender stereotypes to the bedroom and not bring it into real life unless you create a literal written dom subcontract that incorporates gender.

[00:10:58] So when we play with, so in BDSM, we would actually call most of this top bottom rather than dom sub. But in the sort of. Parlance of our times in the sort of lay parlance. We people understand it more as dom sub, but a actual dom sub relationship that's outside the bedroom requires in, in BDSM for very good reasons, requires an actual contract.

[00:11:25] Typically, it's encouraged that that be written down and made very explicit to both parties. So if you're gonna start bleeding your gender stereotypes. Out of this polarity idea that you've created or you've adopted, that's totally made up. That's fine. All role plays are made up, but just make sure you have clear agreements about that.

[00:11:51] Okay? Number five, in the criteria for making this work. Without harming anybody or your relationship, you are willing to have a sense of humor about it and not take yourself too seriously. So I think this one is really important because it will help buffer you from over identifying with the stereotypes, and in fact, it can be great.

[00:12:11] One of the ways to play with this that can be most fun is if everybody just makes it absolutely absurd and takes it to the nth degree. Like, if you are a dude and you're gonna play the mask, make yourself fricking, ridiculously masculine. Like, like, make yourself Conan the barbarian and be like, Fabio, like be like the most like.

[00:12:32] Abso, you know, be something absolutely absurdly masculine and let it be funny. And same thing with the feminine sub. If you're gonna do that, let it go. Like take it to such an absurd level that you can't take yourself seriously, and that it makes it so clear that it's not real. That can be fun. Because really make no mistake, so the world at large is going to always try to pigeonhole us into gender stereotypes anyway based on the sex we were assigned at birth or the sex that we appear on the outside.

[00:13:06] And if it aligns with the one you've chosen to play, you are going to get double the subconscious pressure. So you're already getting the subconscious pressure of gender stereotypes from the world at large, from society. You're already swimming in that every single day. If you can't get away from it, maybe if you live alone in the woods as a hermit, in which case you are still listening to this podcast.

[00:13:33] So I call bullshit 'cause you're still getting culture. So everybody is swimming in the subconscious pressure of gender stereotypes. Now if you add to it sex play as a regular practice where you are playing with doubling down. On a gender stereotype that matches your assigned or outward gender, you're gonna get at least double, if not exponential.

[00:14:02] Increase in the subconscious pressure to conform to that stereotype. And anytime you're being like put in a box, it is gonna have an impact on your own sense of self, your psyche, and your relationships. So that's why I just wanna be really help you understand the cautions here because I think a lot of people are talking about this as if it's some sort of quick fix or end all be all to solve.

[00:14:31] Sexual disconnects or libido mismatches. And I have to say it's absolutely the opposite. It can really worsen things. You may have fun for a few times, but it can really start pigeonholing people and it can really destroy, really destroy the sexual chemistry between people over time. So for example, you are a cis man who's playing the mask.

[00:14:56] It's already hard. To be emotionally open and vulnerable even to yourself when you're socialized as a man because of societal gender roles. But now we've added onto that, the reinforcement of this idea of needing to always be in control, always leading confidently in sex. And it, and you're thinking that this is how you have juiciness between you and your partner.

[00:15:22] So it becomes like an obligation that you have to do that. And over time it can become even harder to feel like it's okay to open up honestly about your actual feelings, to be scared, to be anxious, to be hurt, to need comfort like any normal human being. And you wind up down the road having suppressed all this and you have anger issues.

[00:15:43] You blame others, you feel like a martyr. You have Ed, you have heart problems. It is not a surprise, right? This can for women playing femorals, this is, you know, having this idea of polarity being a thing in your sex life will reinforce the tendency to people please to feel disempowered to over care. Take.

[00:16:07] To run over your own boundaries or fail to acknowledge them. And we can see down the road, emotional overwhelm, resentment, loss of sensation, collapse of libido over time. So that's why I wanna really be cautionary that if you can play with this cleanly without. Really adopting and falling into this great, but beware because it's going to, especially if you align your biological sex or the sex you present as with the gendered assignment of masculine or feminine supposed energies, then you can really be setting yourself up to double down on your own subconscious internalized stereotypes.

[00:16:54] Okay. Some people who espouse polarity in relationships will often say, well, the gendered language isn't meant to align with biological sexes. Like the male doesn't have to be masculine in energy, and everyone always has both blahdi blah. And I think if you're actually flipping the script and you're taking on an opposite role than you are socialized to great.

[00:17:20] But in practice, people who say this, I hear it all the time, and I've never seen one of those people actually be flipping the script. I almost never see that happen, except occasionally in gay male couples. But for hetero couples and lesbians, it's really rare. The butch lesbian most often takes a mask roll, which makes sense, right?

[00:17:42] They've chosen to present and to adopt. The stereotypes that associate with what is considered quote unquote masculine and hetero women most often take a femoral a lot of times, not necessarily because they even want to. A lot of times it's because the hetero male partner is too threatened to take the femoral it seems beneath them.

[00:18:11] Which should tell you something about the hierarchy that is embedded in these roles that people do not wanna acknowledge. If a cis man doesn't wanna take a femoral because it's not, it's too beneath him, then that means that he actually thinks that the feminine is not as worthy. And so I don't want to hear that everything is equal and everybody has both when this is not how it's being played out in reality.

[00:18:38] And so that's why I caution that it's all well and good in theory, and that mask femme absolutely don't apply to biological binary sex, which is actually not binary biologically anyway. But because everyone's so socialized heavily by gender stereotypes being in our heads from a young age associated with what we.

[00:18:59] Are told are two biological sexes. There is literally no way to actually keep all that subconscious stereotyping from happening. It doesn't work, so we can't take one little bite of it without our subconscious swallowing the whole damn thing. Okay. Which is, that's why in practice, it pretty much always aligns with gender roles, whether that's in a hetero partnership or in queer, or same sex partnerships where one person identifies more masculine and the other more feminine.

[00:19:30] We tend to wind up aligning. With those roles for the quote unquote polarity role play. So that's why I just wanna offer that. It's important to be really careful to know you are signing up for a double down on stereotypes. If it's fun to play with a few times, great, but just be careful. It's not so fun when it destroys someone's libido and it can when practice too long.

[00:19:57] Another caution, that should raise your eyebrows and encourage some skepticism. Is that some people refer to relationship polarity as a quote unquote law, the quote unquote law of polarity in relationships, which is an effort to, again, make it sound all sciencey and more legitimate and as if it's based in something real.

[00:20:19] It's total bs. It is in no way a law. Anyone who says that has zero idea what they're talking about, including Tony Robbins, who may be a super rich life coach, but has zero credentials in relationships or science. So a law. What is a law in science? A law is a statement based on reams of documented empirical evidence, which means experiments and scientific observations that are.

[00:20:49] A law requires that it be universal, observable, and measurable, stable, always applicable, absolute, and all encompassing. Seriously. That's what a law is. So the only, there's very few of them. In science, there's not that many because very few things actually conform to all of that conservation of mass and energy.

[00:21:12] Universal gravitation, thermodynamic laws are examples, but there are not very many. Polarity is real in electromagnetism, and it is made up as applied to human relationships. It's absolutely not universal. It is not always true. It's not observable or measurable or stable. We're all encompassing. It's made up based on stereotypes, so please just beware.

[00:21:37] It can be fun, right? If you wanna play with those, like really like over the top, gender stereotypes can be fun when those criteria are met and when all that communication happens. Really openly and clearly where you're able to talk about the pros and cons. You're able to talk about the pitfalls. So some of those pitfalls, right?

[00:22:02] The feminine winds up being subservient, has no clear menu, no clear boundaries, no directive beforehand, right? When instead, what they really should have as the feminine in order to enable safe sub role is be clearly boundaried. Well-communicated desires and then allowed to feel relaxed, open, and receiving because of those boundaries.

[00:22:28] And pitfall for the masculine side winds up being they're actually aggressive because they don't know the difference between dominance and aggression. They might be entitled just kind of generally douchey or broey. Kind of energy instead of like a deep eroticism, grounded in like a caring, service oriented leadership, which is allowing the sub to receive without having to do all this leadership of their own.

[00:23:01] That can, that's like a really yummy situation when it's done right, and then the pitfalls are really awful, like entitled, douchey Aggressive. That doesn't sound that fun. And those pitfalls will often lead to relationship problems and sexual problems. So you can try to think of those roles without the pitfalls.

[00:23:24] Good luck. I would suggest playing first if you are gonna tend, if your partnership is gonna tend to lean towards those stereotyping or, or gendered roles instead of trying to. Jump into polarity, try just playing with non stereotyping dom sub or top bottom roles instead. And if you want them to be gendered at some point, make sure to make those empowered or empowering where you, where both people really feel like they get to be their whole selves.

[00:24:00] They both get to be whole selves. 'cause people will say when they're talking about this polarity thing that like everybody has both, but then they're limiting what you're allowed to express in the roles. So I wanna say allow yourself to fully express a whole being. In each role. For example, maybe you wanna play a pirate queen, and maybe she does wanna be a bottom, but she's a fricking pirate queen who's plotting her escape, and she's going to tie up her capturer with his own bonds as soon as they're done screwing.

[00:24:33] And then she's gonna make her escape and sail the high seas and like plunder, right? So she gets to be this like complex human being that maybe is sometimes playing a little bit of a sub role, but is about to sort of embark on this like. World domination, right? So allowing the role plays to be more nuanced and to be more empowering can help you avoid some of the over stereotyping gender pitfalls.

[00:25:05] All right. Now you know my opinions about polarity. I do think it can be fun for some people. I just caution you to use it really explicitly and know what you're getting into and be very careful so that you don't accidentally harm yourself or your relationship. I. So I hope that was interesting, enlightening, or at least raised some questions for conversation with your partner, and I'll see you here next week.

[00:25:33] Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide. Find your secret turn-ons. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.