Amanda: I’m so happy to have my new friend Katie Runyon here on the podcast today. Why don’t you introduce yourself?

Katie:  I’m Katie Runyon. I’m happily married to my husband John for 24 years. We have 4 amazing children. I recently just stepped out of my comfort zone and I launched a new company, a new website and it’s called Faithful Fling and we create sexy, flirty roleplay dates for you and your spouse to do together. 

In fact, we named our company Faithful Fling because we wanted everybody to know that these roleplay dates are just going to be between you and your spouse hence the ‘faithful’ word. And then we also wanted to apply a fun and flirty name for our roleplay dat, so we came up with flings. 

So what we really did is we created something that my husband and I wish existed when we started to explore with the idea of adding a little bit of playfulness and novelty into our own marriage so we went ahead and created something that we wish existed, that gave us scenarios and location ideas and new names or tips and tricks on how to get into character and we thought why not us because we had such a fabulous time ourselves and we thought it would be really great for a lot of other married couples to experience the joy and playfulness that adding some novelty can add to your marriage.

Amanda: Well, that sounds amazing Katie. I love it. So you said that this is something that you wanted when you were looking for things. What was happening in your relationship where you felt like you wanted to bring some more fun and excitement and novelty in?

Katie: Actually Amanda, our marriage wasn’t that perfect when we first started doing it. We had really young children.They were just ages one 3 and 5, so still waking up in the middle of the night. I really just like put my entire self into being a mother and I gave my husband all my leftovers. It would be very fair to say that he also put everything that he was into his career and then I just got his leftovers as well. So we weren’t in that great of a place but there was this one little conversation of my husband asked me, he’s like, Hey Kate, how come you never dress up for me? And in my mind, I was like, Well, why don’t you do like this this and this for me. But for once I kind of stayed quiet and I got really curious about the idea and it turns out that I liked the idea. Like why didn’t I want to dress up with him? Why did I not put a little bit of extra time into trying to create like a sexy scenario just between the 2 of us instead of just it being like our typical regular random Tuesday night sexual experience. So he really got me thinking.

Amanda: I love that. I love that because so many women when confronted with a question like that would get defensive or you know come back with, Well you don’t do this for me or whatever. But instead you took that and thought about it and used it to better yourself? .

Katie: I did and again that was a little out of character for me. I sat with it and in fact I thought about it and then I even got bigger and bolder and I decided I wanted to be a totally different persona. I wore this cute little short skirt and I wore some knee-high boots and my husband was going to be home late that evening so I took the time and energy and I put all the kids to bed and made sure they were ready and then I got myself put together with like a heavy hand of makeup and I made my hair different and I just put some extra time and energy and when he opened that garage door I was standing there and his face was like oh my goodness like who is she, like what just happened. It was really fun to surprise myself and then I also was able to surprise him and I just said, Professor Jones, I’ve been waiting on you and he was like this is the best day ever and he was pretty seamless, I have to admit that he was like I’m sorry I kept you waiting so that that was our first experience. He was like, Let’s go.

Amanda: He jumped right into character right.

Katie: I’m not certain that that is maybe the exact way I would suggest someone to go for it. But I do know my husband well and we have been together for years. I think having great communication skills and bringing up the topic before you just like hop into a character is most likely going to get you some better results than that. But that was my first experience with it and what it did, it was a caveat for us to just kind of think about each other more. It helped us really build on different aspects of our marriage and like emotional intimacy. And it just made us kind of remember those fun people we were when we first got married. Instead of just being parents to these children or sharing a home, I mean we were kind of like in a roommate situation there where we’re just like trying to make this life work and there wasn’t a lot of fun or newness.

Amanda: You’re doing the business of marriage, right?

Katie: Yeah, there was no fun and playfulness and this was just one aspect that we were able to bring back into our marriage of role-playing, but it really did help us want to work harder on our marriage and build more intimacy, emotional intimacy as well. So it was like a neat caveat for us, but I also love to say that having high levels of emotional intimacy like commitment, freedom to be yourself, emotional safety, vulnerability and all of those things and then you add in some playfulness and novelty is like the absolute best recipe for like a super passionate marriage.

Amanda: Yeah I love that so much. Tell me what it did for you personally.

Katie: It helped me get out of mommy mode. So what it did is, it helped me recognize that I can be a mom and a spiritual person and all of these things and at the same time I am still like a sexual woman and I have the ability to share that with my spouse without feeling shame. So It really helped me get a lot of freedom and I enjoyed it. I liked that. I recognized that I could be both of these people at the same time and there was no shame.

Amanda: What do you think it did for your husband?

Katie: I think it helped remind him of the fun people that we used to be. I think it got him excited again for date night. I think he was able to see me in a different light and he also felt more free to just be more playful and not just always have to be a boss or a dad or anything else. It just really allowed us to put our everyday lives on the back burner for just even a couple of hours but I think it helped him see me in a different light.

Amanda: I love that and I love that you see that it created more intimacy between the two of you, and not just sex, but like intimacy, right? Emotional intimacy as well as the physical intimacy and I think one of the best things about role playing is that willingness to share with your partner and communicate and there has to be a lot of trust there or at least you’re building trust through that process, right?

Katie: I agree because if you’re not going to really have that trust and the option to feel vulnerable then it’s going to feel really uptight and not real free flowing, but if you have that safety and that friendship and the knowledge that you’re just doing something playful together, it’s really an empowering experience.

Amanda: So what would you say to someone who feels like it’s really hard for them to be vulnerable and do these kinds of things.

Katie: I think that the more you do something the easier it gets. With that being said, it’s really hard just to put yourself out there. It’s really hard. So some communication? Maybe if you wanted to talk about something, hey this is really important to me. And you were wanting to approach your spouse and you would say something like, This is really important to me and I love our communication. Are you willing to listen to me right now? Giving your spouse the option of,  is this an okay time to listen to your vulnerability? Is there a better time?

Letting them know upfront in the conversation that you’re about to be vulnerable and they should have the emotional capacity to have this conversation with you as well. Whatever it may be about.

Amanda: Yeah, yeah I love that. Okay, so you said you have your website Faithful Fling, which is so awesome and amazing and you’ve got these different ideas, and a membership?

Katie: It is. It’s a membership-based website where we offer one fling or roleplay date scenario and it would be released to your account once a month or the other option is one fling every other month and it’s just a really fabulous way for you and your spouse to have good quality, classy content that you’re able to act out together. 

So I do want to mention that you and your spouse will share one membership but you guys will have different usernames and passwords because we really want this to be like a unique, intriguing experience for you. Because this is going to build some natural anticipation, what’s their role going to be like and it really allows you to adapt your role to your own preference and it allows you to really spice things up and then we write inside our fling descriptions a ton of surprises that you can do for your spouse.

In fact, we think it’s so important that in our fleeing description, we write everything that they know about your role and then we have an entire other section that is all the surprises that you could implement into your role because the last thing, Amanda, that we want to do is provide something and then to give unmet expectations. That’s the last thing we want to do.

So we don’t want to foster that sort of ability to have these unmet expectations and then somebody at the end of the night is like well you didn’t do this and this and this so we give you plenty of details yet vague enough that you’re able to make it and create it your own between you and your spouse. It is fabulous and it isn’t something like where you’re just given a certain scenario, a couple of awkward one-liners and you’re told to dress in this costume and then just go have sex. We like what so much more for you than that we want the natural buildup.

Amanda: Okay, so walk us through it. Walk us through it. Like if they join the membership, and you do offer a free twenty one day trial, right?

Katie: Yes, because we truly and strongly believe that every couple should decide if they want to role play with their spouse for free. They get to decide if that’s going to be a connecting and pleasurable experience for them and we want them to be able to do that for free so that is why we offer the twenty one day free trial. The first fleeing or roleplay date is called the test drive, so you get to test drive Faithful Fling to see if it’s right for you. Test drive role-playing to see if it’s right for your marriage.

And um, we’ll just use me and my husband as an example. I would log in and I would get to read all of the fling description. It would give me a character. It would give me location ideas. It would give me costume ideas with even possible links to purchase or even just click on the link to get an idea of what you have to implement. And then it’s going to give dialogue suggestions. We also have a spice it up section for, sometimes people don’t really quite know what to do and we just give you some suggestions of how you could surprise your spouse. And those are all just private to your own script.

So, my name would be Indie and my husband. On his site, he would learn all about his character and we even disclose who’s going to make the first initial contact. We have printables if it should be an invitation. We have text ideas, so we try to make it as seamless as possible. And since we’ve been role-playing all through the stages of life, if you will, from having very small children to teenagers and we just became empty nesters a couple months ago…

Amanda: Wow.

Katie: I know right? It’s actually been really, really fun with a lot of heartache too. I like kind of go back and forth. 

So we try to write these flings with all of these ideas in mind of what stage in life you could be at so there are so many suggestions. How to have a fling inside your house, how to have one if you want to go out. Typically, once you read a fling you need a couple days to prepare for it and find a sitter if that is where you’re at in life and just to make some mental preparations but part of that is you’re putting time energy and effort into your marriage. You’re building a lot of sexual tension inside your mind. Your brain is your largest sex organ. Oftentimes, we give you prompts to text beforehand so you’re kind of building up this like how are we gonna meet…

Amanda: Anticipation!

Katie: Yes! And we try to write our flings, we have over 20 now, we try to write our flings to fulfill a couple different like fantasy elements that might like maybe it’s an instant attraction or maybe there’s some innocence on one part or you haven’t an experienced a certain thing so we try to build those in and allow the wife’s side to have a few sexy element surprises for the husband as well as the husband to have a few surprises for her. And another fabulous thing about Faithful Fling that can be a really unique dynamic for some relationships, is that we write the flings for oftentimes the wife will be the pursuer and then the next month’s fling, the husband is the pursuer and this can be a really neat dynamic because I’m sure that you’ve seen this with several of your clients that you know usually someone is always the pursuer in a relationship and that can be really really interesting and dynamic like I’ve had so many fling feedbacks where they’re like, Wow my wife has never done that and she was like taking more of an assertive role and she said some fun sexy things and it was like I had been waiting for 10 years to do that. 

Amanda: That’s awesome!

Katie: So it’s just been really great. And sometimes I think as a woman we might just need, like we shouldn’t need it, but sometimes as characteristics we’re like oh well that was suggested, It’s okay to do that.

Amanda: Yeah, we need permission, right? Instead of just giving ourselves permission. 

Katie: And sometimes that’s a skill to learn which is obviously what you do and try to gelp so many women learn that, but in the meantime until you fully learn and embrace that, sometimes I just give you permission. We’re certainly not the bedroom police and we hope that everybody has those conversations to decide what they want to do inside their own marriage and their sexual experiences with each other but we just give you fabulous ideas. 

I will say that we don’t use any explicit language or images but some of our suggestions are certainly spicy.

Amanda: Well, I love that because you know one of the things, you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, right? 

Katie: I am.

Amanda: So it’s coming from that perspective. You’re not going to be telling them to do things that are outside of our value system.

But it is going to take them in a different direction and maybe do things that they’ve never done before and spice things up, which I think a lot of people need help with so I am a huge fan. I think that’s so awesome. I can’t wait for my listeners to partake of this because you all get a free twenty one day trial, you might as well try it out, right?

Katie: Absolutely and even just to read it to get an idea. It’s just good quality content just to practice using your erotic mind too, like just deciding to tap into that part of you is really powerful.

Amanda: Yeah. I think so many times we have fantasies and desires and we kind of shut them down because we’re afraid of what it will lead to or maybe it’s outside of our value system, things that we wouldn’t actually act on. But there’s ways to do it within your relationship that make it really fun and add a whole different dimension to your sexual relationship with your spouse still staying within your value system.

Katie: Absolutely! I love to say, whatever my husband and I decide to do when it’s just between us and our own bedroom, we’re not going to feel bad about it, have shame or feel like it’s wrong. As long as it’s consensual, just between us and we’re having a good time, that’s great. I think a few questions you could ask is role-playing or adding novelty or adding a toy or you could apply this to anything, is this experience going to be enjoyable for both of us? Is this going to be connecting for us? Is this going to be pleasurable for us? By adding playful and novelty, is that going to enhance our relationship? Do we first need to work on some of our emotional intimacy before we feel comfortable adding some playfulness and novelty and newness? 

So just a lot of those questions that you can ask and decide for yourselves if adding some novelty and newness is right for you guys and I hope it is because it can be really, really hot! I’ve been married for 24 years and my husband John and I are just like wow wow we still have some surprises in us, who knew?.

Amanda: Ah I love it, I love it and you’re writing these flings from your own experience and what you guys have done together over the last you know 20 years plus, right?

Katie: Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of suggestions, so I haven’t done all of them inside of Fling, but we certainly love to trust our members to be able to read what we offer and then create a fabulous night together with their best friend. And the safety of their marriage and it explores some fantasy elements and just getting out of their typical routine because it can be really freeing and help you explore a vibrant, fun and passion-filled sex life.

Amanda: Oh well I think everybody wants that, almost everybody anyway. 

Katie: It’s a lot more fun!

Amanda: Well thank you so much for being here with me today Katie. We’re going to put a link in the show notes where you can learn more about Faithful Fling and get your free trial. Is there anything else you want to share before we end today?

Katie: No, I just really appreciate being on your podcast and just a friendly reminder that the first fling is always free for twenty one days so you may as well give it a shot. 

Amanda: Absolutely. Thanks so much!

Katie: Thank you!