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Would you bare your soul about dating, love, sex and relationships to a group of strangers? One video marketer and sex-talk enthusiast, Jared Matthew Weiss, is counting on it. His latest endeavor involves encouraging strangers to crowd into a room, sit in a circle on the floor, and share intimate details of their love and sex lives.

This is the model of Touchpoint, a monthly series of group discussions about, well, everything. He launched Touchpoint in April and calls it a “town hall about how to date, partner, and have sex in the modern world.” And as intimidating as it might sound to open up about the most personal corners of your life in public, it seems that Touchpoint is striking a chord.

Weiss says, “I realized that people didn’t need a talking head, another figure to give them rules and regulations around how to date or have sex or whatever. What they actually needed was each other, that what we all need is a sense of community of conversation and exploration around the things that we really want.”

In April, Weiss called a friend and asked her to host the first Touchpoint town hall. Ten people gathered to sit in a circle and talk about how to bring BDSM into a relationship, a subject chosen by popular vote: When people RSVPed, they anonymously submitted questions; the day of the event, Weiss emailed the questions to attendees and asked them to vote on their favorites, then took the two most popular questions as the prompts for the evening. There was no scheduled speaker or expert, just Weiss acting as a moderator and calling on people as they raised their hands to voice their thoughts, a structure that holds today.

The following month, about 50 people showed up to Touchpoint. Weiss says that now, the monthly meetings see up to 100 attendees, and that 800 people have attended one in New York over the past six months. One-off events have been held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Mexico City, and on November 22, the first Touchpoint Miami took place, with some 150 people in attendance. Weiss also runs a Touchpoint blog on Medium, where he publishes recaps of discussions and posts written by attendees. His guiding principle? “Ultimately, I think that my goal with every single one of these meetings is just create a space where people can discover that there’s more possible for them than when they got there,” he says. “The list of what we think is possible for us in terms of love, sex, and relationships is relatively short … What else is there out there for you if you aren’t afraid or ashamed?”

It’s Weiss’s hope that widespread yearning for the openness Touchpoint promotes — openness that people may not even have established with their closest friends — will propel its growth as he seeks to host larger gatherings in more cities. “People are in there, sitting there, and they’ve never heard people talk about these things out loud. I think that when we realize that that kind of vulnerability is met with love and interest and not shame or judgement, it can change the way we feel about ourselves, you know?”

Jaclyn Pollack, a Touchpoint attendee-turned-volunteer who first heard about the meetings through a networking group, appreciates the open-mindedness of the Touchpoint community. “When I went to the first one, I wasn’t sure what to expect — there’s only so much research you can do prior to going to a new event, especially one focused on sex, love, and relationships,” she says. “The whole thing about Touchpoint, which is what I really fell in love with, is that it’s just such an open and honest environment, and everybody is so present.

Touchpoint’s attendees tend to be 24 to 40 years old, Weiss says, and about two-thirds are female. When asked why this is, he says, “Part of being a man is not admitting you have to work on anything, right?” he shrugs. “It’s a very macho thing … Getting guys to show up to something that is around love and sex and specifically where people are just freely sharing and it’s with women, it just can be very intimidating.” He’s hopeful that the male contingent will continue to grow, and adds that the gatherings have already proven romantically successful for a number of people.

In 2017, Weiss plans to grow Touchpoint in New York City, introduce it to more locations, and expand the brand’s web presence. He says that the essence of the meetings, however, will remain the same. “Our mission at the beginning of each one is never to answer the questions that have been posed, because there are no answers,” he stresses. “If the question is, ‘How do I give feedback in bed without hurting my partner’s feelings?’, I don’t know if there’s going to be a definitive answer to that, right? But there’s going to be a lot of ideas and you’re going to just let that swirl around in your brain and then go back out into the world and see what you can make of yourself.” In the realms of love and sex, asking each other questions and exchanging responses without judgment might be the most — and the best — that any of us can do.

 

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