Ep 19: Meeting the Wifey, Twenty Years of Silence, and Us Against the Problem with Jessica Reeves
Timestamps:
1. Intro — Meeting the Wifey — 0:00
2. Childhood — Abuse, Silence, and Moving to Indiana — 5:19
3. Reporting Her Grandfather and Being Disowned — 8:52
4. The First Marriage and Coercive Control — 9:39
5. Career, Yard Work, and Getting Crafty — 11:53
6. Meeting Wendy and the Dingle Hopper Phase — 15:10
7. The Booby Chat Negotiation — 18:51
8. Kids' Resistance and Choosing Between Them — 24:14
9. "You're Not Your Mom" — Wendy's Perspective — 29:19
10. The Ghosting Period and the Aneurysm's Role — 40:54
11. The Green Notebook — 43:06
12. What Jess Understands Now — 56:47
13. Most Afraid Of, Most Sure Of — 59:14
14. Addressing Community Skepticism Directly — 1:03:45
15. Wendy's Boundary — "She Doesn't Have to Prove Herself to Anyone But Me" — 1:05:13
16. A Message to Listeners — 1:07:36
17. Wedding Day Recap — 1:14:27
18. What's Next — Moving, Merging Homes, the Future — 1:09:45
19. Tongue First — The Last Question — 1:19:41
Meeting the Wifey, Twenty Years of Silence, and Us Against the Problem with Jessica Reeves
For the first time, listeners get to actually meet her. Not through a story Wendy tells, not through a passing mention — Jessica Reeves, Wendy's wife, sitting down with Siren to answer questions directly.
A Childhood Built on Silence
Jess’s story starts in Wisconsin, where abuse from her grandfather began when she was three years old. It wasn't a secret kept from the adults around her — her mother knew, her grandmother knew, aunts and cousins knew. Nobody stopped it. When the family relocated to Indiana when Jess was nine, she describes feeling both devastated to leave her extended family behind and quietly relieved to no longer share a state with her abuser.
It took until her early thirties for Jess to become vocal about what happened — driving to the police department in the county she grew up in and reporting her grandfather directly. The response from her family wasn't support. It was disownment. Her grandmother told her she'd brought shame on the family.
A First Marriage, and Then Wendy
Jess spent nearly twenty years in a first marriage marked by coercive control — isolation, surveillance, and constant suspicion, without a single instance of physical violence, which she notes almost matter-of-factly made it harder for people to see. She and Wendy actually knew each other years before they got together, both married to other people, in what the two of them now jokingly call the "Dingle Hopper phase" — life before either of them ever considered women.
The Hard Part
This episode doesn't skip the parts that are difficult to hear. Jess and Wendy talk candidly about a period where Jess's kids were resistant to the relationship, and how that resistance sent Jess spiraling back into old patterns — pulling away entirely, going silent for months, ghosting Wendy in a way that looked, from the outside, like abandonment. Jess connects it directly to the aftermath of an aneurysm and to a lifetime of putting everyone else — her kids, her family, anyone but herself — first.
Wendy describes what that period cost her: the confusion, the self-blame, the nights spent wondering if she was imagining the connection they had. And then, when Jess finally showed up again, Wendy handed her a notebook and a pen and asked her to write down why she wanted to stay. Jess talks about what that moment actually felt like from her side — grateful, humbled, and finally honest with herself about what she wanted.
What Changes, What Doesn't
Siren asks Jess directly what she understands now that she didn't before, and Jess answers without flinching: that she has never fully earned the grace Wendy has given her, and that she's terrified of never being able to show Wendy the same depth of love back.
Wendy, in one of the most direct moments the show has aired, makes something clear to anyone listening: if you're not willing to give her wife a real chance, that's a conversation about your friendship with Wendy, not about Jess.
The Rest of It
Because it's still Tongue First: the booby chat negotiation, a debate about whether making out with friends is allowed once you're married, a wedding cake shaped like a blue moon, and Jess getting fully interrogated about her tweezer-clipping habits mid-recording.
Welcome to the family, Jess.
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Tongue First is a sapphic and queer podcast hosted by Aubrey "Siren" Jones and Wendy Reeves. New episodes every Monday. Find us at tonguefirstpodcast.com and support the show on Patreon at Tongue First: After Hours.
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Until next time — stay curious, stay queer, and don't forget to lick responsibly.
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