Sex With Emily - How Social Media is Blocking Your Intimacy

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Social media is becoming the “third'' partner in so many of our relationships, but it’s not the threesome most of us are craving. Sure, it’s a great way to connect, but it can take a major toll on our sex lives. Today’s episode gets into the good, bad, and questionable impacts of social media. I answer your top questions like, what does it mean if my partner follows a bunch of Instagram models? If my partner is paying for Only Fans, does it count as cheating? And is it okay to check my partner's phone? (We surveyed our listeners and you might be surprised how many of you have snooped.) Also, how does all the endless scrolling affect your confidence? I offer advice on how to manage the relationship with your phone, so you can stop the “compare and despair” mindset and build stronger relationships with yourself and others. In this episode, you’ll learn: How Social Media Becomes a “Third Wheel” in Relationships The Sneaky Ways Social Media Can Undermine Your Confidence Micro-Cheating, Doomscrolling, and the Need for Digital Detox Show Notes: Join the SmartSX Membership: Access exclusive sex coaching, live expert sessions, community building, and tools to enhance your pleasure and relationships with Dr. Emily Morse. Ready to grow your business? Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/swe Yes! No! Maybe? List & Other Sex With Emily Guides: Explore pleasure, deepen connections, and enhance intimacy using these Sex With Emily downloadable guides.  SHOP WITH EMILY! (free shipping on orders over $99) The only sex book you’ll ever need: Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure Want more? Visit the Sex With Emily Website  Let’s get social: Instagram | X | Facebook | TikTok | Threads | YouTube Let’s text: Sign up here Want me to slide into your email inbox? Sign Up Here for sex tips on the regular. See the full show notes at sexwithemily.com

People are sharing their real vulnerabilities and their real struggles, and I think that that's where you get hope. But if you're looking at the counts that make you feel good and then there's a bikini model that makes you feel bad and just like, like my whole feed is just feel good. You know, that's all I want. I want to feel good. You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and I'm here to help you prioritize

your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. In this episode, I'm getting into social media and your sex life. Cause we've heard from so many of you that social media is becoming the third partner in your relationship. And unfortunately, it's not the threesome most of us are craving. Sure, it's a great way to connect, but it can take a major toll on our relationships. I'll be talking about the good, bad, and

questionable impacts of social media and answering your top questions. Like, what does it mean if my partner follows a bunch of Instagram models? If my partner's paying for OnlyFans, does it count as cheating? And is it okay to check my partner's phone? We serve our listeners and you might be surprised how many of you have snooped. And also, how does this endless scrolling affect your confidence? Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show. It helps get the shot to more people and it just takes you a few seconds to do it. You can just do it right now.

Look at your phone, look at your app that you're listening to this on and review us. We so appreciate it. You can also find me on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, OREX and Facebook. All the places. It's all at Sex with Emily. My new articles, how to have a full body orgasm, seven tricks to try and how to have pain free sex, 12 ideas are both up on sexwithemily.com. Before we dive into the episode,

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oftentimes social media plays an enabling role. So I asked you how has social media impacted your relationship, your mental health, and I'm just gonna run down here what your answers were on Instagram, which is at sex with Emily. So some of you said social media causes unrealistic expectations. Many people said the same thing. It makes your partner less present. It gives easy access to cross some relationship boundaries with other people. present. It gives easy access to cross some relationship boundaries with other people. Others said it voids trust if they say they're doing or saying things in secret. It can also just cause doubts like do to seem like there's a multitude

of better options than you. Someone else said I struggled early in my relationship by comparing us to other couples. No more. Yeah, cuz other couples you don't know what's happening with them in social media. I've seen the happiest couples in the world and the next thing you know they're no longer together. Some of you also say you're constantly checking up on them and that leads to distrust, which I can see that. This is why you got to pull yourself away from your phone when you're going down a rabbit hole and you're like, who did they like and who are they following? Where were they last week?

A lot of you said it's really hard with my partner followers, Instagram models, and it definitely affects my mental health. We're gonna get into that more in a moment. You also said it triggers your insecurities. Oh, and here's one we've all been through. When going through a breakup, seeing photos of the new partner.

This is why you gotta unfollow and block your ex. You're welcome. It is the best thing you can do. It will save you hours and hours of time. Then diving deep into their social media and finding their new partner, you broke up for a reason. Remember that. Someone else said the older I get, the more reluctant to add my partner in social media. I've heard that too. I've heard people say, why do we see each other every day? My social media is my social media. We don't need to follow each other. So those are some of the things that you said were most impacting you with social media and we're gonna tackle all of those right now. Then we

did a poll. Have you ever gone through your partner's phone? 48% said yes, 52% said no. Now I do not recommend going through your partner's phone, although I have done it and whenever I have done it I have found things that I do not like. But usually what prompted me to do it was because I was getting feelings in the relationship that things were a little sketchy. Like why was he in the bathroom looking at his phone? Why is he hiding his phone all the time? Like what what's happening that's so exciting at midnight? You know those kind of things. We're like there's just something and we have to trust our gut. We have to trust our intuition. So I would say instead of

going through the phone, you could ask the question. Talk to your partner before you go scrolling through their phone. Because I do think you're always gonna find something, but usually it's just not about what you scrolling through their phone because I do think you're always gonna find something But usually it's just not about what you see in their phone. There's some larger issue that's been going on So besides the phone are there other behaviors that you've seen you could just say you seem a little distance You seem really into your phone when we're together. Is there something you want to talk about? People do it. I but I know some couples who share their passwords. They're like, take a look, it's all yours.

I can tell you after somebody who's been in a lot of relationships over the years, there are the people's phones who I could not wait to check because there was more than one. And then there's the ones that I was like, huh, I've been with this person for a year and I've never once thought about checking their phone. I've never once thought of anything going on.

And to me, those were the healthier relationships. We only check when there's been something that made us feel off, something that doesn't seem quite right. That is your sign right there to start paying attention, to have the talks, not to sweep it under the rug. We also got a question about this as well. This is from Madison 23 in Washington. If you have a question you want me to answer on the show, go to sexwithemily.com slash ask Emily. Dear Dr. Emily, okay I know I'm not supposed to do this but I had a sneaking suspicion that something was going wrong in my relationship. I looked through my boyfriend's phone when he was sleeping to see if I was right and I saw some

flirty text messages between him and an unrecognizable contact. What am I supposed to do now? I want to approach him about it, but I also don't want to admit that I was looking through his phone. What is your opinion on snooping? Well, like I said, if you find yourself snooping, that's when you need to pause for a minute. Usually, we are triggered to snoop because of a circumstance. Something's happened. We found some evidence. Something's not quite right. Our partner's coming home later.

There, I remember someone telling me once, like, yeah, like he started using different shampoo or he got a hair, like things were just off and I just had a feeling. And this is when I tell you that you have to have the conversation with your partner. I think before you snoop, that's what I recommend. I recommend just saying, listen,

I feel like there's been some things off lately and I wanna know is there something else going on? Is there someone else? You can talk to me about it. But I'm gonna be honest, that so many people are not going to come clean. They're gonna lie, they're not gonna tell you, they're gonna maybe gaslight you and say that you're crazy.

And how could you think that I'm so loyal, there's nothing going on? And then this is when we lead to snooping okay so my opinion is you snooped and you found something now what you know again this is why it's great when you ask and then you snoop like if you don't get the answer you want and then you snoop you're like well I asked you but that's neither here nor there if you can get your partner just to listen for a moment and to say yeah I know but I had feelings and you can give it's always great to have examples and say, well, ABC

happened the time you came home late, the time you said you were going to see your friend and I found out you weren't. Have your examples ready and then you could say, and I found this contact, could you tell me more about that? And then see what they say and see if they come clean. Like, oh, that's just someone from work or actually I've been wanting to talk to you about it. And then you're going to get your answer. Maybe it's something completely innocent. We don't know yet. The fact that they were flirty texts doesn't make me feel great. I think when people are often caught cheating, they deny it because they're not ready. They haven't

prepared it. They think they can get away with it. But eventually the truth all comes out. So really, Madison, you know your partner better than I do. And I think we all know when someone's not telling the truth, but you have to be strong in this as well. If your partner says, listen, I was flirting. Sometimes I do that. It kind of fills me up. I love just flirting online, but I would never do anything.

Maybe this is time to talk about, well, what does he need from you? Because oftentimes we start to flirt and we start to look for other sources to fill that part up in us that isn't getting satisfied in our relationship. Maybe your partner's no longer being loving towards you, they're no longer saying the sweet things, they're no longer flirting. Remember, we have to continue to flirt in our relationships. You have to continue to date your partner no matter how long you've been

with them. The dating part of it can't end. So Madison, I've seen a lot of couples as well where the cheating or some infidelity or indiscretion actually leads to a much stronger relationship because they decide, okay, well this little indiscretion made me realize that I actually do want to work with you. So I've seen it go both ways. I've seen it happen where it can actually open up a whole new form of communication and couples become closer together and I've also seen it blow up and the relationships end. So as long as you can keep a cool head about you, listen, ask questions, and then you're gonna have to make a decision and see if you want to continue, but I think it's a great time to set some new parameters for the relationship, some new goals, some things

you want to work on, and of course you know how about therapy. Every couple can use a little therapy. Okay, this was a huge one and not only was it just during this episode, but over the last few years, my partner is following exes and social media. Hey Dr. Emily, I just started following your Instagram, have been listening to your podcast and love them. I've also convinced my boyfriend to follow. I have a question about relationships and social media. My boyfriend has had a hundred plus sexual partners. It doesn't bother me about how many partners, but there are some that he still follows on Instagram. I've told him it makes me uncomfortable, especially when he likes these girls in bikinis and lingerie photos.

Is this normal and okay that he's still following these girls he's had sexual relationships with? It makes me feel like he's keeping them in his back pocket and that I should post such photos. Thanks Dr. Emily. All right, there's a lot here because first, I totally get this. You gotta communicate with them.

You could just say, tell me about your relationship with the ex. What happened? Are you guys still friends? Was it tumultuous? Get more information about it. Because I know that I am not the norm at all, but I follow a lot of my ex-boyfriends, or friends of mine on Instagram, and they like my things and I have no way do I want to get back together with them. Will I ever get back together with them? But we're friends and it's been years and you can't be friends with exes. I'm here to tell you if you don't, it's not toxic and they're not abusive and it just because timing and life and you weren't in the place to be committed, you can have beautiful

relationships with exes. So you just got to get more information here. Now if it's really like 50 women a day and he's always liking this one few exes photos all the time, same thing. Ask your partner. Tell them how it makes you feel. How important is it to keep liking their photos? What's their relationship like? I think it's a lot to say you can't be friends with your ex anymore. But if the behavior is making you feel like they're not respecting a boundary or they are just doing it and you've you sense that there's some other motivation, I think trust your gut on that. I think that if it's repeat listen I'm telling you if it's like all the time and it's

really becomes there you start getting all these signs that your partner's doing things like there's probably something there. But if it's just one or two likes it's not that much then you have to look at yourself and go where have I you know have you have a history of someone's been cheating on you you have to look at all those factors is it because of this partner is it because of your history because of is your past but I think a loving partner is going to want to make you feel safe and secure and loved and confident and so I totally be like, no big deal, I'll

stop following them. Also, you don't have to start posting pictures of your own body to make you feel comfortable or sexually empowered. You really don't. In fact, the most important work you could do here is to just authentically post photos that feel like the most you. The more you go towards who you are and you face the shame and the things that you think you cannot say and the things you're holding back, the better you're gonna feel about yourself. And a lot of this stuff won't come up anymore when you get into a more confident, authentic place. Thank you for your email. This is from Sarah 22 in Ottawa, Ontario. Hey Dr. Emily, I recently had a conversation with my boyfriend about masturbating and got

into the topic if he uses visual stimuli to get off. I already knew he wasn't a fan of porn but was curious if he used anything else. He was honest with his response and told me he sometimes looks at pictures of other random girls but didn't want to go into detail and felt awkward talking about it. I clarified that it would bother me if he was looking at photos of girls he knew in real life and he agreed this wouldn't be appropriate. I can't help but still be bothered by our conversation and feeling insecure that he masturbates to pictures of other girls. He made it clear he wouldn't mind if I did the same. However, personally I don't masturbate to photos of other men.

Do tips on how I can learn to be okay with this, or should I communicate how much it's bothering me to my boyfriend? All right, Sarah, this is a great question, and this is a learning curve, okay? So, I would say that many, many penis owners masturbate to photos. It's probably one of the oldest form of masturbation. You can't tell him who he can and cannot masturbate to. And he might masturbate to people, friends of yours. It happens. This happens, this is frequent. And listen, there's an element of taboo. There's an element of I probably shouldn't. There's an element of like, this is just a

release. And I understand that at 22, it feels like an assault on you, maybe, or your relationship, or he doesn't want to be with you. It makes you feel insecure. But this is where education comes in. And I need you to understand that it's part of being sexually healthy. It's part of having a rich fantasy life, that it's really common. And I do hear this more from men than women, but they require the visual stimuli every time. That they love looking at the pictures, and it doesn't mean that they like these people any more than you or they want to be with someone who looks like the women in the photos. It's just a practice. Masturbating is healthy. A lot of times we need something else to look at to stimulate us.

And so I want to ask about your masturbation routine and how comfortable are you with fantasy and your own sexuality? Because I find that when often I'm focusing on my partner's problems, the things of my partner that are bothering me, I often am not looking at my own stuff. So I just want to make sure that you're continuing to masturbate and you're continuing to find things that turn you on and communicating that with your partner so you guys can continue to have a rich sex life. He's still going to be looking at pictures. You still aren't going to be able to control that. But you might feel a lot more connected to him if you're continually enriching and enhancing the

connection you have with your partner. That'll make you feel so good. That kind of trumps all the insecurities when you're like, but I know we've got this hot sex and great connection. So that's the direction I'm going to send you in there. All right, Sarah, thanks for your question. After this break, I'm revealing whether or not only fans should be considered cheating. If you're looking for a hands-on way to take your sex life to the next level, you got to come join me at the SmartSX community. I've loved talking to all of you over the past 20 years

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and I would love you to join us. So sign up now, go to my website, sexwithemily.com and click on the membership tab. That's sexwithemily.com and click the membership tab. Check it out now and change your sex life for the better. So I've been hosting the podcast Sex with Emily for almost 20 years now and I always dreamed of having a website where it would be a portfolio of all my favorite toys. A direct link where you could shop my personal diary directly and clearly so I can send pleasure straight to your doorstep. Only one issue, spoiler alert, I am not a web designer, I was in over my head.

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all used. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash SWE all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash SWE to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash SWE. Here's another main question you asked me. My partner is DMing or messaging other people and flirting online. Let's talk about micro cheating for a moment because listen, if your partner is admittedly like DMing a bunch of people and you're seeing flirty messages, I believe that that is a form of cheating. Absolutely. Especially

if you have an agreement that you are maybe exclusive and reading the messages don't make you feel great, maybe you haven't been in solid ground. I mean, I don't think that anybody in the honeymoon phase of their relationship, which is about six months to two years, I don't think that they're doing that behavior as much. I think it's when you get to the point where things have gotten a little stale and they're like, I'm just going to DM this person. I mean, I get DMs from people that are like, I'll click on their profile.

I'm like, with his wife holding babies. It's like, I don't know if they're just doing it to get off, but I think there's something very intoxicating about being online and having access to women that you might find attractive and just sending a message. But that's why all of this stuff really gets into the psychology of it. When you do talk to your partner, you say,

I just want to understand it. I just want to understand more about it. Is there other other ways that I could be doing more in our relationship that I could be giving you that kind of thrill or flirting or is there something that we could do for each other? But let's talk about micro cheating for a moment. So micro cheating is any act or behavior by someone in a relationship which might suggest to a third party they are emotionally or physically available. So you might think it just started with smartphones,

but before smartphones, microcheating might've been like that sneaky removal of a wedding ring before a night out. You can always tell by their tan lines. I'm just saying where the wedding ring was. You can find that, but in the digital age, it is so much easier than ever to let someone know you're available. Anything from like deep liking the deep liking when you go back into their is so much easier than ever to let someone know you're available. Anything from like deep liking, the deep liking when you go back into their Instagram

and you're like are their Facebook and you're liking very old photos, or just sending direct messages. But the thing about microcheating is it's a behavior that could spark infidelity. It's not saying the infidelity actually happening. It's sort of a warm-up. It's sort of like a foreplay to the infidelity. And the fact that we are communicating more and more in line as opposed to face-to-face mean that relationships have just become more and more ambiguous. There was actually a study that came out that said people were asked to judge certain scenarios and see if they felt like cheating or

they were not cheating. And this is not surprising. Late-night interactions were judges more unfaithful than those taking place during the day due to the secretive nature of night-time interactions. Then they further went on to ask how jealous, angry, hurt, or disgusted people were as a result of their partner interacting online with someone outside the relationship. Well, the consistent finding was that females were emotionally more affected by these behaviors than males. So the term microcheating is experienced more strongly by females.

But I also think that as soon as females are better at cheating, I don't want to say that too that we cover our tracks, but I'll listen to what this study says. So really overall, it's just saying that the behavior that defines what's cheating and what's not a microche cheating is really about the context and it's really about the intent. And one more thing I want to say about micro cheating or any type of infidelity, you're concealing something. You are concealing some information from your partner. So if you're keeping something from your partner because you know it's going to get you into trouble, it's

probably a little bit of micro cheating. Like if you are not, if you are secretly hiding it from your partner, that's cheating however you want to slice it. Micro cheating, a little bit of cheating, so think about that. Now why do people cheat? Why? It's kind of like what people cheat in any way. We want validation, we want to be entertained, we want something different than what we're getting at home. It could be for our ego, it could be feeling desired again when we weren't feeling desired before. So while I think that being online and chatting with a bunch of people, in fact there are studies that show the people who are in line more have more friends,

they have a more active social life, if you are excluding your partner from a huge part of your life and you're living a secret life, that just might be telling you something about the state of your relationship and the state of what you actually need right now and maybe some things that you need to deal with in your personal life. Speaking of micro cheating, this is another poll we did. Do you consider OnlyFans subscriptions to be cheating? 42% yes, 58% said no. So if you don't know about OnlyFans, there's a huge surge in membership and in OnlyFans during the pandemic.

It's essentially a content subscription service based in London and content creators can earn money from users who subscribe to their content. So they become their fans. And so this allows the content creators to receive funding directly from their fans on a monthly basis as well as one-time tips. There's a pay-per-view feature where you can ask for a specific, you know, hey I want you to do this dance for me. Typically OnlyFans is sexual, but not always. And we also got a very specific question about this from Sophia 28 in New Hampshire. Dear Dr. Emily, my husband and I have been together for five years, recently married last July, and now are expecting our first child. A few months ago I found an OnlyFans account open on my husband's iPad. He'd been paying for images and videos for a year of our relationship and I had no idea.

We have a very healthy sex life, lingerie, mix it up at least one or two times a week, and we're very open about what we like and I've even tried new things that he says he likes in porn. All that aside, I was so hurt and felt like he was cheating by sending money to real people for their nudes and videos. I confronted him and he argued it's not cheating. He just likes to watch and that he was mad at me for finding it. Eventually we talked and understood each other's perspective a little better. I'm all for masturbating and porn and freedom in that sense, but paying for real strangers

and being in situations where you can chat with them is cheating to me. He said he understood and things have been fine. A couple months ago, I found out I was pregnant. I've struggled with the body changes and our sex life as he's more nervous now that I'm pregnant to have sex. I broke down one night about this and he reassured me. However, this keeps going here. Today, I discovered he has a secret spank wire live account and had been paying girls for shows as recently

as last week. After seeing how much he had hurt me the first time, I don't know how to handle this. I'm already being insecure with my changing body. This has been so much worse. How do I handle it? Can we move forward? How can I trust him when he swore the last time he was done? Please help. Sophia, thank you so much for spelling this out for me. And it sounds like you have been doing all the things. You're communicating. You've talked to him about it. You're pregnant again. Congratulations. But this sounds like a really tricky situation where you have felt deceived. You feel like he's been cheating on you. It doesn't feel great. Now here's the thing about when partners say they're not

gonna cheat again, however you define it, I'm not gonna go to OnlyFans again, is that a lot of times those are empty promises and here's why. Changing a behavior is a process. So while it's really easy if a partner finds out that you're cheating, be like, oh babe I will never do it again, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again, but unless you actually think about it and you go why why why am I cheating? I actually mean it and I don't want to cheat again. Well, that's when you got to start looking at yourself That's when your husband say what is it about? These models and what am I getting from it? And this is why I would recommend that you and your husband right now

Get into therapy. It's a once- week meeting that you will not cancel. It's to think of it like a mediator who can help you guys facilitate a conversation and find out what was it cheating about? Is he willing to look at that? Because maybe there is some kind of habit he's formed around the connection with these women that is sort of a distraction. Maybe he's using it as a stress reliever and maybe it really has nothing to do with you. But he's not sure why he keeps going back to it because I'm gonna believe that he really believed maybe in the moment he thought

I'm not gonna follow these other women but yet he's here again. So this is why we all need help to change behavior. That's how we see coaches and that's why we see therapists. And so I'm certain that this is something that you can't solve on your own because now it's happened twice, Sophia, and you're gonna continue to feel every time something happens or he says something, you're not gonna trust him.

This is how the mistrust builds in relationships. One thing after the next, our partner says they're not gonna do it again, and then we find out and then we wait again for the other shoe to drop. So much better is to get into a practice with a therapist that can help you heal this and get the language around it so you guys can move forward. And if he's not willing to do this, then I think you definitely have to get into therapy and figure out what you

want to do with this situation. But what I do like here is that you have a healthy sex life, sounds like, and that you're mixing things up and you're making things interesting. There are a lot of men who do have fears around having sex when their partner's pregnant. Nothing's gonna happen to the baby. So I'm not sure what that's about. That might take a little bit more education on his part.

So stay on the path here. I'm really sorry this has happened to you, Sophia, but please find a really good counselor or therapist near you that you can both go in together. You guys see what I mean? There's so much toxicity with social media and it's hard to measure tone on social media, then that leaves space for interpretation and games and confusion. And some examples, toxic, you're like, if you're like, what is a toxic behavior? Creating second accounts for stalking, using stories as indirect messages to spark jealousy

and tracking locations of certain people, like you could do on Snapchat. There's another thing like phubbing. I'm gonna teach you a bunch of new terms. Phubbing is the practice of ignoring one's companion or companions, could be your family or your friends, in order to pay attention to one's phone or other mobile device.

I don't know about you, but I've been in situations with friends and lovers where it's like really like you're hanging out with me and you choose to be on your phone right now. I'm telling you if you're on a first date with someone who's on their phone the whole time you can just imagine that they're gonna be on their phone for the entirety of your relationship if you choose to stick with them. I think it is disrespectful and I think that we're so distracted that it's okay to tell your partner that like let's have a night or two without the phone.

Let's put the phones down for an hour. Let's have Saturdays without a phone. You know, let's just really try to have date night where we leave the phone in the car. Whatever it is, you need to start putting these practices in place so the phone is no longer controlling you, but you're controlling your relationship to the phone. I can remember someone that I was really into, we went away, we went to Mexico for a week and I remember that yes he had a very high profile job and it was very stressful but literally the whole time we were on the beach in Tulum he was on his phone to the point where I was like really? And we were there with some other friends

and they were just like, what's up with him? Like, and then I realized that, oh wow, he actually is like this a lot. And he didn't have any, he was just like staring at the phone. And so to me, that was like a turnoff. I knew that that was not gonna be a relationship that I could stay in.

Cause I even said things, I was like, here we are on MexE, he was like, I know, I just gotta finish this deal, this deal's coming in. I was just like, this is not interesting to me. I'm, we're on vacation. I'm trying to stay away from my phone. And that ended right when I crossed through customs. So the other impact that social media has

is it creates false expectations. So here's another one, doom scrolling, which is kind of like doomster baiting. We covered that in episode a few months ago. You're scrolling mindlessly to content that makes you feel bad, that's impacting you and affecting you negatively, like news or things that spark jealousy, that make you feel angry, that make you feel sad. If this is a practice of yours, you're lying in bed at night, you're like, I can't help

it. It's like watching a train wreck. I know I shouldn't be scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. It does impact our sex lives when we keep putting all this information in front of us. It's going to impact our confidence. It's going to impact our mental health. And let's talk about the social comparison theory. Do you ever think that when you see people living a so-called perfect lives online or you see attractive people online and then it makes you think that you're less

attractive, it can affect your sexual confidence and performance. But there's actually something called social comparison theory. And this says that people constantly evaluate themselves with others in areas like attractiveness, wealth, intelligence, and success. And, get this, according to some studies, as much as 10% of our thoughts involve comparisons of some kind. So essentially what it's saying is that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against each other's. And this

is not a new theory. This was a theory that was developed in 1954. And the research has shown that people who regularly compare themselves to others, they might find motivation to improve, they might be inspired, but they might also find deep dissatisfaction, guilt, remorse. And so this is what I'm talking about is that if you find yourself surrounding yourself with people that are making you feel bad, we get to program our own minds. We get to decide the television we watch, the people we follow on social media, and even the people that we're friends with.

You can unfollow all of them. You can decide what kind of information you want to be feeding your brain rather than your brain just soaking up everything else around you. Because it does make a difference, the whole compare and despair. And this is something that I've learned in life

that you don't have to be around the people that make you feel bad. Even if it's your family, you can choose the times that you spend with people and the times you spend doing things that fill you up and make you feel better and make you feel more empowered. Listen, insecurities and shame, these are all things that are impacting our ability to show up in the bedroom the way we want to. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily and be

sure to like, subscribe, and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or a partner. You can find me on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or X and Facebook, it's all at Sex with Emily. Oh, and I've been told I give really good email. So sign up on sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure.

And if you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating, or relationships, call my hotline 559-TALK-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or just go to sexwithemily.com slash ask Emily. Was it good for you? Email me, feedback at sexwithemily.com.