Sex With Emily - Is Social Media Blocking Your Sex Life?

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

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.A special thanks to our interns, Maria and Erica, who helped produce this episode.For even more sex advice, tips, and tricks visit sexwithemily.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man.

He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. He's a real man. 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, because we've heard from so many of you that social media is becoming the third part of 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 is paying for only fans, does it count as cheating? And is it okay to check my partner's phone? We serve at our listeners and you might be surprised how many of you have snoped. And also, how does this endless scrolling affect your confidence? We also have a new Ask Emily on the site, which is about not having orgasms during sex.

You ask me that a lot, so check out our website at sexwithemley.com. And if you have questions you want to ask me, no problem. Just call my brand new hotline. It's 559 Talk Sex or 559 825 5739. Just leave me your questions or you can also message me sexwithemily.com slash ask Emily. As always include your name, your gender identity, location, age, and how you listen to the show. All right, intentions with Emily, free to episode, let's send an intention. I do it and I encourage you all to do the same. So when you're listening,

what do you want to get out of this episode and how can it help you? My intention is to inspire all of you to take a look at how social media is impacting your relationship, your personal life, your sex life, your mental health, and see what kind of tweaks you can make so social media can work for you and not against you.

I hear from listeners and followers every single day about the problems they're having in the relationships or in dating and oftentimes social media plays an enabling role. So I asked you, how has social media plays an enabling role. So I asked you, how has social media impacted your relationship, your mental health? And I'm just going to 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, and make sure partner less present. It gives easy access to cross some relationship boundaries with other people.

Other said it voids trust if they say they're doing or saying things in secret. It can also just cause doubts, like due 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, because 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.

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 on my partner followers, Instagram models, and it definitely affects our mental health. We're going to get into that more in a moment. You also said it triggers your insecurities. Oh, and here's when we've all been through.

When going through a breakup, seeing photos of the new partner. This is why you got to 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's happening that's so exciting at midnight? You know, those kind of things were 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. I do think you're always going to 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 it. You seem a little distance. You seem really into your phone.

And 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's been in a lot of relationships over the years, there are the people's phones who I could not wait to check, because it was more than one.

And then there's the ones 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 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 sexwithamily.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 what 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 partners coming home later. There I remember someone telling me once, like, yeah, like he started like using different shampoo or you 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 to saying listen I Feel like there's been some things off lately and I want to know is there something else going on? Is there someone else you can talk to me about it?

But I'm going to be honest it's so many people are not going to come clean. They're gonna lie They're not going to tell you they they're going to 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 just say, yeah, I know, but I had feelings and you can give, it's always great type 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. And 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 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

partners 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. We're the cheating or some infidelity or indiscretion actually leads to a much stronger relationship

because they decide, okay, well, this little indiscretion maybe you 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 as questions, and then you're going to 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 relationships and new goals, some things you wanna 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 X's and social media. Hey, Dr. Emily, I just started following your Instagram, have been listening to your podcasts and love them. I've also convinced my boyfriend to follow. I have a question about relationships in social media. My boyfriend has had 100 plus sexual partners. Doesn't bother me about how many partners, but there are so many still followers 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 got to communicate with them. You could just say, tell me about your relationship with the X. What happened? 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, our friends on my Instagram, and they like my things, and I have no way to go back together with them. I'll go back together with them, but we're friends,

and it's been years, and you can be friends with X's. I'm here to tell you, if you don't just not toxic, and they're not abusive, and it's just because timing and life, and you weren't in the place to be committed, you can have beautiful relationships with X's. 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, a few X's photos all the time, same thing. Ask your partner, tell him 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 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 really becomes,

you start getting all these signs that your partner's doing things like, there's probably something there. But if you just want or two likes, it's not that much, then you have to look at yourself and go, well, where have I? You don't 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 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 just hope they'd 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 to hear 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 going to feel by 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 Sarah22 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 would 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. 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 we can and cannot masturbate to. And he might masturbate to people, friends of yours. It happens. This is frequent. And it's listen, there's an element of taboo. There's an element of I probably shouldn't. 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 a relationship or it 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 what happened. So how can you, it's just a practice we 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 I'm focusing on my partner's problems and the things that 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 out with your partner so you guys 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. Here's another main question you asked me. My partner is DMing or messaging other people and flirting online. Let's talk about microcheating for a moment. Because listen, if your partner is in middle like DMing a bunch of people and you're seeing

flirting 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've been in solid ground. I mean, I don't think that anybody in the honeymoon phase of their relationship, which is about six months and 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 gonna DM this person. I mean, I get DMs from people that are like, I'll click on their profile with his wife holding babies. It's like, I don't know if they're just doing it to get off. Like, let me see if Emily answers. Do they really think I'm gonna be with them and I'm gonna message him, 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 the 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 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 microcheating for a moment. So microcheating is any actor 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, microchity might have been like that sneaky removal of a wedding ring before a night out. You can always tell by their tail lines. I'm just saying whether 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 Instagram and you're like, are there 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 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 and faithful than those taking place during the day. Due to the secretive nature of nighttime 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 some of these females are better at cheating.

I don't wanna 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. Microcheating is really about the context, and it's really about the intent. And one more thing I want to say about microcheating

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 microcheating. Like if you are not, if you are secretly hiding from your partner, that's cheating, however you want to slice it. Microcheating, 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, well, 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 microcheating, this is another poll we did. Do you consider only fan subscriptions to be cheating? 42% yes, 58% said no. So if you don't know about only fans, there's a huge surge in membership and in only fans 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 only fans 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 I've been together for five years recently married last July and now expecting our first child A few months ago I found an only fans 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 important. All that I've decided, I was so hurt and felt like he was cheating by sending money to real people for their new ads 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 that I was pregnant. I've stuck with the body changes and our sex life is 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 is 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 and 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 a thing about when partners say

they're not gonna cheat again, however you define when partners say they're not going to cheat again, however you define, I'm not going to go on only fans 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, you're 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 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 a week meeting that you will not cancel. It's the thinking of 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 file these other women, but yet he's here again. So this is why we all need help to change behavior. That's why 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 going to continue to feel every time something happens or he says something you're not going to trust him. This is how the mistrust builds in relationships. One thing after the next, our partner says they're not going to 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 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, stand the path here. I'm really sorry this happened to you Sophia, but please find a really good counselor at Therapist Near You that you can both go in together. Can 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. Some examples, toxic behavior, like what is a toxic behavior? Creating second accounts for stocking,

using stories as indirect messages to spark jealousy and tracking locations of certain people, you know, like you could do on Snapchat. There's another thing like fubbing. I'm going to teach you a bunch of new terms. Fubbing is a practice of ignoring one's companion or companions. It could be your family, 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 Yastia had a very high profile job and it was very stressful, but literally the whole time we were on the beach into loom, 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? And then I realized it, 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 turn off. I knew that that was not gonna be a relationship that I could stay in, because I even said things.

I was like, here we are in Mexico, he's like, I know, I just gotta finish the deal, the deal's coming in. I was just like, this is not interesting to me. I'm trying, we're on vacation. I'm trying to stay away from my phone. And that ended when I crossed through customs.

So the other impact that social media has is to create false expectations. So here's another one, doom scrolling, which is kind of like doomster baiting. We covered that in an 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 about it 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 our, 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. Well, 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 others. 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 diss disazz, faction, 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 in 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 light 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 the things that are impacting our ability to show up in the bedroom the way we want to. After the break, I've talked into our amazing talented interns who not only helped produce this episode, but had some really interesting insights of their own. We have fabulous interns here at Sector's Emily. And the interns helped produce this show today.

Erica Thompson has been a production intern for Sector's Emily for the past eight months. She's finished her third year at UCLA with a major in human biology and society and a minor in food studies. She's from San Francisco and also Maria Hernandez. She's content in term for sex with Emily the last eight months. She has received her bachelor's of art degree in writing, literature publishing

with a minor in global and post-colonial studies at Emerson College. She's a writer and a book lover from Puerto Rico. Hello fabulous Erica and Maria. Thank you for doing this work here and prepping this show. This social media and relationships is something that has, is, it's new territory for all of us. We didn't have this even five years ago. It must come up a lot. Does it come up a lot with your friends? Oh yeah, it's everywhere. You can't escape.

Every day, do you like sitting in your dorm room or sitting at your and you're like, oh, who you like this person? Is that happen all day every day? Yeah, oh yeah. It's like living a different part of your life basically, it's a different life. So you guys were able to collect a lot of questions.

Clearly, it wasn't just, you know, it's everybody. Everyone had so many questions about social media and relationships. So are there some from Instagram that you wanted to highlight? We got so many. Yeah, so as you've already talked about one of the big issues that people have with social media

is insecurities around their partners. Like in other people's photos are following other people and I think, I think, and I've seen a lot of people on Instagram are also wondering why aren't women supporting other women as much on social media? Why is it so easy to target women for, oh, why'd she post a bikini photo instead of celebrating their confidence? It's seen as a threat to their relationship and their partners. So I'm just wondering if you can get into that a little bit.

Gosh, that's a mindset shift. That's like slut-chaming, right? It's like, why do you say that women are the most, or the worst, other women? And it's a good question because I think there are the women who bring other women down. And there's a women who celebrate other women's success. And I'm not sure what's really in the middle there because I often hear, I think it has to do with a lot of things. I think there's women that grew up with that being modeled in their home.

Their mother was always like that woman next door with her short skirt and this one's bad and that one's bad. Like you grow up and like, and that's what you see. And you grow up maybe feeling threatened or jealous that women are a threat. I honestly think it's what you, the behavior that you see modeled in your home. But that doesn't mean that you have to live that way.

You can learn to forge healthy relationships with women, you know? And so I think that's where it starts. It's a practice to realize that you, that women actually supporting other women is probably how you're going to have a more fulfilled life and go further in life and have more friends and have more love and support and realize it's like this really beautiful thing. I'm grateful for whatever upbringing I had around friendships and stuff.

I find women who are competitive. I'm not friends with those people, to be honest, I find it really, really toxic. And think about this. Maybe you're that person. Maybe you're somebody who does that. But I just think that a much healthier way that live in a way that's really gonna boost your self-esteem, so you're gonna find

that you could flip this. You can start to support women and see what happens. You can try to hear the words come out of your mouth that are negative and maybe stop and bite your tongue, say something positive or don't say it. I'm telling you, there are people out there who are paying attention to the words that you say. Again, it's a practice and it's a great way to find your people. And I want to encourage women that if this kind of puts something off in your head, think

about it. How are you treating the women in your life around you? Are you supporting them? Are you not supporting? And if so, I mean, listen, I often know that when I'm super negative about other people and you've just said to myself, I'm like, okay, what's wrong with like,

where am I not loving myself right now? If I'm super jealous or I'm feeling something about someone else, it's typically has to do that I am not in a confident place. Something happened, I feel threatened, I don't feel great. But remember, most criticism is about, really, if we're putting it outward, it's usually about ourselves. And it's just a deflection. And I would say you should spend a lot of time figuring out who you want to spend time with in life, who makes you feel good and who doesn't.

And you just because you've known someone for a long time, or because you have a history, doesn't mean they have to be a friend for life. Okay, Maria, which one of these resonated with you on Instagram? Yeah, this one popped out to me because it's basically just referring specifically to Gen Z because this is something that I've seen the positive and the negative light to. I feel like social media has made us

be very critical of ourselves. We've been comparing ourselves to a lot of other people. But I also feel because we've grown up enough with social media, there's also a movement of being more body positive and being more connecting to other people, not just like comparing. The question is how has social media influence Gen Z, sex and body expectations? I guess my specific question is how can we keep moving forward? We're like, we don't compare ourselves to other bodies online.

And we can forward to just being more body neutral and just like, I don't know, connective with other people. Such a good question. It's like comparing and despairing, right? That's what we do. We compare, we despair. We're looking at social media and we just keep thinking that we're bad and are the things wrong with us. thinking that we're bad, or that something's wrong with us,

and I would say unfollow people that don't make you feel great, or don't make you feel good. We all know that, right? That trigger, every time you see that person unfollow them, find people who are more like minded, it's funny, I go on my Instagram, and feel all I see is sex positivity. I just see people who are sex positive,

I'm like, gosh, everyone's talking about it now. Now you might only follow me, that's cool. But I mean, it's like, what your reality becomes who you surround yourself with. Whether it's the people or the social media or the books you read or the TV shows you watch, you are programming your own mind of what your reality becomes.

So I would say, I love the body positive body neutrality movement. I love that fashion brands online are now including all size bodies. And I've seen that change just in the last two to three years. And so I think how we continue it is talking about it here and pointing it out to your friends and saying, you know, I notice that maybe you're comparing yourself and it seems to be causing you a lot of pain. Here's what I've learned on my journey. Just sharing your stories, sharing it on social media.

I think that's where we find social media really helpful is that people are sharing their real vulnerabilities and their real struggles. And I think that that's where you get help. But if you're looking at the couch and make you feel good and then there's a model, like a bikini model that makes you feel bad and just like, like my whole feet is just feel good, you know? That's all I want. I want to feel good.

I want to feel good. Well, thank you so much, Maria and Erika. You are fabulous interns, contributors. I love having your insights. And I appreciate your help so much. Put the show. That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily.

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