Sex With Emily - Slut-Shaming & Self-Blaming w/ Elise Loehnen

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Author Elise Loehnen has thought a lot about women and desire. In her new book On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, she breaks down the cultural forces that teach women to be desirable rather than desiring, and the shame attached to a woman wanting something: whether it’s sex, success, or a damn slice of pizza. Whether it’s lust, and the way we encourage women to police others' sexuality, or sloth, and the way women are encouraged to be their husbands' caregivers, these invisible expectations serve none of us. Instead, Elise talks about ways we can liberate ourselves in ways that improve our sex lives and beyond: how to balance masculine and feminine energies in relationships, how to shed sexual shame, and so much more. As Elise says, “Our bodies are portals; lust is the invitation to enter.”Please note that this episode includes discussions of sexual trauma. If you would like to skip these portions of the episode, please skip through: 19:35-25:1341:36-43:03Show Notes:4 Penis Problems and 4 Ways to Solve ThemWhat’s a Sexual State of the Union & Why Should You Have One?MEET ME ON TOUR! Sex With Emily Book Tour: SMART SEX Event DatesPRE-ORDER MY NEW BOOK! Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your PleasureSMART SEX PRIZE PACK (submit your pre-order proof of purchase at the bottom of the page, be entered to win the prize pack and everyone that enters receives a copy of my new and improved Yes! No! Maybe? Guide)Yarlap Kegel Exercise Kit & System (code EMILY for $35 off)On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop More Elise Loehnen: Podcast | Newsletter | Instagram | Website | TikTok Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're really here to be in these bodies and to have these experiences and to have deep pleasure. There is something incredibly sacred about pleasure. Women do not need to have an orgasm to have pro-creative sex and get pregnant and have a baby, right? Then why do we have this capacity to really go deep into ourselves? 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. Author Elise Loonon has thought a lot about women and

desire. In her new book, Honor Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and The Price Women Paid to Be Good, she breaks down the cultural forces that teach women to be desirable rather than desiring and the shame attached to women wanting something. Whether it's sex, success, or damn slice of pizza, whether it's lust and the way we encourage women to police each other sexuality or sloth and the way we encourage women to police each other sexuality or sloth and the way women are encouraged to be their husband's caregivers. These invisible expectations serve none of us.

Instead, Elise talks about ways we can liberate ourselves and ways to improve our sex life and beyond. Had a balanced masculine and feminine and an increase in relationships, had a shed sexual shame and so much more. As Elise says, our bodies are portals, and lust is the invitation to enter. Intentions with Emily for each episode join me in setting an intention for the show. My intention is to help you understand the way culture constrains desire, particularly

for women, no matter who you are, I guarantee you'll get something out of this revealing and personal conversation with Elise Loonon, and how we can all experience healthier, more honest, and more liberated sexual connections. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show, my new article is 4 penis problems and 4 ways to solve them, and what is a sexual state of the union, and why should you and your partner have one, up on sexualtomely.com. Check out my YouTube channel social media and TikTok. It's all at sex with Emily for more sex tips and advice. If you want to ask me questions, leave me your questions or message me at sexwithemily.com slash ask Emily or call my hotline 559 talk sex or 559 825 5739. Always

include your name, your age, where you live and how you listen to the show. All right, so I know you're gonna love this episode with Lisa and I hope that you will click the link and you will buy her book because it's gonna change your life. And I actually became connect with the Lisa for a few reasons, but my book is also coming out June 13th and I gotta be honest, it's hard to want for things like I want this book to be successful.

I want you to buy this book and change your life. I have a hard time asking for it. I feel like I'm here in service of you and I want you to listen to this show and I want to help you, but I'm really, really proud of my book Smart Sex. It comes into your hat little hands on June 13th, it will be released, but you can pre-order it now. Pre-order is the whole jam for helping a book become a best seller, which is something I really, really want.

Can you imagine sex being on the best seller list? At least when I talk about how difficult it is for women to ask for what they want, well that's me practicing asking you for what I really want. And I'm hoping you can help me. I know you're gonna love it. It's your new sex Bible. Other exciting thing where I want you to join me. Okay, I'm just gonna pile it on right now. I am doing a book tour or something I've never done before.

I'm going to be in your city. This is just a partial list of what we have upcoming so far, but they're on sale now. I'm gonna be doing a live event in New York on June 13th. So please get tickets and come see me there. We've never met. I want to meet you in person. I'll be doing a virtual book event, which is going to be really great, which means you can join from anywhere on June 15th. And then San Francisco Bay area come meet me in person on June 17th. I'm so excited to meet you face to face. It's like why I do what I do is to help you. And we can also connect. I can answer your questions live. We'll do my photo ops.

It's going to be a good time. And also when you buy a ticket, you'll automatically get a copy of my new book, Smart Sex. But not to worry, we have an article live on our site right now with all this info, which you can also find in the show notes. Lastly, this episode is brought to you by Yarlap. You all know the importance of doing your kegels and strengthening your pelvic floor, right? Our pelvic floors are the energetic centers of pleasure, sexuality, and joy. And for many, a stronger pelvic floor can lead to less pain and stronger orgasms.

These are essentially the muscles that are responsible for orgasm. So the yar lap basically does your kegels for you. A lot of us don't do them correctly. So I just rely on the yarlap to do inform me. I use it a few times a week. It's a really great routine. You're it's a small, discreet advice. I use insert it, I lie back, I read a book, I meditate, I fall asleep. And while I'm doing all of that in this aggressive place, it's essentially working my pelvic floor. I love that the yarlap is clinically proven, FDA cleared and leads to less incontinence, better control, and more powerful orgasms. I have to say one thing that if you do have vaginal

pain, pelvic floor pain, you should definitely see your doctor or pelvic floor physical therapists. Try Yarlap today and save $35 if you use the code Emily. Just click the link in our show notes or go to Yarlap.com. That's Y-A-R-L-A-P.com and use code Emily to save $35. Elise Loonon is a writer, editor and podcast host, most known for her weekly podcast with Kated's 13 Pulling the Thread, where she has interviewed various cultural luminaries. She has previously worked as the chief content officer of Goop. And while at Goop, Elise co-hosts the Goop podcast and the Goop lab on Netflix. Her first book under her own name, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good

is out now. Lastly, I just want to notify you all that Elise shares some of her sexual traumas in this episode, and we will put timestamps in the show notes of that section for any of you who want to skip ahead. I want to thank Elise again for being so vulnerable and sharing her story, which I know is going to resonate with a lot of you. She is vulnerable, and just thank you again, Elise, for coming on sex with Emily. And I have such admiration and respect for Elise. Her book is truly smart and stunning.

And I think you're going to realize in listening to this episode and hopefully getting her book, you're going to recognize your own behavior through the lens of control. You'll see that there's ways that you can maybe give yourself permission for the first time ever to truly experience your desire, to slow down and to live a life that starts to work for you and not necessarily society and those around you. I really hope you enjoy this episode. I'm really, really proud of you and your book. Your book is titled, On Our Best, the seven deadly sins and the price women Hey to be good and I love that your book

Shed's light on the common often hidden struggles that women have and all the ways that women are contorting our lives to be good Yes, and how it's not very It's not okay for us to have desires really in any way. We don't have permission for that. Yeah, because we're not granting it to ourselves. We don't give it to ourselves. Exactly. We shame ourselves. Other people shame us for wanting desires, desire to rest, to be sexual, to be sensual, to take time for ourselves. In your book, you use a Settling Deadly Sins as a way to demonstrate this. So can you just run down the Deadly Sins

and how they show up in our lives? Yes, and to make it clear to anyone who's listening, I'm sure some people are part of a religion or grew up in a religious household, I did not. And so that's what makes the superstructure of my book and the revelation of how they all live in me so much more eye-opening because they're so invisible. They are part of culture.

So they are to remind you, sloth, pride, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and anger. And Emily, as you know, they weren't actually in the Bible. They are to quote my friend Nora Bible fanfic. And when I thought about them in the context of my own life, I could see how they had become a punch card for what it is to be a good woman and to deny ourselves all of these very human instincts. The way we sletchame ourselves and each other, the way that we moralize around what we're eating, I was bad last night. I'm going to be good tonight. The way we prioritize thinness, smallness, all of these qualities of culture, and these things show up as voices in our heads,

ways that we control and patrol our own behavior, and think that this is just who we are, rather than who we've been told to be. It's so clear when you're reading your book that how programmed we are, we don't even see it, because I didn't grow up in a religious home either. And these days we find out, you know, aren't even in the Bible, but you realize that they

are so pervasive. And it's almost like I can't on see them now. And even though your book isn't necessarily prescriptive, you sort of can't on see the way. We are definitely controlled and programmed. Let's just start without even the foreplay here. I wanna talk about lust, because I field more questions from people.

People trying to break their feelings of shame and how the shame they feel around sex and being sexual, being sensual, but you point out first, I think you'd be kind of said this, but I wanna hammer this home that the Bible is very little to say about the sin of sexual pleasure. In and of itself, the idea that sex is sinful or lust is sinful, where does that actually even begin? Because that might even help us deprogram a little bit.

So we also all know the story of Adam and Eve and the fall from Paradise, which is actually based on an earlier Sumerian myth about a goddess and a garden. There's no fall, there's a snake, but the snake is really sort of like the creative sexual energy of the goddess. That's typically what the snake represents. If you look back at Genesis, it's really about, the way I would read it,

is a decision on the part of Adam and Eve to enter the world and leave sort of this duality, leave and come and be mortal and learn, right? It's about knowledge. Well, Constantine says that it's about lust, and he specifically writes about how there was an uncovering of genitals and a stirring, and that that was why even inspired Adam's lust and that's why they were evicted. And that's where we start to see Sin so wrapped up. And then there are all these interesting translationnaires not to get all dorky around. There's a word for sin in Greek

and word for sexual sin. And it's like, there's one letter distinction. And so it was mistranslated many times. It's like Pornéus or Poreus or something like that. So we see it start to enter consciousness and this idea of celibacy and this idea of virginity, which is another translation error, where viola in the original Hebrew just means young woman. And when it was translated into Greek,

as part of the nose, that's when it became virgin. But Bula had nothing to do with sexual status, married status. It was just a young woman. And so as this sort of starts to build in the culture, we start getting all of this programming about our virginity and all of it. So basically it's all these mis-translations and misunderstandings.

And I think you said your book, it's like a game of telephone essentially, which I love that through time, all these mis-translations and whoever was saying who and it wasn't even in the Bible, but as a result of that, women in particular have struggled the most and had the repercussions

of feeling shame and feeling like it's not okay to have desiring. So like women are taught to be desirable, but not desiring. Yes. Can we talk more about that? I mean, we don't know what we want really either because of this. Yeah. And it's exactly what you said.

You know, this idea of being desirable, not desiring, not ever showing our wanting, waiting to be chosen, waiting to be picked, wait until he calls you. And the way that we're also taught to be sexy, but not sexual. So the performance of this, and we're picking up all of these cues from culture, right? That's what tells us how to be, quote unquote, sexy,

long before, wherever actually really in our own bodies, understanding how they work, figuring out what feels good, figuring out what we even want. All of this is a cultural projection that we pick up from the media. We pick up from our friends. We are constantly studying and seeing what boys, men, et cetera, women are responding to.

And then so many of us are trying it on, which is fine, but it becomes entirely about a projection of sexuality rather than being sexual. And I was talking about this yesterday, not to pick on, this isn't meant to his judgment, but I look at someone like Kim Kardashian, who is very sexy. She doesn't strike me as being very sexual. And you think about someone like Rihanna, who seems so sexual, like she can, Lizzo, so in their bodies, I don't know,

that to me is the difference, like how embodied we are. And I, I for one, have struggled with that for my whole life. Again, not growing up in a very patriarchal, shaming family. It doesn't matter. It's like in us. It's what we learn from the culture. It's informed by our own traumas. Because that's another big component for girls and women, which is that besides this horrible idea that you need to be desirable and not desiring and be passive to the male gaze typically. Also, you are responsible for inspiring that male gaze and whatever it might bring your way, right? So we are charged as we go out into the world with being the babysitters to the sexual

appetite of men. And if we inspire too much lust, Emily, if he loses control, then that's on us. We are at best complicit, at worst, to blame for whatever is done to us, because of appearing in any way like we wanted it, or we're dressed for it, or didn't fight it hard enough. It's not good. It is not good. Let's just say that. And this is where all the performative sex comes in and people acting as if and sort of thinking like this is what men want or what society wants because we don't really know. And you mentioned embodiment.

You mentioned how hard it is with something that we both talk a lot about is how do you actually be in your body during sex when so many of us, I mean, I feel questions all the time for people to say, I'm having sex and I'm there, but I'm not really not there. And you actually do get really personal in your book with something that I don't think you would ever shared before about your disassociating during sex, which is again, a pretty common experience for women. And I think it was just really brave of you to bring this up in the book and with much a bit in a cathartic, but also really difficult thing to do. And it's a common experience for women.

So maybe you could kind of share your own journey, your own story with being embodied. No, I'd love to, particularly if it helps people because I'm in my early 40s and it really wasn't until my very late 30s that I realized that I was dissociating during sex. I didn't do it all the time, but most of the time I was kind of somewhere else. And I was explaining to my therapist how I'll just sort of be spinning and spinning and spinning and he was like, do you understand

that that's dissociation? And I didn't. I had no idea that that wasn't a completely normal event. And can you explain more about that spinning though? Do you mean in your head? You were sort of like, like, I have the sensation. It's like sort of a woozy spinning. Okay. So you're not in the realm really kind of. No, I'm not completely like it's not like I'm hovering on the ceiling looking down at myself But I am not like having a sensorial experience. I am I can feel things Ish, but it's not I'm sort of other other somewhere else and

I had just sort of assumed I liked having sex with my husband it felt intimate or tender in some ways, but it wasn't like, it wasn't what he wanted for me, but I didn't know what that meant, and I didn't know how to access it or what was happening in my body. And I knew I'd had a bad experience in high school, but I didn't even know, which I'll tell you about in a minute, I didn't quite know how to think about that. For my old job, we were covering psychedelics, and so I did an MDMA session with the therapist, actually did three, but the first one was the most dramatic. I didn't know what I expected. I did not actually expect to have a therapeutic experience. I was approaching it like a journalist where

I was figuring that that way I could explain it or talk about it. And you take two doses of MDMA quite close together in time, although your whole sense of time is very strange while you're in the middle of this experience. It feels like an hour and it's a whole day and you're wearing an eye shade and you're're listening to music, and you are just deeply in yourself. And that therapist is there, they're taking notes, but they're specifically not leading you, or guiding you at best, they're sort of asking you to stay where you are,

and observe, but they're not planting anything. You're very mentally competent, too, I should add. So my first sensation was this warmth moving down my body. And I was saying, oh my God, I don't think I've ever been in my body before. I'm like in my body. I really feel like I'm in my body. And that might sound like not a big deal, but it was the biggest, it was such an insight for me to have this deeply embodied experience where I could feel everything. And then I was sort of having experiences, memories in this process. It took me back to a basement of a friend of a friend's house.

I spent a lot of time there as a child, these were my best friends growing up. I just had this revelation that I had been molested by a friend of a family friend. And I very well remember one incident with this man in public where he was intertubing with me at a party at the lake and just kept getting on the inner tube with me even though he weighed 120 pounds more than me maybe. And the inner tube would flip like my body weight would fall in him and I was just waiting

for someone to say something. I remember him from my childhood like that. But then in the basement, I was with this guy. And I don't really know what happened Emily. Like I don't think it was, I don't think he raped me. I don't think it was anything that violent or invasive. But he made me feel, and this is what I've been working with in therapy, that I was making him lose control of himself, and that I was so intoxicating to him that he was in love with me, that, you know, he wanted to sort of be with me and just having this feeling as a small child eight or nine years old of like, how do I make this stop? Please make

this stop. And I realized in this re-experiencing it, and I think he maybe like would make me like look at him, I think is what happened. And you had to remember this experience in the past. It all was coming to you through this therapeutic. Yeah, and I don't really know. Like all the doors are open and I don't feel like it's important. I didn't feel retraumatized by it, but it was like what I got from it was enough for me

to understand the ways in which I have spent my life feeling like my sexual power or light or energy is dangerous to me and that whatever happens to me is my fault. Flash forward to high school, I had this experience, which I write about in the book, that I hadn't really allowed myself to call a rape, because I went to a boarding school.

We were away from the school in Boston for a long weekend. I was a new kid at the school, and this former student he had been kicked out was stalking me throughout the day, and I kept trying to avoid him, and I was very mature. I was convinced I could take care of myself, but I kept sort of looking for relief

anywhere I could find it. And long story short, I go back to my hotel room that I'm sharing with my girlfriends and he's in that room and everyone else has passed out. And I sort of have this, can I make out with him and make him, will that be enough for him to leave me alone? Like, what do I do here?

I was a virgin so that I don't wake up in the middle of the night and I didn't wanna be raped. And so I sort of to make a longer story short, was like, okay, I'll kiss him. And then he was a wrestler. He's pinned me down, went down on me, and I had an orgasm in like 15 seconds. I mean, I don't know, 20 seconds.

I had sort of a fear response orgasm, and then he left me alone and told everyone. Wow. And for a long time, I took responsibility for that encounter and for my own shame and that I my body betrayed me and that showed pleasure at a point when I was feeling the opposite. And it took me a long time and research. Once I had this revelation about what happened to me as a child, it sort of allowed me to go back to this and really address this core trauma and come to the recognition through reading researchers

that a lot of women in this situation orgasm, it's a common response. It's a common response to show a rousal, they think to prevent you from getting torn. And that I wasn't complicit, that I could call it something, that it was, that something I really didn't want. And a long process, unfortunately, it's long and slow, but of re-embodying of, you know, I realized that it was so hard for me for all the reasons it's hard for any woman to have an orgasm during sex, but that part of it was this like, I want to take

this back. I want to take this back and this constant revoking of an orgasm that he didn't deserve. And it's funny. These things happen and then you're like, wow, it's been 25 years, almost 30 years. And yet I haven, these things happen. And then you're like, wow, it's been 25 years, almost 30 years. And yet I haven't dealt with this. First off, thank you for sharing that story because I'm why I think it's so important to tell. And to share is because it's so common. It's like one in three women

have some kind of sexual assault in their life or rape. And we sometimes maybe we repress it or we might not even remember it. But something happened early on where women are often either were shamed for touching ourselves or something happens. You've had some extrude. You have two examples of that, two experiences of that. That as a result of that, now you are a grown woman and it's having implications in the

bedroom that were not really explainable, but as a result, you weren't able to fully be in your desire, fully be in your body. Of course, that's gonna lead to some shame and some disassociation. Maybe you could talk about from there, like what have you been able to do to kind of reengage with yourself and your body? Kind of what does that look like for you?

And so much of it, you know, I love in your book that you explore the masculine and the feminine, and how essential these energies are, and they're not attached to our gender, and the masculine is the directing, truth, order, structure. You describe it in that direction, but that general vicinity. I write about this too. And then the feminine, is sort of the receptive, creative, nurturing caring. And I think too, for me, so much of this has been my response

is probably already sort of how I naturally run. But I am so comfortable in my masculine and structuring things, telling people what to do, making sure everyone gets everywhere they need to go on time, et cetera, and controlling my world. Let's be clear. Tamping down and controlling my world and keeping myself in a clench, which I feel in my pelvic floor, and that's been a big place where I've had to really reconnect

and learn how to relax it and understand it as a filter. Do I feel safe around someone am I clenching or do I feel calm, open, receptive? So for me, it's been this process of trying to soften and get back into my feminine and to let people do things for me, including my husband and to receive without hyper self-consciousness and you know, I love to talk about you and well people will enjoy this because they've been listening to you ever, but like we're friends in real life. And I love being with you in public because besides being obviously you're a

beautiful woman. But I have a lot of very beautiful female friends. And you have you exude, I call it your magical vagina, but you have just like this ability to run energy in your body. And it's very attractive and magnetic to the point that like 80 year old women are crossing the street to talk to you and 20 year old men are like running up to bring you a coffee. No, but it's like, it transcends sexual attraction really,

but it's just like this energy that you have. And I think we all have that. Some of us are better at letting it rip. And so for me, it's also been being conscious of that and how much I'm tamping down and holding it up Bay. And then what would happen, Emily, if I let it up and let it go. What does it look like? Yeah, what does that look like in your relationships? What does it look in your life? It's so relatable that we clench, we tamp down,

we on our pelvic floor, that's how women also have pain or reginism, so they experience all the stuff because it's in this unknowingly, when anything comes up around sexuality or attraction or femininity, we like really have to, we are so trained, so many of us to lead to do to do, but and to get shit done and to have this purpose, but yet at what expense, right? And I think that's what your whole book is about. It's one of the expense of us truly leaning into our desire and our knowing

and our intuition. And yeah yeah so much of being a woman is being told to subject your wants to other people's needs and so so much of the take back I think of our sexuality is reversing it and letting our wants come up and articulating them and saying, this is what I want and letting our partners serve our needs. It's a reverse in a way of how we have all been conditioned by society. It's so hard exactly and how do we do that when women for so long have been like, but I gotta take care of it.

If I don't take care of all of his needs and he's not gonna be there for me, can you talk about how this has sort of changed maybe? And you do kind of write about this in your book a little bit about how you kind of had to learn to reframe that in your relationship or change that up in your relationship. Because you are the doer.

You are the one of the family who's making the sandwiches and getting things done and getting the kids out the door. Yeah. But then what does that do for your sexuality and how could anyone, even if it's you or anybody, what's the, how do we rework that? So one of the main sort of not even a thesis statement of the book, but like one of the things that I was grappling with was we can look out into culture Emily and see

all of the ways in which things are not equitable for women, right? And yes, we desperately need things are not equitable for women, right? And yes, we desperately need social change. We need paid family leave and affordable daycare and we need equity in boardrooms and in government, et cetera. And we recognize that. And yet we haven't made as much progress as I think many of us feel like we should have been able to make. And when I was writing the book and sort of serving the people in my life, I think there's, we love binaries, right? We love to say, oh, it's the men. It's men. And then when I looked at the men

in my life, I'm like, I have two sons, married to a lovely man, I've had many male bosses. I'm like, I don't, I, yes, there are the Harvey, you know, Weinstein's in the world. There are horrible men. There are horrible women as well. This isn't to say that all of this inequity isn't real and doesn't need to be addressed. But what I realized, as I was writing this,

is that this is about our psychology and this is about where we are continuing sort of our own internalized patriarchy or misogyny, I wanna say, which is sounds heady, but an easy example of enforcing this in each other is the way that women in all the social science are as hard on other women as men, if not harder. You see women policing girls about their sexual activity as well.

So somewhat it's hard because you're like, yes, society is not safe, so be careful out there without intending to sort of be like, you look like a slut. But in my own relationship, for example, living with like a pretty feminist man and feeling so upset, you know, I'm the primary breadwinner, I am a workaholic, I do more child care, all of this stuff, and like, sort of being upset about it and slightly resentful, my husband might say like very resentful. And what I realized, what I realized is that a lot of it is because of my own rush to competence and my inability to stop myself from doing all the things. So for example, I fell off a horse last summer and I broke my neck. And I was completely fine ultimately, but I didn't even know that my neck was broken for a week.

I didn't go to the doctor, which I would not recommend. If you fall off a horse and lose consciousness and are in a lot of pain, go to the doctor. So what you had stuff to do, you didn't have time to get to the doctor. So what you had stuff to do, you didn't have time, maybe to get to the doctor, right? Yeah, exactly. I was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just my neck. Just my neck. We were there for a few more days. I like continued. I packed my whole family. I, we go to the airport. My husband won't let me carry anything. I'm in a lot of pain. We get home. He puts all the bags in the living room.

Normally I would rush to sort of, I hate being packed. So I like to unpack, do laundry, put everything away. This is like how I like everything. And I was in so much pain. I just sat on the couch, which I don't normally do. I sat on the couch next to my kids and I just stared at the bags and internally was berating myself for not doing the laundry and getting everything unpacked. And guess what?

I don't think it was the day we landed, but the next day, my husband unpacked, did all the laundry, and put everything away. I didn't ask him, I didn't say anything, I didn't share my own anxiety about not having done this myself. But I couldn't do it. And guess what? He did it. And this is, you know, a pattern that I've observed now again and again, that I'm conscious of it. Instead of rushing to do the thing in the first 10 minutes,

when the teacher emails for a permission slip for a field trip, I normally, I'm on it, Emily, I just get that done. You're very on it, right? You return the text, you get on the things. Now, if I just wait a day, my good chance, my husband has done it. And so that's how I'm starting to, I'm just watching myself now. And this isn't about me saying,

sometimes I'll say, I need you to do these things. But often, I find that when I leave a little bit of room, when I pull and hold back my energy, it allows him to fill the space in ways that, it's like, oh, you do know how to do that. And you're perfectly capable and happy to do it. But when I do it first and fast, you never have the chance.

So yeah, it's like actually giving them the permission to jump in when you're highly competent, getting it all done in your masculine. I think this is a great way to explain it, that it wasn't that you necessarily, like you just kind of lean back. You're not just rushing to fix and he is competent. You probably enjoyed doing that and taking care of it for the family. You gave him the space and time to do it.

And how else do we slow down? And I know you cover this a lot in sloth, which was so relatable about how this productivity culture to get shit done. I think we're both, we're so many of us are like this, that there's so much to be said to slowing down to not going so fast to, but we just don't feel okay with it. Because it's not demonstrated as you talk about your mother

in the book, like, I've never seen my mother slow down. She's 80, she's still hiking mountains, she's still doing things, she's never sit still. And what is the cost of that? Like, what is the cost of the going and the doing and the checking things off the list? And that's how we define our worth. And I think for so many women, yes,

there might be an abundance of energy, but so much of it is driven by this invisible cattle prod, you know, just sort of this like electrified whip at our butts, pushing us in ways that we don't always identify. We just sort of have it as an internal voice saying like, I need to do more. I'm not doing enough. I'm not being enough to everyone. And this, you know, I think too, when you think about where we're at,

culturally with working moms who work outside the house as well, and this idea of work-life balance, and which is such a fallacy and so elusive, but our response to that, or at least I've noticed this in myself, and I think we promote this behavior amongst each other, because we all feel so bad, is at least I've noticed this in myself. And I think we promote this behavior amongst each other because we all feel so bad, is that if I were, I'm really, like, for example, we both have, we're both have books coming out around the same time. I'm incredibly busy. And the more that I'm doing for my book, the more I feel like I should be doing in contrast for my kids is also ramping up the two in my mind, like they should be equal. So if you're going to be really spend long hours at the office,

then you better spend extra time with your kids instead of saying, oh, right now, I'm not that available to my kids. And it's fine. I feel so bad, right? What I also love in your book that you do bunk, all of these myths like women are the most capable ones. Women, the kids need the mom around. That's just because like what we're saying here, we just really haven't allowed the fathers, the men to step up in ways.

Like they're just as capable of packing lunchbox. They're just as capable of being there and fulfilling the emotional needs, but we take all of this on. They have just as much feminine energy as we do. I think women understand intimately what it is to be in your masculine and your feminine of various times throughout the day. Men have the same energies, and yet their cultural conditioning, you know, I write about how women are conditioned for goodness and to pursue goodness and men are conditioned for power. And that's a terrible legacy too.

It requires that you're always in your masculine, dominating, oppressing, ordering people around. And I think that men desperately need to let their feminine come up. All dads I know really want to be present for their kids. It's more than just weekend sports games. When we're back, Elise talks about feeling truly liberate in the bedroom. It helps me answer a listener's question about anger affecting her dating life. When you said here, well, there's a few things I want to go back to, but another quote from your book was, the reality is I think that straight women don't know what they want because they've been told that they shouldn't have any sexual wants at all.

So basically, our desire is off the chart simply because we haven't been taught to map it. And then you talk about Meredith Chivers' famous experiment about women being shown these videos of primates, men and men, women and women and how we were aroused by everything. Can we talk about that? Meredith Chivers did this experiment and I think she's run various iterations of this but she took people put them in these lazy boys with plesmo graphs which are they connected to your genitalia to measure a rousal and she took all different types of people of all different persuasions and showed bonobos, humping, people exercising, straight sex, people exercising,

straight sex, gay sex, like all of it. And people have had sort of a field day trying to understand and parse this research. Everyone's desire mapped to their arousal. Like men weren't turned on by the bonobos, they weren't turned on straight men, weren't turned on by gay male sex, et cetera. Everyone aligned except for straight women

who were just aroused. And we're just aroused. We're just aroused. And so I guess some of the, you know, people were like women are just so sexual. They're so highly aroused at everything. And I read that as almost the opposite. Not that we're not so sexual,

but that we have never clearly articulated what we want in the way that I think lesbians and non-binary people have. Like they've really had to do the work of being like, no, I don't want that. I actually want this and they're pushing against a culture that would insist that they don't want that, right? And I feel like straight women haven't done that process of really articulating and going there and saying, I like that, not that. I like that, not that. And so I read it more as like an expression of our confusion. And rather than an expression of just thinking everything is hot.

That's what I loved about this because what you hear like with Kinsey, like, all women are like a three or a four, like we are hot for everything that turns us on, that women are more likely to be with other women and find other things hot. And I love that your interpretation of us know, we just been told that we shouldn't have any sexual wants or desires. And so therefore, we don't really know. We're kinda open.

We're just sort of open because we have been policed so much. Yeah. And I think that so much, particularly with straight women, there's so much projection on us of being the subjects, like anything that happens to us again is our fault because we wanted it in some way. And to be raped, particularly in the way that rape happens, which is not sort of on a law and order fantasy level,

but in it like, it's scary. You feel like you're gonna die. You, it's not particularly arousing, but that's very different than this feeling of ravishment that someone is just like so blown away by you, they just have to have you. It's very close, but it's not the same thing. And so I think a lot of women when they struggle or when they have those fantasies, think like what is wrong with me? Do I actually want this? And yeah, the reality is, no, some cousin,

but it's very different, there's consent. Exactly. Yeah, I love this distinction because I think that a lot of women also feel shame around that, that they have this fantasy, or we call it the four sex fantasy or the rape fantasy, but really it's more about ravishment, about being taken in a way that's like,

this person wants me so badly, they can't help but take me, because we also, for many reasons, it feels great to be adored and loved and worshiped, and it would be sort of become absolved of any desire because we don't have to feel the shame around it. And I also love this insight you have in your book about, like let's create a new paradigm for expressing that desire,

that a desire that is untethered to shame, right? I also write about shame and talk about shame, my book too, because I think that shame is such a heavy stew. Like shame is really when you think about what's keeping so many of women from feeling desire, you know, sexually but otherwise, or it just from wanting, right? Is the shame that it's not okay? What do you think about naming desires out loud is so shameful for women? Because we don't have forums for talking about our lives. And I think that so much of this conversation about sex is so dominated by men, male gaze, pornography,

pleasing men, so much of our early programming is about like, how do you be good and bad? I mean, think about cosmopolitan. For most of our adult lives, it was like, how do you give an amazing blow job? Like how do you, it was all performance for his pleasure. And so much of our culture is about, again, being desirable, being in a desirable body, making him feel like the man, there's very little in the margins. I mean, you're creating these conversations,

but it's still far too rare. And we need to be having these conversations with each other, because I think the more that you tell your story, the more you hear me to. We know this. We know that then other women are like, oh my god, I thought that was just me. And now I feel less alone. That's what I see your book doing.

I really do see your book becoming part of women's groups. People, if you have a book club, this is the book on our best behavior that you wanna have in your book club. Each chapter is so chock full of all of the conditioning and strife that women face in every area of their life. So I think it's really, really important

and going back to the shaming, because we can never get off of this, when we just kind of talked on this briefie, this slut shaming, I so resonated with this, and this actually came up the other day, and I was like, oh, I gotta bring this up to a leasing and because in your book, you talk about how you and your girl, and we have women, police other women,

but how you and your girlfriends really tried to keep your number below 10. And I distinctly have that conversation with a friend in college, or like it was like our summer after college, and we were backpacking and we're like, well, that went in count because the penis didn't really go in or he wasn't that hard.

So that was actually only like seven people. And even though we weren't like in religious backgrounds and all it just seemed right to keep that, you know, number under 10. And that, you know, the aversion that, you know, and this is also another quote from you that women feel towards more sexually liberated women is sort of this internalized patriarchy that we have been set to police each other.

Like, we are, like, part of keeping that number down is maybe so I'll be desirable to a mate, but we also are policing each other about, you know, being morals and this morality, which I also think is problematic. Yeah. And it's so pervasive. Yes. And there are a lot, the history of this is so entrenched and intense, Emily. And it goes back to sort of early patriarchy. And how women were chattel, we were property.

And that women had these various levels of respectability and they could sort of fall down. Rarely would they be elevated. But there was the wife, the prostitute, the servant, the slave effectively and that you could only respectable woman could be veiled, etc cetera. And so this is so old, the way that we have been conditioned to believe that other women are a threat to our relationships. They call it mate guarding. And I don't know if any of this is even real. It's just so conditioned in us as how we think about these things and talk about these things

that were threats to each other and that will invariably again we assign so much of the responsibility to the woman. Like I was here listening to someone talk about sort of being cheated on by her boyfriend who sounded like a real psychopath, but most of her rage was directed at this other woman who she had found on Instagram. She was just projecting everything onto this like slutty whore. Most of her rage was directed at the other woman instead of directing it at the appropriate source, which is her flandering boyfriend, her trust violating boyfriend. And yeah, this is like the cycle that we get into,

which I find really interesting, which is, and you challenge women about this, and they'll say things like, I have higher standards for women, like they sort of go to that. And it's like, no, you're just being kind of misogynistic and yeah we'll do anything to protect the man. Right but still we don't think this is the this is the entire lies patriarchy and this also brings me to envy which I think is one of your chapters I've

thought so much about and I remember hearing you talk about it we were on a walk and you're like well envy and I was like you know, I'm not really a dullist person. I don't really have a lot of envy. I celebrate women. I love all my friends. Like, I want them to succeed. Like, I can't wait for your book to be a best seller

and change all these women's lives. Like, I really am very passionate about a lease and her work, all the things, all the ways I do it. But then I could just see you listening to me not in your head, like I knew. I'm like, oh, I bet you a lot of women are saying this to her. And then I went home and I thought about it and then I read your book.

And I think, could you speak more to what that message? Because I think this is just going to bunk it so many women over and even people over the head of men are willing to go there with us. But what is this teacher that envy is for us? What could be learned from our envy? I got envy is so essential. An envy slightly different than jealousy. Jealousy requires a third. So that's when you would say you might be in a

love triangle or someone's trying to steal your partner, et cetera. That's jealousy. envy is one to one. It's very intimate. It's when someone has something that you want for yourself. And it feels really gross and slimy and bad in a culture where we want to feel good. But envy is the most essential information from your soul because it, again, it's pointing the light on what you want. And so I believe strongly, and it goes to sort of women not having a lot of practice or encouragement to examine what they want and needing to subjugate our ones to other people's needs. But I feel so strongly that what's happening in this culture, I think we can all sadly recognize of women being so hard

on other women, that we suppress our envy. When it comes up, we feel so gross. We don't let it come up so we can diagnose it. We just project it onto the person who is making us feel bad. And so this is when you'll hear things like, I just don't like her. She rubs me the wrong way. Who does she think she is? She thinks she's all that. And if you can interrupt that with yourself and with your friends and say, wait, wait, wait, okay, pause. What's she doing? Like, what's happening here? What is she doing that is pushing on you,

that's pushing on a dream that maybe you have for yourself? Is it that her, she's so, her career is on fire. Is it that she's been married to the same person for 30 years, that her kids read on command. Like, what is it? And you'll get so much information. And what's really, I've done this now with so many women,

like you on that walk, where it immediately, we immediately go to like, I love women, women, hashtag women supporting women, hashtag, um, where are my girls? And we just hate it. And invariably, I'll have this conversation with a friend, like I was having this conversation with my friend Kate. Oh, yeah, I'm way past that. Maybe when I was a kid and her mom,

his older was like, yeah, you grew out of that guys. And then the next morning, I was at coffee and I had 17 unread text messages from my friend who was like, oh, this person, they were all Westside mothers who had their own brands and businesses were creatively expressed. She was like, this person drives me nuts.

Like, I hate this person on Instagram. And I mean, it was really funny. She was very funny, but it was clear. She was like, I get it. I need to do my clothing label. I need to acknowledge that all I want is to be a creatively expressed mother. I get it. It's so empowering really when you flip it, when you're flipping this script, I think that that's been a creatively expressed mother. I get it. It's so empowering really when you flip it,

when you're flipping this script, I think that that's been a really powerful message. Like we, it's just a way of, you know, that we can all like learn from each other. And you also talk about the expanders and how we navigate into that, but about how we can kind of look at people as another teacher.

Yes, and all of this. Yeah, and it can be a teacher. This is Lacey Phillips and she, you take people who are doing something that's like touching you where you're sort of a little, a little triggered in a good way and you use them. You study them. You support them ideally. You try to engage with them.

You just, you don't have to use, it might not be their whole life, but you use the part of them that is doing what you want as a guide. And as an example of if she can do that, I can do that too. And pushing against all of the scarcity program that we have, that there's really only room for one, there will only be one woman, since she has it, I can't have it too.

So pushing against that and saying, all right, she is modeling with possible for me and showing me what I want. And maybe I don't want that part and I don't want that part, but this part, this is my deepest desire. Each one of the sins the way you break down the book, there is just so many lessons that I hope that people who read this will take with them and learn to kind of undo and rethinking and kind of reprogram their thinking

around a lot of these things. So in one part, you tell a really, really hopeful story in your book about being in college dorm room with your boyfriend, who loved you, and you were in a good relationship, and you were able to actually let go and feel truly free during sex. And you have a great line in the book. I would love you to read the sign because I think it's such, there's a lot to say in this one. It's a really beautiful moving line. Thank you. The pleasure of women is a vortex, a gate to a deeper experience of surrender and awe. This is the space I visited back in that college dorm, a realm I felt and saw, a place I went. This space has been described as the maternal matrix,

a way to touch the divine and the deepest impulses of life. It is accessible to all of us. That's just a beautiful roadmap and guide to pleasure. I think that so many of us could really try to understand and can you maybe talk about sexual liberation as a spiritual experience? Can you elaborate maybe a bit more on that? So it's my belief and it's interesting when you have an experience of I'm sure many people who are listening have had maybe one or two deeply

felt spiritual experiences. I don't know, spiritual might be a weird word, but where you are feel like you're in touch with something beyond yourself, something unseen. And I believe, despite the way that Augustine has recast sexuality as this base sin, as the body, you know, we live in a culture that is insistent that if we could just escape this world and get to the next, we'll be saved, right? The body is base and gross and particularly the bodies of women, and you can take this out to the planet, right? We're just constantly trying to control our mother earth, etc. and just bring it all under dominion. And not that the reverse is true, but that it is both a, should be a transcendent and descendent experience, and that we're really here to be in these bodies and to have

these experiences and to have deep pleasure. There is something incredibly sacred about pleasure. Women do not need to have an orgasm to have procreative sex and get pregnant and have a baby, right? Then why do we have this capacity to really go deep into ourselves? What is that about? It's because we're here to experience life, and that includes food, that includes each other, that means listening to our appetites and all of these human urges, and really letting ourselves feel. And I think so many of us are in such a constant state of self-denial and always trying to control those impulses that we're missing that miracle. And it's like we're walking up to a door and

never going through it. I believe in sacred sexuality. I believe that there is something magical that can happen, some place that we can go partnered or not partnered. And that that is part of what it is to be human, the deepest part of it. I totally agree. And I love the way that in your book you go through all of the ways, whether it's pride or gluttony or greed, lust, anger, anger, sloth. If we could learn to kind of loosen the grip, I suppose we have on all of these areas of our life, even just little ways. Like this isn't going to heal all of us, but just to have the awareness that we would much more likely to have pleasure. Like all the ways that women

are restricting ourselves by what we eat, by what we feel good about, by how fast we're going in life and not slowing down, all of those things are sort of inhibiting our ability to have more pleasure and to have sex like you describe here, to have that freedom like you had in that dorm room. And I think if you make it realize that we are sort of leasing ourselves and we kind of learn to loosen that grip, we could have so much more of this accessible to us in our life. So much more joy. Yeah.

We really, we really need that at least. Thank you for expressing this. We always have our guests to help us answer a question on the show. This is from Nina 29 in Illinois. Hey Dr. Emily, for the longest time, it was my deepest shame that I had never had any kind of intimate relationship until last year. Since I was a kid, I felt the kind of angry feminist aggression towards men that put up a wall between me and any guy I interact with with socially. I was sure

that if he showed any interest in me, it was because he thought I was a quick screw, and if he showed no interest in me, it was because he didn't want to sex with me. I recently met a guy online who I liked, wanted to have sex with, and be friends with. For the last stretch of the relationship, he was only asking me out for booty calls where I would give him a blowjob or a handjob. I didn't know he'd become an object myself, and I broke up with the sky after about seven months. It was my first intimate relationship first breakup, and I'm getting angry and angrier. I tried online dating again and every profile I viewed brought up anger and sadness. I could just say, wonder if these guys were

just looking to hook up. If they had good relationships with their mothers, if they had female friends, or if they could ever be my friend, I feel as a casual hook up. But it feels like that's all there is because of this perception. I can't imagine ever trusting a guy. How could I begin a friendship with a guy that could evolve into something more? If I'm constantly thinking he only values me for sex and is manipulating me,

how do you set aside anger or suspicion that all guys only value women for sex? Yeah. Ooh, do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? First off, I want to say that Nina, amazing that she has this knowing, like what a journey she's gone on right that she's had this aggression since she was a kid she met a guy in line and I think that she's got some anger and

some stuff that she has to work to I think reading the book could have really helped her have more compassion with herself and a result of that maybe have more compassion towards men yeah but also I think for my recommendation is also having these conversations early on with guys like there should be no pressure to give low jobs or hand jobs but get to know somebody. Give the next guy you go out with the permission and the opportunity to show you maybe who he is. Maybe women hasn't really talked to him about it in a way that he could really express what he wants and desires before making it sexual. Yeah, that's what I feel. What do you think, Elise? I mean, I think there's so much going on in that that's really beautiful

It's obviously heavy baggage that she's carrying and you know We want to try to we want to try and address all of our unprocessed emotional baggage as much as possible before we bring it into any relationship so I feel like there's There's work she needs to do with herself before she's going to feel safe, comfortable and open, sort of going to what we were talking about, like running that energy of openness and magnetism, where I feel like she is in her body. So there's worth and needs to be done.

And she mentioned her anger. And anger is so important because anger, which is, and she also mentioned aggression. And so this is where girls just get such a raw bargain. So aggression is very human. It's present in boys and girls. And yet we condition our children differently around this. So for boys, it's definitely considered natural and normal.

And we allow them to express it physically, verbally, on the playground, right? They punch, they see boys will be boys. This is unacceptable behavior for girls. We expect more from them. We don't think that they should be aggressive. We think that they should be docile. And again, these are cultural conditions that we then show each other how girls should be, right? This is what we're modeling for each other as well.

And so, girls aggression goes covert and underground. And that's why we see and underground and that's why we see whispering, bullying, whisper networks, social exclusion, etc. We, none of us have been taught how to have proper conflict, healthy conflict. And conflict is so essential for a healthy relationship. And so what I hear her expressing in her unprocessed, unmet anger is that she has needs and she feels like very clear, even if she can't articulate it, what her needs are and what her boundaries are. And she needs to begin by actually defining that to herself and then articulating it to potential partners. And we don't do this because of fear of relationship loss. We worry if I say to my husband, babe,

this is what I need, this is the deal breaker. You know, you need to meet this, I'm angry because I'm needing this thing from you that he'll say, oh, well, then I'll just find someone easier. You know, I don't need this, right? That's our greatest fear often. And so- Being yeah, unlovable and abandoned. Unlovable and abandoned. And so I think for her, it's actually going into a relationship and saying, yeah, I don't do this. This is what I need to feel safe. This is what I need to do. I would need companionship

and comfort and I'm not your booty call. It's hard, but it's like it's so hard. Someone will meet her there. It might take a while. I was single for most of my 20s, but it's so much better to be in no relationship than in the wrong relationship. Exactly. And if we learn to express this and to learn how to have healthy conflict, I mean, I read the chapter on anger too. I don't have a lot of experience with anger at least consciously. I know my mother always had that too.

She's like, I don't get angry. It's like that is just so dangerous towards women. She even told me she went back into therapy. I remember, she's like in like air 50s. She I remember telling me this, I didn't really get it because she doesn't feel anger. And I realized, oh, guess what? Mom, I don't really experience a lot of anger either.

So it's something I'm still working on. Yeah. Ah, we have five quicky questions. We ask all of our guests. Don't overthink it. Just the first of the accounts your head it can be like one word of answers here. And then we're going to get into how people can find you

and follow you and love you. Okay, what's your biggest turn on? Oh my God, look at this. I've written a book and I'm still stuck. Let me think for one second's your biggest turn on? Oh my god. Look at this. I've written a book and I'm still stuck. Let me think for one second. My biggest turn on. It could be like eyes, you know, yeah. I think it's server. I think it's like a flirtatious touch in the presence of other people that they might not know about. Ooh, what's your biggest turn off? Being humed on the leg, dry humped on the leg, just, you know, following the dry high school and college. Exactly. Dry humping in the USA, what makes good sex?

Eye contact. Something you tell your younger self about sex and relationships. You're safe. You're not too much. What's the number one thing you wish everyone knew about sex? What's the number one thing you wish everyone knew about sex? That it has a spiritual sacred dimension and it doesn't always have to be present, but it's possible and that you should have it a little bit in your life. I love that. Elise, Luna, thank you so much. Tell us we've looking to find your book, your podcast, and all the incredible work that you're doing. Emily, thank you so much. Tell us we book and find your book, your podcast, and all the incredible work that you're doing. Emily, you're the best. Thank you so much for being

you and for all that you do for all of us. So my book is called On Our Best Behavior, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good. It's available wherever you get your books in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, more countries coming soon. And I have a podcast called Pulling the Thread, which you can find Emily on as well soon coming soon. And then I have a newsletter, aliselunin.substac.com. And it's aliselunin on Instagram as well. Okay, great. We'll put all this in the show notes and many people I know personally, and it's Elise Lunen on Instagram as well. Okay, great. We'll put all this in the show notes,

and many people I know personally, you'll be able, and our team are obsessed with your substack and your podcast. You're just soothing voice and just a beautiful way of interviewing people. And then your book is just next level, and I can't wait for everyone to read it. Thank you, Elise, for your time,

for being my friend, for being really a friend and a guide for all of us. I appreciate you and your work. I appreciate you. Thanks for being my friend, for being really a friend and a guide for all of us. I appreciate you in your work. I appreciate you. Thanks for being here. That's it for today's episode. See you on Friday. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily.

Be sure to like, subscribe, and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at Sex with Emily. Oh, I've been told I give really good email. So sign up at sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. 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. Go to sexwithemily.com slash Ask Emily. Special thanks to ACAST for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedback at sexwithemily.com. for you, email me feedback at sexwithmleek.com.