Sex With Emily - The One Question That Ends All Relationship Confusion

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

EVERYONE who signs up wins a FREE toy or gift card!  ⁠⁠https://www.bboutique.co/vibe/emilymorse-podcast Magnesium, multiplied. 10 forms for total support. Go to ⁠https://qualialife.com/SEXWITHEMILY⁠ to get 50% off and save an extra 15% with the code SEXWITHEMILY. Sponsored by Je Joue https://www.jejoue.com/products/hera-flex-rabbit-vibrator?utm_source=SWE-HeraFLEXPODCAST&utm_medium=SWE-HeraFLEXPODCAST Join the SmartSX Membership : https://sexwithemily.com/smartsx Access exclusive sex coaching, live expert sessions, community building, and tools to enhance your pleasure and relationships with Dr. Emily Morse. List & Other Sex With Emily Guides: https://sexwithemily.com/guides/ Explore pleasure, deepen connections, and enhance intimacy using these Sex With Emily downloadable guides. SHOP WITH EMILY!: https://bit.ly/3rNSNcZ (free shipping on orders over $99) Want more? Visit the Sex With Emily Website: https://sexwithemily.com/ Episode Description In this Sex with Emily episode, Dr. Emily sits down with Liz Moody—bestselling author, podcast host, and the woman who turned her life around from severe agoraphobia to help others level up their lives with science-backed strategies. The morbid exercise that Liz swears by for making better decisions in bed and everywhere else—and why thinking about your 85-year-old self might be the permission slip you need to stop worrying about how your thighs look in those pants. Why "friends with benefits" might mean something completely different to you than it does to your partner—and the crucial conversation most couples skip before slapping labels on their relationship (spoiler: this applies to marriage too). The biggest myth about what makes someone "good" in bed, and why Liz believes your sex life can transform no matter where you're starting from. That one body part you've never considered an erogenous zone—until Liz reveals hers and suddenly you're rethinking everything you thought you knew about turn-ons. The real reason habits fail (hint: it's not about willpower)—and why letting go of routines that once served you doesn't make you a failure, it makes you self-aware. Plus: the conversation starter deck that's saving marriages by getting couples on the same page about money, desire, childhood trauma, and the question "how much do you need to feel safe?" that revealed way more than Liz expected. Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 2:00 - The 100 Ways Framework: Spring Cleaning Your Life 5:00 - Think About Your Death: The Power of Zoom-Out Perspective 8:07 - Micro Workouts: Movement for Mental Health, Not Body Size 9:55 - Rewire Your Brain for Happiness: The 5-Second Joy Practice 16:00 - Be the CEO of Your Household: Weekly Relationship Meetings 18:30 - Sex Starts When You Wake Up: Micro Intimacy Throughout the Day 21:47 - Why Communication Makes Sex Better After 15 Years 28:12 - Let Your Partner Surprise You: Breaking Free from Old Resentments 30:00 - Your Personal Bill of Rights (Including Sexual Rights) 32:05 - The Orgasm Gap: Why 20 Minutes is Normal 36:24 - Body Confidence: Your Body is for Living, Not Looking 42:01 - Boundaries as Energy Protection (Not Just Saying "No") 49:51 - Friends with Benefits to Dating: Defining Your Relationship 56:28 - Lightning Round: Biggest Turn-Ons & Sex Advice

And I find this really helpful on a macro level and a micro level. So what did my year feel like? What do I want the next five years to feel like? What are my relationships feeling like? But also on a day-to-day basis for the choices that I'm making, is this a choice that 85-year-old me is going to be proud of, is going to be excited about. You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily, here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation

around sex. Today, I'm sitting down with Liz Moody, best-selling author, podcast host, and wellness expert to talk about something we don't discuss enough, how the way we live our entire lives shows up in our sex lives. We're covering how to create your ideal sex bill of rights, why thinking about your death can actually improve your orgasms, and what Liz calls micro-intimacy, those tiny moments that keep your relationship alive when you're too busy for date night. This conversation is about getting real with yourself, figuring out what you actually want, not what you think you're supposed to want, and learning that it's never too late to completely transform your sex life. If you've been faking it, settling, or just

feeling disconnected, stay right here and let's get into it. Okay, let's be real. Confidence is sexy in and out of the bedroom. And when it comes to performance, sometimes a little support makes a big difference. So whether you're craving more stamina, full of erections, or you're just looking to level up your pleasure game, there's a tool that's been helping people feel more empowered for years. Meet Bathmate, the world's leading hydro-powered penis pump. These aren't gimmicks. They're FDA registered backed by science and designed to give real lasting results. At BathMate Direct, you'll find pumps that naturally support size, strength, and blood flow, helping you experience bigger, harder, more energized directions over time. And because they work with water, they're more

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growth. To me, her book feels more like an old-school coffee table book. You can pick it up, flip through it for relatable and simple tips that make you feel like you can overcome any major challenge in your life. There are so many valuable tips. But the big one for me that I loved Liz was about loving and trusting yourself. So important at the end of the day, that's where we have to start loving and trusting ourselves, which helps us all in our relationships and in our life. So I think today's episode can sub in for our own spring cleaning of our lives. That's how I felt reading it. I felt like this is what I needed to get going in this season.

Thank you so much for being here, Liz. Oh my gosh. That was such a lovely introduction. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited you're here. I'm so excited to chat about this. I also love the idea. I didn't know we're going to do spring cleaning.

I'm like, that's genius. Yeah. Well, that's what you're a good episode idea. There you go. Okay. You can take that for your podcast. Go, go. It's true, though.

I was reading your book and I was like, these 100 tips are just. just so helpful and you make it so easy and accessible, digestible with, you know, science. I almost felt like your book was the book I didn't know I needed. Thank you. Thank you. We really tried. There's 19 different sections. And so I think sometimes people can be like there's 100 tips in 19 sections.

That's a little bit intimidating. But it's really meant to serve you at different points in your life. So you can pick it up. You can put it down like you said. You can one week, maybe you're feeling a little bit lonely. So you flip to the section about how to make more friends and up level the friendships that you have. Maybe another week you've had some gut issues.

We have a section for that. Maybe another week you want to just focus on your energy. You want to focus on your success at work. You want to focus on your anxiety. We have sections for all of those things. So it's really meant to serve you throughout your life at different points. I love that it wasn't like this. You have to get through the whole book.

You just felt great whenever you picked it up. I learned something. Yeah, you know, one of our biggest audiences for it, which has really surprised me is moms because they're like, if I start reading a book, it doesn't stick in my brain. and then I go back the next day and I have to reread what I read. And because on this book, you can pick it up and read page 256 for five minutes, get a whole tip in and be done. Or you could start on page 15. You can start on page 30. New moms are like, oh my gosh, this fits so well into my life. That's exactly it. I thought, too, about how the tips were, yeah, you could pick

it up at any time that it was the kind of thing if you're at a dinner party. Like, you know, you learn something that we always talk about the hair. Like, what could you say that would get people to talk at a dinner party? It's like all those tips. You're like, I tried this thing. and I stuck with it. What are the three or the few that are the most useful to you personally? Because there's a hundred tips and I'm sure they resonate different times at which three are like these are the top ones that really have changed your life. Yeah. So they all do resonate at different times. And if we're talking about spring cleaning, I would say that one of the things I recommend people do is take stock of the habits that they have and say which ones are

serving me right now and which ones do I maybe want to work on. Which ones do I want to let go on? There's a lot of talk about if you incorporate a habit for a little bit and then you fall off and you feel like a failure, you feel like you've done something wrong. But I firmly believe that certain habits are meant to serve us at certain periods in our life. And then maybe we don't need them anymore. That doesn't mean you're a failure. That means that you are aware of your needs, your interest at that time, your goal. So different things have really saved me, I want to say, at different points in my life.

You know my story. You know how bad off I was. I was agoraphobic. I couldn't get out of bed for a really long time. I really dealt with anxiety in a very severe way that really impacted my life. So different tips have genuinely saved me, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. But right now, one that's been really helpful recently is think about your death.

It's the third tip in the book. It's one of the few tips I do ask that everybody read the first three tips. But I put it towards the front because it helps us figure out what, the rest of our goals, what the rest of our habit should be, by giving us that zoom out perspective so that we can identify what's going to matter the most to us. And I find this really helpful on a macro level and a micro level. So what did my year feel like? What do I want the next five years to feel like? What are my relationships feeling like? But also on a day-to-day basis for the choices that I'm making, is this a choice that 85-year-old me is going to be proud of, is going to be

excited about? Or is this a choice that 85-year-old me will be like, why did you spend so much time thinking about how your thighs looked in those pants? Like, what a waste of a life. And recently, I've been really focused on living a big life, an exciting life, a life that feels really authentically mine. And picturing that me on my deathbed has been really, really helpful for that. So that's one. I had a hard time with that one at first. Because you said, don't skip this one. So, I skipped it. I said, I don't go, death. Death is triggering for me.

I've had a lot of death. But then I was like, okay, this is me. I went back and I read it. It's still part because I actually don't think about death very much and it seems so extreme. But then why I found it helpful is because we talked about this before we started is like, it's so important. And something we don't often do is like, what do I actually want? What's actually important to me?

And when you do zoom out, so then I was able to do the Zoom, like you said, I zoomed out. And I was like, okay, but what really matters? And it's like, and it comes down to most of what we worry about is kind of ridiculous. And it's like love and friendships and connections. I think in many ways, the things that you want to value that you want to feel good about, that you've helped people, you have built beautiful relationships. So I actually went through that one and I enjoyed it. I transformed.

And it can even really help with some things that we feel embarrassment about or shame about. I think about it in the context of something like faking an orgasm. You can fake an orgasm and fake an orgasm and be so worried to have the confronting moment with your partner, especially if you've been doing it for a while, where you're like, oh, my God, it's going to be embarrassing. It's going to be uncomfortable. Then if I flash forward and I picture 85-year-old me being like, you could have had hundreds of orgasms that you chose not to have because of one 20-minute conversation, it really puts things in their right place. It really does. It's funny because I always say to people, what if you don't masturbate? What if you're going to end up in

your deathbed and you're going to find out, like, you had this spot between your knee that gave you 500 orgasms because I've always don't explore their body. Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. It actually breaks my heart. I know, me too. And so it's like, it's like, so what we're saying is like we're only just a few steps away from like, look at if we could kind of just kind of have the hard conversations,

look at the things that are stressing us out and kind of move through them, right? And kind of not hold on to things, not worry about things, just, you know. Okay. So what was the next one? Okay. Micro workouts. I've been on such a moving my body journey. I was not a person who worked out ever.

I didn't have a consistent work. routine until I was in my 30s. I worked in a wellness magazine. Everybody would go and do these like little workouts. We had workouts at lunch because we were that type of company. And I would be like, no, I'm fine. Thank you so much. Like I'll be over here doing myself because I only thought about working out in the context of how my body looks. And I had heard so much that what we eat matters more than how we move our bodies. Like eating is 80 percent, moving your body is 20 percent. You can't outrun a bad diet, et cetera, et cetera. So I was like if working out is only important for the size of my body, then what is the point of this? It wasn't until I really switched

working out to be about how I felt, how my brain felt, how my mental health was every single day, that I was able to see the rewards in an immediate way and stick to my working out routine. And the way that I've been able to do that is by making it really, really teeny tiny. It's so accessible then, right? We all have time to move our body. We know how much better we feel. But what you're saying is you almost reverse into your near day because most people are like, I got to go to the gym for an hour and I got to change and I got to drive across town. It's like, no, you actually don't. We don't have to be. You can kind of make it work for you. Start with baby steps. It's actually more important to do the little ones than it is to do

the big one. And there's some evidence that shows that these larger workouts, especially an hour plus are more harmful to your body than they are helpful. So I go for a 20 to 30 minute workout one today. And then I'm also trying to do these little bite-sized micro workouts throughout the day. I'd say like five minutes every hour. That's super inspiring. So this also helps with your self-care and your wellness and kind of impacts every other area of your life, right? Yeah. Okay. This tip is from Dr. Rick Hansen, and it's about how you can literally rewire your neural pathways to feel happier on a daily basis. And the reason that I love this is because you're doing the work ahead of time to naturally feel happier throughout the day. It's not like you meditate, you feel calm. Well, actually,

meditation, you feel calm all the time. Maybe it's similar. You're rewiring your own pathways for meditation too. But it will have these effects that go on much longer than the practice. So the practice is this. You notice when you're feeling really good. It can be anything. It can be, I'm eating a delicious ice cream. I was just in Palm Springs for a week. We had an outdoor shower. Every single time I was in the shower naked with like the breeze against my skin, I was like, oh, this is the moment, like anything good in your life. You want to amplify that feeling. So really tune up the dial of that feeling in your body so that you feel it in your chest. You feel it in your arms. You feel in your head. You're just exploding with the goodness of that

feeling. And then you want to sit in that for five seconds. And what that is going to do is it's going to literally cement the neural pathway for good feelings, for positive emotions in your brain. So the next time your brain needs to look for a path to take, it's going to take the path that it is made the strongest neural connections with. So the next time your brain is looking to think a thought is more likely to think a positive thought because you've done this work ahead of time. So I try to do this once a day. I also love it because it turns you into a detective for good moments in your life. It turns you into a detective for joy. And that's such a beautiful thing. That's what we're all looking for, these little magical moments. So I'm always on the lookout. When does it

feel good? How can I amplify in it? How can I sit in it? It makes so much sense, too, because so many of us are default to the negative. We're thinking negative thoughts. And we all've heard this. It reprograms your brain. Every cell in your body is feeling that negativity. And maybe just saying an affirmation doesn't work, but you're talking about a full embodied. Maybe they say it takes 90 seconds to feel an emotion. Usually we just skirt all of our emotions or block them, but to really like get into a 90 second appreciation and feeling good and joy of something feeling happiness that makes so much sense. See, that's just that. I think I'm going to do that now too. We'll see. Maybe I'll thank you. You can't do the gratitude journal. It's so hard. I know. But I get it. You know what I love

that you're so real about too. It's like, you have all the tips. That's why when I asked you is more like, yeah, what works now? Because I'm sure they've all touched you in some way. But we're also human. You're not saying do this every day. And I think that the key is to not feel overwhelmed by all of the information out there because we do have access to more information than we have ever had before in history. And sometimes it can feel like, oh my gosh, I'm listening to this podcast. I'm reading this I'm seeing this on social media. And I think you, one, should make sure that your sources are validated before you're taking in any information from anywhere. And that's really, really critical and important. But also, know that you are taking in what you need to take in.

And that will come up from your brain when you need it to come up. What about all the overwhelm and all the advice and we're supposed to have like these crazy morning routines and do everything? So what do we do about that? Do you think it's sometimes too much? Like, how do we just like chill? Is it okay to do nothing? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's 100% okay to do nothing. Yes, it's often too much. I think it depends who you're talking to or about. But I think the biggest thing, I have a tip in the book that's called figure out your why, and that is having a reason for every single thing that you do. So if you're stacking your morning routine with 10 different things because you saw an influencer do it because you sat on a podcast

because you feel like you should do it, you're not going to feel good. You're going to run out of time. You're going to run out of money. Every single thing that I do in my life, I'm asking myself why. It is an intentionality that I approach the supplements that I take with, the movement that I'm doing. Being able, again, to connect that movement to my why, which is mental health. It's feeling calm. It's keeping my anxiety under control and energy is the thing that motivates me to do it. If you're taking a bunch of supplements and you have no idea why, if you're stacking your morning routine with this meditation, that breathwork practice, you're cold plunging and you don't have a reason for any of you. You're just like, I don't

know. I'm supposed to do it. You're not going to be able to stick to it because you won't find real motivation. But even with the why, what if you're like, well, why? Because supplements are good for you. But you're talking about deeper. For what is your goal? I think it's going to help with my, you know, sleep or something. So if you're saying this, my sleep is my why. Okay. So let's add in, there's a tip in the book that's do an N of one, which is an experiment with one person. And I think that obviously double-blind studies, placebo-controlled, that's the dream. Amazing. But even within those, even a really successful double-blind placebo-controlled study, you're not having 100% of people react in the same way because we're all bio-individual. So running an experience

experiment on yourself is one of the best ways to find out whether you're reaching the goals that you've set for yourself. So you want to sleep more. Maybe you add in magnesium at night. Maybe you don't take anything else for a month so that you're not conflating your results. You're actually seeing, is the magnesium helping me sleep? And then you're tracking, what does my sleep look like? Maybe with an aura ring, maybe just with a journal, a piece of paper. But you're actually seen what are the results I want to get and how can I measure those results in a way that's meaningful to me. Yeah. There's more of a mindfulness and intention around it. Really just getting clear on why am I doing this. I think that's the hard part sometimes is that we don't slow down enough to really think. Is it working? Is it not? And then we should all over ourselves. We should be doing. We should be doing this. And we feel guilt. That time pays back so much because you've taken that initial 20, 30 minutes, even just like once a week, check in with yourself briefly. What are my goals? How is what I'm doing stacking up with my goals? What are my values? How's what I'm doing stacking up with my values? And that will pay back so much with all the money you're going to get back, all the time you're going to get back,

and the general feeling of living a life that's true to you. Exactly. We don't often take the time to really even think about our values and what's working and not's working, which is why I love your- Why we've got to think about our death. That was like a big one, but if you've all the steps in your book, I think lead towards that part, because sometimes that can be a leap, but if you take it in small chunks will become clear.

Like if you're kind of overwhelmed with trying to figure out a lot of things in your life. Okay, but I did think about it. and it's going to be a really good death. And I know who's going to be there and it'll be fine. Speaking of the questions, what I also loved is in your up-level the relationship section, you talked about how do you be the CEO of your household? And I love that because it's like, why don't we run our marriage is like a business? So it makes so much more sense.

You run on like fairy dust and unicorns, hope it works out. But like you have these really great tools and questions and ways to think about being the CEO of your household. I think that there's an idea that this isn't romantic. But by taking these things off the table, you have so much room for the romance. You're not making lists in your head while you should be having sex with your partner. You know what I mean? You know the groceries are taking care of.

You know, the toilet paper is coming all of that. So being the CEO of your household just means we have a weekly meeting. Me and my husband do. And we check in with ourselves about our relationship. So we'll say, like, how can you, how can I support you in the next week? Is there anything that you wish I had done differently to support you last week? anything like that. We have these relationship check-in questions that we'll do. And then we'll also check in about our weeks. What is your week upcoming look like? What are some problem points? And then we will

figure out ways to solve those problems together. I do think that couples therapy is incredibly valuable. And my husband and I have done that too. We absolutely love it. But sometimes the things that are plaguing you are logistical pragmatic problems and they don't need to be sat around and talked about. They need logistical pragmatic solutions. They can absolutely be. solved. If you're like sitting around working like, this is the last toilet paper, are you going to recognize that? Like, no. And what I love is that, yeah, maybe doesn't seem so sexy to people. However, how sexy are the resentments going and the buildup and the anxiety and the worry and the blaming and the shaming? It's like in a business, you get people doing certain tasks,

like hire, you know, financial person or assistance. They take care of things so it can run. And at home, yeah. It just is very practical. Oh, hiring a cleaning person probably did more for my sex life than any sex tip that I've ever had. Because I'm a different level of cleanliness than my husband. He's much cleaner than I am. And he would describe me as perhaps a slob. And I would perhaps describe myself as that as well. And we got a cleaning person before we, like, we got a clean person while we still lived with roommates. We were just like, this needs to be a priority for us. And it changed our relationship. You talk about all the time you talk about in your book, you talk about all the time how like sex is a whole body, whole brain thing. It's not something that's isolated from the

rest of your life. It's something that is a result of the rest of your life. And so I think that being the CEO of your own households very much fits in with that. That's exactly it does. I mean, this is why it's so important to clear these stuff and to have these tips for, you know, you talk about the rules of fighting and they're being in your household because these are the things that are keeping us from connecting sexually. You might not realize that when the laundry's undone and we have resentments for our partner that we're not going to get turned on. So I think having practical tools to solve them is important to take a look at it. Like it's all, I think sometimes also people feel that they should be able to fix everything on their own and

that asking for help is like it is a weakness. I know a lot of people like that, but you also realize that sometimes you got it like it's where else you're spending your money. Like maybe that's actually a priority because it also reminds me something else that you talk about is what are the parts of you, like you try to fix like, I should be better cleaner or I should be better this stuff, like you could just really actually figure out in your relationship, too, what your strengths are, what your weakness is, lean into your relationship, or figure out how you can solve the easy stuff. Yeah, 100%. And I also think that goes to the point of something that my husband and I have been talking about a lot recently. Well, first of all, you can't go from zero to 60 with

your sex life. So sex is starting the second you open your eyes next to your partner. Are you reaching for them and giving them a little snuggle or are you rolling away and like scrolling on your phone and getting out of bed and not even starting your day? When they come home from work, or you come home from work. Are you greeting each other with excitement? Are you giving their butt a little smack when you walk by them? Are you giving them a little kiss? I think that one of the biggest mistakes we make in relationships is to silo our sex lives. Think that that 30-minute period exists completely outside of the rest of our lives. And it's so hard to go just like zero to 60. Oh, I'm revved up. I think that foreplay happens throughout your day, not just in this one tiny moment

in your day. And thinking about it like that, thinking about it like how I'm interacting with my has been this morning is going to impact how I feel in bed tonight has completely changed my openness to those little moments of intimacy. I think there's been times where I've been like, oh, okay, like he'll be here later. Like I need to focus on this thing. But I'm like, no, it's throughout the day this needs to matter. And that's what's going to have the cumulative result that I want to have has been really helpful for me. Yeah. No. And like we couples who learn to like prioritize that and understand that it is, it's not just this thing that happens in the bedroom where you turn, you know, turn the lights off and you go at it. Like all of these things that we do throughout

the days are impacting our ability to feel connected and aroused. Why I love that you guys after 15 years and you prioritize a lot long together. But it's so true that we walk around like a mystery. Like, no, it's not going to stay hot like it always did. But it's actually another area that we have to, you know, put effort into. And if you could chunk it like your workout. What you're saying is you're chunking it like your workout. It's like you could literally be like high, Like, micro intimacy. Truly, you make out in the morning, you pat their butt, you send a sexy text. That's what it is.

Like, micro-dosing your sex life. I love that. I absolutely love that. I like, I'm all about the micro-intimacy. We're going to add to the list, micro-habits, micro-workouts, micro-meditation, all of these things. I think that that's, you're like, true, because it's all these days you can't, really, can't sit. Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to sit for an hour to meditate.

Our attention spans for better or worse are not what they used to be as well. That's just honor that. I think that's just realistic to say, and we have to work within that. I do want to say, though, like, genuinely, I feel like my sex life is better after 15 years than it was at the beginning. And I do think there's this idea that at the beginning there's this fire and you're so hot for each other and then it's going to fade into being really boring and just the same old thing. And you do develop a familiarity that I think is at times more boring and at times more

really lovely and safe and comforting feeling. But, and you know this, communication is the single thing that makes your sex life better. Like, communication is the secret to having satisfying sex. And our ability to communicate with each other over 15 years has risen so dramatically that it completely overtakes any super hot, passionate, whatever we were having just by nature of just meeting at the beginning. Like, it's gotten so much better because now we're able to say what we want, ask for what we want without being embarrassed, say, oh, I'd be wanting to try.

this. It changes everything, being able to openly communicate. So for anybody who's listening, who's nervous about a long-term relationship, I just, I like saying that it gets better and better. I love to hear that. Absolutely. I mean, I think that people are, yeah, chasing the spark. Can it go back to how it was at the beginning? I'm like, well, why would we even want to go back? Like so much about life is like moving forward, building on what we've learned. So exactly what you're saying, like, no, you might not have that new news and that spark. You can't create the novelty in the spot in eight again. But however, there's a depth. in a connection and knowing this that comes from this years together and really caring about

your partner's pleasure and really being able to communicate about it and not be chipped up on all the like is this awkward and all the shame like you've worked through that you know yeah and now you can really come together on it and come together come together exactly there you go I do think that we don't often hear about couples who are genuinely doing the work and staying together I would say it's a small percentage of couples who have actually leaned into therapy, both have a growth mindset. I know that you and your husband do. And recognizing that it's not always easy, but you're moving through it. So I just love to hear these examples that people can know that it's possible. Because I think a lot of times people get in relationships and their partner, I've found that

there's one partner that wants to do work. One person's like, I'm never going to do that. Like, I'm never going to meditate. I'm never going to go to therapy. And it's tough. So what would you say with your relationship, are you guys always on the self-improvement track? No. And I think that it's differed over the years. What usually happens, and I find this happens in a lot of things in a relationship, is one person is really one place and then the other person might find that place but at a different time.

So for us on our growth improvement journey, I would say that I found it as a result of my anxiety as a result of my gorephobia. And then I went through a period where I tried to tell my husband everything. he should be doing that I learned, which did not work very well, which might surprise everybody listening. But what happened was is my life slowly got better and I felt happier and I felt more excited. He began to take an interest in the things that I was doing. So I'm a huge fan of modeling and letting the results speak for themselves. I also think we don't talk about this that much and it might be a little bit of a touchy subject for people. But I think sometimes we use

pressuring other people into doing habits as like, oh, that means that it works. Like, Rather than doing the work to see the results ourselves, we need somebody else to do it to prove to ourselves that it's worth doing, that it is part of, it's worth the value of our time for that. If I can get my husband to do it, if I can get my friends to do it. And what I really need to do is do it myself, see the value, demonstrate the value, and then they'll come along. And if they don't come along, that's okay, too.

Like, everybody has their own path, and it's just about if you are connecting still on that path. And I think there's a lot of work, a lot of skills that you learn over the years, but there's also really an element of luck to long-term relationships. And my husband and I have been really lucky that we have grown together. Yeah, I think that's the part that stands out to me is that just a lot of couples, you know, don't. Many do, but a lot don't. And it takes a little bit of work. And I don't think that's bad either. It's like the habits we talked about. I think that there are relationships that are meant to serve you at certain points in your life. And I think it's a

really beautiful thing to say that relationship served me so beautifully. And it's no longer. And I'm going to let this relationship go. To what? end is anything else in life? All we're trying to do is grow and learn and connect and become more of ourselves. So every bit of information that you're getting along that journey is not wasted time. Absolutely. And what I love also about this part is that the people who are caught up in this, my partner won't change. And I'm not changing, you know, what's going to happen? We spend so much energy out there being negative. But I think what you're saying is that when we start to really do the work and change, we have to also honor that maybe.

our partners might be on their own path and they can change too. And I know you have something you have about like let your partner surprise you. I love that. I love that one too. That was one of my favorites because it's like I think we just, if we have years of resentment, they're never going to change. They're never going to do it. But like they might surprise you. Sometimes my husband will literally say to me like you're bringing up that assumption about me based on a fight we had eight years ago, you know? And it's so true though. Like we hold on to this perception of the person that we love. And even though we are doing the work, we're growing, we're evolving, we're recognizing that in ourselves. We trap them in a version that we met years and years and years ago. We don't allow

them to do the same. So I like to do this both on a unconscious or subconscious level, while all the time I'm like, let Zach reveal himself to me in front of me. Don't make assumptions about what he's thinking, what he's feeling, what he's saying. But then I also like to do it in a really conscious level where I ask him, what are you into that's new recently? I know you had this opinion that you said ages ago, do you still feel that way? Do you want to try this thing that maybe you weren't open to a few years ago? I try to ask questions that prompt him to share and think about whether that growth has occurred. That's such a great reframe of thinking about it. I love that. People take a moment now. If you are in a relationship, are you holding on to

something that happened in your relationship, some kind of, it could be, and people hold on to like resentments around money or relationships or affairs or all the things that I could never let it go. I can never let it go. I often hear from the one partner who's like, my partner won't let this go. So if you are that person holding on, you know, what is something you could reexamine out from this lens of like maybe it's a little bit different. I love that moment to pause. Yeah. So it's just seeing the person that you have the resentment about literally doesn't exist anymore. Like, that person is no longer in existence. Can you be open to dropping that resentment and forming a new relationship with a person who exists now? And if that person is continuing

to bring up the resentment, if they're continuing to have the same problems, that's something else to evaluate. But maybe try it. And there's something to think about, like, what role are you playing in them staying as that person, too? So the more you get to change and people change around you, it's like homeostasis, right? So it's like the more that you, people are going to notice that change, but allowing them, like, you're only in control that's not allowing them to see them differently, too. I think that's the really interesting thing about friendships, too, is, like, we like our friends to mirror the self that we want to be back at us. So often we'll have friends from, like, high school or college, and they'll mirror back a version of ourselves that we maybe

aren't anymore, which is why I think that new friends always feel a little bit refreshing, because you're meeting them as the version of yourself that you are now. Essentially, if you view yourself one way. You really want the people that you love the most in the world to see you that way, too. And it takes a little bit of work to get them there sometimes because they've known all of these other versions. Yeah, it is very different relationships too. And then those friends, and even that's my family's tough too because you're like, I'm not six. I'm not six anymore. Yeah. It's even tougher. It's like, yeah, for sure. For sure. And we often revert back to our childhood selves when we're with our families for that reason. Exactly. God, it's so,

this is going to be so helpful people, but for a little bit of reframe, you know, they don't know you, especially if you live away from home, you're seeing you all the time. Yeah, they've seen you thousands of hours as a child and 25 hours as an adult. You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's just normalize that. Okay. So this also makes you think about the bill. I love the bill of rights, the personal bill of rights. And you can even do like in a relationship. I love the idea of just like where are we like what like putting a stake in the ground? Like what are my values? What do I believe in? That would make life so much easier if we just even if we write it in our notes or it's clear. It's those little things, right, we accept in the moment, like, it's no big deal or

you can do that or, you know, okay, I'll just keep saying yes. And then you realize, like, such a build in our body infects our mental health, physical health, that we are literally steamrolling over ourselves and not even knowing it. Yeah, that's from the work of Dr. Aziz Gadsapora, and he's a psychologist that specializes in confidence. We did an entire episode about how we can be more confident. It's one of my favorite episodes of the podcast. I highly recommend it. But he says the same thing that you said, basically, which is just that if we don't know what our rights are. If we haven't made the very, very clear, we will find that our rights are being violated constantly. So he recommends you just take a second. We have sample rights in the

book. But you take a second, you write down, I have a right to state my opinion. Doesn't need to be agreed with, but I have a right to share how I feel about something. I have a right to say no. I have a right to be respected by the people that I'm going to spend time with. And once you write those down really clearly. Put it in a note on your phone, you'll begin to notice all these micro moments where those rights are being violated and you'll be so much more prone to push back on those moments. I maybe think about people having a personal bill of rights even for their sex life. I have a right to say no. I have a right to ask for what I want, right? Would you say have a right to orgasm? Yeah, I have a right to have sex according to my desire. I have a right to

have sex on my terms. I have a right to have sex when I want to, when I don't want to, to have orgasms, to have pleasure. And also, yeah, a big one is giving ourselves permission to pleasure, too. Oh, and I love the idea of I have like, I have a right to orgasm, for instance. I have so many girlfriends who feel that because they take 20 minutes to orgasm, they're putting their partner out. He takes five minutes to orgasm. She takes 20. And so she's like, I don't have a right to make him work for 15 minutes longer for my orgasm. And it's just like, no, you both have a right to orgasm that is on your bill of rights, you deserve that as much as he does. Absolutely. It's true. It's like, and just if we knew too, if women knew, like it takes a man, you know, eight to 10

minutes or there's an orgasm gap, eight to 10 minutes to orgasm, women 20 to 40 minutes. No, you talked about this when I had you on my podcast and I have sent that episode to so many people because I have so many girlfriends who feel so much shame about the amount of time that it takes them to orgasm because they have so many ex-boyfriends. who have been like, oh my God, you take so long. We've like perpetuated this myth through fake orgasms through movie scenes where everybody's coming together in two minutes. Like all these.

And then and then people, the men are like, well, my last five girlfriends came in five minutes. I'm like, did they fake it? Yeah, exactly. Because they were probably faking it. So I think that we. But they're faking it because they feel bad because they take 20 minutes. And it's such a tricky self-perpetuating cycle.

And the more people who know, no, it just takes this long. It begins to take some of that shame out of it. and then you can go and get your 20-minute orgasm, and then that guy, when he moves on to his next girlfriend, will be like, oh, it takes 20 minutes. It's not like a five-minute in and out endeavor. Exactly. Well, I think that there's so much permissioning in here, too, like in your book and in all your work, it's like giving people permission just to take the time, take care of ourselves. It's okay to prioritize self. We still struggle so much as women thinking that we are everyone. I shouldn't even say that, but I do think it's more of a feminine trait that we tend to feel like we have

more responsible for everything. We don't deserve the time. and we can't slow down. So even just declaring for our sex lives that like our partners don't know this either. So what a great thing to be an advocate for to have your own bill of rights and your own choices when it comes to sex, your own desires. I always tell couples like listen to the podcast together, play it in the background, but even just listening to any podcast that you're interested in, like instead of trying to change them, bringing them into what you're interested in and what you like.

But this, I know that sex family works for couples. At first I didn't get this, but so many couples when they would listen to the show, they'd like, we listen to 12 episodes together, like back to back when you were driving in the car, and I was like, that seems like a lot. Because it's like, I don't want to listen to it, but anything. Sorry, not even yours, Liz. But it's that repetition of normalizing behavior and making the suggestions about things that we think we can't talk about.

That's so interesting. And just it would normalize a conversation, which I think in the work that you do, you do so much work just to get people to have these conversations. Right. And so hearing, having your brain internalize these conversations are being had is the first step. I'll be right back with the word from our sponsors. Look, magnesium is something most of us lack, and if you're taking the drugstore variant, you're still not getting the full picture. And industrial farming, chronic stress, and everyday aging

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Q-U-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-O-C-com slash sex with Emily and use code sex with Emily. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode. The other struggle that we hear from women all the time is about their body, their body image, body confidence, how do I feel more confident in my body? learn to love or even like my, obviously body neutrality. You don't have to love it, but you do have a journey of learning to really love your body. You said it went viral. It was a really popular episode. Talk to me. Talk to us. Yeah. So one of my life mottoes is your body is for living, not looking. And it's a really simple phrase. Your body is for living, not looking. But I find

that you can pull that out at the times that you need it and it really changes your behavior. So if you're at the beach and you're sitting there and your swimsuit and you're trying to figure out how to like cover up your body because you don't want anybody to see your thighs or you don't anybody to see your cellulite, which the vast majority of women have, if instead you're like, my body isn't here to be perceived by other people. My body is here for me to have an experience. It changes the way you would sit at the beach. You would go and play a game of volleyball with your friends. You would go let the sand hit your, squish the sand in your toes. You'd go play in the waves at the ocean. And if we're thinking about our death,

That's something. Once you said you were uncomfortable with it, I was like. No, just because I wasn't ready to think about death. No, but yeah. The person who is at the end of your life is going to be so much happier that you lived in your body in that moment. When you are in bed, are you thinking about the positions that you're in, how you're being perceived? Are you living in your body? And I think I had Dr. Lindsay Kite on the podcast recently, and she is a, she did her whole PhD, basically, in body.

image and how we see ourselves. And she takes it even a step further, which is in the moments that you are feeling like you're focusing on the perception on. She calls it self-objectification, which I think is really, really interesting. Other people objectify us, but we objectify ourselves significantly more all day, every day. Even when we feel jealousy about other people, like, if I feel jealous of another woman, I'm actually objectifying her in that moment because I'm turning her into an object who's the recipient of my jealousy rather than connecting with her, empathizing her with her as a real person, which I thought was such a callout for me. But she says in the moments that we feel like we're focusing on that perception, on that self-objectification to actively

try to go do something that involves the living, that involves experiencing our body. But we've been tricked by people trying to make money off of us to focus on how it exists for other people to look at, which is so crazy. It's crazy when you think about it. I love the reframe of like, if I love my body, I'm going to run through the sand naked, feel my toes in the sand, run in the water. What is that switch when you're like, okay, how do you go to suddenly don't care what other, how that at the west of all judging me? So everything that we're doing is about thinking the thoughts that we want to think as much as possible because that's the process of rewiring your brain. Whenever I talk about anything, I'm talking about the science behind

it. I'm talking about the pragmatic action steps you can take. I'm not interested in the like, look in the mirror and love yourself. Like that's, it just, it doesn't work and it's not of interest to me. No. So what we're doing. Yeah, how would we reframe that? Because I be like, okay, I said the affirmations. I didn't feel it. So let's talk about the other step of it. So every single moment that you are pushing yourself to have a living moment in your body, not a looking moment in your body, living not looking, you're giving yourself that message

that is rewiring those neural pathways. So it's going to feel really hard at first because your brain is not used to taking those pathways, because your brain has been bombarded with thousands of messages from the time that you could hear about your body being for looking. So you have to have thousands of messages to begin to put it back on track. to begin to push for those new neural pathways. But every time you think it, it's going to get a little bit easier until those are the pathways that your brain is most likely to take naturally.

So what were some of the ways that you got yourself to be so consistent? You know what I mean? I know you're not always probably you fall off the wagon, maybe with certain things we all do. But like, for example, remembering to do like a reminder, like remember to look in the mirror and say this thing or feel this throughout my body. Is there any, like, tips that helped you stay on the affirmations and the... Yeah. So I think it's that I believe we can choose how we want to feel moment to moment, and I got

sick of feeling awful. So it's really in each moment, I'm like, do I want to feel bad about myself? Do I want to be my own biggest critic in this moment? Or do I want to be my own biggest cheerleader in this moment? And there's so many people in this world who are going to serve as critics. I would much rather be my own cheerleader. Why are we our own critics? Yeah.

Why do we have to do that? And then we do it to other people. I will also say I think about my death a lot. Oh, my God. I want to come to your funeral now. Can I be in your vision? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to great music.

I'm sure. Yeah. Have you actually planned it? No, I just – You've got that far yet. No. Taylor Swift would be singing, though. Obviously.

Obviously. with a special song that she just whips out for you for sure. I want to also talk about boundaries because I feel like it's in everything that I'm reading and talking to it comes up in every area now boundaries. And it is sort of a buzzy word, which I love, that they can be so heavy for people to kind to get their head around, like, what do you actually mean by that? It could be people who actually aren't used to setting boundaries because that's also a skill set. I mean, all this stuff is we're talking about these things that we should know,

but we just wasn't modeled to us. No, I don't think we should not know that. We shouldn't know them. There's no one to set set them barely. Nobody taught us these things. We are doing the best we can with the information that we've been given, which is not very much. Exactly. In our homes or either it just feels very oppressive or it's scary a set of boundary because

someone's going to get mad at us. But you had a great reframe on boundaries. You talked about before you commit to anything or make a decision, think about how does it resonate with you? It's actually, do you have the time and space to give to this person above your own needs? Yes. And I think of all the times I say, yes, I want to do something. And there's always this other reason why maybe you just, we want to please people or

we don't want to disappoint people or we don't really think it. But to think my time is my most precious resource, how do I want to source it? How do I want to put it out there in the world? So like that moment before, like just to kind of adopt that? Yeah, to take a pause. So that's from Melissa Urban, who wrote an incredible book called The Book of Boundaries. And one of her top tips from the interview that I did with her was to take a pause before you commit to anything.

Before you answer yes, before you enter no. If somebody asks you a question, just say, I'm going to think about that for a second and then you respond. I think an interesting thing about boundaries is I have boundaries in the energy. section of my book, which a lot of people are like, wait, what does boundaries have to do with energy? Boundaries are one of the single most important things for energy. With energy, we often are like, oh, our mitochondria, and we need to drink this drink and take this supplement. But we are oozing time all over the place in ways that we are not really liking or agreeing to in ways

that we don't really consent to. And once you begin to take that time back, once you begin to take back the energy that you're spending on worrying about disappointing people and putting other people's needs above yourself, you don't need all these supplements and like all of this fancy top tier pyramid stuff. You need to take care of the boundaries first. So we put it in the energy section of the book very intentionally because I think that boundaries are one of the biggest seepages of energy that we're not talking about. I also think a really important thing to point out with boundaries is the boundary isn't saying, I don't like it when you do this. A boundary is saying, if you do this, I'm going to remove myself from the situation. A boundary is the action

that you take after somebody has violated the agreement that you have made with them. So if you're just saying to your parent over and over, I don't like when you talk about my body, you're just saying to a friend over and over, this topic of conversation doesn't sit right with me. That is not a boundary. A boundary is saying, I won't come to Thanksgiving dinner this year if you comment on my body. And if you comment on the body while you're there, I'm leaving. Like, a boundary is saying what the action you're going to take is going to be and then sticking to that action. Examples are so helpful. Can you share a boundary maybe you've put into your relationship, your marriage?

I mean, I said a lot of boundaries at work. So boundaries at work include we don't have communication after hours. Computers are closed. Text messages are off after 6 p.m. That's company-wide. I just think people do their best work when they can disconnect from work. in my relationship, I'd say the boundaries are often about how we live together. So this is what I need for the house to feel good to me.

This is what I need for our day-to-day life to feel good to me. And it's not so much about I'm going to leave in the relationship, but if you're not doing this, I'm not going to do this. Yeah. And in talking about that, I mean, that's why so much of your talk does resonate into sex as well because it's like letting your partner know if the house is messy, I might not be turned on. That is such a perfect example. If it's freezing in the house, there's no way I'm going to be turned on.

The sheets are dirty. The dogs, I'm going to the kids. Like, just to even explain that to your partner. I mean, so many times we shut them down for sex. I was like, I don't want sex. We're not going to do sex when this happens. But when will it happen? What does make you feel?

Like, what is your requirement to feel aroused and turn on? Because boundaries are so useful. When the house is really messy and it's really hard for me to get turned on when I'm stressed. Like, that's a very straightforward boundary. I can't have sex when the house is a mess, you know? Honestly, because otherwise, you can get this resentment of like there's dishes in the sink and you're resenting the dishes but they're not noticing the dishes and then they're resenting that you don't want to have sex with

them and nobody's just communicating what the actual things impacting their mental state are this is a great noticing invitation for people that like really drill down and think what is it in my environment like what get curious about your own you know your own life and your own preferences and like what is bothering you about your relationship your home like you can drill it down you can just walk on being annoyed all the time but there are probably little signs that we don't really think to even talk about it because the dishes are always in the sink. But to be like, oh, maybe that's a moment. And with a great boundary and good communication, maybe we can start to like heal some of

these things. And the other thing in the energy that I love, decision fatigue, I think that that is something that is so exhausting, especially if you're working a lot at work or you have family, you go home or in your relationship. Like, how do we deal with decision fatigue? Like, that's one that we don't even realize how many decisions we're making a day. Yeah, we make over 30,000 decisions in a single day, which sounds like a lot. But then you realize from the second you wake up, you're like, should I reach for my phone?

Should I not reach for my phone? What should I wear today? Should I brush my teeth after I work out? Should I brush my teeth after I work out? What should I eat for breakfast? There are so many decisions that we make in a single day. So the point of this section of the book is that those are sapping our energy in ways that we're not even aware of. And if we can eliminate those sources of decision fatigue, whether it's setting a rule in place.

I talk about Rami Sadie. He has a rule. It's a very simple rule. He's a financial expert. but he talks about if he sees a book and he wants that book, he buys it. He just has a rule that he doesn't have to think about buying a book. It's in a price point that he's really comfortable with. So instead of standing there and debating, oh my gosh, it's $39. Is that worth it? Is it not worth it? He's like, I love books enough that I've made that decision ahead of time. I'm just going to buy it. I

recently made that for myself, that decision with fun little drinks. So I used to stand at the grocery store with the like, oh my God, it's $3.99 for a soda. What am I doing here? But I recently was like, I get so much joy from these silly little drinks that I made a universal rule. I'm going to buy myself. I can't drink myself out of house and home with my silly little beverages, especially since I don't really drink alcohol anymore. So my general drinking costs have gone significantly down. So any silly little drink that I want to buy, a little healthy soda, a little kombucha,

I just let myself buy and I don't debate it anymore. And it sounds inconsequential. But it is one decision out of many decisions that I've completely taken off of my plate, automating things. It's a really great way of eliminating decision fatigue, automating your monthly credit card payments, also automating your savings so that you're not sitting there debating, oh my gosh, how much should I save? Should I save this month? Just automate it. And then it's out of your hands. It's happening. Friendship is actually a really great way. I think you can eliminate decision fatigue by making standing plans with your friends.

So we recently started doing game nights. We do them once a month. They rotate between different houses. Instead of being like, oh, what should we do? Should we meet up? Blah, blah, blah. we have a standing game night. We know what night it's going to be on. We know what we're going to do. The person who's hosting gets to pick the game, it means that you get to have that social connection without bringing in the element of making the decision. I love it. That makes sense. And I always think about like Steve Jobs and his turtleneck, right? Yeah, I can't do that. I want to do that, but see, that to me, I go through my life. You dress so cute. Thank you. Find other sources. So that's the other thing is, like, find the things that work for you. If fashion brings you joy, if, like,

Emily, you dress so cute. Like, don't do that because fashion clearly brings you joy. Or does it not? Do you just dress cute for me? I do. I do. Because I know you like the way I I dress. No, I just don't like having so many things sometimes. I'm like, why do we need so many clothes? Why do we need? I guess I do it with food, though. I know exactly what I like to eat. I don't change it. I don't, that doesn't bother me that much. But I think we can find the things that work for us, whether it's doing. I have like, I do 20 minutes of a workout every single day. I rotate the things that I'm doing. So I don't have to think about, am I doing a workout today? how long. I know that like on Mondays, I'm doing the Sculpt Society. On Tuesdays, I'm doing

weight training. On Wednesdays, I'm going for a run. I just know what I'm doing. So I've taken the decision out of it. Yeah. No, I love that. Automate people. Okay. So Liz, I have a question from a listener. I would love your help answering. Nope. Fun. Okay. She's 24 in Toronto. She wants to remain anonymous. Hi, Emily. I'm a huge fan of the show. Thank you for everything you do. It's been a huge help to be my friends. I have a question about transitioning from a friends with benefit relationship to dating and how we should work on defining our new boundaries and building a deeper emotional relationship together. What questions should we be asking and how best can we start off on a good foot together in this transition? Any help would be

appreciated. Well, first I want to say to Anonymous, I love that she is asking this question now because instead of seeing this person primarily for sex in the casual relationship, well, now you're like, okay, we're going to be committed. We're going to have to understand each other at all these emotional levels and we're going to have to see do we actually have the same values and do we like doing the same things? You know, they get to do things outside the bedroom? And I always think like, do you like the same activities? Do you, you know, see a future? A lot of times people, when they're in friends with benefits or casual relationships, like we don't talk about sex. It's not safe enough. So also the thing is about getting a little bit safer when you are, you feel a bit

safer to explore your sexuality. So I hope that those are some great areas anonymous that you can focus on. And just knowing that it's going to take time and just because you made this decision to transition, you're still taking steps. I remember getting to know each other's a step and pay attention to all the steps. But what I thought about you was your conversation cards, because I'm always thinking people are like, what questions should we be asking rather than being like, what are your values? You want children. I love you. You have these card decks that are just so fun to leave on your coffee table and ask each other, get to know each other. What are some of your favorite questions from your decks? And can people buy those somewhere? We can put those somewhere.

Yes, yes. Yes. You can buy those at Healthycomvo.co. These are conversation starter decks that my husband and I started this company together. We tested literally thousands of questions to narrow down to a small set of questions. I think they're 150 per deck and we have four decks. We have a raunchier together, which is a little bit more sexy. And then we have our original deck, which you can use with friends. So we have six different categories. We have wealth, which is a really interesting one to get on the same page about financial conversations. So an example question from there is how much money do you need to feel safe? number was a lot higher than my husband's. And I think that has a lot to do with my childhood.

It sparks some very interesting conversations. How did your parents talk to you about money as a kid? Name one thing that you spend money on that brings you joy. That one was so helpful for me and my husband because I think sometimes we can judge our partner's spending habits. And when they say, no, this thing is actually one of the big sources of joy for me. It puts it into perspective. We have love. What compliment do you get that you don't relate to? What is your favorite and least favorite part of your personality? What's the most romantic thing you've ever done? And then we have Growing Up, which is all about your childhood.

What was your first memory of being embarrassed? Were you an only child or did you have siblings? Did you ever wish for a different situation and why? In growing up, have you changed any of your opinions or values in a way that would have surprised your younger self? And then we have a well-being section, which is all about wellness. So we have, do you experience anxiety? What does it feel like to you?

This is a fun one. A fun one that everybody has really different reactions to is, is there anything that freaks other people out that you're totally fine with? Like if you're the person who can take the spider and move them out of the room. And then we have what ifs, which are imaginative ones. If you could be president, would you, why or why not? There's so much here to it. Because I feel like when couples often feel like, are we going on a date or how do I talk to someone? I just love to be able to whip out some cards. And the answer is again, they change all of the time. So I'll play this game with my husband. We've, obsessively test all these questions. His answers today are different than when we formulated the questions. And so again, always leaving that space for growth. I do want to say something too anonymous, though, that isn't just get my conversation cards, although I think she should do that too, which is that I think we focus on these labels, friends with benefits, in a relationship. And there's this assumption that these labels mean the same thing to everybody. And I think the most important thing you can do if you're going to take on any label in a relationship is be really clear and get on the same page about what that relationship means to both of you. So friends

with benefits could mean a different thing to each partner in the friends with benefits relationship, and that can cause a lot of problems. But also as you're transitioning into a relationship, what does that mean to the person you're getting into a relationship with and what does that mean to you? The most important thing I think you can do as you're making these transitions is to get on the same page about what these words mean to you because they don't have universal meanings. Yeah, absolutely. People do that with marriage too. They're like, oh, I thought commitment I met the same thing. I can't be, you know, on, you know, watching porn or, you know, I think porn's fine, but people are like, oh, I'm like, whatever it is, Camgirls, or every

relationship is going to look different. You need to figure out with this person. You're in a new relationship, which is so exciting, what does an ideal relationship mean to the two of you at this moment. Yeah. And I think often we don't know, we don't think about it. We just assume it's this model of all this happy couples that we see, assumingly happy couples. All of this is about really knowing ourselves to know what we want and learning because no one ever asked us or we thought we had to follow these societal norms. So what a great time going into a new relationship that you could even say, like, I actually never really thought about this, but how fun for us together to figure out what we both

want. 100%. It's like, I just think two marriages, like this agreement that you sign forever without any rules to it, any justifications, any like addendums, like any, you know, things that you want to follow. I always think it could be like a marriage contract should be renewed every few years. Yeah, when the Jewish faith, I think they do have like a contract that they sign and some couples will make that on their own and other couples will just follow one that's on there.

And I think that's a really beautiful part of the Jewish faith is that you realize that you're not, that marriage means something. What does it mean? And getting on the same page, what does marriage mean to us? Because marriage is going to mean a different thing to every single person. Exactly. Letting go of all the shoulds there too. Okay, Liz Moody, I'm going to ask you the five quickie questions we ask all of our guests.

Biggest turn on. This isn't so weird. I've never said this anywhere. Okay. Okay. So either hands, like I love my husband's hands. So anything he's doing with his hands, I just think they're really beautiful. But then if he's doing something to me, like the inside of my elbow is a very erogenous spot for me. So if you're like stroking it or kissing it, like the inside of my elbow, oh, I love it. It's a secondary rodentstone.

Wait, really? Yeah. Oh, thank you. That's so validating. Okay. Okay. It's so weird. No, well, people don't often know. So so many people are going to go home and touch their elbows. Okay. Thank you. Well, because when you were a kid and you would do like that. thing where you run your hand up and down. It feels so good. What makes good sex? Communication. Something you would tell your younger self about sex and relationships.

That there's no such thing as good in bed. Being good in bed is about knowing what you want and what your partner wants and it's going to change with different people and different partners. What's the number one thing you wish everyone knew about sex? That it's always possible to transform your sex life no matter where you're coming from. Thank you so much, Liz. Thank you so much for having me. this is such a fun conversation. So fun. Tell us where everyone can find you and follow along

with everything you're doing. So I'm Liz Moody on Instagram and on TikTok and that's where I share bite-sized little ways that you can transform your life. I share the tips as I'm putting them into practice as I'm trying them in my own life. And then I have my book, 100 ways to change your life. And then my podcast is called the Liz Moody podcast. We have the Me and Zach relationship, 15 tips episode. We have the one with Emily. We have the confidence one. So lots to dive into there. So many good topics. Thank you for being here, Liz. Thank you so much for having me. That's it for today's episode.

Thank you so much for listening to Sex with Emily. And if you love the show, please like, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you get your podcast. And hey, share this with a friend or a partner. It might just spark something. It usually does. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and X. It's all at Sex with Emily. Oh, and I've been told I give really good email.

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