Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Myths Of Love, Sex, Dating, And Relationships | Myisha Battle

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

How our false expectations and misunderstandings about relationships can create an incalculable amount of suffering — and the many problems of the "You complete me" model.Description: This episode was part one of our four-part series where we’re counter-programming against the way Valentine’s Day is often celebrated, and examining different kinds of relationships including romantic, friendship, and family. Today’s guest hews a bit more closely to the traditional Valentine’s Day theme and will do some myth-busting around all the things we tend to get wrong when we talk about romantic relationships. Myisha Battle is the author of the book, “This Is Supposed to Be Fun: How To Find Joy in Hooking Up, Settling Down, and Everything in Between.” She also hosts the podcast How’s Your Sex Life?  Much of her public work focuses on the early stages of relationships, but in her private practice, she counsels people at all stages, and in all kinds of relationships. Content Warning: Explicit language and conversations about sex. In this episode we talk about:Five ways to improve intimacy and connection in romantic partnershipThe nuts and bolts of sex, and how we often get intimacy and sex confused in unhelpful waysUnderstanding men’s and women’s cycles to depersonalize issues in sex and relationshipsThe myth of finding “the one”The orgasm gapBromanceAnd if you’re looking, tips on how to make finding a partner easierFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/myisha-battle-archive Where to find Myisha Battle online: Website: www.myishabattle.com/Social Media:Twitter: @MyishaBattleInstagram: @MyishaBattleBook Mentioned:This Is Supposed to Be Fun: How To Find Joy in Hooking Up, Settling Down, and Everything in Between Other Resources Mentioned:Alain de Botton’s  Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person The School of Life #418. How Not to Ruin Your Relationships | Drs. John & Julie Gottman#213: Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel#464. How to Keep Friendships From Imploding | Esther PerelHalf the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It?Michael Vincent Miller’s Intimate TerrorismEsther Perel’s Mating in CaptivityAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how we doing? My guest today is going to do some myth busting around all the things we tend to get wrong when we talk about romantic relationships. Because even within this narrow band of love, and I often like to talk about love as encompassing everything from self-love to our feelings about random people we meet to family, friends, all the way up to romantic relationships. Anyway, even within this narrow band, we often bring all kinds of false expectations and misunderstandings to the table, which can create a lot of

suffering for ourselves and everybody around us. For example, my guest is gonna talk about the many problems of what she calls the You Complete Me model of romantic relationships. Maisha Battle is a certified sex and dating coach, educator, and author. And in this conversation, we talk about five ways to improve intimacy and connection in romantic partnerships, the nuts and bolts of sex and why we often get intimacy and sex confused in unhelpful ways, understanding men's and women's cycles to depersonalize issues in sex and relationships, the myth of finding the one, the orgasm gap,

and we also talk about romance. Oh, and by the way, if you're single and looking, we also talk about tips for making dating or finding a partner easier. A little bit more about Myisha before we dive in here. She's the author of the book, This Is Supposed to Be Fun, How to Find Joy in Hooking Up, Settling Down,

and Everything in Between. She also hosts a couple of podcasts, Down for Whatever and Dating White. Much of her public work does focus on the early stages of relationships, including dating, but in her private practice, she counsels people at all stages of relationships and in all kinds of relationships. So she very much understands the full spectrum here. Heads up, if you've got kids in the room or if you have sensitive ears,

we do get into the nitty gritty of sex a little bit, full spectrum here. A heads up, if you've got kids in the room, or if you have sensitive ears, we do get into the nitty gritty of sex a little bit, so brace yourself for some graphic language, tastefully deployed, I must say. Just one other thing to say before we dive in here, this is a rerun. We first posted this several months ago. It did really well.

We got a great reaction to it, so we're bringing it back from the vault. Myisha Battle coming up. First though, time for a little BSP, Blatant Self-Promotion. I am doing two informal weekend retreats with my friends, Seben A. Selassie and Jeff Warren. We call them meditation parties.

They're going down at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. One is coming up in May and another in October. They're open for in-person and also virtual registration. You can find the links at danharris.com over on the events page. And by the way, if you are tired of listening to ads on this show, go over to the 10% Happier app.

If you're a subscriber, you can get these shows, all of them, all the way back to episode one, without ads and you get them a week before everybody else. Download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps and get started for free. Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island? Well, that's exactly what Jane, Phil and their three kids did when they traded their English home for a tropical island they bought online. But paradise has its secrets, and family life is about to take a terrifying turn.

You don't fire at people in that area without some kind of consequence. And he says, yes ma'am, he's dead. There's pure cold-blooded terror running through me. From Wondery, I'm Alice Levine, and this is The Price of Paradise, the real life story of an island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder.

Search and follow The Price of Paradise now to listen to the full trailer. I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Alan Turing. Why are we talking about Alan Turing, Peter? Alan Turing is the father of computer science. And some of those questions we're thinking about today around artificial intelligence. Turing was so involved in setting and framing what some of those questions were but he's also interesting for lots of other reasons Afro. He had such a fascinating life, he was unapologetically gay at a time when that was completely criminalized and stigmatized and from his imagination he created ideas that have formed the very physical, practical foundation

of all of the technology on which our lives depend. And on top of that, he's responsible for being part of a team that saved millions, maybe even tens of millions of lives because of his work during the Second World War using maths and computer science to code-break. So join us on Legacy, wherever you get your podcasts. My Isha Battle, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure. In doing a little research on you, I saw a phrase that I really liked.

You talked about the problems with the you complete me model of romantic relationships. That's a Jerry Maguire reference. I remember watching that in real time because I'm old enough to have seen it when it was in the theaters. So I thought that would be a good place to start. What are the problems with the you complete me model of romance? To start, it's assuming that people are not whole until they find romantic partnership. I think this is a huge pitfall in our society because not only does it put a ton of pressure on individuals to find the absolute perfect complimentary person.

It also assumes that's what we want, that romantic partnership is a default setting. When a lot of people experience flavors of romantic life through friendships, through other types of connection. So it does devalue in some ways those other connections as well as the individual. We're not just searching for people who might help us to live better lives and more complete and full lives by the value that they add. We're saying that there is something fundamentally missing and wrong with ourselves that needs

to be filled in by the qualities of someone else and only one person. So it also, I guess, does a disservice to the person who we do find ourselves in romantic partnership with. I see this a lot in my practice where the whole of someone's needs gets filled by one person. And that's a tremendous amount of pressure for anyone to try to fill. And I see that as a wedge and a block to sexual connection. Because I think when we're trying to fill all of our needs with one person, they can

get overburdened. And sexual energy doesn't love that vibe at all. I think it's multi-layered and we really don't question it enough and we get this message through so much of our media that a lot of people just operate from this assumption. My wife and I went to a couple's counselor a couple years ago, a really interesting guy named Michael Vincent Miller, and he wrote a book called Intimate Terrorism, which he wrote before 9-11. So it sounds more severe these days than it did in the 90s when he wrote the book.

One of the arguments he makes in the book is that marriage before the Industrial Revolution when we lived mostly in small towns was weighted down, or alternatively you could argue supported by faith and family and all of these societal expectations. And you often didn't have a choice of who you married. We now have this dizzying freedom to Marry whoever we want but we're unmoored from a lot of the societal structures for better and for worse and as a consequence We are now

expecting of our partner so much as you just said that it can be crippling Yes that it can be crippling. Yes. Esther Perel talks about this in Mating in Captivity, as well, the kind of evolution of marriage and the overburdening that we put on one partner in our lives.

And I also love the work of Alan de Botton, where he had this viral New York Times piece, Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. And I actually send my clients a lot of resources from the School of Life, his company, because I do appreciate the realistic take on what it actually entails to have a long-term successful partnership.

And whatever that means to you, whether marriage is included or not. Another beef with the You Complete Me model comes from Maria Popova. I think I'm pronouncing her name correctly. She's got a digital operation. It used to be called Brain Pickings and now it's called The Marginalian and I recently subscribed and I really like it. Anyway, Maria, if you're listening to this,

you're invited on the show whenever you would like. She's great, yeah, love her work. Beautiful writer. And I just read one of her recent newsletters, and she was talking about how the romantics, the literary movement of the 1800s, left us this notion of romance as a fusion of two individuals, whereas real love could be understood as

being devoid of wanting or needing and instead be whittled down to as I believe Aristotle put it Simply willing the good of the other person the best for somebody and love Covers a whole spectrum of relationships, I think, properly understood, not just romantic, but as you referenced before, it could be friends, it could be your barista, just having simple goodwill. That is love. And of course, it's a spectrum. You can have more goodwill for people

you're very, very close with, but when it gets caught up in wanting an attachment, that's where it can get complicated in bad ways. Does that land for you? It does. I mean, there's so much there that I see in my client work. One, it's this narrowing down of community, and I see this mostly as a problem,

generally speaking, for my cis hetero male clients in partnership, because some of the notions that you just mentioned of having goodwill or feelings of love or romantic friendships is not something that we really encourage in men and boys. In fact, we think of love as a very feminine quality, generally speaking, and something that is difficult for men to give themselves over to when they're feeling romantic feelings towards a bro. But I think those feelings are so important. And I think that they are often misconstrued as sexual desire or society wants to label that as homoerotic. And there's obviously this terror of being misidentified for a lot of cis hetero men. And that does keep them from looking for avenues of connection outside of their female partners.

So the overburdening that I mentioned, I think it does tend to fall on women to be the everything to their partner and that's something that we don't talk about a lot either. I do think that there is maybe a cultural dialogue about a dependency maybe that women have on men as providers, etc. But there's an emotional dependency that women often express as a barrier to intimacy within their partnerships as well. Yeah, I think it's very true. I see that among a lot of my male friends. And the data bared this out. There's been quite a bit of ink spilled in the past year or two about the friendship crisis in America and the fact that fewer and fewer people are reporting significant numbers of close friends and that is particularly true among men. Just

want to get back to your use of the word romantic before because that might be a use that I hadn't heard before. So you're saying that it's possible for me to have romantic feelings toward one of my bros that are not sexual in nature. Oh yeah, I mean we have a word for it. It's bromance. Your bestie is someone who you are romantically connected to. And it makes so much sense that a lot of this work on friendship came during a time when we were in isolation. We were fine to drift into parasocial relationships and people were thinking that during the pandemic these were suitable substitutes for in-person connection. But waves and waves of books, my friend Anne Friedman

and Amina Tussaud came out with big friendship during the pandemic, talking about the relationship and evolution of their friendship. But also, I think that people were really feeling the utter isolation of not having community and realizing that even Those colleague relationships that they could rely on here and there or someone on social media It just wasn't filling the same Type of void that we often feel when we lack human connection

And I think that it's only the tip of the iceberg for us to start thinking about the ways in which we can connect to other human beings that when we can strip away all of the social layers of nonsense of what that means, at the end of the day, most of us just want that connection and want to be seen and want to be understood. So bromance is one way that I think we've come up with a way for it to be okay for men to feel romantic feelings towards a friend. And I've also encountered things like biromantic.

This is a term that has come up during the pandemic, at least for me. It may have existed in studies, but I think it started popping up in popular culture, and I got asked to, like, comment on biromanticism during the pandemic. And so what that means is that, yeah, you have romantic feelings for two or more genders. And that is actually how most of us experience life. But we really don't have words for it.

And I think because romance and sex for us get conflated so easily, bisexuality is something that people are, I don't know if I can identify as that. But by romantic, simply broken down just means that you do have those romantic feelings for friends and maybe people with whom you have sex of whatever gender is your preference. And again, by romantic, it seems like you're using the word to indicate sort of an attraction and affection that is nonsexual in nature.

I want to spend time with this person. Yeah. And so anybody you might want to spend time with or be excited to be in their company, that's a romance, but that doesn't necessarily entail sex. Sexual attraction would be a subset of that perhaps. I think of it as maybe related, but not necessarily, it doesn't have to be.

So someone could be bi-romantic, but not bisexual. Someone could be bisexual, but not biromantic. So that's the thing that I think is really important to sort of tease out is that we do put a lot of our needs in one bucket, this one person who's supposed to complete you. And that can encompass all of our sexual needs, which I have thoughts about that too, and all of our romantic needs as well. have thoughts about that too, and all of our romantic needs as well.

But again, language is great and always evolving, and we use things like friend date all the time. So we're working to kind of create space for us to have these feelings and thoughts and experiences. But I think as a culture, we're not quite ready yet to say, I have a romantic relationship with my friend. It's like, well, we already kind of do, but people don't want to label it as such.

Coming up, Maisha Battle talks about five ways to improve intimacy and connection in your romantic relationships. Hello, I'm Emily, one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. Some of them hit the big time overnight, some had to plug away for years, but in our latest series we're talking about a man who was world famous before he was even born. A life of extreme privilege that was mapped out from the start, but left him struggling to find his true purpose.

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wherever you get your apps. So we've established that if you don't have a range of relationships, you might be putting your romantic partner, your spouse or your long-term partner in an unfair position because you're expecting too much, and that can really get in the way of intimacy and sex. Having established that, you've come up with a list

of five ways to improve intimacy and connection in romantic partnership. And I think in this sense, I'm using romantic in the traditional sense. Would you be cool walking through these five ways? Absolutely, yes. So when clients present a sexual issue to me, I am someone who believes there's always more to it than the nuts and bolts of sex. I really over the years have learned to

explore a few areas with my clients that seem to, when they're addressed, produce a really good outcome when it comes to just feeling more intimately connected. I think because intimacy also gets conflated with sex, we have a lot of hangups about sex. The problem is sex, but the issue is really intimacy in my experience. So one of the first things that we explore is how is your non-sexual intimacy? Because that's one of the things that can be a key indicator for how connected a couple is feeling when there's no kissing, there's no touching, there's no cuddling, or there's only cuddling on the couch watching Netflix. Okay?

This is a very specific type of intimacy that feels great, but I kind of refer to this as the puddle. Like, you get in this, like, ooey gooey puddle that is very difficult to shift and translate into sexual territory. Some people try to, and that can be an issue too, because some people use this non-sexual intimacy, these moments of comfort and goodness to then move into a sexual territory. And what I've noticed is that when people are not feeling a delineation between non-sexual intimacy and sexual intimacy, when those things bleed into each other,

it can feel very difficult to believe that your partner really wants that non-sexual intimacy from you. And so that's when I see a lot of withholding of sexual intimacy, is when the only time there's kissing, hugging, cuddling, is when there's a bid for sexual connection. So we really need to be fostering this sense of there's space for us to connect in physical ways

that show that we care about each other and that we're there for one another, but that sex is something that we do as a co-created experience that we really set a tone for. And that kind of leads to my next recommendation, which is to schedule sex. Most people do not want to do this. I am not the first person to tell clients to schedule sex, and I will not be the last.

But one of the reasons that we, as sexologists, might do this, if you see a sex therapist or a sex coach, is because we want to separate the non-sexual intimacy from the sexual intimacy. We also want to see more anticipation built up for the experience of sex. Because Esther Perel so beautifully states that sexual desire shows up when there is novelty

and when there's anticipation. And when you're sitting on the couch watching Netflix and trying to make a move, it may be very difficult because there's one, maybe a precedent there. So there's maybe more anxiety than anticipation. And also it's not novel. There's no novelty there. Sexual desires leave me alone.

I don't, I'm not interested. So if this sounds like something you're dealing with in your partnership, please understand that it is very common. And the way that you break this up is by actually setting an intention. When I get that resistance from clients, I tell them that the organic, spontaneous sex that they mourn from the earlier stages of their relationship, that's an illusion. You planned dates. When we didn't cohabitate with our partners.

We dated them. We anticipated a time in the future when we would see them, when we may or may not have sex with them. Okay? And that's why the sex is so wild at the beginning, because we don't know. And there is that question and there is a chance to sort of flirt and tease and build up between the time when you set that date and the time that you actually commit to showing up. Because the other thing is you have to both show up both mentally and physically for that experience.

You know, you put a little effort into how you look. You put some attention towards the other person and their needs. And that really does set you up for success when it comes to sexual connection. And it's something that we really easily forget, just like we forget that making out is awesome. You know, it's like people are not making out 10, 20 years in. It's just not a thing people do. If you do, amazing. Just email me.

I'd love to hear about your sex life. I'm wondering whether there are some, possibly some gender differences here. I think it might be the case that for some men, and obviously not all relationships are between men and women, but for some men, straight men, we don't actually need a lot of novelty. You just wake me up at three o'clock in the morning

on a Tuesday and I might be good to go. Whereas I think that may not be the case for many women. So I was speaking in generalizations here. Yes, another thing that I think is very difficult and something that we don't talk about is that we are human beings with hormone systems. And if you're in a heterosexual relationship, we have two wildly different hormone systems. So the fact that you mentioned you wake up and can be ready, that's because you have a 24-hour testosterone system that peaks in the

morning hours, drains throughout the day, and replenishes overnight. So it can really feel the experience of desire, of lust, that spontaneousness of it is ever-present for a lot of men. Obviously, this changes. We're all creatures of cycles, too, and it changes as we age. But for cis women, we have a 28-day cycle, and our hormones are in this dance throughout the course of our cycle. So we might only feel what men feel on a daily basis a handful of days out of the month. So that's really what can drive a wedge between heterosexual couples, and this is what I've seen. So another thing that I try to tell people

is practice working with these rhythms, working with these cycles, and acknowledging those differences, not necessarily restricting yourself to only having sex when, for instance, your partner is ovulating or is in their fertile window, et. But to maximize that time and to not maybe put as much pressure on sex happening in a certain way during the other times. So that's another thing. I'm very big on cycles and recognizing that

we are humans in cycle and we have to like work with the natural energy that we're provided. That seems like a really important message to get out because as you said, I think this is a wedge issue for many heterosexual couples where the guy can understand that it's not like video on demand where you can just play your favorite movie at 3.15 on a Wednesday, like it doesn't work like that. And it can lead to lots of feelings of rejection or you used to be this way or that way. And I hear about this all the time in private conversations.

So putting it in biological terms makes it way easier to understand, right? Depersonalizes it. Absolutely. And that's really what my clients are looking for because that hurt and that pain of rejection and the hurt and the pain of having to feel like a sexual gatekeeper, which is what a lot of my female clients in partnership with men feel like, that's hard too. Both positions really suck. So a big part of my work is this education of,

okay, this is what might be happening for you. Could we track it this month and see, or could we put some intention behind date nights, which is one of my other recommendations, to see how that might shift the energy a little bit. Because as people recount to me time and time again, this didn't happen this way at the beginning, right? But sexual energy had a lot more to sustain itself than it does later on in partnership where things are a bit more predictable.

In a lot of ways, we work towards that place of predictability with our partners and because it's a way we build trust. But that trust can also feel like I'm going to trust that you're going to do this and I'm going to have to be in this position to say no, or I'm going to trust that if I ask you if it's a good time to have sex, you're going to tell me no, because it's never a good time. So yes, I see this pattern a lot. And this is a cycle that I try to break, rather than work with. But just knowing that it's a cycle makes it much less

personal. My wife and I had this a lot in our couples counseling. What wasn't this issue in particular, it was this issue of intimate terrorism, which is, and I'm probably gonna mangle this, so I apologize, Michael Vincent Miller, but the idea that in many couples, there is one who fears abandonment and the other who fears engulfment or being overburdened or overasked.

And that can lead to a kind of intimate terrorism where each side uses the other's deepest fears against them. And we were not at that point, but we definitely had that dynamic of one of us worried about being left, the other worried about being put in a position where they weren't up to the task. And just having the pathology described

and being told that this is really common aerated the whole thing. It was just like, oh, okay, we can work with this. And I feel like what you're doing here is something really similar. Yes, I think a lot of what my clients come to me, whether they're single or partnered and experiencing this deeply personal issue

around their sexuality, they feel incredibly alone. They feel broken. They feel like they have not figured something very crucial out about their own lives. And part of my job as a coach is that education piece of giving people the information that we all mostly lack because our sexual education, in most cases, is abysmal. So there are a lot of gaps to fill in for people to help them understand what's really going on here

and why their sex life doesn't look like their expectations and why adjusting those expectations to their own realities, no one else's, you know, no one on social media telling them that all they need is this one weird trick, just what they're experiencing, and then building actionable goals around that feels so empowering for them. You know, it's just, oh, I'm not broken,

and there's stuff we can do. Just to pick up on your point about the fact that many of us don't get sufficient sex ed, I think we also don't get taught enough about interpersonal hygiene, like how to do relationships, including how to do romantic relationships, which it is, and I learned this a lot from, I keep coming back to Michael Vincent Miller, but he and Esther Perel, who you have referenced and has been on the show several times and is amazing, they really are getting the word out that romantic relationships are a kind of skill and we're sold a bill of goods in the form of you complete me, but actually

it's work and work you can get better at. And so one of that kind of brings me to your third recommendation in these five ways to improve intimacy and connection, and it is to schedule regular relationship meetings. What does that mean? Yeah. So I got introduced to this terminology when I was struggling in a past relationship, and we really needed some communication tools. So I looked up what we could do.

I was on my research grind and came across marriage meetings. So we weren't married, but we were cohabitating at the time. And it's a framework that I think has become really helpful for me in my practice. Actually, the Gottman's from the Gottman Institute created a fantastic structure for relationship

meetings that I share with my clients currently. This was something they shared in their newsletter a few months ago. But I think something that can happen to you in long-term partnership, which is related to intimacy, is that there's a level of intimacy that we all become accustomed to, which is we know intimately what our partners like to eat and how they eat. We know relatively their bathroom schedules, and that kind of intimacy is not very sexy. Those are the things that I think we just accept, right? But we forget that there's a component of intimacy, which is below that, the day-to-day puzzle,

which is how are you doing? What's top of mind for you? What are you struggling with? What was worst thing that happened this week and are you okay? Like, we struggle to have those kinds of conversations organically because we're always searching for the right time.

And the right time never happens, so those conversations never happen. And then we feel disconnected. We have no idea how our partner is really feeling, what their life is like. Some of us, and I have to say, like in my current relationship, because we're both on our own self-help journeys, we do have a lot more just organic check-in. So this might happen regularly for you in your relationship. But for those who feel more like, you know, this is my roommate. I share a household. I collaborate with them on a lot of things, but I don't really know

what's going on inside that brain. So I do think that scheduling these relationship meetings can be very helpful to getting that space and time allotted every week. Once a month, some couples really like to have kind of a check-in once a year where there's a deep dive into how things are going. I think that can be really helpful. The Gottman framework that I mentioned is a weekly check-in.

And I've definitely seen some amazing things with my clients who have implemented this type of weekly check-in, yeah. Just to say the Gottmans have been on the show too. We'll post a link to that in the show notes. But this kind of does bring us to your fourth recommendation. I think I could see how there would be a connection. You'll correct me if I'm wrong.

The fourth recommendation is to date your partner. And I imagine if you're dating, if you're getting serious about going out on dates with your partner, some of these things might come up. You might understand the inside of their skulls a little bit better. That's right. Yes. I think so many people assume that the time

that they spend with their partner is more, so the intimacy must be more. And like I said, there are levels of intimacy. So during the pandemic, I was getting a lot of like peak pandemic times, I was getting a lot of inquiries with people being like, we see each other all the time. But like, I just feel so disconnected from them. We don't know what to do. The romance is dead. And yeah, I think dating your partner, especially during a time where people could not

leave their homes or do much of anything, was a struggle. But I believe humans are resourceful and creative beings. And a lot of my clients during that time came up with really sweet, amazing, thoughtful dates that they could implement just at home. So I don't want people to think that like, oh, now we've got to go out and do what we did when we were together and spend all this money

and try to court each other. Not necessarily, but I do think there's something to having that intention of a regular cadence. Some people really like to have a set date night. Sometimes that's easier to, for instance, my couples with kids. It's just easier to, for instance, my couples with kids. It's just easier to have a sitter on a recurring basis at the ready,

but some people feel like that doesn't necessarily work for their lives. So it's about maybe using that meeting time to say, hey, I would like to really see us dating a little bit more. When would be a good time for you? When is a time in your week where you feel like you could be present for that? And again, working with what we've all got going on,

we have very busy lives, but trying to like interweave this notion of intentionality around our romantic lives can be really supportive and really helpful. Also leads us to the next, this is a sign of a good list, one bullet point, one item leading to the next. And the fifth one is always be curious. ABC. Say more about that.

Yeah. ABC. ABC, always be curious. I say this a lot to my clients. Some identify very strongly with being curious people, but we do tend to fall into patterns and we forget that our relationships are relational. We are in relation to other people and that affects how we are and how we show up for our romantic partnerships and our sexual relationships.

Something that can happen is couples aren't having as much sex as they would like because the sex that they are having is the same that they've been having for 10 years. So again, that novelty piece can be missing, but it also could be very real changes that happened, that the things that worked so well for 10 years just aren't working the same. And we have to be curious about the changes that are happening for ourselves, the changes that are happening for our partners, and how that changes how we relate to one another

in these contexts. So yes, always be curious. I want people to not just take the notion of date my partner as we go to the same steakhouse every two weeks, because that's gonna set up the same pattern, right? Date nights should be something that you both get excited about and get, oh, we get to check that off our list. Oh, there's something new. There's a new thing. It also helps to spark that in ourselves where we know

we have this person who is a willing participant in our social lives. So we can use that to our advantage to try to find things that will enrich our lives individually and as a couple. And with that, the novelty of that experience, we get to be curious with our partners, but we also get to learn more with our partners, but we also get to learn more about them because we're exploring the world and we're seeing the world

through their eyes. And that goes very far when it comes to intimate connection. Speaking of intimate connection, there's something you talk about, I believe you call it the orgasm gap. Yes. What's that mean? The orgasm gap is, it's been floating around for a while now, but it's a phenomenon that I think a lot of straight women have felt, but now has a more researched grounding. And the experience is that fewer women have orgasms than their male partners.

So men are having the experience of orgasm, it depends on the research, but sometimes three to five times more frequently than women. And that discrepancy is concerning. We would expect that this might be an issue that has to do with women. But we look at lesbian couples and we don't see this discrepancy. So what is at the core here?

At the core, in my opinion and many researchers' opinions, is that we don't know enough about female pleasure anatomy. And when I say that, specifically, the clitoris, We don't know enough about female pleasure anatomy. And when I say that specifically, the clitoris, I think there's been a lot more emphasis on this, especially in social media circles, et cetera. The clitoris is out there. She is out there, but her whole structure was not discovered until the 90s. Wow.

So what we see physically. Meanwhile, they're spending all this money on boner drugs. Ding, ding, ding, ding. So crazy, right? The New York Times just had a fantastic piece, I think maybe a month ago, about this lack of research into the clitoris and that discrepancy of how much money

is going into erectile dysfunction medications. But we have this disconnect in bedrooms across the world that we're really not talking about. There's also a cultural component to this, which is that unfortunately men are socialized to be the experts in sex. And so there's a dynamic where men don't know this because women don't know this. Nobody knows this. And men are supposed to be the experts. So the assumption is I do to you what feels good to me. And that I do to you is penetrative sex. So we're having a lot of, I think, more discussion about moving away from penetrative sex as the end-all, be-all to sex,

or kind of labeling that as sex. In fact, even with issues of losing one's virginity, we're now using language more like sexual initiation. And that sexual initiation, because there's a lot of different ways to have sex, can be lots of different things to lots of different people. I think that we're headed in a good direction to address the orgasm gap,

because we now have the full structure of the clitoris. I have a 3D printed model that I picked up from a sexuality conference that I call Sheila, and I've used her in demonstrations. I use her with clients all the time, and people are blown away, because Sheila's a lot bigger than we think and she is quite mighty.

I point to people where on the glands of the clitoris, which is akin to the tip of the male penis, there are 8,000 to 80,000 nerve endings in just the glands of the clitoris, but there's a whole structure that's deep within the vulva that encompasses the inner part of the labia. Women experience erections and that includes the whole vulva because that structure of the clitoris is an analogous structure to the male penis. We really don't know these things. We're not taught that. And then the layer of culture does keep us from having meaningful dialogue about what's happening with our bodies,

especially during sex. Women are very hesitant to give in the moment feedback about sex with male partners, generally speaking. And men tend to not receive that critical feedback in the moment very well. So that dynamic, we really have to, again, like you said, depersonalize it and say, no. The person who has the vulva is the person who knows what feels good. And the person with the penis can be inquisitive, be curious, and take that information as just that, it's information, so that he can be a better partner.

And I think once we recognize this, once we start having more permission to have these conversations in real time, which is something I included in a chapter of my current book, because I think it's so important and I do think that it is the key to bridging this orgasm gap. I think we can start to have more egalitarian experiences in the bedroom. I want to talk about your current book in a minute, but a few other things to say before that. First, I wish we had some sort of prize to give you because the show has been around six or seven years and you are definitely the first person to use the words clitoris, labia, and vulva on the show.

I'm probably the first person to use the word boner. Congratulations to both of us. My jaw has dropped. I say these words daily. My search history on my laptop is filthy because I am constantly looking up sex things. And this is something that people should hear too. If you have a sex question,

please feel free to investigate that and look for trusted sources. Look for people like myself who have written about these things, who understand sexual phenomenon and are writing about it from the perspective of you are not broken. There is not one quick fix.

Skip those articles. Go straight to what is happening on a biological and physiological basis because so many of us are missing that information. And information is the key to all of our sexual freedom. And it doesn't have to be a gross odyssey into the nether regions of the internet. It can be a real light and gentle investigation for personal purposes. And just think of it as another extension of your health

because it is. Yeah, this is all massively helpful and I love that last point. It's another aspect of health. I do wanna go back to how to do romantic partnership better. And then I want to move into dating and hooking up and lots of other interesting romantic questions that I have for you. But on this issue of communication, which again, can be the key to unlocking sexual

functionality, for lack of a better word, you've extolled the virtues of having a free-flowing communication, but I believe you've also made the point elsewhere, not yet here, because I haven't given you a chance to make it, that there is the potential to overdo it. There is the potential to say too much and sometimes you do have to like just let shit go. Yeah that's true. I do see this in my couples that I work with where sometimes you can talk an issue to death and sex is one of those things. When I'm getting to know a couple I ask them how they talk about sex. What's your communication pattern around sex?

And it might, nine times out of 10, it's something like this. We don't talk about it, and then time goes by, we don't have it, and then they'll forget to empty the dishwasher. And so not only are we to empty the dishwasher. And so not only are we talking about the dishwasher not being emptied, like I asked, but also we're not having sex. And it's like the same conversation over and over again.

And there's not much to be gained by having the same conversation over and over again without taking a pause and saying, wait, why are we having the same conversation over and over again without taking a pause and saying, wait, why are we having the same conversation over and over again? What is the core issue here? Because it might be something that's out of both of our hands.

In my experience, I think I have had to learn how to not say everything that I'm thinking to my partner, like every little thing. I am a Virgo, I'm very to my partner, like every little thing. I am a Virgo, I'm very analytical, I notice things, I want to point out patterns. The biggest compliment someone can give me is that my list flows, so thank you, Dan. I will take that little gem and I will run with it.

But yeah, so I have had to think about what is useful in this particular conversation and what can I hold closer to the vest and maybe say at a later time when things are less heated or not say at all because it's not adding anything. It's not moving the conversation forward. It's just me noticing something irritating. And that's part of a relationship. People are going to be irritating.

And I would hope that my partner, and I assume that he does, extends that courtesy to me as well. Coming up, Maisha Battle talks about some advice for people currently in the dating game, including my producer, Marissa, who I dragooned into asking a few questions here. Maisha is also gonna talk about the dating zen mindset and how meditation practice and looking for a mate

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the destination for business podcasts with shows like The Best One Yet, How I Built This and many more. Wondery means business. OK, let's talk about your book. You wrote a book called This Is Supposed to Be Fun. Yeah. And it really does dwell, in the most part, on dating talk about your book. You wrote a book called This Is Supposed to Be Fun. Yeah. And it really does dwell in the most part on dating and hooking up. I imagine there are a lot of people listening to this show

who are in that sphere. They're in that zone, they're in that mode. They may have had relationships, but they're not in one right now. And a lot of the people I know who are dating, it kind of sucks. The apps can feel like a rat race, and it can feel like you're just putting another job

on top of all the other responsibilities in your life. But what is your advice for those who are engaged in this right now? Yeah, the biggest piece of advice that I have to give for people who are choosing to go on the apps, and not everybody is, but the apps are a tool. You don't have to conform to them. You don't have to compare your dating life to someone else's. It is completely your

experience to curate. And the way in which you do that is by putting as much of yourself into your profile as feels comfortable for you. A lot of people get that initial shock of, I'm doing what now? I'm putting that I'm looking for this specific thing or this particular person out into the world for people to see. And that can be, people stop there, right? They go, they open the app and go, I have to put a picture up and no, I'm not going to do that. So the initial shock can be, well, you have to work through it, right? You have to sit with it and go, why am I afraid to put myself out there? Why is making it known to the world that I value partnership? Why is that such a big thing for me? There could be a lot of stuff that gets stirred up just by putting yourself out there.

The reason that I wanted to write the book was because I saw that in helping my clients to put more of themselves in their profiles instead of these sort of blanket, almost like CV or resume style profiles, it was really helping them to increase the quality of the matches that they were receiving. It was also helping them to spend time with people they actually

cared about and to progress relationships even farther, like beyond the first or second date. It was helping them, a lot of my clients maybe are new to sex and was helping them to navigate new hurdles to, what do I do here? What do I, this person wants this and I'm not that into that. So we build sexual communication skills and that's why I've devoted a whole chapter to giving sexual feedback is because that is a part of dating.

And there are a lot of books about dating that include nothing about sex, when that is actually a huge motivator for a lot of people. It's not the only thing. And I do give people the opportunity in the book to sort of weigh the pros and cons for them, whether or not they want to use dating apps as hooking up or not. So that's another thing, too, that I would like to say to people who are new to this. If you're thinking that it's just for hooking up, it's not.

They're tools for connection. And that's how I like to reframe it for my clients and to help them to find the types of connection they're looking for. What do you say to people who are having trouble finding, I don't know if this term brings us back to the top of this conversation around you complete me, what do you say to people who are having trouble finding, I don't know if this term brings us back to the top of this conversation around you complete me, what do you say to people who are having trouble finding the one? There probably is not a one. There might be many that you need to explore before you get to good enough. And that just totally goes back to the why you will marry the wrong person That just totally goes back to the, why you will marry the wrong person article. But I think that for so many people, they start off dating with that feeling of deficit

and having to prove their worthiness for some partner that has qualities that are going to enhance their life. And I think we do think of that in very materialistic and superficial ways. I've had the privilege of seeing a lot of my clients like wishlist qualities that they really want to focus on. And they're very much focused on height, weight, job, where a person graduated from college.

The fact that they did graduate from college is something very telling. There are a lot of people in this world who don't have degrees and are very, very capable of love. And so I try to also help people take a step back from these checklists and to focus more on how they feel. Because a lot of times when I say, last couple of days you've gone on with people who meet all of this criteria, how did you feel? It's usually not great.

It's usually like, I felt I was being interviewed. I felt like he was sizing me up for wifey material and it didn't feel great. I'm like, great. So can we move beyond that now? Because now you know how it feels for you. Let's not make other people feel that way. Let's create experiences where you can actually be you and they can actually be them. And you can give each other the opportunity to learn and to decide for yourselves whether or not this is a good match or whether or not there's something long term in in this for you, if that's what they're looking for. It takes a lot of stepping back from those expectations of

society where you have to have a certain partner who looks a certain way and does a certain thing, which has its own problems. And I talk about in the book very openly, like some of those assumptions we have are racist. Some of those assumptions we have are sexist. Some of them are fat phobic. They are just rooted in things that don't help us connect. They help us to disconnect. And there's an opportunity here through expanding our vision of what connection is to really reach something meaningful.

With the apps, we have the capability of reaching a lot more people than we did before. And by narrowing our perspective of who that person is, who are we to know? Like, I really believe there's so much more to connection than a lot of these qualities that people put forward. Can you have some of the qualities? I think so, but I think that's more happenstance than it is like it prerequisite to connection. It's my spiel. It's hard out there.

Also just know that everybody is hard out there. I met my partner on Tinder and we were going on five years in July. You hear these stories all the time. This person wasn't anything like I was looking for and they're so great for me. That's what I want more of. I want more curiosity with what could that even mean to be with a person who sees me fully who hears me? Who is here for my growth and I'm surprised by them literally every day That's not something I've ever seen on a list. I

Feel a little out of my depth talking about dating since I haven't been single since 2006 depth talking about dating since I haven't been single since 2006. Marissa, I don't know if you're comfortable with this. Marissa is one of the boss producers on the show. Marissa, do you have any questions from Aisha that that might be lobbed in? So I actually just came back from meditation retreat. And when you're in silence for many days, what happens is what's alive in your mind is just magnified, and you're watching it.

And I was specifically inhabiting two hell realms. And one of them had to do with love and romance. And we are in silence, so everything's very heightened. And I'd see people with wedding rings and just envision their perfect lives and think about people and couples and just so much mental proliferation and projection about that happiness. And hilariously, when we broke silence, I was sitting next to these two people,

and they were like, Where do you live? And I said where I lived. And I was like, What about you? And she goes Northampton. And then he goes, Me too, we're married. The first couple I talked to on retreat, which it's very rare to marry people on retreat would even come anyway. That's a big thing for me is that I feel like that can also be a block, is this projection of thinking once you are in the married romantic zone problems disappear, which I know that they don't. But I think that just feels like such a big orientation in life. It can feel hard

to accept and be okay with what is when I look around and I'm like, wow, you have a spouse or a partner to support you. It can feel isolating to be without that. Yes. A lot of my clients are looking for that level of support and consistency and knowing. And I think that we, as we date, get glimpses of that with each person that we date. And again, I think relationships are relational. So how I related to people in my past who I dated, whether it was a week or six months or three years, like those people were part of my transformational journey.

Like their value is, I cannot underscore their value, even though there's some of them I just don't like as people. But I needed to go through that to get to a place of, wow, I'm in a relationship where I don't have to worry about someone else so much. So I can address some of the stuff that I was bringing to the table that was maybe keeping me from deeper levels of intimacy. It's a little bit of that both and, right? The search is a part of getting to that destination of I have that security of a partner who I can grow into

who I'm supposed to be becoming, but you already are. And the people that you're attracting through dating are helping you along that journey. They're showing you what you need. They're showing you what you want. Largely, I think I ended up with someone who is kind of an amalgam of a lot of people that I dated, who along my journey helped me see

what was really valuable to me. And that actually brings me to a point that might surprise your listeners or you, Dan, that I'm a big proponent of having sexual values. Someone who thinks that you can have these types of connections with people who really align with how you want to live your life and that that's important, right? That sexual values are just as important for your growth and development than other values

in your life. So that also really helps my clients to not only recognize what they need from partnership, but also to ask for it in ways that are really attracting. I think we have this venue of app-based dating and it can feel really limiting, but again, I think of it as a tool. And all tools can be modified to your needs. And by putting your sexual values out there or any relationship values, maybe in the next iteration of your dating profile, Marissa, you could put something in there that like met a couple at a meditation retreat and would love to be them one day.

It's like there is something that you can take from these experiences to put out into the world, to show people who are like you, here I am. This is what I'm looking for. This is what I want. I want someone who's here for my growth and development. This is what it looked like to me and it was really moving. If it moves you, I'm here, take me out.

Yeah. We often talk about in meditation how major barrier to progress is wanting to progress. That desire of that sort, that kind of craving is a hindrance. And I can imagine, and this may not be specifically true for Marissa, but I can imagine based on her question

that you could get into a situation where this feeling that you're missing out on this stability and this flavor of happiness that can come through being in a long-term committed relationship, that desire can be a hindrance to achieving that. It can make you, I don't know, sweaty on dates or can skew your judgment about who's the right person for you. So if I'm hunting in the right direction here, Maisha and Marissa, what would you, Maisha, recommend?

Yeah, I've definitely seen this in my practice where people want so badly for a vision that they have. And the visions are great. The visions we can actually take from and utilize some of the information in that vision to focus on values and focus on what it is qualitatively speaking they're looking for. But in the book, I describe how the ultimate goal is to kind of get to that dating Zen mindset. So I'm glad you mentioned meditation, where you're holding two things at the same time that feel contradictory, which are the ultimate goal of partnership, but the lack of expectation that will happen.

And so I don't expect this to happen exactly in the way that I want it to, but I am very focused on the thing that I want to achieve. And I think that when I see my clients slip into that, the things they say are like, I'm just, I'm having a really good time. I'm not overthinking it. I'm not trying to make something into something that it's not. I'm meeting a really good time. I'm not overthinking it. I'm not trying to make something

into something that it's not. I'm meeting these great people. I'm having good interactions. I'm able to see more clearly where there is a disconnect, and I'm not forcing my will upon the relationship. So it's just like this tension of holding these two things at the same time, but also the stability of that, which is very... And I experienced this myself in dating too. I remember very clearly,

this was about two weeks, I think, before I had my first date with my current partner, where I said, I am so tired. I am so drained from all of this. I just want to have fun. I just want to meet some good people to spend time with and enjoy myself. And then I don't really even care what happens after that. And it was that sigh of relief. And I did end up with something that feels like it's heading in the direction of what I was ultimately looking for, like I said, five years in. It's hard. And I think I wanted to not create a book that made it seem like these are just the things you have to do. And it's going to all feel great. Like I recognize within the book that things suck out there and it is painful.

Rejection is painful and when you sign up to date, you're signing up to be rejected over and over again. It's how we deal with that. It's how we process that. It's the people that float in and out of our lives that help us to sort of like grow and understand new things about ourselves. That process is really important because the process is part of getting to that ultimate goal. I like what you said about dating Zen and the two weeks before meeting the person who's your partner now that you've just surrendered or capitulated and in the positive sense and that just describes the arc of every meditation retreat I've been on. It's three or four days in.

I'm just trying so hard to, for what? I don't even know. And then at some point I just give up and that's when things get interesting. That's right. Before I let you go, anything that you wish we had asked, but failed to ask?

No. I've really enjoyed our conversation. so I wouldn't want it any other way. Perfect. Zen in and of itself. Can you please promote your book and any other things you've put out into the world our listeners should know about? So my book, This Is Supposed to Be Fun, How to Find Joy in Hooking Up, Settling Down, and Everything in Between, is now available where most books are sold. And maybe buy it from your local mom and pop bookstore. Just a little plug for local booksellers out there that have it. And my website is myeshabattle.com.

There you will find some writing. I have a blog there. So remember when I told everybody to look into your sex questions, you can start there. And I also offer a monthly e-zine, which is kind of akin to like a Delia's magazine, but instead of descriptions of crop tops, I tell you about the clitoris. And it's a way for me to get a lot of information out into the world about sex and a little bit of dating, but it's mostly sex-focused, so you can check that out as well at myeshabattle.com.

You should start a merch business where you sell 3D models of the clitoris. A woman was doing that at a conference. So I don't want to step on her toes. Myisha, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. It was such a pleasure being here.

And yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show. Thanks again to Myisha Battle. Great to talk to her. Thank you to you for listening. And thanks to everybody who worked so hard to make this show a reality. Our producers are Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson and we get additional production support from Colin Lester Fleming, Isabel Hibbard, Carolyn Keenan and Wonbo Wu. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production,

DJ Cashmere is our managing producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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