We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - 224. Get REAL Pleasure & Stop Faking It with Vanessa Marin

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

Sex Therapist Vanessa Marin is back on the pod to discuss how we can all make sex more ENJOYABLE. She shares with us:  How we can stop faking our orgasms and experiment with real pleasure;  How to communicate honestly with our partners about what we want in bed; and Why masturbation can be an opportunity for self-exploration and reclamation. She also offers empowering advice for individuals recovering from sexual trauma.  Plus, Glennon contemplates writing erotica.  CW: Discussion of sex after sexual trauma  For our previous conversations with Vanessa, check out: Episode 195 Sex Talk & That Night in Miami: Sex Therapy with Vanessa Marin, Episode 196 How Glennon & Abby Learned to Talk Dirty with Vanessa Marin, and Episode 213 Sex Fantasies: What Do They Say About Us? with Vanessa Marin. About Vanessa: Vanessa Marin is a sex therapist and instant New York Times Best Selling author of Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life, co-written with her husband and partner-in-crime, Xander Marin. Vanessa is here to help you kick shame out of the bedroom so you can start feeling the connection, pleasure, and joy you deserve! TW: @VMTherapy IG: @vanessaandxander To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And to be loved we need to be normal. Hello, lovebugs. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we have a sweet sexy episode for you with our fave Vanessa Marin, who makes sex feel doable. She's gotten you talking. This is the fourth episode that we've done here. I know. I just like Vanessa's approach very much. Vanessa Marin is a sex therapist and New York Times

bestselling author of sex talks, the five conversations that will transform your love life, co-written with her husband, Sandra Marin. Vanessa is here to help you kick shame out of the bedroom so you can start feeling the connection, pleasure, enjoy, you deserve. Thank you for coming back again. We just wanted to ask you a bunch of questions. Yeah, I'm ready. And I want to ask you also to tell us what people ask you the most often. First, I wanna ask you this. We've done three episodes together already.

And one of the most frequently asked questions to me after people listen to those episodes are, if I've been faking orgasm with my partner, I've heard this like 20 times, okay? If I have been faking orgasms with my partner, how do I come clean? I wanna stop it now, I wanna get real, I wanna start over, I wanna explore how to have an actual orgasm,

but I'm in so much shame and fear because I have been faking it this whole time. Where do I start? So we'll just start with an easy one like that. Yes. Okay, if you have two options here, I'm going to give you two choices. But first, what I want you to start with is forgiving yourself. So nobody sets out faking orgasms to be a jerk to their partner. Like, let me figure out how I can

really mess with my partner. I'm going to fake this for 10 years. And then when we get down there, then I'm really going to throw them for a loop. No, we fake orgasm because we're taught so much crap about how our bodies work. We're taught that it's not okay for us to ask for what we want. We're taught that we're supposed to be more focused on our partners' experience than our own. It's a whole lot of BS that a lot of us have been taught and faking feels like the easiest way to get around all of that.

And I say that as somebody who faked every single orgasm with every partner for years. So I get this. So going forward, what do we do? Two options. The first one is the harder one. So that's to come clean to your partner and tell them that you have been faking. And so if you want to do that, what I would do is share with your partner the reasons why you started faking

and talk about all those things that I mentioned. Like I was taught, it wasn't okay for me to ask for what I want. I never knew what my body needed. I was ashamed. So share it with your partner. So you're helping give them the context. I never meant this to hurt you. I completely understand that it does.

And then you have to leave the space for your partner to have their feelings about it. Because they're gonna have feelings. And it's gonna be tricky. They're gonna feel like sad. They might feel upset. They might feel like their trust has really been shaken. So you're gonna have to sit with that

and that is gonna be challenging. But it's also can be a huge relief to finally just get everything out there in the open and be able to regroup after that. Okay, how do we need to approach our sex life differently to make sure that this is happening for you? Because I can almost guarantee you that your partner wants you to be having real orgasms. So if that option just has you sweating from head to toe, then the other option is to tell a little bit of a white lie around this. And to tell your partner, I've been noticing lately that the things that my body is responding to feel really different from what it used to respond to. And so I want to be able to like give you more feedback for us to like try some new things out.

I'm not really sure why I'm not responding the same way that I used to, but things are just different. And you can even say like, you know, when I'm masturbating, touching myself, like I'm noticing things feel different. So this is a white lie. It's not really the truth of what happened,

but it is something that's told by you. Well, sort of true. Things are feeling different because you've decided you're not going to lie about it. Yeah. In general, my advice is always like the more open and honest we are, the better, even though it is very hard to do sometimes. But I do think this option can be okay in some circumstances where you're still giving

your partner the ability to kind of reset. I'm like, okay, we've got to try some different things. Let's find what's working. Let's see what you like. And there also is a reality of like what we like does change throughout our lives. So couples get into trouble if they kind of get locked into a pattern of, well, this is what works. This is what we always do.

We talked about that before, right? So you're introducing this idea of just trying a slightly different approach. So that'll spare your partner's feelings. It won't feel as hard on you, but it'll still give you that opportunity to reset your sex life. That's nice to give. And everyone has different levels of safety in their relationship. So that's exactly that's great. But I do think if it's possible in terms of sex being about everything it's kind of a beautiful thing for your partner

to know that you are a person that doesn't always say what you want. Here's an example. I just learned in therapy that I never really say what I want to watch on TV. I just make a decision based on what I think the family most of the people will want. And then I say that thing. Anyway, the point being that a lot of women don't say what they need or want because they'd rather just keep the peace, then introduce themselves. So wouldn't it be a beautiful exercise in a relationship just to use that one thing to then begin to explain that you're going to start figuring out what you like and want and need in a lot of different areas and make it even bigger than about that one thing.

It could become a revolution. The first person that you can trust to tell the truth about that information. Like I didn't tell these other people, because I knew it wouldn't be relevant to them. And you're the first person that I trust. Yeah. Exactly. Wants to do this.

They're real way with me. I want to circle back just really quick. What do you want to be watching on TV? I mean, honestly, I want to watch Vanderpump rules. It's really. I want to circle back just really quick. What do you want to be watching on TV? I mean honestly, I want to watch Vanderpump rules It's really what I want to watch I want to watch trash TV and this is what's interesting is is even though She's not saying what she wants. She's still very opinionated about what we end up watching That's what we talked about with my therapist. Because she's fighting for the energy of the room and to control what the thing is that

we're all watching in a way. And it's hilarious that it's not even what you want. It's a thing that goes into what do women want? Because the scariest thing, what I want desperately is for the energy in this room to be correct. What I want desperately is for what should happen to happen. Yes, but that's a different question than what do I want. I think this is what works for me. This is what works for me.

I think that in my family and work, whenever I can be perceived as a bit of a tyrant, like as I know I want my, but I'm never getting what I want. I'm just trying to control the thing to make everybody happy, but nobody's gonna be happy, but nobody's happy because nobody's getting what they want. This is another thing Vanessa, this is with a different therapist, okay? I think that this is also related.

My God. It's related. It's all related and this is what I think is so interesting about sex is it's very easy for us to compartmentalize sex and think, oh, it's just that thing that happens in our bedroom with the doors close and the lights off, but how we show up in sex is how we show up in life. And so even if you're feeling really nervous to read sex talks to have these conversations to start working on your sex life to remind yourself, this is going to have impacts wildly, wildly beyond the best. This is going to affect every relationship in my life, every area of my life. There's so much growth to be had here. It is so true. It is so true. It feels like you've got to nail it all before you can get to the sex part of your

life. But actually, if you can just explore through sex, it can go the other way. It can start affecting every other part of your life. You can start with sex. Can you talk to us about masturbating? Because you just said it, like it's the easiest thing to talk about or like it's just nothing. But actually, lots of us have been taught to be ashamed of masturbating. So just talk to us about how to undo the shame.

What's this skinny on masturbating? Okay, I'll lose us back to the last episode. We'll really start talking about some hard things here. So we were talking about Amanda's experience with her daughter, like the back scratches at night, right? And like this way that kids are so tuned into their own bodies, their own needs, and their own desires. So kids masturbate.

There is evidence of fetuses in the womb masturbating. Now it's not masturbation in the way that we think of it as adults. A lot of us think of masturbation is, you know, very sexual, but for kids it's, it's just an exploration of their bodies. Oh, that feels good. Just like my little back scratches feel good. And a lot of us have had experiences as children of being caught masturbating. And that was one of the earliest experiences that we got of learning. Pleasure is not okay. That's shameful. Don't do that. Don't touch yourself. Something is weird about you that you were inclined to do that. You're absolutely. And in particular, women get a lot of negative socialization about masturbating as well with boys there's sort of a like boys will be boys kind of thing about it. It's kind of a cute celebration. Yeah, I remember like the boy baby boys in the bathtub

And they're like playing with their penises and it's like oh isn't this hilarious like we expected That is an appropriate exploration But a girl doing it is like oh Jesus is an appropriate exploration, but a girl doing it is like, oh, Jesus. Exactly. It's so much more shameful. And so as women, most of us feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of masturbating a huge percentage

of women have never masturbated before. So this is one of those areas where for me, the best thing to do is just get really fired up about this. Like masturbation is a deeply spiritual act. Like being connected with your own body, understanding what your body needs to feel good, to feel pleasure, to have orgasms, like what more powerful experience can you have with your own body? And yet so many of us have been robbed of the

opportunity to have that kind of relationship. You've been taught so much shame that we just never access that part of ourselves. So for me masturbation is a reclamation. It's a this is my body. I deserve to touch it with love and curiosity and openness and excitement. I deserve to explore what brings me pleasure, to explore what brings me to orgasm. I deserve that intimate knowledge of myself, that intimate relationship with myself. So for me, that, yeah, that energy of like getting fired up about what we've been robbed of, that's such a great way to overcome the shame that might come up for you in the moment.

So now, let me like take a deep breath and dial that back. That was so beautiful. That was so beautiful. Super beautiful. Practically, I always want to give practical tips too. If you just feel so much shame about this, we can break it down into baby steps.

So a first one would be just visualize yourself, touching yourself. You don't actually have to touch yourself, just visualize it and practice getting comfortable just with that image. And then maybe the next step could be you just place your hand on the outside of your vulva and you don't move it, you're not touching anything, you're not trying to make yourself feel good, you're literally just holding your hand over yourself and practicing like breathing deeply and connecting to yourself. So I mean, even just that can be such a beautiful experience for so many women, but take it slow and use your way into it. And you are fan of vibrators? I imagine. Are we all fan of vibrators?

I think vibrators can be great. I mean, they can deliver an intensity of stimulation that the human body just cannot. And for a lot of people with ability issues, people on medications where they might not be feeling as sensitive, like they can be absolute life changers. Also, for people who have never really explored their genitals before and don't really know, like a vibrator is going to be a lot more intense, so it can be kind of a shortcut to like, oh, okay, that feels good. I know what that sensation is like. Yeah, so I always like to be clear. Sometimes people think, oh, well, if you're using a vibrator, it's not the same or it's not

the real thing. There's no orgasm hierarchy here. They're like, yeah. It's just whatever brings your body pleasure. Hi, it's Elise Loonon, the New York Times bestselling author of Honor Best Behavior, and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread. I'm pulling the thread. I'm joined in conversation by those who can help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming. My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny sees of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow. Listen and follow pulling the thread and Odyssey podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever

you get your podcasts. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing likely manual. Simulation to orgasm partner. Orgasm. That's what I was going to ask. It can, but it's not just about the vibrator. So it's, I think when we are masturbating, we have to be, and this is for people of all genders, all genitals, we have to be thoughtful about the patterns that we're creating on our own. So there's kind of the saying the nerves that fire together, wire together, we're just very good at making patterns. And so if you are masturbating in the same way every single time, and so that could be with a vibrator, it could be a specific technique you're using for people with penises, it could

be using a certain level of pressure or a certain level of speed, it could be watching porn, anything. If you are only doing that thing, your body just gets accustomed to it. And it can be harder to experience that with a partner. So I think an easy rule of thumb is just mix it up with yourself. We talked about keeping it spicy with your partner. Keep it spicy with yourself. Maybe like half the time that you masturbate, try something different. And then half the time you can use your old standby method.

And then with vibrators in particular, one thing that I find happens is that vibrators can turn us into very lazy masturbators. For a lot of us, it's like you turn it on, you hold it in place. Exactly. That was good 45 seconds. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, for a lot of people, you can have an orgasm like that.

It's so fun. You can have an orgasm while you're planning your groceries. You don't even have to think about what you're doing. It's a quick, commercial break. Have you seen the people who like where like they put an egg or some sort of vibrational device inside their partner and then they go out and their partner actually has the on and off button? So they're like walking down the aisle. Berlin. their partner and then they go out and their partner actually has the on and off button.

So they're like walking down the aisle. Berlin. No, they're like grocery shopping. They're like walking down the aisles and she goes and grabs like the Oreos from the aisle and she falls to the ground. She's not. Where are you seeing this? What kind of toggar are you at? I mean, these are on my reels on IJ. Oh, for shit's sake. Oh, okay. Do you know? There are a lot of great Bluetooth enabled toys. But yes, and lazy masturbation is delightful sometimes. Like, I'm not knocking it.

But if you are then with a partner, there can be this mental impatience that kicks in of like, oh, this is taking so long. And like, now I have to focus. And I have to give feedback. So that's just something to be aware of. Like it's okay to have your lazy masturbation, but sometimes practice being in the moment, moving the vibrator around, taking little breaks from the vibrator and just recognize

it's going to be different when you're with a partner. That's good. I just want to real quick want to tell you just because I just thought of it. When I was in elementary school, this is the only time that I've ever had a major athletic side is that we had this. It was called the Tough 20 Club, and it was a rope that hung from the ceiling of the gym.

Oh yeah. And we're done with this. I could fucking clear that rope. I was like the least athletic, but I was the first in line for that rope. And I don't know, I don't know what the hell was happening. But by the time I got to the top rope,

I was like, this is climbing ropes is the most amazing feeling. And just like hanging onto the top of the rope, looking out like, oh my God, it's like heaven at the top of a rope. Okay, this is actually a huge gift that you're giving to your audience because this is one of the top three female masturbation techniques.

It's like some sort of grinding sensation. So most girls discover this on the playground. I was with you exactly the same. Like, I love PE. But some people will do it with, it could be like a bald-up towel, clothes, against the side of like a desk. So Grinding is one of the top three techniques, but it's not something that ever gets talked about.

So so many women feel like something is super wrong with me if that's the way that I used to get off if that was the thing that works for me. But it's not, it's incredibly, incredibly common and it makes perfect sense. Great. I feel better about it already. Yes.

Vanessa, a lot of people after some of our episodes have asked, all of this stuff is hard enough to enter into, to talk to, to try to try new ways. What about people who are survivors of sexual abuse, of sexual assault? Are people for whom this is triggering in very, very real ways? I just really would love to offer those people any help in terms of the very difficult client out of like trying to find

your safeest place in a place that has been the least safe for you? Absolutely. So in sex talks, we do have a section of it where we talk about the experience of abuse. We also have at our website, it's vmtherapy.com. My initials, if you go to the website, we have a free course that we give away to anybody who's been a survivor of sexual abuse. It's not meant to be a replacement for therapy. I want to be really clear about that. I think anybody who's experienced sexual abuse deserves to have the container of therapy, but it is a very practical guide for understanding the specific impacts that abuse can have on your sex life and for the specific impacts that abuse can have on your sex life, and for rediscovering how to make sex feel safe and pleasurable again.

So it's called a Survivors Guide. It's at vmtherapy.com. And so the main thing is, it's really important to recognize that it does have impacts. So I'm going to just speak to women. For now, I do want to acknowledge people of all genders have experienced sexual abuse. But a lot of women, when I work with them around this, have the tendency to downplay it. That happens so long ago. I'm over it by now. A lot of women have had a way worse than I had it.

And they don't recognize like, what happened to you was not okay. It doesn't matter how long ago it was. It doesn't matter how bad or not was. It doesn't matter how bad or not bad it was. Like you never, ever deserve to have your boundaries violated. And it's very important to recognize that it is going to impact your sex life. And that can be one of the hardest things. It's like you endured something you shouldn't ever have had to endure. And you also have to deal with the lasting impacts.

But a lot of women say it felt really validating to acknowledge that it is getting in the way. So some common things that can come up is you might feel yourself dissociating during sex. Like it feels like your body is there in the moment, but your brain, your spirit, your soul is like miles and miles away. You can even feel like a sense of watching yourself.

Like a lot of women will say, I feel like I'm up on the ceiling looking down at my body. You might have a hard time with like feeling a lot of hyper vigilance. If your partner touches you, you feel yourself tense up a lot or you're always kind of unguarded for when they're gonna initiate.

You might have low sex drive. This goes back to that enjoyment desire connection that we talked about in the earlier episodes. If your body has learned that sex is an unsafe, scary, painful, unwanted experience, why are you going to have a wild desire for that? Right. So those are just some of the many things that can come up. And there's more detail in that in that course that I mentioned. But just being able to recognize, like these things make sense. There's nothing wrong with me. It makes sense that I have these experiences. Why is missionary sex missionary style called missionary style? Because suddenly I was reading

your book and I kept reading missionary and I was like, whoa, why are we calling this missionary? I actually don't know the history behind that. What, yeah, where did the name come from? What, did it trace back to the missionaries and we decided to give some name to it, but yeah, no, it feels just very- It feels just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very-

It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- It's just very- called suspicionary sex. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at that because in the last episode, we're glendin' you were talking about. But what is the origin of our fantasies? What is it saying about us? We are always trying to connect to the higher level of us. Like, quote unquote, what does it mean from my brain? What does it mean from who I am as opposed to?

We are wild ass animals. We were born that way. And unless it's beaten out of us, we will remain that way. But the world has civilized the shit out of us so that anytime there's anything that feels odd or like, well, that's wrong. And so it wouldn't surprise me at all that if it was the missionaries, they went over and saw people being luscious, joyful wild animals. And they're like, well, we need to just rein this joy in a little bit. Exactly.

We'll give them one way to do it. We will do. We'll do, interesting way. We'll do to their sexuality, what we're about to do to their faith and their economies and their bottom. I'm gonna have to look that up now, go up the history. I have to do to their faith and their economies and their bottom. I'm gonna have to look that up now. I have to look up the history.

I have to look up the history. You don't have to. I feelings checked it. Lauren, our producer just sent us something and it says that according to Wikipedia, it is said that the name missionary position arose because this sex position was supposed to have been taught by Christian missionaries as the only quote, proper sex position. Yep. Not shocked.

Makes total sense. Oh my God. Okay. We should start calling the gender binary, the missionary binary. Yeah. We should start calling it missionary. And of course it's one of the positions that's the least pleasurable. Yeah, exactly.

Of course that's the only proper way to have it. Unrelated, unrelated, and as I'm sure they didn't calculate that. I have a question around times in our lives that are more sex-filled and less sex-filled. Like, this idea of quantity and how it, I think it's pervasive in our culture and it gets really ugly, I think, in relationships. Is there a period of time during a person's life that is less sexy, sexed around than others. Because I kind of think that there's like this period at like midlife that there's like kind of this law because there's so fucking much going on.

Like your kids are still at home or they're about to go to school and your parents are kind of getting older and you're dealing with that, there's just like this 30 to 50 year old period. I thought you were gonna say 30 to 50 year periods. No. But this time of life, is there a time of life that there are just like some ebbs and flows and lows, and when are they, and am I in one now?

So studies have shown that one of the biggest ebbs in a couple of sex life happens after kids. Just the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the sleepless nights, and even the physical discomfort of it can be a really difficult time. But in terms of like overall, you know, patterns, I've really found that every couple has their own unique ebbs and flows. And it is important for us to normalize this too. Like we've talked so much in our other episodes about this belief that we all have that more is better. We just need to be having

all the sucks and then everything is okay. But the reality is we all have seasons of life where we're more focused on physical intimacy and we're less focused on physical intimacy. And that's okay. So we did a study. I can't remember if I mentioned this in one of our previous episodes, but we did a frequency survey. And it's not a proper scientific survey, but we have had 70,000 people answer it, which is quite a lot. And we found that there weren't huge noticeable differences in how much people are having sex across different age groups,

which I found quite fascinating. There was a slight decline as people got older, but we had plenty of respondents in their 70s, 80s who are still quite active. So, it's not that once you hit a certain age, just a fast, down-hills slide from there, it's really more individual. It does always come back to us being able to ask ourselves in the season of life that we're in right now, are we feeling satisfied with the amount of connection

that we're having? So again, it's really easy for us to go to, we should be having more sex. I feel like our friends are having more sex. Everybody seems to be talking about having more sex. Great. I don't care. What is it that you feel for yourself? Are you satisfied with the amount of sex that you're having? And I will also say, I challenge every couple to push yourselves to make a little bit more space for physical intimacy than you might think. So not force yourself to have sex if you don't want to. I will never in a million years say that, but create the space for that because the

reality is we all lead really busy lives. It's very easy for sex to fall to the bottom of the to-do list, retired, we've got other stuff going on. We just don't make the space for it. And I'm sure you guys have noticed in our lives, like unless we make the space for things, life just fills up with lots of other stuff. So challenge yourself to say, you know, maybe we're going to carve out time for date nights. And it doesn't mean that we need to have sex on those times. Maybe we're just going to make out. Maybe we're just going to hold hands. Maybe we're just going to have an intimate conversation with each other, but make the space for that. And I said, don't you have a make out rule that just went viral?

I feel like, did I tell you this? Oh my gosh, yes. Tell us about the make out rule, because this was really helpful to millions of people. Yes, it was a TikTok that I made that I think at this point, there have been eight or nine million people that have watched it, so it really took off. So this is a rule, and a guideline. Right. Some people got a rule, and a guideline. Some people got a little triggered by the rule.

It's a guideline, a fun thing that Xander and I decided to start doing, because I realized that we had really stopped making out. And I think a lot of couples and long-term relationships stop making out. And for Xander and I, it was one of the most fun things about our relationship in the early stages. We would make out like all the time, and it was so fun,

and we would enjoy making out just for the sake of making out. You need to find making out. You need to find making out. To find making out. Tongue contact. Tongue contact. Okay, some tongue contact. Yeah.

And not everybody loves tongue contact. So if you like pecs, if you're just like interlocking each other's lips, that can count as well. So we don't have to, doesn't have to be a strict definition of it. But we decided to start making out and we made this little guideline that we're just gonna make out every night before bed. And we've done that now for years

and it's been really, really fun to just have the space to carve out this little routine and to have it be a daily thing. For me, if I'm doing something daily, it's so much easier for me to build a routine out of it than every once in a while. Did you just say every night for years? You've been doing this? Yeah, for years, you've been doing this. Okay, so most nights, it's 10 to 30 seconds. If we're really tired, it's like a little bit of tongue contact. Okay, we're done. We have fun with it. But, you know, so some nights it might be a little bit longer,

but on average it's like 10 to 30 seconds. And one other thing that I think is really important about this is a lot of couples and long-term relationships, you start only making out as an initiation for during sex. And we make this connection that, oh, if my partner's making out with me, that means they want sex.

And so we shut ourselves down. Like, no, no, no, don't come in for me. Don't touch me. Don't kiss me. I don't want it to lead to more. And so I wanted to break that connection. I think that can be really powerful for so many couples. Like break the connection that any sort of touch or any sort of kissing is supposed to

lead to sex. Because a lot of couples and long-term relationships say like, yeah, we just, you know, kiss, we don't touch. We only have physical contact when we're right about to have sex or in the middle of having sex. And we all miss it so much. So this is just a nice way to like bring some of that back into our relationship.

And now it just feels like this sweet special thing that we do every night and it feels really intimate and bonding. And the vast majority of times it does not leave to sex. We just get to enjoy the make out for the make out sake. What if you're in an argument? Do we never go to bed mad at the marine house or do we take now? We go to bed mad and we're taking a break. We're definitely making out. Some people took the rule part of it a little bit too strongly. I'm like, no, if I'm pissed at him, I'm not making out with him. If he's sick or I'm sick, I'm getting out of here. We're just using our logic here.

Yes. I'm not a believer in don't go to bed angry. There are lots of times where I need to go to bed angry. And if I've had some time and some space in a good night of sleep, I can come back to an argument and be in such a better place. We can resolve it so much faster versus, I mean, I've definitely had plenty of experiences

where we were trying to solve something at night. And it's like hours will go by and you're exhausted and crankier and just wanting to go to sleep. So I think that's some of the worst advice about a conflict. I wouldn't have slept in years. I think about a bedding. I imagine it. Last time I went to bed was three and a half years ago. I have a question since one unrepresenting population on this podcast is heterosexual men. on this podcast is heterosexual men. Other than what you've told us in prior episodes

about men really do in the majority, want to please their partners and want their partners to be having a really great experience. What is another thing that you hear very frequently from heterosexual men about? What their fear is or what their

unspoken Truth is that we don't know Mm-hmm about them. Oh, there's so many. I mean, a big one that comes to mind is this idea that men always want sex and they always should want it more. We've pulled our Instagram audience and in male female relationships in 45% the woman was the one who wants sex more.

But it's another thing that doesn't get talked about. So there are a lot of men who feel very ashamed about not wanting sex more often than they do or having a female partner who wants sex more often than they do even though it's incredibly normal and common. And may I add that women in those relationships feel very ashamed too.

Oh, deeply ashamed. I had a relationship like that where I was the rejected party and no women talk about that and it's really, really hard place to be. You feel broken and then doubly broken because literally no one admits to this. You know, absolutely. Okay, so that is a really good one. Yeah, that's one. Another good one is that men want to experience emotional connection during sex too. I mean, we talked about this a little bit

in our third episode about, you know, men don't want to just, you know, let you have sex with them. Like they want to have an emotional connected, intimate experience. Again, it's like this idea, like, oh, men will just take whatever they can get. They just want the orgasm. They're just whoreny. But men want to feel close and vulnerable

and intimate as well. And a lot of men tell me like, it feels tiring to have my partner treat me like, all I want is just this physical release when I'm trying to feel this closeness with them. What are some things that we can do in our everyday life to increase or get us into good sex bodies? Are there foods we can eat that will make us more excited? Do oysters work. Yeah, does exercise increase libido? What are things that can help us increase our sex drives? So the most important things that will increase your sex drive are the trickier things.

The making sure you're having enjoyable sex, making sure you're feeling emotionally connected to your partner. And the top three one is also making sure you're not in pain. There's so many women in particular who experience pain. So those are the three biggies. Of course, people are always more curious about the things that are a little more straightforward.

Like, can I just eat the oyster? Right. Is there a Vanessa supplement? Is there a problem? Is there a problem looking for it? The fucking hell. Right. Is there a Vanessa supplement? Is there a pill? Is there a pill? Is there a pill? What are you looking for? The fucking pill.

No. So maybe you might get the little tiniest, tiniest of a hit of desire from an aphrodisiac, but it's really going to be more of the placebo effect you thinking. Like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to get this oyster and get turned on and in the mood. Foods, supplements, those things just, I mean, if you want to eat oysters, go for it, but it's not gonna have this huge effect on your sex drive. In general, though, like treating your body with care

and respect is going to increase your sex drive. So if that means there are certain foods that make you feel more connected to yourself or a certain way of eating that feels good for you. And that's going to be great. If there's a certain way of moving your body that makes you feel connected to yourself, makes you feel sexy. It feels good to move that way.

That's amazing. And I always want to say like the idea of, you know, exercising or needing your body to look a certain way in order to have great sex or to have a high sex drive is just not accurate. Like, people of any body shapes and sizes can experience pleasure and deserve to experience. And it's so interesting that concept because, you know, what diet culture and porn culture has taught us that, oh, no, no, if there's like a body we can build that from the outside that will make us sexy or I'm doing a lot of work right now on embodiment because of my eating disorder recovery. And I don't know how exactly to say this other than I'm working more in my sex life when I am in a conversation

and I'm saying like a conversation with somebody I barely know and I'm saying, like a conversation with somebody I barely know. And I'm saying, oh, hold on a second. What you just said feels weird to me. Hold on a second. I'm feeling uncomfortable right now. Speaking something from the inside to the outside to a stranger is me working on my sex life. Like it's becoming embodied enough to speak my insides on the outside or to be aligned that way. That is what helps in the bedroom a million times more than a lifetime spent trying to shape my body into something that looks like it could be in a movie. It's the inner work. What is

your take on porn and erotica? Because I feel like eroticum for women is an untapped, like women should be reading eroticum or I don't even know what I'm saying. Does it feel like that is it something that is should be trending? Is it funny? I have to go back to Vanessa. Vanessa puts it on TikTok Vanessa. If Vanessa puts it on TikTok, it will. We'll have Abby narrate it.

Yes, so my God. I didn't do a lot of DMs from people that I think would be interested in that. I'm just saying, we're business idea. But I want to go back to what you were saying about, you know, body and diet culture. I do think sex is also a way for us to overcome diet culture and all this crap that we've been taught to believe about our bodies. Like when we can reclaim the pleasure that we can experience

and the great thing about pleasure is, it doesn't matter what your body looks like. You are capable of experiencing the same amount of pleasure with your body exactly how it looks right now. Your weight has no bearing on the amount of pleasure that you're capable of feeling. So being able to claim like, this is my body, it's deserving of pleasure and exploring like, what are all the ways that I can feel pleasure in this body? That can help move us beyond these ideas of my body needs to look exactly like this. Okay. When it comes to erotica, I like to think of this as it's just a different kind

of stimulation. So erotica, if you're reading something, if you're listening to something, if you're watching something, it's just a different way of getting stimulation. And a lot of women will tell me in particular with erotica, there's something about like written erotica, like reading that feels like it opens up space in their brain. So one of the biggest concerns that women have is I can't be present in the moment. I'm thinking about my to-do list, I'm thinking about all this other stuff

I have to do, like I can't shut my brain off and just be present with my partner. So erotic can be a nice transition time where we are reading something, it's giving our brains something to do, but it's a sexy thing to do. So we're getting that stimulation and we're helping our brain kind of like wind down

and get more into the moment. So it's not this abrupt, like, I'm running around all day, constantly thinking of all the things and then I'm supposed to get into sex and all of a sudden shut my brain off and not think about any of the things. It's like this nice little, wind down moment. It's more all-encompassing than to some people, to me.

Like that's why I like listening, Abby loves listening to a book and lots of people do. For me, I like reading because it's all my sense. It's like, I can listen to something, I'm still doing a million other things. But like when I'm reading, I have to be right there. And that is like the presence that sex requires. So it makes sense that that would be a bridge.

I want to write a sexy romance lesbian novel. Why don't you? I think that's a great idea. I'll read it. You can read the audiobook. Can you imagine me trying to read it? And erotic, it can also give you ideas. Yeah. You can read with your partner like, let me read you this scene or, oh, I really like what they did here. I was very interesting. Oh, I've never thought about doing this before. What do you think of this scene right here? So it gives you some inspiration too. Do you have any good recommendations on erotica? Books. So I have just finished reading the Accourt of Thorn and Roses series. I was having so many people ask me for my professional opinion on it. It got super popular. It was really big on book talk.

So I finished reading that series. And I definitely found it to be really interesting. It was, it's kind of like very, it's a lot of fantasy, almost a much more simplified version of game of thrones, something but like some, you know, just more sexy elements mixed in. So I thought that was interesting. And a lot of people have told me they really enjoyed it.

So it could be worth reading. In closing, what would you say is that the question that people ask you the most as a very trusted voice in this world, that when you answer it, can do the most good for them in their lives. Like what's the question that you can free people the most quickly by answering? I love that question. It's really the simplest one.

Am I normal? So many of us just feel so alone in whatever it is that we're going through. And even the most simple things. Like am I alone in wishing sex is that we're going through. And even the most simple things, like, am I alone in wishing sex is a little bit slower? Am I alone in being turned on by my partner kissing all over my neck? That question is just, it's one that gives us so much shame, so much anxiety, this fear, you know, comes up so strongly for us. So just being able to share with people, like whatever it is that you're going through, I promise you, you're not alone.

And even if it's something that you don't love or you wish was different about your sex life, like there are ways to address it, to talk about it, to transform it. And I think just starting with that, that basic reality reality, like you're not alone and it's okay. Beautiful. Beautiful. Vanessa Marin, thank you so much. We adore you. Everybody go pick up sex talks.

You won't regret it. And Pod Squad, you are normal. And we love you. That means you are too, honey. Well, we'll see. You are. Just don't be out here letting the Christian missionaries dictate what you do in your bedroom. All right.

Don't let them win. That was never about God, and it was never about sex. Okay. Catch you next time. Bye, Potspot. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things, first can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things Show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts,

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That I'm the one for me And because I mine I walk the line the light. Because we're adventurous and heartbreak. So now, a final destination. You can stop asking directions. Some places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home

And through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do a heartache. I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new star. a new star. I'm not the problem sometimes things fall apart. And I continue to believe The best people are free And it took some time But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers in heartbreak So man, a final destination

With that we stopped asking directions So places they've never been, can to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do our thing This world finishes and heart breaks on land. We might get lost but we're only in that room Stopped asking directions Some places may have never been And to be loved we need to be loved We'll finally find our way back home

Through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do hard things Yeah, we can do hard things