Pleasure Mechanics

Love Sex Again

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Love Sex Again :: Free Podcast Episode

Do you remember what it feels like to love sex? To look forward to making love? To daydream about being hot and sweaty under the sheets with your lover?

For so many of us, those days are in the past, confined to our sexier youth when we had less stress, fewer responsibilities and less worry.

If you are in love with your sex life right now, fabulous. Get ready to fall even more in love!

But if you have fallen out of love with sex, if it has become routine or boring, let’s explore how to fall in love with sex again.

Love Sex Again: How To

To be in love with sex again, you need to make one solemn vow to yourself: never have sex you don’t want to have. Some experts say it is ok to have unwanted sex to appease your partner, but we say absolutely not. Especially when it comes to any kind of penetration, your body knows when it is being violated. Unwanted sex quickly leads to resentment and makes it harder to get turned on down the road. If your partner is in the mood and you are not, encourage them to masturbate (in front of you or alone) and wait until you are truly in the mood to engage. You can’t fool your body when it comes to unwanted sex, so to have a sex life you truly love, only participate when you are authentically enjoying yourself.

Perhaps the most important step in loving sex is making sure the sex you are having is highly arousing and pleasurable! Everything we do here at Pleasure Mechanics is designed to make your sex life more pleasurable, so put our resources to work to make sure your sex is as orgasmic as possible.

This might mean learning couples massage so you can relax and let go of stress, or it might mean mastering the art of foreplay so you can get fully turned on. Or maybe you are ready to create your own adventure in the realm of kinky sex.

Whatever you need to do to make your sex life arousing and orgasmic, we are here to guide you every step of the way. You can’t love sex if the sex you are having is less than satisfying! We believe everyone can level up their sex life and make it more pleasurable. How can we help you love sex even more?

Love Sex Again: Release Toxic Emotions

The next step in falling in love with sex again is confronting shame and guilt. No matter how sex positive you are, we all have residual shame and guilt that block us from loving sex as much as we could. So your job is rooting out these toxins and purging them from your system. Shame and guilt come in many disguises: body shame (too fat, too thin, too small, too large, too hairy, too old), guilt about receiving too much pleasure (Am I taking too long? I feel selfish being the focus of attention! Is my partner getting bored?) shame about enjoying sex (what kind of woman does this make me? Am I a slut? I shouldn’t want this so badly!) When you start recognizing and confronting the shame and guilt you carry, you can start releasing it and make room for even more pleasure. This is an ongoing task, as you discover new levels of toxic emotions and confront deeper emotions. Keep doing the work and keep discovering just how much you can learn to love sex!

As you confront personal levels of guilt and shame, you will also come across the cultural messages about what it means to love sex. In a culture that doesn’t respect sexuality, we are taught that loving sex makes us hedonistic, selfish, trashy and even worthless. Women are especially prone to these messages, but men have their own coded judgements about being “players” or “thinking with their small head.” We are told that to love sex is morally degrading. To truly fall in love with sex we need to transform these messages and actively embrace the idea that good sex is healthy, positive and uplifting. To love sex we need to value sex and it’s place in our relationships and spiritual lives.

Finally, as you fall in love with sex again start asking yourself what it means to love pleasure and sex outside of the bedroom. What does being a sex positive person mean in the rest of your life? How does inviting and enjoying pleasure change your mood and the experience of your days? How does it change how you live, how you communicate with your friends, how you prioritize your time and energy?

Go ahead, fall in love with sex again. Allow yourself to open up to the pleasures and excitement of loving sex and loving your sex life!

Healthy Fucking

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Healthy Fucking :: Free Podcast Episode
What is the difference between having sex, making love and fucking? The same physical acts can create very different subjective experiences. Many of us crave more fucking, but don’t know quite how to get there.

PassionateMarriagePassionate Marriage is one of the best books about sex and relationships that we’ve ever come across, and the entire book is well worth reading.

Get your free Audible version of Passionate Marriage by clicking here!

After exploring many facets of sexual intimacy, David Schnarch turns his attention to the experience of fucking, and why so many people find it harder to fuck their spouse than a stranger.  

Here are some excerpts from this exploration of healthy fucking:

Fucking involves a unique tone of engagement and experience. People who know it know when they feel it – and with whom they feel it. To those who like it, it’s often more important than orgasm itself. Fucking embodies a lusty, lascivious eagerness for pleasure… a delicious, desirous wantonness. It is the opposite of crudeness; it is sex embellished with erotic virtuosity. There is deliberate intent to arouse (and satisfy) passion. Fucking makes for intense sexual encounters.

Fucking involves doing and being done – as in doing your partner and being done by him or her. It’s the doing and being done that some crave and others fear. It involves energy exchange through patterns of coordinated stimulation and role behaviors.

Do you know what it feels like when somebody’s doing you – not just bringing you to orgasm or having intercourse  but really doing you? Do you know what it feels like to do somebody else?

Fucking is the subjective experience of doing each other and being done simultaneously.

Many people, male or female, have a hard time cranking loose their eroticism with the person they married.

The real issue here is potency, in this case manifested as sexual intent.

In marriage, sexual intent can involve love, caretaking, mutuality and nurturance, among others. We so rarely address sexual intent that we never think of fucking as loving (in fact, many think of it as “debased sex” and the farthest thing from making love). We think love and caring lead to desire for tender sex, but we don’t associate these with the carnivorous intent involved with doing your partner. The only part we think is involved in fucking is people’s “dark” side.

This brings us to the other issue noted above: what “kind” of aggression is involved? Society may accept that anger can be healthy – but not when it’s mixed with sex. Becuase sexualied aggression too often fuels degradation, abuse, and rape, all forms of it have been banished from the bed. The problem is that healthy aggression plays a role in healthy fucking.

Think of it as a productive way to use pent-up energy in the relationship. Having sex with as much energy as you expend at the gym is good for you physically and emotionally, and much better for your relationship. People don’t have sex to the point of exhaustion the same way they do in their workouts, but it would probably help everything if they did.

Get your free Audible version of Passionate Marriage by clicking here!

Your challenge: Fantasize about what it means to fuck. How does it feel in comparison to making love? Do you crave fucking more in your relationship? If so, what steps can you take to open up to healthy fucking?

An Ode To Chris

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At the time of recording it is Chris’s Birthday, so Charlotte thought she’d do an ode to Chris on her birthday. 

As some of you may know from our tell all episode, episode 100. I first met Chris as my sex teacher. I walked into the building and was greeted by her, she was this loving, beautiful, powerful presence. I saw her and thought “I love you”. but didn’t quite know what to do with that. She was teaching an in person sexuality class that I was attending. She was younger than most people in the large group of people she was teaching and yet the way she held the space, taught with such competence and confidence, eloquence and intelligence was just breathtaking. And then I saw her touch. And I was done. She was demonstrating some kind of massage, butt massage I think it was and the precision of her touch was beautiful. She was paying such exquisite attention to the body, demonstrating such care, focus and skill that I knew I wanted to be under those hands. Later, when I first saw her receive touch, she moved her body and used her voice in ways that I had never thought of or had given myself permission to. She moved her hips in circles, growled, howled, got guttural and expressed her voice in a very loud, free, inspiring way. For the record we didn’t talk much during the class, she had excellent boundaries and many many months later I asked her out.

When I met her she was 90 pounds heavier than she is now. I saw her across the room naked and she was so confident, so at ease in her body and it was entirely inspiring. In our culture fat women are taught to be ashamed of their bodies and to see her feel not only so comfortable, but feel sexy in her skin was profoundly moving.

As some of you know she has a very intense history of childhood, teen and adult sexual assault and seeing her courage and persistence in how she has moved through the trauma in her body is incredibly inspiring. All of her perpetrators were men and I am amazed at her generosity of spirit that she has forgiven them all. She always reminds others that people who commit sexual abuse and assault have almost always been victims themselves, and how much they must have been hurting to hurt others. It is also beautiful to me that after all that, she continues to feel such a deep commitment to serve and encourage men to embody all of their power in their sexuality.

Her commitment to our Pleasure Mechanics community drives so much of her life. She inspires me daily in her desire to share, educate and encourage you to experience the most pleasure, power and freedom you and your lover can possibly feel in your body. We started this business three months into dating, and her primary motivation for taking our teachings online was to reach as many people as possible through the power of technology. She wakes up every day at 5 am by choice so ready to serve people she’s never met, and gets giddy with excitement when we get email from people whose lives we’ve touched.

There are a thousand other qualities I adore about Chris, we’ve done 6 road trips across the country, driven up and down each coast of the states so many times I’ve lost track and after over 9 years spending everyday together we haven’t yet run out of things to talk about. She is the kind of person that after camping out under the stars, we get in the car to go find breakfast, and before coffee she asks me “do you believe in democracy?”. Her inquisitive, sharp mind, her open hearted spirit is ever inspiring and interesting to me. And I adore seeing her parent our daughter. It is just the best.

I am honored to be her wife, co-parent and co-conspirator in creating a more safe, more pleasurable and more connected experience of sexuality in this world. To many more pleasurable years ahead for us all. Happy birthday darling. 

Cuddling

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Cuddling :: Free Podcast Episode

Cuddling is one of the most important things you can do for your relationship. Cuddling offers many benefits for your physical health and for your relationship. Every expert – from sex educators to doctors to therapists – recommend cuddling. Most people love some element of cuddling – either the physical affection or the emotional intimacy.

But cuddling does offer some challenges that are rarely talked about! From dead limb syndrome to mismatched desires for cuddling, cuddling can actually create conflict in a relationship if it is not approached with the right skills and strategies!

In this podcast (hit the “play” button at the top of this page to start listening!)

Let’s be clear: cuddling is a very healthy practice. Skin to skin contact releases the healthy hormones oxytocin and dopamine, both of which offer a range of benefits from boosting your immune system to regulating your sleep patterns. But most of us don’t cuddle for the medicinal effects. We cuddle to express love and affection, to feel close to our loved ones and to slow down long enough to really connect. A good cuddle session can leave you feeling loved, relaxed and nourished with love.

Since cuddling is so great, let’s explore how you can enjoy even more of it in your relationship.

First, find your cuddle style!

Cuddling Positions:

Not everyone likes the intense physical closeness of spooning, for example. Try lots of positions and notice the emotional energetics of each one. Some cuddling positions feel more mutual while others feel like one partner is “holding” the other. Spooning offers the closeness of full body-to-body contact, while other positions minimize physical contact while maintaining the intimacy of cuddling. Try a whole range of positions and notice the emotional and physical feelings of each one!

Don’t get stuck in a cuddling rut! Trying new positions allows each of you to experience the whole range of cuddling experiences. The term “jetpacking” refers to the physically smaller partner being on the outside of the spooning position. We love this nickname and encourage you to not limit your cuddling based on assumptions due to physical size or gender norms!

Cuddling Times:

Do you like to cuddle in front of the TV? before sleep? upon waking? Do you want to create dedicated cuddle time? There are many opportunities for cuddling. While cuddling in front of the TV can offer many of the physical benefits of cuddling, your emotional attention is directed at the screen rather than at one another, so it may feel less intimate.

Cuddling Capacity:

Just like everyone has a different level of libido, everyone craves a certain amount of cuddling. This means that between you and your partner, it is quite normal to have a gap between how much cuddling you each want. Discuss this openly and don’t make it a problem. Try to meet one another’s needs without either of you becoming a martyr. We discuss this issue in depth in the podcast episode (just hit “play” at the top of this page!)

Cuddling Needs:

When navigating your cuddling times with your partner, try to be specific about what you need. Do you just want to relax in your lover’s arms? Do you want to connect emotionally and talk? Are you in the mood for sex and using cuddling as the first steps of foreplay? The more clear and specific you can be about what you need, the more likely you are to get it!

Cuddling Troubleshooting:

Some people avoid cuddling because of specific annoyances. Rather than giving up the benefits of cuddling, it is worthwhile exploring solutions. Here are some of the more common cuddling annoyances we hear about and a few possible solutions!

  • Temperature: Does one of you burn up while the other basks in the heat? Regulate your individual temperatures with clothing and blankets so you can both be comfortable. You don’t have to both be under the same blanket to be intimate! Give yourself permission to take cuddling breaks to roll over, cool off and then come back to cuddling when you are ready!
  • Dead Limb Syndrome: Don’t ever feel stuck in one position, especially if it means one of your limbs falling asleep. There are no martyrs in cuddling! Always adjust for comfort. This requires exploring a range of positions so you never feel stuck or smothered. Changing positions doesn’t have to mean breaking the intimacy. Remember, unless both of you are comfortable you’ll never sink into that exquisite zone of intimacy, so it is well worth the time to find the positions that work best for your unique combination of bodies and move between them as you need!
  • Hair Management: Sometimes it can be hard to relax if a big beautiful head of hair is choking one of you! If hair is getting in the way of enjoying cuddling, consider using a headwrap, scarf or other hair management tool! Or, making smoothing the hair away a part of the cuddling experience.

Take Cuddling To The Next Level:

Cuddling can be a pathway to profound intimacy and physical pleasure. On the podcast we cover 5 techniques for making cuddling even better. Listen in (hit the “play” button at the top of the page!) to hear about:

  • Two simple tools to deepen your physical and emotional connection
  • A game for couples to strengthen your intimate bond
  • Two touch techniques to add to cuddling for more physical pleasure

May you enjoy the profound pleasures of cuddling your whole life long!
Ready to unlock the power of foreplay? Add massage to your cuddling with our Couples Massage Mastery Course and then check out the Foreplay Mastery Online Course to take your love life to the next level of orgasmic pleasure!