Pleasure Mechanics

Fucking Vs. Making Love

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Podcast Image for Speaking Of Sex Episode 367 : Image of waves crashing onto large rocks

In this encore of Speaking of Sex episode #178, we discuss the difference in the experience of “making love” vs. “fucking” – which of course is not a simple binary and yet resonates for so many of us. Sometimes, we want tender, emotional and deeply personal sex – “making love.” And sometimes, many of us crave bestial, intense sex or what we sometimes call “fucking.”

Love the podcast? Ready for more?

Join The Pleasure Pod & Get The Interactive Worksheet & More of the Best of Pleasure Mechanics!

Continue The Conversation: Speaking Of Sex Episodes

Podcast Transcript:

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose (00:00):
Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and on this podcast we have explicit and soulful conversations about all aspects of human sexuality. If you love the show and want to support what we are doing here at Pleasure Mechanics, please remember that we are a hundred percent community supported erotic education.

Chris Rose (00:26):
We experimented with sponsorships for a while and decided not to take advertisements so we could focus on doing what we do best, which is bringing you these conversations and online resources for your erotic engagement. So if you love this show and want to support what we’re doing, go to pleasuremechanics.com/love and you’ll find ways to show your love and support this show. Dive a little deeper with us at pleasuremechanics.com/free, where you can enroll in our free online course. This week at the Pleasure Mechanics headquarters, a flu has befallen all of us.

Chris Rose (01:05):
It is actually a winter break for our daughter’s school, but it is a sick week for all of us. We have this cough and cold that you definitely do not want to hear on the microphones. So we are bringing you an Encore episode from our archives, because we are over 360 episodes deep into this conversation now. And while some of you have been with us for many years, week to week having this conversation, many, many of you are newer listeners. And while I encourage you to go to pleasuremechanics.com and check out our podcast archive, you can use the index to quickly find episodes around topics that most interest you, I also know that there is no possible way of listening to all of the episodes.

Chris Rose (01:56):
And so we want to highlight some of our classic episodes from time to time. And a sick week is a great week to do that. So here’s an episode that goes a few years back. It is all about how to fuck. How to fuck, fucking versus making love. And if that word fuck shocked you a little bit, just get prepared for this episode, because this is an explicit episode we are talking about, fucking. There’s sound effects and I think I use the word fuck about 87 times. So if this word triggers you in any way, this might not be the episode for you. But I love this episode because we really share a ton of advice here about how to harness this energy of fucking, especially in longterm relationships. Enjoy.

Charlotte Rose (02:47):
Hi, welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose (02:51):
I’m Chris. We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we share our expert advice so you can have an extraordinary sex life. You can find an entire archive of this podcast over at pleasuremechanics.com, where you will also be able to submit a question or a topic you want to hear more about on future episodes of this podcast. Check it all out at pleasuremechanics.com. We just had a fabulous lady say that she has spent 60 to 80 hours on our website over the past month since being introduced to it. And I love that. She said she sat down one evening and started going through our sex index, where we index everything by topic alphabetically and noticed that six hours had passed since she sat down when she got up to pee, which is awesome.

Chris Rose (03:43):
So there’s tons there to explore. Go check it out at pleasuremechanics.com, and let us know what you want to hear more about.

Charlotte Rose (03:51):
We’re here for you.

Chris Rose (03:52):
All right, so this is a fabulous episode we’re about to share with you. It is on how to fuck.

Charlotte Rose (04:01):
And what do we mean by that? Don’t we all want to know how to do that as best as we possibly can?

Chris Rose (04:06):
What does it mean though? Because we talk about sex and in every episode, what is, specifically we’re going to talk about when we say, “How to fuck.”

Charlotte Rose (04:16):
Well, we believe that there is a different kind of having sex when one is fucking versus making love. That there is a different kind of sex happening. And we want to talk about that. We want to distinguish that and we want to encourage people who are in longterm relationships to bring a little more fucking back into their relationship, because there’s something very primal and bestial an animal and athletic and sweaty and intense about fucking. Whereas making love can be much more romantic and personal and about the connection and about the, “I am with you and you alone. I picked you of everyone on this planet and I cherish you.” It’s a more personal, not necessarily more intimate, but a more personal experience and connection.

Chris Rose (05:08):
And our culture tends to elevate making love over fucking, and people think that that’s the right way to have sex, the polite way. And fucking sometimes gets left to casual sex, or sex with strangers where we give ourselves permission to be more animalistic and more raw, physically. And we think it’s important. And there’s a fabulous marriage therapists, David Schnarch and his book Passionate Marriage that we’ve covered on previous episodes that he really thinks that fucking is an important part of a healthy longterm marriage. And we couldn’t agree more.

Chris Rose (05:48):
So whether or not you’re in a casual relationship, or in a longterm marriage, we are going to encourage you to fuck more often and we’re going to talk about what that means in this episode and how to do it, how to activate it in your life.

Charlotte Rose (06:03):
Great. You had talked about his book in the episode Healthy Fucking.

Chris Rose (06:07):
Which is number what?

Charlotte Rose (06:08):
Which is number 159.

Chris Rose (06:10):
All right, so go to our website, pleasuremechanics.com, look in the podcast archives and find episode 159, where I talk about healthy fucking. All right, so let’s talk about how to fuck. In that episode we talked about why it’s important. Let’s talk about how to do it.

Charlotte Rose (06:28):
Before we jump into that, can I just say that I think that this is something that has been thought of as not very moral for women to do. This is that idea that if you’re too into it, you’re slutty and you must really like sex and it’s not polite and it’s not moral to be really-

Chris Rose (06:47):
Good girls don’t fuck.

Charlotte Rose (06:48):
No, absolutely not. Just slutty girls, right? So I think that that’s something that we have to process and reject, but notice that that is part of our cultural script. So I think that has to be released before one can really give oneself over to fucking.

Chris Rose (07:05):
And yet we hear from so many women, so often that just want to be fucked. “My man is too gentle with me. He loves me. He’s so nice to me. He’s so sweet. He’s always asking me how things are, but all I want to do is be fucked. All I want is for him to let loose and fuck me.” We hear that constantly. And so I think women have this struggle of they’re not supposed to want it, but they really do want it. They’re not supposed to be too into it. And yet that’s what they crave. So we as a culture need to work on this. And individually in your relationships and in your own psyche, we need to heal this divide between our desires and what we give ourselves permission to want and ask for. Because I think a lot of these guys who these women are referencing are more than excited to fuck their wives, more than excited to get into it, but feel like they have to hold back to be polite.

Chris Rose (07:59):
So it affects both of us. And this is something that I always want to present, that anything that’s affecting female sexuality is equally affecting male sexuality. We’re in it together. So let’s let loose and give all of us permission to ask for being fucked to want to be fucked. And this word, it might feel abrasive to hear, fucking, we use it for a… There’s a great website or something. Maybe I’ll find and try to put it on this podcast page. It’s all the different ways the word fuck is used. I don’t give a fuck. Fuck you. Fuck that. I feel fucked by him. There’s so many ways this word is used. It’s a very powerful word. What we mean when we’re talking about how to fuck, fucking, right now is the idea of sex let loose from cultural niceties.

Chris Rose (08:53):
It’s not polite. It’s not restrained. It’s not held back. It’s when your body is fully into it, you are moving like animals. You’re going after pleasure, you’re fully in it for the experience of that bodies colliding together in a sweaty heap of pleasure. It doesn’t have to include intercourse, which I think might be a mind fuck for a lot of you. It doesn’t have to include intercourse. That’s our primary vision, because we’re so intercourse-centric in this culture of you know that penis and vagina fucking. It can be with hands, it can be with a toy, it can be anal, it can be oral. It can actually not include body contact at all if you really want to get trippy. But the energy of fucking is just that complete, abandoned to pleasure where you’re going after it with full force. That’s how I think of it. Is that kind of what you’re thinking, Charlotte?

Charlotte Rose (09:52):
Yes, and I think as we’ve said, it is most common. It’s easier often for people to do with strangers, or a new sex.

Chris Rose (09:59):
Why?

Charlotte Rose (10:00):
Because we are not known. Because we are not-

Chris Rose (10:03):
We can be anonymous animals.

Charlotte Rose (10:05):
Yeah, we can activate and we can presence that part of ourselves. Once you know, love and are domestic with somebody, it is much harder to access that kind of energy. And that is troublesome, because I think that we do deeply crave that kind of physicality. And so how do we bring that back? How do we give ourselves permission and create the relationship where we have permission to access this.

Chris Rose (10:32):
Right. And so much of this about inhibitions and especially when alcohol or drugs are involved and we talk about them lowering our inhibitions. And so if we think about those inhibitions as shame and fear and judgment, that’s what’s holding us back. How do we do that in our relationship, sober, or with a little bit of wine, whatever you want, but without getting drunk and loaded and going home with a stranger and taking on all of the risks that that entails? Because let’s be clear, there is freedom in casual sex, but there is also a lot of risk. And if you’re in a longterm relationship and you want your husband to fuck you like silly, you have to lower your inhibitions, on your own, without alcohol and be able to name and ask for what you want. And that’s a lot scarier perhaps.

Chris Rose (11:25):
But the freedom in that is that once you establish that kind of relationship, you can get fucked like silly as frequently as you want if that open communication is there with your partner, they know what you want, they’re not judging you, they’re on board with it too, and then you have that range. You can make sweet, beautiful love sometimes and it can be slow and tender if that’s what your body is craving. And other times you can fuck like bunnies and that’s what your body’s craving in that moment and you have that vocabulary to ask for the range. That’s what’s important.

Charlotte Rose (12:00):
I think the casual sex there isn’t the relationship, so there is nothing but the physicality, so of course it’s easier to drop into that place. I think there’s also this myth perhaps that fucking is fueled by passion and lust. And it actually doesn’t have to be, it can be fueled by the desire to experience intensity and intense sex and that can be brought forth and generated so that you’re generating a intense athletic experience.

Chris Rose (12:27):
Right. It’s funny athletic, because that’s what I was thinking. You might run like hell if you’re being chased by a bear, and that’s fueled by that moment and that lust of, “I want to stay alive and I’m running for my life.” Or you can step onto a track and run like hell, because you choose to.

Charlotte Rose (12:43):
Yeah. Right. And I think that’s a really important distinction. So this idea that lust is the only time we can experience that doesn’t have to be.

Chris Rose (12:53):
Yes. That’s a big point. Let’s just sit with that for a second. But what that takes is asking for it and communicating with your partner. “What I’m really craving right now is to really go for it and some primal fucking, you up for that?”

Charlotte Rose (13:09):
Right.

Chris Rose (13:10):
What would it take to say that sentence to your partner? What’s in the way?

Charlotte Rose (13:14):
Because let’s be clear, that is only going to feel good for the woman if she is really warmed up.

Chris Rose (13:19):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Charlotte Rose (13:19):
So you can be more gentle and loving if you want to in the warm up stage in the getting her really aroused, giving her an orgasm, perhaps, prior to thrusting, with your penis, if you’re going to be doing that kind of fucking. Or your hands, or warming up with the hands and then eventually graduating to a toy, or a penis. You can bring the thoughtful, loving attitude and energy into the whole experience, but get warmed up.

Chris Rose (13:49):
That is such a true point. So if you’re fucking into a vagina, or an anus, foreplay’s absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary. And that foreplay can be in the fucking energy. It can be rough and tumble in your wrestling and kissing and biting one another. Or it can be a massage followed by lots of clitoral stimulation and seductive talk. And then you build up that desire to the point where you are ready to fuck. And the vagina is in engorged and you’re using lubrication, or she’s wet enough and you have created the conditions for that fucking to happen. Because the idea of a quickie, sometimes when we think of fucking we go right to, “Oh, we’re so passionate and I’m just going to throw you on the kitchen table and plunge into you.” Not so good for the vagina. Vaginas need to be warmed up and sex intercourse feels best when it is primed, when it is ready for penetration.

Chris Rose (14:46):
We do hear from some women who love being plunged into very fast without a lot of warm up, but I think these women are living in a warmed up state. They are aroused enough, they are feeling sexual enough that they’re ready in a quick way. But that’s because they’ve been living in a foreplay state. So I just want to put that out there. And not to say every woman needs 30 minutes of warmup and orgasms to be ready for penetration. Sometimes women are ready and when they’re ready they’re ready. But it’s what’s important is it comes from the person being penetrated. You can fuck with pegging and prostate massage, by the way, men can be the ones being penetrated. What’s important is the body being penetrated is ready for it and they ask for it and it’s their choice when that penetration begins.

Charlotte Rose (15:37):
Yes, and most women will need at least 30 minutes of warmup. There are very few women statistically speaking, that are ready for quick penetration.

Chris Rose (15:47):
Yeah. I just wanted to presence them because they do exist.

Charlotte Rose (15:49):
Yeah.

Chris Rose (15:50):
And the more foreplay, the more seduction you have in your relationship as a whole, the more her body will be ready for this kind of fucking energy. And I think that’s a point we’ve covered in other podcasts. You can look for seduction on the podcast archive. This idea of seducing your lover throughout your relationship is important. And most people feel ready to fuck when they’re living a turned on life. When they feel erotic, they feel sexy as they walk through the world. And that is preparation that goes beyond the scope of this podcast. But that’s important too, is that you feel sexy. You feel fuckable.

Charlotte Rose (16:30):
Right. And then in the rest of the relationship you’re feeling cared for and valued and respected. So there’s this good relationship happening and then you’re having this experience, but it is not about being disrespected or being lesser than.

Chris Rose (16:46):
Right. I think it’s important that you want to fuck your spouse. If we’re talking about fucking your spouse. And that means respecting your spouse, not having resentment, all of those prequalifying conditions. But let’s talk about fucking. What does it mean? We’ve warmed up the body, the body’s ready to be penetrated. What are the differences once we’re actually in the act between making love and fucking?

Charlotte Rose (17:08):
Because fucking is a very physical, primal experience. There are certain kinds of movements that are more related to this kind of sex than lovemaking, for instance. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit. Most obvious are rhythm and speed. With fucking, you are more likely to do more of a deep thrust that has a real-

Chris Rose (17:30):
Strong, driving, rhythm.

Charlotte Rose (17:32):
Yes.

Chris Rose (17:33):
You’re doing it with your hands.

Charlotte Rose (17:34):
I know, Like a real kind of pulse to it. Often for making love. We think about slow, sweet, love making and you’re really drawing out the experience. Looking into each other’s eyes, taking deep, pausing and being still sometimes. Fucking is faster. There is more of an intensity and a drive and there’s more speed.

Chris Rose (18:00):
Which you might build up to, over time.

Charlotte Rose (18:02):
Right, right.

Chris Rose (18:03):
But you get to this point of a nice driving forceful rhythm, which also means staying in a rhythm for a while. It means being able to stay in that point of intensity. Whereas making love, you might build up to that and then come back down and it’s these waves and these crescendos, but it’s not this intense period of being fucked. Right? And so I think yes, so you said, speed, you build up to it and it eventually gets faster. And then the rhythm is that constant driving, not letting up feeling until one or both of you climaxes. You build up, you stay there and draw it out. And this can happen in any position, but I think what’s important here is this idea of being able to build up to the intensity and stay there. And a lot of women report the feeling of their cervixes being stimulated by that deep, thrusting rhythmic penetration, activates the cervix.

Chris Rose (19:08):
And if you can get into different positions, it doesn’t matter how big the penis is, most of the time it will reach and your cervix gets pounded. And the cervix has specific nerves that run to the brain and are hooked up into our arousal system in this very primal way. The cervix can be very tender on some women, and other women love this feeling, and even love the day after. Their cervix can even feel a little bit bruised a little bit…

Charlotte Rose (19:36):
Oh, that’s a horrible word.

Chris Rose (19:38):
But I’ve heard women talk about this, it’s like that deep internal part. So the cervix, little anatomy lesson, is the entrance to the uterus. It’s the deepest part of the vagina and it’s that feeling of the deepest part of their vagina being used and activated and bruised…

Charlotte Rose (19:58):
Activated, I’m much more comfortable with.

Chris Rose (20:00):
But bruise like after sex sometimes you feel a little bit tenderized, a little pummeled and this is part of the fucking experience I think is waking up the next day and being like, “Ooh, my ass from that spanking. Whoa. Yeah.” It’s not bruised as an injury it’s bruised as having been used.

Charlotte Rose (20:19):
Used.

Chris Rose (20:19):
Yeah. Used and activated.

Charlotte Rose (20:21):
So we’re talking about really deep penetration here and making the point again, you’re already really warmed up. You’ve built up to this. You’re not starting there. That would be really uncomfortable-

Chris Rose (20:31):
Yeah.

Charlotte Rose (20:31):
… and painful for many women. The cervix is only going to feel delicious.

Chris Rose (20:34):
… this is the summit of lots of foreplay.

Charlotte Rose (20:36):
Yes. It’s only going to feel good when it is really, really warmed up. You have to start from the outside of the body and move deeper and deeper into the body and the arousal builds.

Chris Rose (20:47):
Yeah, and the person being penetrated again, we’ve said it, we’ll say it again, really wants to want this for it to feel super pleasurable. And this is where the artistry of fucking comes in. It’s not just about going for it with everything you’ve got. It’s about building it up until the anticipation and the desire and the longing is so big that when you get to the fucking, it’s a relief. It’s a fulfillment of that desire that you’ve built up. And this is the emotional part. This is the seduction part. This is the relationship part of fucking.

Chris Rose (21:21):
And that can build up inside of you as an individual and then it builds up between you as you do the foreplay, as you gracefully enter the intensity. And just to say, if you feel like you’re not getting fucked big enough or deep enough by your partners parts, whether that’s penis or fingers, you can be fucked with toys and you can get a toy as big as you want it to be. And then your partner can use that toy on you. And if you are a size queen and want to be filled, super filled up and really deep and really big, they make dildos in all sorts of sizes. And don’t feel shy about asking for that. And if you’re a guy and your partner wants something bigger, you can choose to take that personally and get a complex about it, or you can choose to be like, “I’m going to be the one holding that dildo and fucking you so well with it and giving you exactly what you want and that is sexy and that’s powerful for me.” And so that’s really about attitude.

Charlotte Rose (22:23):
Yeah, that’s a lot for a lot of men though.

Chris Rose (22:25):
We will do another episode on this.

Charlotte Rose (22:26):
Okay. But the other thing that you can do is wear a butt plug, if you are experiencing that you want more.

Chris Rose (22:33):
The man or the women?

Charlotte Rose (22:35):
But the woman could wear a butt plugs to feel more filled up and a lot of people report that that makes penetration feel bigger and deeper no matter the size of the men’s cock.

Chris Rose (22:46):
Yeah.

Charlotte Rose (22:47):
So that’s another way to feel more filled up.

Chris Rose (22:49):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Charlotte Rose (22:50):
If you like that kind of feeling.

Chris Rose (22:51):
Or use lots of fingers and go to fisting, which is actually one of our most popular podcast episodes is our episode on how to fist. And most women will be satisfied with the size of your fist if they can take it, anyway, okay.

Chris Rose (23:07):
So size, being filled up, being full, that rhythmic pounding of fucking, I think that’s the core experience for many people. It’s that experience of being left breathless at the end and hopefully both of you will climax. And if the guy climaxes first from all of this intense friction and fucking, then let’s be sure to take care of the partner and fuck her again with fingers, a toy, oral sex, whatever she needs to finish that experience and also be left feeling breathless and collapsed in a pool of pleasure. That I think is the idea of being fucked, is used, exhausted, done.

Charlotte Rose (23:53):
Relieved.

Chris Rose (23:54):
Yep.

Charlotte Rose (23:55):
There’s release.

Chris Rose (23:56):
Yes. So many of us are so pent up sexually and every once in a while just need to be fucked into oblivion until you reset. And it’s interesting because there’s an image of like being released and drained and empty, but at the same time you’re very full of energy and you’re gaining something through this experience.

Charlotte Rose (24:19):
And remember though, in our culture, we often think about the men fucking and the women more lying still. And remember that the women can be really active in this experience and push back. If you’re in missionary, you can have your feet on the bed, so you can really push and [crosstalk 00:24:40] thrust back into them. You can be active in this. And we talked about this a whole bunch in last week’s episode.

Chris Rose (24:47):
176 find it in our podcast archive. It is a companion episode. It’s about how to move during sex. And if you have not figured out yet how to move during sex, the experience of fucking and being fucked will be hard to access.

Charlotte Rose (25:04):
It’ll be less pleasurable. So it’s another tool to have in your sexy tool belt.

Chris Rose (25:08):
Yes. So, how to move, how to fuck. These two episodes go hand in hand together. And put it into practice. So much of this is about giving yourself permission to stop holding back. I think so many of us know this experience of being in bed and there’s more you want, there’s more you want to chase after. But we hold back in order to be polite, not to be too much, not to be judged, not to feel slutty, not to feel like we scare our partner away. We hold back. And the core of the emotions of fucking is not holding back and all of those inhibitions are gone. They have been checked at the door and you are an animal doing your human thing of fucking.

Chris Rose (25:52):
And it’s so funny, we talk about fucking like animals, but animal sex is actually really boring. Most animals thrust one to three times before ejaculation. And if you look up animal sex on YouTube, most of it is very boring. Humans are the fucking machines. Humans are the most creative, erotic beings on the face of this planet. We have a very creative, awesome sexuality. It’s part of our relationships. It’s part of kinship, it’s part of our emotional lives. It’s part of our spiritual lives. And let’s fuck like humans instead of fucking like animals. Let’s fuck like the human animal. All that we’re designed to do.

Chris Rose (26:34):
And the fulfillment of that, the satisfaction of that, and again, that’s the range. That’s not just fucking, as we’ve been talking about, that intensity. It’s the range of how we can make love, how we can fuck, how we can have sex with one another, how we can give one another pleasure. Even with just our minds and even with just our voice, we can bring one another to these high States of arousal. That’s what’s so exciting is exploring that whole range of possibility and that’s what we want for you.

Charlotte Rose (27:02):
Yeah. Knowing that it’s all within us, it’s all there.

Chris Rose (27:05):
And this idea of athletic sex.

Charlotte Rose (27:07):
Yeah.

Chris Rose (27:08):
Circling back to that. We talked about that at the beginning of this episode of being willing to get sweaty, being willing to get breathless, being willing to use our muscles to really fuck. And I learned a lot about this when I started using strap-ons, of how difficult it is actually to fuck a woman well, using your hips while you’re propping your weight up on your forearms, using that thrusting again and again and again to fuck well is an athletic feat. And it’s fun to take it on as an exercise, as a sport that you want to get better at. It’s one thing to choose to get better at basketball. How about we get better at fucking and build those muscles, build our stamina, build our endurance so we can be better fucking humans.

Charlotte Rose (27:55):
And this is not less intimate. I think there’s this idea that fucking is lesser than making love because perhaps it’s less emotional, but I don’t think that’s true. It can be just as intimate in a physical way, perhaps not as emotional, but there are all kinds of different intimacy. And when it’s with your lover, one of those with your longterm partner, it can be emotionally intimate to release this certain part of you and to see one another in this state. And to give permission to be all of yourself. Not just being loved for who you are, but also being loved for your body. It’s a different, it’s a physical intimacy.

Chris Rose (28:36):
Yeah.

Charlotte Rose (28:37):
Not just an emotional intimacy. And that’s so cool in a longterm relationship to be able to access all of it.

Chris Rose (28:42):
And yet to complicate things further, we also know that emotions can come up when you’re fucking vigorously and when you have intense physical activity. Sometimes people cry, sometimes people laugh, sometimes people feel rage. All of those emotions can be part of fucking, you just channel it into the physical plane. And that I think is what can be therapeutic. If you harness all of those emotions and you bring them out physically, just like running can be a great relief for stress or grief. And you run till you’re breathless and then you feel better afterwards. You release those endorphins.

Chris Rose (29:14):
That’s the same thing that’s happening when you’re fucking. Your endorphins are flowing, you might even get a hit of adrenaline and it can really purge you of so much that’s pent up.

Charlotte Rose (29:25):
Yes, it’s a cleansing. And we’ve done a great episode on crygasms too. Check it out if that is something that happens for you.

Chris Rose (29:32):
So go fuck my dear friends. Go fuck your hearts out. Fuck your longterm lover and fuck with all that you got and be a better fucking human each time you fuck. Build up your endurance for fucking. Fuck yeah. I’m just trying to use the word fuck as much as I can right now. So we hope this has helped you discover how to fuck with more fucking authenticity, more fucking enthusiasm, and we hope you enjoy your fucking day.

Chris Rose (30:03):
I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose (30:04):
I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose (30:05):
We are the Pleasure Mechanics. You can find us at pleasuremechanics.com, where you’ll also find our online courses. And if you want to fuck with greatness, our Foreplay Mastery Course is a must. It’s a fucking must. [crosstalk 00:30:19] It’s going to make you a great fucking fucker and fuckee. Just go check that out and use the code speakingofsex for 20% off your fucking online course. We’re the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose (30:34):
Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose (30:37):
Enjoy your fucking day.

Taking Sexy Back : An Interview With Dr. Alexandra Solomon

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

In this interview, Alexandra Solomon PhD joins us to discuss her new book Taking Sexy Back : How To Own Your Sexuality & Create The Relationships You Want (New Harbinger, 2020)

Ready for a masterclass in intimate relationships? Join us in Dr. Solomon’s new online course Intimate Relationships 101

It’s time to flip the script and shift from sexualized to sexual. It’s time for women to construct their sexuality from the inside-out. Instead of awaiting or fearing the label, “you’re sexy,” it’s time to get to know “Your Sexy.” Your sexy is your sexuality – the unfolding story of your relationship to the erotic.

It is time to quiet the noise of the outside world so you can create, from the inside-out, a deeper connection to Your Sexy and reclaim that which has always been yours. Neither earned nor ordained by another, an inside-out experience of Your Sexy is about believing that your sexuality connects to and reflects your physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual self. By cultivating an inside-out experience of Your Sexy, you courageously step outside narrow gender roles and insist on nothing less than self-aware and empowered sexual experiences”

Dr. Alexandra Solomon, Taking Sexy Back (New Harbinger, 2020)

This book is a beautiful and powerful guide on your erotic journey. When you are ready to begin exploring what your sexy feels like, let’s team up: Grab your copy of Taking Sexy Back and send us a screenshot on Instagram or via email and we’ll send you a coupon code for $50 off the Pleasure Mechanics course of your choice.

About Our Guest, Alexandra Solomon, PhD

Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University and a licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University. She is the author of numerous articles and journal publications, as well as her two incredible books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back.

Ready for a masterclass in intimate relationships? Join us in Dr. Solomon’s new online course Intimate Relationships 101

TED Talk on Relational Self-Awareness from Dr. Alexandra Solomon

Love the podcast? Ready for more?

Join The Pleasure Pod & Get The Interactive Worksheet & More of the Best of Pleasure Mechanics!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8jL5Uup5lP/

Transcript for Podcast Episode #366: Interview with Dr. Alexandra Solomon

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose (00:00):
Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, and on today’s episode we have a wonderful conversation to share with you with Dr. Alexandra Solomon about her new book, Taking Sexy Back, how to own your sexuality and create the relationships you want.

Chris Rose (00:24):
I loved this book. I love Dr. Solomon. She has been a leader in the field of marriage and family therapy for decades. She is on staff at Northwestern University where she teaches a huge seminar called Marriage 101 every year, and she has her own clinical practice. She has a woven so much wisdom into the pages of this book about how to own your own sexuality.

Chris Rose (00:52):
And you’ve heard us talk about this on the podcast, how to shift from a performance based model of sexuality to a deep sense of erotic embodiment where your sexuality is your own to inhabit, to create, to express and to share with others.

Chris Rose (01:13):
That’s what this book is all about. It is a beautifully crafted book. Check the show notes page because we have set up an offer for you. Grab your copy of this book. Send us a picture of the receipt, or of you holding the book via Instagram or email and we will send you back a coupon towards our online courses, multiple X your purchase price of the book, so you can be guided by this book and join us in our online community of erotic practice and be guided by us stroke by stroke, step-by-step as you learn new or erotic skills. Yes, check the show notes page for links to this book to Dr. Solomon’s brilliant Ted talk.

Chris Rose (01:56):
In this interview we talk all about or erotic self-awareness, how to inhabit our erotic bodies, and discover our inner truths and start listening to these inner voices. It’s a beautiful conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive, and join us at pleasuremechanics.com/free to get started with our free online courses and dive a little deeper with us.

Chris Rose (02:27):
We will be back with you next week with another episode of Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. Here is our interview with Dr. Alexandra Solomon about her new book, Taking Sexy Back. Yes, please. Here we go. Dr. Solomon, welcome to Speaking of Sex.

Dr. Solomon (02:46):
Thank you so much for having me on, Chris.

Chris Rose (02:49):
I’m so thrilled that you’re here. For those who are not aware of your work yet, can you introduce yourself in the work you do in this world?

Dr. Solomon (02:56):
Sure. My name is Dr. Alexandra Solomon. I have been working as a Clinical Psychologist and a faculty member at Northwestern for a couple of decades now. And so I spend some of my week doing therapy with individuals and couples, and then some of my week teaching and training, both graduate students who are studying to be marriage and family therapists as well as teaching undergraduate students. I do have a big relationship education course called Building Happy and Healthy … no, that’s not true, Building, Loving and Lasting Relationships, Marriage 101.

Dr. Solomon (03:37):
And then I’m going to spend the rest of my time really translating clinical tools, research tools to the general public, whether that’s through self help books that I write, or these conversations like I’m having with you. So that’s really, my work is, I call myself a woman on a bridge. I’m bridging all different clinical and research and academia and general public. And that’s my happy place.

Chris Rose (04:04):
And I am so thrilled to meet you on this bridge, Taking Sexy Back. Your new book arrived on my doorstep, and by page six, I was doing praise hands around the room, shouting to the rooftops with gratitude for this book that both honor the complexity of human sexuality, but then offered some clarity and some pathways forward and inward. And we’ll talk about that kind of inward step into our sexuality.

Chris Rose (04:35):
So your first book was very much relational, about loving bravely. How did you come to write this second book, and why, Taking Sexy Back? Why sexy and what does that word mean for you in this book and in this work that you do?

Dr. Solomon (04:51):
Right. So my first book, as you say it was called Loving Bravely. And it was, the sort of centerpiece of the work that I do, is helping people understand themselves in the context of intimate partnership. You know, intimate partnership, whether we are dating and falling in love, or whether we are in year 22 of our intimate partnership as I am with my husband, it’s really easy to focus on the other person, what they’re doing, what they’re not doing. That’s sort of the nature of intimate partnership, I think.

Dr. Solomon (05:30):
And so, Loving Bravely, as well as the work that I do in my classrooms and my clinical office is really taking people into themselves and understanding the lenses, the paradigms, the belief systems that we bring into intimate partnership and how that shapes how we experience. Right? This idea that perspective shapes perception, and that our willingness to look at the complexities we bring in, then helps us open to deeper intimacy, and since it has a kind of curiosity and self compassion.

Dr. Solomon (06:03):
And even in writing that book, I was aware that this entire world of sex was a place where all of that plays out with the volume cranked up even that much more loudly. Right? Because it’s where things get really naked and really tender and those beliefs are so entrenched. And so that was where that second book was born.

Dr. Solomon (06:27):
But it took me a while, because I think that there’s, I became really aware of all these splits. And one of the splits in my part of the world is that we have Couples Therapists and we have Sex Therapists. And so it took me a while to authorize myself to step into this domain, because I am a Couples Therapist who’s had many conversations over the years with my students and my clients.

Dr. Solomon (06:54):
But it took me a while to really feel like I could be authorized to write about the relational and the self aspects of sexuality. And I’m so glad that I did.

Chris Rose (07:05):
I’m so glad that you did too. As a sex educator, we’ve been hands deep in sexuality for this past decade, and this book resonated for us so deeply. So you nailed it. And I think what you nailed is this sense of sexuality, is so complex. It’s so multifaceted, and it is both deeply internal. We have this deeply individual relationship with our own sexuality and so much of our sexual experience is born from there. And yet it is also so relational.

Chris Rose (07:41):
Can you talk about what you call as relational self-awareness and this tension and dialogue between self and social, that as you said, is amplified on the sexual stage?

Dr. Solomon (07:53):
Right, right, right. So relational self awareness is exactly what we were saying before. It’s this idea that I need to understand who I am, and how I show up in my relationships. And if I’m not willing to do that, I’m going to be at risk of taking us again and again and again into the space of either blame or a space of shame.

Dr. Solomon (08:16):
So either I’m going to put our dynamics on you and make you wrong, have to get you to hold the bag, or I’m going to disappear from you, because I’m going to swirl down the tubes into shame, and really feel like I’m wrong and I’m broken and it’s my history and it’s my trauma that’s causing our problems.

Dr. Solomon (08:35):
So relational self-awareness helps me hold onto what I call the golden equation of love, that my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff. And that is true whether we are kind of debating whose turn it is to give the baby a bath, or whether we are talking about a discrepancy we’re bumping into around sexual desire.

Dr. Solomon (08:57):
But then the cultural piece comes in because if the problem we’re having is something around sexual desire and the challenges of negotiating sexuality over time in our partnership, we then bring in all the cultural loading. Right? Like what it means to have grown up in this world of ours.

Dr. Solomon (09:17):
It tends towards being so sex negative that we don’t have the tools we need to talk with care and vulnerability and honesty about what’s happening for us as sexual beings, which is where you spend your time and the work that you do, right, is helping people just kind of like look at how much shame we come by. We come by it really honestly, don’t we? It just is. We get this inheritance of negativity we didn’t ask for, but it is ours then to take a look at, and name and then process. And through that process, it allows us to choose something else, like to choose some voice around sex.

Chris Rose (10:00):
And with your guidance, you bring these values to the surface of this process. And I wrote down self awareness, self compassion and self discovery. Why is the call to self-compassion so important to you to kind of ring that bell over and over again for us, especially, in all mindful practice, but especially when we’re starting to look within and think about our own sexualities?

Dr. Solomon (10:29):
I want to go back and pull that thread that was about this word sexy, which we used in the title. I think so much about, women have, I think each of us, those of us who’ve been socialized in the feminine, we develop a particular relationship with that word sexy. And I think that’s a really interesting point of self inquiry for somebody, I think somebody who’s been socialized, whether in the masculine or the feminine, but I think especially given the messages in a system of patriarchy around women as objects, kind of unpacking, what have you internalized about that word? What is your relationship to that word?

Dr. Solomon (11:10):
And I think very often what we come to is a sense that it’s a question like, Do you find me sexy? And the idea that our value and our desirability around our sexuality is determined in the gaze of another, and that, that creates the conditions then for sex as a performance.

Dr. Solomon (11:31):
And then it kind of cuts us off from that experience of being sexual. Right? Of this idea that my sexuality is mine to determine and mine to construct and mine to explore. And in fact we can’t even get to, I don’t know how we could even be intimate with another unless we can really feel that sense of ownership, and that it has to be done with self compassion because so often we’ve internalized messages, especially around our bodies that are really, really harsh. You know, that our bodies, we have such narrow ideas in our culture of who gets to be proceed as desirable and who gets to decide what is and isn’t desirable. And so it has to be self compassion that we come back to again and again about our bodies as delicious and whole as they are, and that, that has to really guide this process.

Dr. Solomon (12:31):
I think one of the things, I had this wonderful team of graduate students and undergraduate students that was with me as we worked on this book. And I was really struck by how much we as a community were really moving through our own grief and anger and sadness as we would take a look at these different aspects of sexuality, and just how unfortunate it is that our sexuality has to oftentimes be like a reclamation, rather than something that we kind of grow up with ease and flow right from the get go.

Chris Rose (13:02):
Yeah. I was talking to a friend recently about intergenerational trauma, and when we were looking at the history of sexuality, of sexual pleasure, let alone bodies, how can we expect ourselves to be born with agency, with access to pleasure, let alone access to ecstasy of these expanded states we seek?

Chris Rose (13:25):
So this self-compassion is also this cultural compassion of, “Wow, this is a really new conversation about autonomy, about different relations between men and women, between people of all sexualities, allowing sexual expression to even be part of the cultural conversation, is all really new.” And when we bring compassion to this conversation, it gives us much more space.

Dr. Solomon (13:52):
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then that really big wide lens of like the big historical lens, it’s a bridge, right? To go from that big historical lens to me and my bedroom, but that is so important because it does shape it and it’s a reminder again that I didn’t ask for all of this cultural loading.

Dr. Solomon (14:12):
I carry stuff that really, really isn’t mine. It’s been transmitted again and again and again and it lives in me now and it’s mine to massage, transform shed, but it has to start from that place of like, “Okay, I didn’t ask for this.”

Chris Rose (14:29):
Thank you for that. Can we go back to this piece about shifting from performative sex into more of an experiential sex, a sex that you can show up for with your whole being? You do such a beautiful job shifting this language from, “You are sexy, to you’re sexy,” a sexy you can claim as your own.

Chris Rose (14:53):
Can you talk a little bit about why that process is so important in one’s life, and what are the after effects, like how does going on this journey change and transform other arenas of our life? What is that connection?

Dr. Solomon (15:11):
We had a book event on Saturday and there was a gal in line and she came up with her book to have me sign it. And she wanted me to sign it for her daughter who’s 24. And she said, “My daughter is just so lost right now. She’s having such a hard time deciding and getting clear on any aspect of her life, and I hope this book serves her.”

Dr. Solomon (15:34):
And it was like this light bulb moment for me where I was like, “Oh, I get it. No, this book is about sex, but it’s also about holding onto all of the parts of who we are as people, and the more we can do that, feel kind of whole on the inside and that all that we are in communication with all the aspects of ourselves, that just helps us understand what’s a yes, and what’s a no.”

Dr. Solomon (16:00):
What am I choosing from the energy of love? I’m choosing this because I want this. I’m choosing this because it speaks to me. I’m choosing this because I’m curious about it versus those choices we make from the energy of fear. I’m choosing this because I feel like I should. I’m choosing this because I’m scared if I don’t do it now, it’s never going to happen again.

Dr. Solomon (16:22):
And I think so often those of us who’ve been socialized in the feminine, everybody else’s voices get really loud. Right? And so I think we can realize how much we’re driven by that energy of fear. Like, “I really should. I really should go to the gym. I really should have sex with my partner. I really should, say yes to this new job or whatever.”

Dr. Solomon (16:44):
And that, that’s different than pausing and noticing the different pulls that are happening on the inside. And so to be able to bring that distinction of fear versus love into the sexual arena is also really important. Because, I think, when we talk about these generations of conditioning, that sex for women is a duty. It is a duty that we perform.

Dr. Solomon (17:18):
And then now in the era and this moment in time, I think with so much of there certainly are beautifully feminist produced erotica that I know you talk about and celebrate and support, but a lot of what we see in pornography kind of replicates that, right? It’s sex as a performance for somebody else. But then how do we come back to, “Okay, what are the conditions where I would want to choose a sexual experience, and how would I know?”

Dr. Solomon (17:49):
We even have, if I’m giving a workshop or speaking to people, especially who are dating and looking for intimate partnership, they will say, “Is it okay to have sex on the first date or how long do I wait to have sex,” as if I could give them any answer to that. But it makes sense. It makes sense that’s posed as a question, because it’s predicated upon this idea that somebody else needs to tell me, because it’s really, really radical to consider that I might figure out what are the conditions.

Dr. Solomon (18:16):
That’s a mind shift to be like, “I can’t ever ask somebody else when should you have sex, because I own my sexuality and I have to figure out for myself what are the conditions in which I want to open myself to a partner in that way?”

Chris Rose (18:32):
Yes. Do you think that impulse to want to be on script, to want to be normal, to know how other people are doing it and do it that way, has to do with sexuality’s connection to kinship and belonging?

Chris Rose (18:48):
What is this piece of us that, we each kind of have our internal sexual landscape and yet we want to fit in and belong, and not, there’s part of sexual shame tells us, “If they know what I truly want, they won’t love me anymore.” Where does that voice come from?

Dr. Solomon (19:09):
Yeah. I think it is. Right. There’s something and a fear that somehow I am different and that’s scary, right? That I need someone to give me the rules and the parameters and the boundaries, because I’m kind of afraid of how unruly my sexuality might be if it was unleashed. So just please tell me where the guardrails are.

Dr. Solomon (19:34):
I think it’s some of both of that, right? And I think that’s the nature of slut-shaming isn’t it? This idea that we would otherwise marginalize and silence women especially, who are perceived as just outside of the bounds, and that to be outside of the bounds is to risk being put off to one side and shunned. I think it’s maybe some of both.

Dr. Solomon (20:04):
The external piece is, “I need to know what the lines are because I don’t want you guys to exclude me.” And then the interior piece, “Maybe, I usually know what the lines are, because if I really let myself go here, I may start to live without any lines.” Like a fear of if I don’t manage my own sexual appetite, it might be really, really unruly.

Chris Rose (20:23):
And what do you say to that fear? Because we do hear this of, “If I trust my pleasure, if I go towards pleasure, if I let pleasure be my measure, then I’ll become an out of the control hedonist and nothing else will matter.” And yet you and I both know as professionals, as mothers, there is a way to integrate this and actually allow sexuality to become fuel for the rest of our lives and not a distraction. How do we play that game?

Dr. Solomon (20:50):
Right. My gosh, I just had a conversation recently with a woman who is really struggling in her intimate partnership. She was just really bored and checked out of their erotic connection. And in our conversation she flashed on this memory that she hadn’t thought about in years, of being 17 with her boyfriend at the time, in a sexual experience and just lost in her pleasure. And she squirted with her orgasm and he shamed her. And maybe he shamed her because he’s a really, gnarly dude. But maybe he shamed her because he had really inadequate sex education, and was very confused about what was happening.

Dr. Solomon (21:34):
But regardless, his kind of freak out gave her the message that, “Your sexuality, if it is not tamed is going to freak everybody out.” So it was something that she had just really put away. She hadn’t consciously thought about that, but it was a piece of her that she had locked down, maybe in part because of, but likely in part because of that memory of just, “If I really let myself go, the other person is going to be grossed out or disturbed.”

Dr. Solomon (22:06):
And so I think sometimes it starts there, right, with our early like those conversations we might have with our 16, 17, 18 year old selves or our 12 year old selves, whatever. Like, kind of going back to the beginning of how did I relate to my early experiences of my sexuality? How did the people around me relate to that? Was I told that it was really dangerous?

Dr. Solomon (22:33):
Because you’re right, that as we move into adulthood, it is for us to cultivate and honor because it does become fuel, and the erotic is our life force and it’s our creativity. It’s our aliveness and so there is a shift from fearing it to trusting it

Chris Rose (22:59):
And this sense of trust, internal trust, trusting our felt senses is something we develop over time with practice. What are some of your favorite practices that you do either with clients or that you suggest in your courses to help us develop internal felt sense and a trust of our felt sense.?

Dr. Solomon (23:24):
Well, one practice I think, is noticing our stress level and what is blocking self care. I think that it’s really easy to go kind of full tilt all the time in letting ourselves get exhausted and depleted and the tie between our sexual desire and stress is really strong. Right? For many of us, stress acts as a break.

Dr. Solomon (23:56):
If we think about the sort of Emily Nagoski accelerator and brake model for sexual desire and our stress level is going to act as a break. And it may be that we have stories in our head that, “That’s okay, it’s okay to put sex in the back burner because we must be accomplishing and doing, and one more this and one more that, and one more hour.” And I think there is certainly a reality to that, that we live in time of deep income inequality, and many of us are needing to work extreme hours in order to ensure that we are taking care of our needs and our family’s needs. But just noticing, what are the ways that we may be adding to that and kind of going above and beyond being driven by this sense that like our work is our worth.

Dr. Solomon (24:50):
I know that I’m certainly guilty of getting into this, of kind of compromising and sacrificing the things that I know nourish me. Exercise and sleep and good food and spending time on all of those things are what creates the conditions for me to feel like I have access and permission to also support my sexuality and my erotic health and connection.

Dr. Solomon (25:18):
So that’s some of those, like really basic foundational things that we may not think affect us in the bedroom, but I think they really, really do.

Chris Rose (25:24):
And then I always encourage, if we notice the after effect, the after glow of even something as simple as a slightly prolonged shower, a walk with your partner to talk things out. If we notice and install as we’ve been talking about the effects of this, and then thank ourselves, have an internal sense of gratitude of, “I’m really grateful to have taken that time and I’m noticing the effects,” it kind of self motivates further practice.

Dr. Solomon (25:57):
I was just working with the couple on this recently where she really was asking for more connection with her partner as a way of helping them move into an erotic space. And I think that her partner was hearing her saying that he had to be quote unquote, like a good boy in order to kind of earn access to her, and it became this real rift in their relationship.

Dr. Solomon (26:23):
And I think that what she was really trying to say is, “This is how I nourish connection with you, and connection with myself and so let’s work together to create the conditions where my erotic self can come forward more.” It’s not like, “You need to earn access to me.” It really is like, “This is what I know to be true about my connection to my desire, and will you come with me and support this with me?”

Dr. Solomon (26:48):
Because you’re saying like that walk together is about just celebrating like, “Okay, this is what we can do to support us, to support connection,” that then for some of us, it’s the connection that then opens the door to the erotic.

Chris Rose (27:07):
That’s such a beautiful story too of how by developing a more internal sense of our sexuality, we have so much more to bring to potential partners, to our longterm relationships. That Venn diagram gets so much richer and brighter as we go inside and discover what’s there.

Chris Rose (27:27):
Will you say one thing more about, we’ve, a few times in this conversation, both of us are saying, when you drop inside, when you go inside, scan inside, what are we feeling for there? How would you guide someone who’s new to this? What am I doing when I am feeling inside?

Dr. Solomon (27:50):
It is the stepping away and turning attention inward and quieting down the thoughts. So it’s, I often start with just some deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth and a scan of sort of, I go top to bottom, sort of like top to bottom. Where am I holding tension?

Dr. Solomon (28:15):
And just getting into those five senses and quieting down the thoughts, what the Buddhist would call, sort of like that monkey brain, right, where we’re kind of scrolling from this to this, to this, to this and slowing that process down. Because when we do that we notice that we are having thoughts, versus we are the thoughts. And then it sometimes is, especially around this no, the way that I feel when there’s a no, I’m not saying is I feel it in my gut.

Dr. Solomon (28:49):
But different people may hold their unspoken no in different places. It may be in their chest, like a tightness in the chest. For me, it feels like a twist kind of in my gut, and it’s sort of then, sometimes asking, “Okay, so hello twist in the gut. What are you holding? What do you want me to know?” Kind of asking our body, like I think we imagine that we are these top-down creatures that our thoughts drive the whole thing, and that checking in that body scan, that paying attention to where the tension is, is going from the body wisdom up.

Dr. Solomon (29:27):
And then we’re asking, “What is this tightness in my chest telling me? What does it want to say?” So it’s kind of that listening from the more base level of the body and then attending to that, and allowing that to be a source of information versus the idea that we have to think our way through a decision or a challenge.

Chris Rose (29:54):
Thank you so much. That was really beautiful. And it reminds us that our feelings, we can feel the feelings of our feelings. And so when a no is present, what does that feel like, versus a yes? We can do so much of this through fantasy alone, engaging the imagination and then checking in the body, or in small moments out in the world as we notice we gain literacy. And these voices get louder, I think, is one thing people need to hear because sometimes it’s like, “well I don’t feel anything.”

Chris Rose (30:24):
And it’s a process. It’s a practice to trust these voices, to hear them. And as you said, to quiet the external noise so we can hear. And what would you say to those who, when we’re choosing to focus on our own experience, instead of finding pleasure or curiosity, even we start finding numbness or sadness or grief welling up? How do we ride that edge of allowing these feelings, feeling the feelings, but also kind of keeping ourselves regulated?

Dr. Solomon (31:02):
Right, right, right. I had a message a couple of months ago from a woman who had survived a sexual trauma in her childhood. And she shared a story with me that was just so sacred, and so precious for her to let me know about, that she had gone through a process of prosecuting her abuser. And she said that the day of the sentencing she came home and she masturbated and she wept.

Dr. Solomon (31:32):
And it was a really, really powerfully healing experience for her. It brings tears to my eyes as I even say it out loud to you right now. And that, we do have these stories I think of which emotions we’re allowed to pair with pleasure. And for her, that was such a moment of reclamation and healing, right, was to pair her own experience of bringing herself pleasure, and reminding herself that trauma doesn’t break us.

Dr. Solomon (32:00):
It may disconnect us. It doesn’t break us, and that she could have pleasure and sadness and grief all in the same place and that, that wouldn’t mean that that was all going to be together in that space forever. But in that moment it was.

Chris Rose (32:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Solomon (32:17):
And so I think it is right that we want to be mindful, to think about a bell shaped curve and be in some sort of sweet space. Right? And that we can give ourselves permission that if there’s a lot coming up for me, I can slow down, I can pause, I can stop. But I can also just kind of stay present to it and trust that emotions have a timestamp, right? They are like waves. They will rise and they will fall.

Dr. Solomon (32:45):
And that when there’s trauma, I think one of the important skills that survivors of trauma learn is when am I present, when am I absent. Right? Sort of dissociation. What does the dissociation feel like to me? And, knowing how to bring ourselves back to a place of safety when we feel ourselves beginning to dissociate.

Dr. Solomon (33:12):
And so that would be, I think, like we talk about that in the book, that allowing ourselves to pause a sexual experience, whether it’s by ourselves or with a partner, as we notice ourselves dissociating because dissociation is a coping tool. It was at some point in time an incredibly important coping tool.

Dr. Solomon (33:34):
And that in our healing, what we can say to ourselves is, “Sweet darling, love me. I feel you slipping away and you don’t need to. I can make you safe in this moment.” Right. So treating that dissociation as that part of us, that’s saying, “It’s too much for me.”

Dr. Solomon (33:52):
Okay. So then we can stop. Then we stop for now. And that’s okay. And I hear you that I think for those of us who are doing a bit more of the self help and distant healing through books, through courses, I think we do need to be talking about trauma and being aware that there’s always always a space for therapy, right? Like, in face to face, old school organic therapy, psychotherapy with a clinician who’s trained to support healing trauma.

Dr. Solomon (34:23):
So I think both those things, I think that therapy on its own, probably isn’t enough for trauma recovery. I think all these different pieces, there’s lots of elements, and that survivors of trauma can really make use of on their journeys.

Dr. Solomon (34:39):
And so we don’t have to say that it’s only one way or the other, but I hear you that I try to be really thoughtful also when I’m in these conversations or writing a self help book that it’s different than therapy.

Chris Rose (34:50):
Yeah. Thank you for that. The book is full of self-reflections and practices and ways of engaging with ourselves. To discover who we are as sexual beings, what is one question you want everyone or you invite everyone to pause and ask of themselves?

Dr. Solomon (35:13):
Well, one that I really like is, “What is the no that I am needing to say, that I haven’t said?” Like what is, I think especially for those of us, we’ve been talking a lot about those who’ve been socialized in the feminine, where we feel driven by sort of obligation and responsibility, and what is the quiet no, that is kind of hanging out in the corner that is I’m asking for my attention.

Dr. Solomon (35:41):
That’s one question, I think that can be just an important way of asking it, kinda scanning on the inside, and where is a place where maybe I’m letting my boundary be a bit looser, that is good for my health and is good for the health of whatever the relationship, and how might there be a no that would would serve everybody a bit better?

Chris Rose (36:01):
Your book is such a beautiful guide in that discernment process and is really, I think a rich practice guide. There’s so much within these pages, so you can engage with the ideas, but then also take the time, drop into your own life, and engage these ideas with your own body and see what emerges for you.

Chris Rose (36:22):
So thank you for putting together this resource guide. It is a really beautiful offering. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you so much for your work.

Dr. Solomon (36:30):
Thank you so much. Thank you for making the space that you make, to allow these conversations to happen. I think it’s so, so, so important. And a podcast is just such a nice way to be able to listen in, gain some knowledge in a way that’s really nonthreatening and safe. So thank you for the work that you do.

Chris Rose (36:49):
One image I love is couples will listen to the same episode, while walking through the city streets together. So they have kind of the same audio scape and can exchange knowing glances or send each other notes as they listen to episodes. And this is all about having the conversation. So whether you’re reading the book, engaging in the podcast or engaging in our online courses, this conversation happens over time.

Chris Rose (37:14):
Look in the show notes page, we have a special offer. If you buy Dr. Solomon’s new book and send us a quick screenshot, we will send you a coupon code for the online course of your choice, so you can engage these practices in our online practice community together with other pleasure seekers from all around the world.

Chris Rose (37:33):
Thank you so much, Dr. Solomon, for joining us on Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics.

Dr. Solomon (37:38):
Thank you for having me.

Chris Rose (37:39):
Check the show notes page for more from Dr. Solomon, and we will have another episode for you next week on Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. Cheers.

How To Be More Romantic

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Want more romance? Want your partner to be more romantic? Want to be more romantic and be able to express your love? Let’s start with thinking about what being romantic even means! Beyond the package deal scripts of Valentine’s Day style romance, what does it mean to be more romantic? How can we approach romance with a fresh lens that reveals the heart of romance that so many of us crave?

On this episode of Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics, Chris and Charlotte Rose bring their irreverent wit and wisdom to the perennial topic of romance to try and understand: what is at the heart of romance, and how can we all learn to be way more romantic?

Love the podcast? Ready for more?

Join The Pleasure Pod & Get The Interactive Worksheet & More of the Best of Pleasure Mechanics!

More Speaking of Sex Episodes About Romance and Long Term Love

Resources Mentioned On This Episode

Transcript for Podcast Episode #365: How To Be More Romantic

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I am Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast, we have honest, heartful, soulful, and explicit conversations about sex, love, relationships, pleasure and joy. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive and visit us at pleasuremechanics.com/free to enroll in our free online course and find ways to dive deeper with us right away. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free. We are a 100% community-supported erotic education. So if you love what we do, show us the love at pleasuremechanics.com/love.

Chris Rose: 00:52 All right, we’re going to show you the love on today’s episode. We’re talking about romance. Romance. We are approaching Valentine’s Day. The shops are full of red foil hearts and chocolates galore and red rose farms are going crazy snipping those roses that are ecologically disastrous. So, what do we do with romance? What role does romance play in our busy modern lives? In our lives burdened with eco grief and climate change? What about the romance? What role does romance play and what is romance?

Chris Rose: 01:32 Someone the other day referred to me as a highly romantic person and it took me aback for a second because I do not subscribe to the scripts of romance. I said hell no to the package deal of romance when I was a child. But when I looked at it, I was like, yes, I actually am very romantic. If you look at romance anew that’s what we would like to do today. And I think people have so much pressure around wanting and needing to be romantic, but how do we unpack that and make it simpler and doable and feel fun? I think romance now has this reality show hyper real version of it, the package deal of red roses and champagne and candle lit dinners and fancy clothes and this heteronormative cisgender couple eye gazing across the table. The bachelorette version of romance.

Chris Rose: 02:33 And that is supposed to speak to this huge part of the human soul and it does not. And so we feel this emptiness, this saccharin quality to romance, because it has been commodified, and packaged and normalized. And what we want to do in this conversation, is go to the heart of romance. What is romance? If we look at it anew and honor it for some force that we can play with in our lives every day of the year. So, not just for Valentine’s day, but we’re hoping that this episode we’re recording in the first week of February, hoping it catches you in time to make this holiday a little more meaningful for you, and give you the opportunity to put some of this conversation into practice for this holiday.

Chris Rose: 03:24 Whether or not you’re in a “romantic” relationship, whether or not you’re in a sexual partnership, you can play with the force of romance. So what is romance? So, romance to me is very much this process of creating a moment or an event for a beloved, for someone else on purpose to be savored, to be cherished, to be shared, just out of this gesture of love and adoration and wanting to give pleasure to another.

Charlotte Rose: 04:02 So, what I hear you saying is generating a moment or an experience of pleasure on purpose.

Chris Rose: 04:10 For another.

Charlotte Rose: 04:11 For another. Boy you could probably generate, can you generate a romantic moment for yourself?

Chris Rose: 04:15 Well, I think this is something to be explored because I think that’s a different force. I think there’s something about romance that is interpersonal. It can be communal, it could be outside of the dyad of what we traditionally think is romantic relationships. But the thrill of a romantic moment for me, is pleasure on purpose that comes out of this intention of serving and loving and cherishing you. So, it’s a thing that is received and generated and shared. I don’t know. I guess if we get esoteric, I think you could share a romantic moment with the universe as a whole. But I think through this conversation we should really think of it as something we do on purpose for each other.

Chris Rose: 05:03 Because seeking your own pleasure is one thing. Being handed a pleasure, like on a silver platter, here darling, I created this just for you. Whether that’s a gift, and we’ll get into talking about how romance can show up. But a gift, an experience, an event, a sensual experience, a word, like something that you receive from someone else to delight, thrill, surprise, and please you. I think that is worth exploring, and I am willing to call that romance. And as always we turn to the dictionary to look at what they say about romance. And it was actually less prescriptive. They didn’t have a picture of the bachelorette. What it talked about was the mystery and thrill of love. The mystery and thrill and suspense of love. So, how does that play in? So, let’s really operationalize romance so we can do it more.

Chris Rose: 06:03 Because I think what I’m hearing from people, is in our eco grief, in these moments of high stress, we’re craving something from one another, and it’s something we can generate for each other on purpose. So, this is a bit of a call to arms. Let’s all get more romantic with each other and see what happens if we start delighting, thrilling and surprising one another with pleasure on purpose.

Charlotte Rose: 06:29 Beautiful. Because also part of creating romantic moments or experiences is about creating time that is outside of our normal every day life. It’s about taking us out of the ordinary, and hopefully in our life there are many moments of caretaking and loving things that we do for our partners, that show we are in this together and we are caring for one another. But romance has a different element. It takes us beyond that. It is a special generated experience.

Chris Rose: 07:02 So, I think that’s really important. This baseline pleasure in your relationship, the baseline give and take of love and caretaking and nourishment that we hope you fold into all relationships. And then romance comes in to create peak moments within that, to create spikes, to create memorable moments of intensity, of thrill, of delight, of mystery. And in naming that we want to go for peak experiences. We don’t mean it has to be really big.

Chris Rose: 07:36 You don’t have to go for a sky riding event. You don’t have to hire a hot air balloon. It can be really simple. It can be cheap or free. It has to be personal. It has to be curated for the intended object of this romantic gesture. And that’s where the magic is. The more specific you get, the more you are generating this romantic act, gesture, gift out of your exquisite attention. Knowing what will bring your beloved pleasure on their terms. Lavishing, surprising and delighting has to be really specific or it doesn’t land.

Charlotte Rose: 08:22 So, we’re talking about personalization here. We’re talking about you paying attention to your lover over time, over the years, over the months, to really listen for and remember what they like, what they love, what delights them, and taking notes. Have a Google document, do what you need to do to register that and to prime yourself to pay attention for this information, because this is where the thoughtfulness comes in. When you’re able to specifically respond to their pleasures and delights. There’s something so meaningful about that. You may have experienced this in your life, where you’ve been given a gift that just feels so right, that you have been seen, you’ve been paid attention to, and someone notices who you are and what you are about in the world and honors you with a gift that is just right, and that feels so good.

Chris Rose: 09:18 So yeah, personalization matters a lot. And we’re about to talk about five love languages, and then how to get even more personal beyond that, how to get really unique with our romance. But there’s also something that has to be named here, where romance is really about pleasure, sensuality and it has to stay in that realm. You can’t buy someone a vacuum cleaner and expect it to be romantic because it’s not in that pleasurable sensual realm. It’s functional, it’s utilitarian. Perhaps there are some people that would romanticize a vacuum cleaner. But how do we think about this, of staying in that realm of the sensual, the pleasurable?

Charlotte Rose: 09:58 Yes, so many of the examples that are traditional tropes of romance, are about opening the senses, the flowers, the chocolate, the champagne. There is a sensory activation that invites us into the realm of pleasure and connection and presence and paying attention to one another. Because we’re slowing down enough to savour a sense, which then brings us into the present moment so we can be more available to one another.

Chris Rose: 10:28 And the luxury helps there. Luxury beckons us to slow down, which is why the box of truffles, each one is individually wrapped or the champagne you want to sip. So, luxury is one way to slow down and signal that this is meant to be savored. But we can also do that just intentionally, like bringing someone to a bench in your favorite park because the trees are in full bloom, and then you bring out a thermos of their favorite coffee that you have brewed just to their liking. That is not luxurious, but it can be deeply romantic, and we can slow down and savor these things on purpose. Yeah. I just keep wanting to bring us back from romance and creating something special means spending more money, because that is not always the ticket.

Charlotte Rose: 11:21 Totally. I remember one moment where there was a gorgeous tree in bloom, and you said, “Come with me, I have to show you something.” And we went out of our door and we stood under a tree that its petals were all falling from the sky. And it was an exquisite and very romantic and epic sensual moment that definitely cost nothing, but was a beauty and a pleasure that you wanted to share, and created and generated an experience around. When we allow and intentionally use the senses and the sensual to invite us into a state that is not ordinary, we will allow ourselves to go deeper into enjoying and experiencing the moment together.

Chris Rose: 12:09 And this is when we talked about savoring as a practice. When we talk about installing the good as a practice, getting better at pleasure, learning how to experience pleasure, developing our capacity for pleasure, and also for emotional presence and our capacity for feeling, feeling emotions, and feeling physical states. We practice day to day for these peak moments. So, if you have that feast of a lifetime laid out before you, if your partner has gone to great lengths to create this experience for you, we have to then be able to show up for that joyfully. What helps to show up for it joyfully and not let these moments fall flat, are when these moments are curated specifically to our tastes.

Chris Rose: 13:00 So, we are not taking someone who is afraid of heights on a hot air balloon ride. It really is easier to show up for romantic gestures that are curated just for you. So I think it’s important to learn how to do that. And I want to give you a few examples using Gary Chapman’s, The Five Love Languages. We’ll have links in the show notes page if this is not familiar to you. And this is a useful framework to think about five different ways we can show up and love one another, but it’s not limiting. Let’s go beyond this. Let’s find all new love languages. Let’s make fusions. It’s all about figuring out how you can show up in this moment for the person you want to shine some love on, on purpose, and then doing it a little bit bigger and brighter.

Chris Rose: 13:52 And creating these extraordinary moments also then create this arc. We have talked about micro pleasures, so the 62nd pleasure points throughout your day. We also need to create these macro pleasures, peak erotic experiences, peak pleasure experiences, peak emotional experiences throughout our year. And we do this and other realms with holidays, birthdays, there are ways we create moments to celebrate, look forward to, remember and cherish the memories of, to anchor our lived experience into these peak moments. How do we do this in our sexual lives, our romantic lives? How do we create these things that it’s like, Oh, I remember how loved I felt in that moment.

Chris Rose: 14:42 So, how do we do this? We start paying more and more attention to one another. One of the ways we pay attention is to learn love languages. So this is Gary Chapman. He’s a Christian. God bless him. But he has this very lasting framework, of the five love languages, how people give and receive love best. So, the five love languages being gifts, that’s the obvious one. Buy something and stick a bow on it. Quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation and…

Charlotte Rose: 15:22 Touch.

Chris Rose: 15:23 How did I forget that? And touch and physical connection. So, thinking of those five categories, what are romantic gestures you could do once you know how your partner best receives it? Some people love getting gifts, and the perfectly curated gift that hits their pleasure point makes them feel incredibly loved. For other people that falls flat. So let’s get beyond gifts. What’s a romantic gesture in acts of service because the day to day love language of acts of service is, I picked up the dry cleaning without you having to ask. I replaced the milk. I’m bringing you a warm blanket on a cold day. All of those ways we show up and make someone else’s life easier by shouldering a little bit of the burden.

Chris Rose: 16:12 How do we amplify that? What is an act of service that feels romantic and thrilling? But in acts of service romantic gesture might be, let me take you out to dinner. Meanwhile, I have hired someone to come and do a deep clean of our house. And when you come home you are thrilled and surprised by that. Or we’re going away for the weekend and when we come home, my landscaping friend has planted whole new beds of flowers for this season, and I’m going to thrill you with that. It’s about going for that, ah, moment, like you did this for me? How do you get that? When someone wants acts of service.

Chris Rose: 16:54 Words of affirmation. We have to go beyond, love you baby, have a good day. And even, wow, you look really beautiful today. How do we go beyond that? Poetry, song, love letters. Taking ink to paper is one of the most romantic things you can do in the digital age. And if your lover’s love language is words of affirmation, and you are not a writer, go to the library there’s all sorts of books. Or fricking Google, like best love letters of all time. And steal classic love letters and say, when I saw this I thought of you. And then just copy it in your own handwriting, sign your name, and it will count like it’s the doing of the thing and we get better over time with this.

Charlotte Rose: 17:47 And quality time is of course about spending time together, that that is what is most important. Having experiences together hopefully with as little distraction as possible. That creates the most meaningful feeling of being loved.

Chris Rose: 18:04 And so how do you amplify that? If you’re a couple that spends a lot of time together. It’s going beyond the ordinary and perhaps this is where anchoring it into a shared experience, an event where you are having to learn a new skill together. Something like a cooking class, would be really good here because it forces you to not only spend that time together but deeply engage during that time. And quality time people love that stuff. And then touch. If touch is your love language and you cuddle every night. How do you amplify that? How do you make that thrilling? Well, we have a lot to say about that realm. But this is where something like an erotic massage, where you are carving out an entire hour or two to pamper someone with an entire erotic experience start to finish. So it goes beyond the cuddles and it’s like, I am inviting you into this experience. Come with me baby. I want to pamper you soulfully.

Chris Rose: 19:06 So, how do we amplify all of this? And then how do we get beyond these constructs of the five love languages, and just deeply pay attention to our partner at this moment in their life, and at least once a day, ask yourself, how can I generate pleasure for my beloved? How could I make their life a little more thrilling, joyful, pleasurable, erotic, sexy, whatever realm you want to take it in. What do they need right now? That goes beyond the day to day love and caretaking that is the lifeblood of a relationship. All of that is super important. How do we create moments of peak pleasures? How do we elevate it and amplify it for one another? And when I say peak, peak can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, I’m talking about amplifying it. And just like it’s important to know how to personalize. So, what the pleasure is, what the gesture is, what the amplifier is, is also important. Is that intensity, is that surprise, is that thrill, is that novelty.

Charlotte Rose: 20:13 Is that drama. There is this other element that we’re adding in that creates the non-ordinary state and a not ordinary experience. And it is a little extra, that adds to the epicness, adds to the interest and intrigue. And different people will be most excited about different elements here. Some will really love surprise or mystery. Others will really go for thrill and drama. Depends on your relationship and your propensities, but it’s something to think about. That it’s one element that really makes something different than regular life. So play with that element and see what you are longing for, and what your partner may be longing for, and use this knowledge to choose how to amplify the experience together.

Chris Rose: 21:01 Right. You can create peak experiences through duration, intensity, surprise, novelty. There’s all sorts of ways to create peak experiences. So, in the personalization, there’s these factors of, what you’re offering, what is the romantic gesture, and how do you amplify it in a way that will land and be received? So, this is all about really creating a very specific gift that you are offering. And that’s what makes it romantic because it is for you. Birthday parties are not romantic because they are group celebration that’s for everyone. So, even if one person is the center of attention, that entire experience is not just for you. There is something about romance that puts your desires, your pleasures, your thrill, your enjoyment at the center. And then says, let me savor this with you.

Chris Rose: 22:00 It’s delicious. And I think that we could all use more of it in our lives. It doesn’t just have to be within a sexual, romantic relationship. You can be more passionate and romantic with your friends and find ways to amplify pleasure with and for each other. That is a romantic vision I can get behind. All right. We will see you next week, on Valentine’s day, for another episode of Speaking of Sex. If you are looking for ways to amplify your ability to show up with touch, with your hands, with the erotic experience, we invite you into our mastery courses.

Chris Rose: 22:41 You can find them all at pleasuremechanics.com. Use the code, Speaking of Sex for 20% off the online course of your choice. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com we love hearing from you. We will be featuring our first voice memo from a listener on an upcoming episode. If you have something you want to say about Pleasure Mechanics, how our ideas have touched your life, a question you want us to wrestle with on a future episode, record us a voice memo on the device of your choice. They all have voice memo apps now, and email that over to us at chris at pleasuremechanics.com or charlotte @ pleasuremechanics.com. Share your beautiful voices with us. Let us know how this work is touching you. What’s going on for you? We love to hear from you. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 23:33 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 23:34 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 23:36 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Finding New Pleasure Pathways

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

We all develop pleasure ruts – our most reliable pathways to pleasure, arousal and orgasm. How do we break out of ruts and find new pleasure pathways? How can we encourage exploration in our relationships – without losing any of the reliable standbys that we might depend on for accessing pleasure?

This is an encore presentation of Episode #127: New Paths To Pleasure: Here’s How

Love the show? Show your love for the show & join our inner circle!

Podcast Transcript:

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:01 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and on this podcast we have honest, soulful, explicit conversations about all arenas of human sexuality. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com to explore our resources. A great place to get started is pleasuremechanics.com/free. That will get you enrolled in our free online course and you can become part of our community of pleasure seekers all around the world.

Chris Rose: 00:37 On today’s episode we are taking a little time travel back into our archives. I chose this episode out of our archives because we’ve been in this conversation over the past few weeks about savoring pleasure, finding micro pleasures within our days. This episode is all about shaking ourselves out of ruts. How do we interrupt the patterns, the operating systems of our pleasures, that were laid down when we were perhaps children, things that have become habituated and even have become invisible to us that might be really limiting our pleasure?

Chris Rose: 01:13 I thought this was a great conversation to encore. We hope you enjoy it. We will be back with you next week with another episode of Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. Don’t forget to subscribe on the podcast feed of your choice. That way you will also be able to explore our archives. If you love the show, be sure to leave us a rating on the podcast app of your choice. It really helps other folks find the show and join the conversation. Here is an encore presentation of episode 127 originally aired in 2015 where Charlotte and I discuss laying new paths to pleasure. Cheers.

Charlotte Rose: 01:55 Hello and welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 02:00 I’m Chris. We are The Pleasure Mechanics and in this podcast we offer our expert advice so you can have a stunningly pleasurable sex life. You can submit questions for future episodes by heading over to pleasuremechanics.com and hitting the Ask Us Anything button. While you’re there, get on our newsletter for a free weekly dose of erotic inspiration delivered straight to your inbox. When you’re ready to master new erotic skills, check out our online courses designed to help you master everything from couples massage, who wants a foot massage, to erotic spanking and so much more. Use the code speaking of sex for 20% off the online course of your choice. On this episode we’re going to be talking about how to break out of routines and ruts to expand your arousal. Charlotte’s going to get us started by reading a question submitted by a listener.

Charlotte Rose: 02:59 He writes, “Hi there. I recently discovered the podcast and hope you might be able to help me on an issue. My wife really only orgasms when her legs are locked tight together. There have been a couple of exceptions where she has orgasms while straddling me and using a toy. I’d like for her to be able to orgasm with legs spread to allow for a variety of positions. I have read using the wonderful world of Google… Sarcastic he says in brackets… That this would just take practice. Supposedly leg locking was what she learned at a young age. I’d like to know if practice would really affect this. I don’t want to encourage her to change something that can’t be changed. I’d hate for her to feel like she’s doing something wrong. Do you have any guidance or could perhaps point me in a direction for reliable information. Thank you so much.”

Charlotte Rose: 03:52 We totally get that the wonderful world of Google can lead you all sorts of strange places and this is partly why we do what we do and we want to offer you free sex advice week after week.

Chris Rose: 04:07 We’re the reliable information.

Charlotte Rose: 04:07 Yeah, we want to be a reliable source of information.

Chris Rose: 04:10 That said, when we don’t know something, I will point you in the right direction for trusted resources when it’s beyond our scope of experience. For example, medical issues I tend to pass on. For this kind of thing, here we are, doing what we do. There’s a question within this question and we’ll address both. This idea of locking your legs together to orgasm is actually quite common. A lot of women have that pattern around their orgasms. The question that is relevant for all of us is, can you train your body to build arousal and have orgasms in a variety of positions? Can you expand the possibilities beyond your trusted routine towards orgasm? The great news is yes. Without giving anything up, you can unlock new pathways to pleasure. That’s what we’re going to talk about, is how to break out of your ruts and expand your arousal repertoire. I love that word, repertoire.

Charlotte Rose: 05:15 It’s true that the way that we start masturbating as kids often does stay. It’s sort of incredible. If you reflect on your own style of masturbation and notice if you are doing what you have been doing for many, many years, many of our foundational masturbation practices are set up from a young age and often that wants to be quick and quiet and we want to be done before we get caught. This pattern really stays for many of us for decades. For all of us, this is a great subject to look at, to reflect on and we can all benefit from shaking up our masturbation routine even if it’s going well for you.

Chris Rose: 05:59 It doesn’t even affect just your masturbation as an adult. It affects the way you want to be stimulated by your partner as an adult and how you reach orgasms as an adult. Early childhood masturbation patterns affect your entire sex life. This is why it’s so important to work on sex positive parenting and dialogues about masturbation because so many of us started masturbating under really dire circumstances. The fear of discovery, the shame of it, not having freedom to express yourself.

Chris Rose: 06:31 I’ve even met women who started masturbating with the plastic nose of a specific teddy bear that they would put between their legs and rub their clitoris with. They are still as adults, on the quest of finding that same feeling so they buy stuffed animals with different plastic parts to masturbate with, or people who only masturbate lying face down legs tightly clenched around a pillow and muffling their sound into another pillow. This is the only way they can experience pleasure with our partner as well. They end up having a sex life totally from behind, smothering their pleasure into a pillow.

Chris Rose: 07:10 First of all, reflect on your patterns. What patterns in your sex life have been established by early childhood masturbation practices? Now on a bigger level, think about your routines and patterns in general. The biggest question here is how can we slowly but surely expand our arousal patterns so we can feel pleasure, we can enjoy sensation and build towards orgasm in as many ways as possible, we have an expanded repertoire, our palette of colors has just expanded, our spice rack has grow.

Chris Rose: 07:49 A quick little anatomy lesson here. The way things are interpreted as erotic is this basic interplay between your nerve endings and your brain. Your nerve endings are responsible only for registering stimulation and sending a message to the brain, sending a signal to the brain where it is interpreted and it’s in the brain that something gets sorted into these erotic, non-erotic, threatening, non-threatening, buckets and are interpreted and then messages are relayed back. Hormones are released and our experience of the sensation happens. These pathways establish themselves over time. If a signal is sent to your brain and that signal has led to orgasm a hundred times before, the brain is very quick to say, “Ooh, goody, orgasm stimulation, lets go,” and releases that flood of hormones and sets your body on the track towards arousal and orgasm.

Chris Rose: 08:49 These are the routines that work for us. These are the kinds of stimulation, the precise strokes, the location, the positions, that we’ve been in when we’ve had orgasm after orgasm after orgasm. Usually by volume, that’s masturbation, which is another interesting thing here just to pause and reflect on, is that most of your orgasms of your life have probably been with yourself? Isn’t that true for most people?

Chris Rose: 09:13 Charlotte’s like, “Well, I don’t know.”

Charlotte Rose: 09:15 I mean I think it depends. I think there’s a range, but certainly a large amount, hopefully for many people, are from solo sex.

Chris Rose: 09:24 Especially for people who start during their childhood. I guess that’s what I’m thinking is, from ages six to 12 or whenever you started masturbating, for many, many years, a lot of kids did it a lot.

Charlotte Rose: 09:38 Yeah, I think that’s certainly true.

Chris Rose: 09:40 Then during long phases of adulthood when some of us are single for long periods of time, and then even when we’re in relationships, we’re masturbating. I don’t know. I would be interested by the numbers, what percentage of orgasms are through masturbation?

Charlotte Rose: 09:53 All the more important to do it well then.

Chris Rose: 09:55 Right. We have to relearn that because no one, as a kid is rooting you on, saying, “Go masturbate well. Be creative and do a variety of things and explore your body and your sounds.” We don’t give kids that coaching, of course. The surgeon general was fired for even suggesting that masturbation be taught as something that’s healthy. Geez. We have a long way to go. That’s why, as adults, we need this kind of sex education that we’ve dedicated our life to, is to undo so many of the patterns we’ve established that is limiting our pleasure and our expression.

Charlotte Rose: 10:33 With that, I love Mr. Anonymous, I don’t know your name. I love that you’re saying you’d hate for her to feel like she’s doing something wrong. That is very attentive and very thoughtful. I think that it’s important that when you discuss this with her to really make sure you’re letting her know that you don’t think there is anything wrong. You’re merely wanting to expand the pleasure that she can experience and that you guys can explore together by being able to explore different positions. Making sure that you’re framing it as an expansion of pleasure, that you don’t have to give up what she already knows and how she already generally cums. You just want to play and experiment and is she up for doing that with you? Absolutely she’s not doing anything wrong.

Chris Rose: 11:19 Right. That’s this attitude we all need to take on. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re not fixing anything that’s broken. We’re expanding our repertoire of pleasure, our capacity for arousal, starting from wherever you are now and knowing that there’s no end in sight. No matter where you are now, if you can orgasm one way or three ways, or you’ve never had an orgasm in your life, or you orgasm at the site of a beautiful flower on the side of the road, whatever your pleasure capacity now, you can always expand it. It’s the perfect time to begin.

Charlotte Rose: 11:55 Yeah. I love what you’re saying that there’s never any limit. That really no one has ever found a limit to the amount of expansive pleasure we can feel. May we all remember that and may we all continue to increase what we can feel. It is infinite. Let us keep going.

Chris Rose: 12:11 Yeah, your life might be committed to that, my dear. How do we do this? The simplest solution, the simplest recommendation, is to slowly and with a spirit of curiosity, expand your repertoire. Think about the positions you pleasure yourself in, the strokes you use, what parts of your anatomy you’re stimulating, your pace and pressure, and what you’re thinking about in your head or what you’re focusing on in your body. Switch all of those things up in different combinations and you’re going to expand your capacity for pleasure. That is the most basic suggestion here, is mix it up. See what feels good. Do more of that. Be willing to explore things that might not feel good at first and then slowly warm up as an erogenous zone. Don’t you think that happens a lot? You’ll try something once and you don’t feel it the first time.

Charlotte Rose: 13:06 It’s totally true that sometimes we have to do the work of waking up our anatomy. For instance, if you get used to stroking one side of the clitoris using your dominant hand, that location on the clitoris gets sensitized and then is more responsive. Perhaps the rest of the clitoris, you don’t feel as much when you explore it, but if you start including it and stimulating it on a regular basis, even though you might not feel as strong at first, over time it will get sensitized.

Chris Rose: 13:40 I just want to highlight that point that a pattern can be established simply by, where your dominant hand falls when you reach down and touch your genitals.

Charlotte Rose: 13:49 Absolutely.

Chris Rose: 13:49 You reach down across the clitoris, that spot is where you touch most often, therefore it’s most sensitized to orgasm.

Charlotte Rose: 13:57 And becomes quote unquote your spot.

Chris Rose: 13:59 Right.

Charlotte Rose: 14:00 Really all of it can become your spot if you stimulate it. It just takes sensitizing it, which takes time, which takes attention, which takes effort. We’ve mentioned changing positions, changing your strokes, changing way you’re stimulating on your penis or clitoris or vulva. Pace and pressure is also a valuable one to pay attention to. We often are in the same place doing this at the same pace and-

Chris Rose: 14:27 Same place, same pace.

Charlotte Rose: 14:29 Totally. Play with slowing it down.

Chris Rose: 14:31 Right. Everyone does things too fast.

Charlotte Rose: 14:34 Or we go really fast so that we can get to orgasm quickly. If we want to just play, slow everything down. Make it lighter. Make the pressure deeper. Play with that. It’s another place to bring your attention to, to get out of your habits.

Chris Rose: 14:52 The same nerve ending can be stimulated with featherlite touch, right on the surface of the skin or even just stimulating the hair above the skin or you can then sink deeper into the skin itself or deeper yet into the muscle and the bone and all of these create different pressure points and different kinds of stimulation in the same square inch of your body. Really the combinations here are infinite.

Charlotte Rose: 15:17 Right. Which is just sometimes hard to remember when you’re in the throws of it because the habits are so strong and we just do what’s routine.

Chris Rose: 15:25 Hear our voices in the back of your head your are in bed. Be creative.

Charlotte Rose: 15:29 Play a little.

Chris Rose: 15:31 Go deeper.

Charlotte Rose: 15:31 Switch it up.

Chris Rose: 15:32 Slow down.

Charlotte Rose: 15:35 Only if that doesn’t feel funny.

Chris Rose: 15:37 That might be a total boner killer or it might work for you. I’m not sure.

Charlotte Rose: 15:42 Then the other piece to pay attention to is where your attention is within your own body. Are you focusing deeply on the sensations or are you running fantasies in your mind? You can explore either end of that spectrum.

Chris Rose: 15:57 Right, and the same thing applies to the positions you’re in and how you’re stimulating yourself. This also is really relevant with sex toys. A lot of people find a vibrator that works and they find their quickest route to orgasm and lock down on that vibrator and have that pattern. This, over time, really starts to limit the kinds of pleasure you’re capable of feeling and the strength of your orgasms. It’s just really important to diversify. You can do this in your masturbatory life or with your partner. I think it’s actually really liberating and fun if you go into sex with your partner being like, “Let’s try to find three new things to do to one another. Let’s try to stimulate parts of our body that we usually ignore.” Getting out of your routine together and just putting it as a challenge, a creative process, and saying, “Let’s take a little adventure and try to do something new on purpose.” Not knowing what the outcome’s going to be. You might not reach orgasm and that has to be okay, but at least you’ve shaken things up and aroused new nerve endings and gotten creative together, which is part of the erotic process.

Charlotte Rose: 17:06 Right, and with this couple, for instance, as you’re exploring new positions, as Chris was saying, it’s totally possible that no orgasm will be happening for awhile because she will have to retrain her neurology to associate those positions with high levels of turn on and eroticism. That’s what you want to be focusing on, seeing how much arousal you can bring to her body in those positions, not necessarily with the goal of orgasm.

Chris Rose: 17:34 I will mention as a sidebar here, there can be a certain level of avoidance when routines become routine. Meaning, she might not want to explore certain positions because they trigger something from her past that her body would rather not remember. Other people avoid entire bodily regions because of past trauma or an association with pain or unpleasant and stimulation. That has to be okay. You have to be willing to have that conversation that’s like, “Yeah, no, I’d really not rather explore that area or that position or that kind of stimulation because it doesn’t feel good to me.” At least you know, and are identifying the reason and putting it in context, so it’s not just a avoidance that becomes routine and really creates this electric fence in your sex life. It’s more of a gentle boundary. You can choose to explore it over time with real care and compassion and start reclaiming those areas of avoidance. Don’t let avoidance dictate your patterns in general, because then you’re really giving them too much power.

Charlotte Rose: 18:40 I like the electric fence idea. That’s a useful one. We should explore that more in a later podcast.

Chris Rose: 18:46 We will.

Charlotte Rose: 18:47 Okay.

Chris Rose: 18:48 It is a really great metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 18:50 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 18:51 [inaudible 00:18:51] about that. All right.

Chris Rose: 18:52 We hope we’ve given you some insight and some motivation to expand your arousal capacity to locate alternative pathways to pleasure. I’ve got another metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 19:05 Go for it.

Chris Rose: 19:06 The GPS metaphor.

Charlotte Rose: 19:07 Oh yeah, always good.

Chris Rose: 19:08 Okay. So just like you have your trusted path to orgasm, when you plug an address into the GPS, it will give you the most direct path. Yet, we all know that you could go to the grocery store the same way for 25 years and you’ll get there. If you start exploring the side roads, you will discover untold pleasures. You’ll find that cute pond with a beautiful willow tree. You’ll find the gorgeous expansive views that you’ve never seen before. You’ll go by that little rickety house that pleasures you each time with its charm.

Charlotte Rose: 19:41 It might take longer. You may get lost looking at the view and never actually get to the destination, but you’ve had an adventure and that’s part of it.

Chris Rose: 19:53 There will be some days where you go the GPS route, the most direct path, and that’s what makes total sense for that day. Other days, you have time to wander and enjoy the scenic route.

Charlotte Rose: 20:02 You can also do the exploring and then come back to the GPS to get back, if you want to be playing with all of the options and then have your trusty orgasm at the end.

Chris Rose: 20:12 Recalculating. Recalculating.

Chris Rose: 20:15 All right, so you get the point. We are here to guide you every step of the way as you expand your erotic repertoire. Our online courses are a great way to do it. Gentle reminder, if you want to explore erotic spanking say, come on over to Pleasure Mechanics, sign up for our course, and we will guide you every step of the way. The same goes for things like anal play and prostate massage and expanded foreplay and even couples massage. All of these are ways of expanding your repertoire and come over to pleasuremechanics.com, explore our resources and be in touch. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 20:53 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 20:54 We are The Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 20:56 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

The Pleasure Mechanics Visit Sex Talk With My Mom

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

We stopped by the Sex Talk With My Mom studios in Los Angeles to talk with our old friends about opening up to pleasure, mindful sex, erection and ejaculation issues, and so much more. We hold nothing back in this candid conversation!

This episode originally aired as episode 264 of Sex Talk With My Mom. Our first conversation with them was episode 121. Check out their podcast for more candid conversation about sex, dating, love after loss and lots of great laughs. Big thanks to Karen Lee and Cam for having us on the show again!