Pleasure Mechanics

Erotic Gift Giving

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Erotic gifts can add a beautiful intimate touch to the holidays. With so much family togetherness and busy schedules, think about setting aside a little bit of time to be alone together, savor some relaxing touch and exchange gifts intended to enhance your erotic life together.

Below you’ll find some of our favorite toys for inspiration. Wrap one up with a beautiful bow, make sure to mark it Do Not Open In Front Of The Family! and express your love and commitment to another year of shared pleasure.

Sometimes the best gift is an investment in getting support. If you are struggling with an erotic roadblock, the comprehensive courses from therapist Vanessa Marin are our go-to referral for effective tools for transformation. Check out or . Our guys have loved her to overcoming performance anxiety and we regularly send couples to for tools to balance mismatched libidos.

While Vanessa Marin offers deep dives for the most common struggles, if you are already in a pretty good relational space and ready to just play more and get creative together, you can get your inbox absolutely stuffed with enticing options with her !

One of our favorite new toys of the year is Lelo’s Sona – for anyone who likes clitoral stimulation, this toy uses sonic pulses rather than vibration to stimulate deep into the body. Give her the gift of a whole new kind of stimulation!

Another new favorite is the Crescendo from MysteryVibe

This fun, flexible vibrator is defiantly NOT one size fits all – you can bend and shape it to contour just right to the pleasure zones you want to stimulate. Plus, it integrates technology in a meaningful way, allowing you to control the vibrating zones and rhythms with an app that is easy to use. It comes in a gorgeous box, ready to wrap and present to your partner (after the kids have gone to sleep!)

Want a discreet yet powerful toy to integrate into partnered play? Check out the Eva vibrator from Dame Products. This tiny powerhouse tucks right into the labia to stimulate the clitoris during intercourse – Adding a nice additional level of stimulation without a lot of bulk coming between you. Use the code MECHANICS for $15 off!

Want to add some luxury to your erotic life? Check out the affordable yet luxe line of body jewelry from Bijoux Indiscrets, a Barcelona based company that offers simple yet gorgeous ways to adorn the body. They also have a beautiful line of vegan harnesses, cuffs and body adornments.

Use the code MECHANICS20 for 20% off anything you wish!

Does your lover enjoy lots of quality touch?

Wrap up a nice massage candle and enroll in our Couples Massage Mastery online course, and give the gift of a lifetime of beautiful full body touch! If you want to give the gift of any of our Erotic Mastery Courses, use the code GIFT for 33% off! 

If your lover enjoys receiving love notes, hearing you speak loving words during sex, or is an avid reader, give the gift of an erotica anthology on audiobook. Click here to get a free book of your choice with a trial membership: Audible.com

No matter what kind of erotic play you love, everyone needs a good personal lubricant to make your touch slip, slide and glide in all the right ways. Check out our favorite organic lubricant from GoodCleanLove.com and use the code Pleasure for 33% off your entire order!

Have another toy in mind?

Start here with these links to some of our favorite sex toy companies:

Goodvibes.com : for a full selection of toys from trusted brands

Lelo.com : for luxury, high quality toys and light bondage gear

Naming Your True Desires

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Do you know what you want out of your sex life? Is naming your true desires something that comes easily?

If you have a hard time knowing what you want in bed, let alone asking for it, you are not alone. For many people, naming true desires is a challenge. Many times people settle for “good enough” when it comes to sex because it can be so difficult to imagine what your ideal sex life would look and feel like.

In this podcast, we share an invitation for you to experience a guided date night that leads you through the process of discovering your own desires.

The first guided date night in our course Kinky Sex Mastery is an interactive experience in discovering and naming your unique and specific desires. This date night is now included for free as part of our free course The Erotic Essentials. Click here to join The Erotic Essentials an unlock a treasure trove of free resources, including this guided conversation about fantasy, desire and asking for what you want.

Vibrator Nation: The History Of Feminist Sex Stores with Lynn Comella Ph.D.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Ever wonder how vibrators and sex toys became so popular? How did sex toys find their way into our bedside tables and cultural conversations?

Author Lynn Comella, Ph.D. shares the fascinating history of feminist sex toy stores and their impact on sex culture.

Nowadays, you can find lube at the drugstore and sex toys on Amazon – but we can’t forget that the availability of pleasure products is thanks to the visionaries that led the sex positive movement and created safe spaces for sex positive education and shopping.

The new book Vibrator Nation traces the history and impact of feminist sex toy stores. It traces the history back to feminist pioneers like Dell Williams, who founded Eve’s Garden in New York City in 1974 and Joani Blank, who opened the Good Vibrations retail store in San Francisco in 1977. 

These feminist sex toy stores quickly became more than a place to buy vibrators. Sex stores like Good Vibrations and Babeland became the epicenters of sex positive education, community and empowerment.

Tune in to this fascinating conversation and then grab a copy of Vibrator Nation to explore how feminist sex toys stores influenced sex culture for us all.

Check out LynnComella.com for more information about Lynn’s work and book tour dates!

Want to find a feminist sex toy store near you? Check out this map from our friend at RedheadBedhead!

Thanks to our podcast sponsors for making this episode possible: 

Check out getcocoon.com/edu for a free download of the cocoon browser, offering you the safest way to browse the internet.

A big welcome to our new sponsor Good Clean Love, who offer amazing organic lubricants and sexual wellness products. Good Clean Love’s lube is the only one we use and we highly recommend their products. Go to GoodCleanLove.com and use the code PLEASURE for 33% off your entire order! 

 

Break The Rules Together

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Let’s face it: for some of us, some of the time, breaking rules feels good. Transgression creates anticipation, thrill, the rush of “getting away with it” – and for some of us, this excitement is incredible arousing.

For some people, breaking the rules helps us feel free and brings the thrills of new and novel experiences. Breaking the rules helps us relieve the stress and responsibility of daily life. Breaking the rules has an erotic thrill that can’t easily be topped.

Breaking the unspoken rules of monogamy can be the easiest way to get this thrill – but one with huge potential costs. So if you know yourself as a thrill-seeking rulebreaker, it’s time to get intentional and learn how to harness this energy without risking it all.

Here’s how to break an even bigger set of rules – together as a couple – to capture the thrills of transgression while strengthening your relationship.

This episode is part of our book club series inspired by Esther Perel’s new book, The State of Affairs. In the first episode we talked about making explicit monogamy agreements for your relationship. In the second episode we tackled the topic of jealousy. In this episode, we discuss how to transgress boundaries together as a couple, rather than cheating on one another.

If you want to go deeper with these ideas, come on over to patreon.com/pleasuremechanics to join our online community and unlock bonus resources – I am developing interactive worksheets that help you integrate the ideas of this podcast into your love life. You’ll also get an ad free version of this podcast – go to Patreon.com/pleasuremechanics and join in!

In her incredible book, The State of Affairs, Esther Perel discusses what we can learn from infidelity to help us strengthen long term relationships. She writes:

Each of these long standing couples has chosen not to ignore the lure of the forbidden, but rather to subvert its power by inviting it in. Plainly, these tactics strengthen their connection, and when the connection is stronger, they are less likely to cheat. “It would be fun, but it’s not worth it” becomes a voice of the inner boundary. That still does not mean their relationships are “affair proof.” And it is precisely because they know this that they are continuously adding new pages to their love stories.

Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew – or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.

The current of aliveness, once awoken, is a force hard to resist. What must be resisted are the dwindling curiosity, the flaccid engagements, the grim resignation, the desiccating routines. Domestic deadness is often a crisis of imagination.

At their peak, affairs rarely lack imagination. Nor do they lack desire, abundance of attention, romance and playfulness. Shared dreams, affection, passion and endless curiosity – all these are natural ingredients found in the adulterous plot. They are also the ingredients of thriving relationships. It is no accident that many of the most erotic couples lift their marital strategies directly from the infidelity playbook ~ Esther Perel, The State of Affairs

Click here to listen to episode 247, where we talk about how to have an affair with your spouse.

Want help in communicating with your partner as you explore your fantasies and desires? Click here to check out the Kinky Sex Mastery course – and get the first date experience for free! 

This episode is sponsored by Cocoon, a new web browser that brings you total safety, security and privacy. Click here for your free download. 

Harnessing Jealousy As Erotic Fuel

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tune in on: Spotify | RSS

Jealousy is a natural emotion, part of the great human drama of eroticism and sexuality. Everyone gets jealous – so the question becomes how to harness jealousy instead of allowing it to harm you and your relationship.

This episode continues our discussion inspired by Esther Perel’s new book State of Affairs.

For a bonus resource to help you explore jealousy, join our Patreon community at patreon.com/pleasuremechanics or by clicking here.

Jealousy is usually understood as a normal part of monogamy. If we think being in a relationship means owning our partner’s sexuality, anytime their attention or interest strays it can feel like a betrayal. Jealousy can be toxic, leading to arguments, fights and even violence. 

But when is jealousy useful? When can it be a guidepost about what you desire, what you want more of, what you cherish and want to protect? 

If you get honest with your jealousy, it can be a powerful tool to steer your growth, help you invest more in your relationship and even – for some people – become a powerful turn on.

 

In her new book State of Affairs, Esther Perel writes “The green-eyed monster taunts us at our most defenseless and puts us directly in touch with our insecurities, our fear of loss and our lack of self-worth.” 

If you start noticing when you feel jealous, you can discover where you feel the most vulnerable. Then you can strengthen your sense of security in these areas or ask your partner for reassurance.

Esther also notes that jealousy “may in fact be the last glowing ember of eros in an otherwise burned-out relationship – and therefore, it is also the means of relighting the fire.”

Click here to get a copy of Esther Perel’s State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

You may also be interested in these podcast episodes:

This episode is sponsored by Cocoon, the most secure web browser available. Download your free web browser by clicking here.