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Too Stressed Out For Sex?

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If you find yourself too stressed out for sex, or know that sex gets in the way of your sex life, this episode is for you. Part of our podcast mini series inspired by the book Burnout, this episode explores the crucial step of completing the stress cycle so it doesn’t interfere with your life and relationships.

We all know what it feels like to be stressed out – but far too few of us know how to actively participate in completing the stress cycle. This framework, one of the many gems from the Burnout book, helps us take more initiative in completing the stress cycle so we can return home to a place of safety, relaxation, joy, comfort, pleasure – and yes, arousal and orgasmic release.

Here’s what you need to know about completing the stress cycle – so you can begin the arousal cycle!

Speaking of Sex Episode #058:
The Missing Link In Your Sex Life

Thanks to #LubeLife for sponsoring this episode! Go to LubeLife.com and use the code 20Mechanics for 20% off your order of top quality lube.

Transcript for podcast episode Too Stressed For Sex? Here’s How To Complete The Stress Cycle

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 Hello, welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:05 We are the Pleasure Mechanics. And on this podcast, we have explicit yet soulful conversations about every facet of human sexuality. Come on over to PleasureMechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive. And while you are there, go to PleasureMechanics.com/free and sign up for our free online course, the Erotic Essentials. It is a treasure chest of free resources and strategies for you to get started with tonight. That’s at PleasureMechanics.com/free. On today’s episode, we are going to be continuing or conversation about burnout, and how stress can interfere with your erotic experience.

Chris Rose: 00:52 Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor for this episode, LubeLife. LubeLife creates Amazon.com’s best selling line of personal lubricants. They have water-based lube and silicone – based lube. Go to LubeLife.com or use the link in the show notes page and use the code 20Mechanics, that’s 20Mechanics, for 20% off your entire order. And if you are doing some spring cleaning this time of year, it’s a great time to refresh your lube bottle. Get a new bottle of lube at LubeLife.com. Use the code 20Mechanics for 20% off your order.

Chris Rose: 01:31 All right, my dear, my darling. So, many listeners of the show will notice we missed last week’s episode, which we very rarely do, because we were in the middle of some stressors. So this week, we’re going to be talking about … We’re going to continue the conversation that started two weeks ago with the conversation with Emily Nagoski about her new book, Burnout. And I know a lot of you have bought the book and are reading along with us. And even if you don’t even know what we’re talking about, we are going to be talking about stress and sex this week, and what you need to know about completing the stress cycle so you can have a more enjoyable life in general.

Chris Rose: 02:18 But mostly so stress does not interfere with your sex life, so your sex life is not hijacked by stress. This is a theme we have been talking about for 12 years. As soon as we started our business and we started researching sexuality and arousal and pleasure, the theme of stress came right up. And it was so clear to us that the number one enemy of sexuality is stress. We gave a talk about it in North Carolina 12 years ago, about what you need to know about stress and sex. So this is something that we’ve been aware of and we’ve been talking about. But this book and the framework of completing the stress cycle gives us some new language to really talk about how important a step this is. And if we’re missing this step as individuals or couples it might be one of the main reasons our sex life is not where we want it. Yes?

Charlotte Rose: 03:21 That’s so profound.

Chris Rose: 03:23 Do we want to talk a little bit about the past couple … why we?

Charlotte Rose: 03:26 Well we can. We were just all sick. Our kid was really ill, really ill. And we were in full on care taking mode for weeks, it was crazy.

Chris Rose: 03:34 Yeah, it was like weeks of a family stomach bug, and we were just passing it back and forth.

Charlotte Rose: 03:39 It was amazing.

Chris Rose: 03:41 It was a couple weeks of vomit and laundry. Yeah, and we tried. We tried really hard to produce a podcast for you. And between our care taking duties and then both of us being sick …

Charlotte Rose: 03:53 We thought you’d understand.

Chris Rose: 03:54 Yeah, and we had to really humble ourselves, and cancel a ton of appointments and just surrender to the illness. And it was a really good reminder of how important rest is when your body needs it. You cannot push through things sometimes, you just need to rest. So that’s what we did, and it’s been like two weeks, and we’re just emerging out of it. And now our daughter’s on spring break. She got better just in time to be on vacation, yay. But I also bring this up, so that’s partly why we missed an episode, thank you for your patience, thank you to our patrons over at Patreon for your support and love. We are back, and we’re just going to continue onwards.

Chris Rose: 04:40 So how this relates, though, is I was so aware within our relationship of the ways that we had to navigate and be in this really stressful situation together. There was nothing that was going to change the fact that all of the sheets had vomit on them.

Charlotte Rose: 05:01 In the middle of the night.

Chris Rose: 05:02 Right. And we’re all losing sleep. The situation was what it was, and our choice was how we navigated it together and as individuals, and that is what created the outcome of the two weeks. Which ended up being a very loving, sweet, restful, quiet two weeks. We did a ton of art, and painted a ton of canvases together and read a ton of books. But we managed to get through it without really fighting too much. And I think that’s a lot because we’ve been talking and reading about managing the stress cycle. So I felt like it was this kind of marathon test of what we had been learning in so many ways. Except we didn’t get to the sexy times, yet. All right.

Chris Rose: 05:50 So in her book, Burnout, the Nagoski’s … I keep saying Emily Nagoski, but it’s Emily and her twin Amelia. I don’t mean to cut Amelia out of the conversation. So in this book, the Nagoski twins, Emily and Amelia Nagoski, talk about completing the stress cycle. So I just want to lay this out really clearly, whether or not you’re read the book, on why this matters in your sex life. So completing the stress cycle is this idea that stressors, so the things that cause us stress, the lion attacking us, your job, health stuff, financial stuff, we all know what causes us stress. Those are your stressors.

Chris Rose: 06:35 Stressors exist in all of our lives. Some of them are chronic, some of them are temporary, some of theme are extreme, some of them are mild. Stressors exist. The stress it puts on our bodies … stress is the physiological reaction to a stressor. And it’s a full body, full system reaction. It’s an event. I think the Nagoski’s do a really good job laying out how much of an event … This is something that happens to your body. And it affects your cardiovascular system, your immune system, your emotional state, your ability to sleep, your personality, right? It’s a full, global event, stress is, in the body.

Chris Rose: 07:21 Wellness, happiness, joy, eroticism, depends on our ability to complete the stress cycle and return to a state of relaxation and enjoyment and relaxed awareness. And that state where the body can heal and relax and heal and complete the cycle and go back to its restful state. That is the piece that so many of us are missing. There’s plenty of stressors in the world, got that. We all experience the stress. But very few of us are as aware and active in completing the stress cycle as we need to be.

Chris Rose: 08:07 If you’re stressed out at work, and you’re stressed out because of traffic, and you’re stressed out because your job isn’t paying enough to cover the bills and all of these things, and then you come home and you just walk in the door and bring all of that with you, and then you meet your partner, and they’ve got all of their stress from the work, bouncing of each other for the whole evening. How do you get to the point where you’re ready to luxuriate in one another’s touch and take a long bath and nibble one another’s earlobes and kiss one another’s necks, and all of these techniques that we can flood you with, right? We can give you all of these ways of loving and cherishing and enjoying one another’s bodies.

Chris Rose: 08:47 But how do you get from fists clenched at the kitchen table, feeling enraged about your day, to wanting to nibble your partner’s earlobes? So that is the missing link for some people. And we have another podcast episode that’s called the missing link and we’ll put that in the show notes. But this is what we call that missing step in between your day to day activity, that stressful day you’ve had, and being able to relax enough to even want to have sex. There’s a missing step here, and this is the completing the stress cycle. And it’s different for different people. So we’re going to tell you some things that work for different people, and as you hear this, notice for yourself what you feel has worked in the past. If you’ve had a really stressful event, what helps you get out of that state? What helps you ratchet down your system and just be like, all right, things are chill now, things are okay?

Chris Rose: 09:47 So for many people, it’s movement. Movement. And we’re going to talk more about movement in future episodes. But movement can be a hard workout, it can be dancing, it can be yoga, it can be walking or running. It can be clenching and releasing your muscles rhythmically, right? Anything that moves your muscles and releases them, ideally in rhythm. But anything, and ideally to the point that you’re out of breath. Those are kind of some of the ingredients where movement can become a stress cycle completer. All right, we will be talking more about strategies for completing the stress cycle.

Chris Rose: 10:30 Before we do, I want to thank our sponsor for this episode, Lube Life. Lube is a super important ingredient in just about any erotic activity. Anytime you want a little more slip, slide, and glide in your touch, grab some lube. There is no shame in it, we all use it for all different things. So everyone should have a bottle of lube in their bedside table. Lube Life creates Amazon.com’s best selling lube. It’s a great value, and you can use the code 20Mechanics for 20% off your order. Go to LubeLife.com, use the code 20Mechanics, or use the link in our show notes page. Thank you to Lube Life for sponsoring this episode of Speaking of Sex.

Chris Rose: 11:19 All right, back to the show.

Charlotte Rose: 11:22 So this is where you get to figure out what works best for you, and everyone will have a different kind of movement that feels most cathartic or releasing or pleasurable. They named 20 minutes being an important chunk of time that most people can use to complete the cycle, but whatever works for you. Even a few minutes can feel really valuable to just let your body return to that state of calm.

Chris Rose: 11:49 And notice what happens when we talk about it as movement versus exercise. We’ve all been told we need to exercise three times a week for 20 minutes at a time. For a lot of people, that’s annoying, or just feels like another to do list, or is about what your body should look like or is about losing weight. What if you frame it as what movement can I do to help my body release stress, complete the stress cycle, and feel more relaxed afterwards? What movement would that be? Fuck the calories burned, don’t worry about it as exercise. Is that a walk where you talk to your best friend on the phone? Just think about that for yourself, where can movement fit in?

Chris Rose: 12:32 For some people, this is already a big part of their life. For other people, it feels really far away. Especially for those of us who exercise has been kind of a shameful thing. Or where movement feels activating and feels scary. For that group of us, because hello, I’m part of you. What helped for me was I did Wii Dance. I had a Wii video game system, and I started doing the dance video games, and that was really fun for me. Because I could engage, and I had biometrics, and I had a score. And video games were a more comfortable yes than dancing. So I kind of combined them.

Chris Rose: 13:13 And then discovered how much I loved to dance, and that I couldn’t be angry after I danced. I always ended up feeling better after dancing. And I’m not someone who dancing has ever been a socially approved activity as a fat butch. It’s never been given a gold star. But I discovered it, and it’s now been a super important ally for me. If I am feeling stuck, like my anger and my stress, I can always dance. So finding the movement at works for you. Social connection is another huge piece for a lot of people that completes the stress cycle.

Chris Rose: 13:54 Some people bring this home from a stressful week and want that social connection with their partner. For some couples, that can be too big of a burden. For some couples that works, and it’s like build that into your days. Some time to talk and decompress and download. But also notice, are you socially connecting? Are you looking at one another in the eye? Are you attuning with one another? Are you feeling happier as you talk? Or are you just complaining at one another? Because if you come home from work and you’re both talking at each other but you’re just complaining, you’re not completing the stress cycle, you’re just continuing it.

Chris Rose: 14:36 So notice if that is a pattern in your relationship, where you both come home stressed and then you’re like, “Bah bah bah bah, can you believe this? And blah blah blah.” And do you feel better afterwards? Usually, the answer is no. You feel just as stressed out rather than less stressed out, because you’ve reactivated rather than completed. So what social connection might be more completing, not releasing? Maybe it’s telling each other jokes, maybe it’s watching standup on Netflix for 20 minutes as you eat a bowl of popcorn and take off your work shoes. Maybe it’s the calling your best friend who you don’t want to complain to about work, but you do want to hear about her cute kids. Or maybe it’s talking to a friend at a coffee shop before you get home so you can decompress, and you bitch about with your coworker, and then you both go home with that steam released, right?

Chris Rose: 15:32 So what are the ways you can build social connection into your life as a stress cycle completer?

Charlotte Rose: 15:42 What is the role there, though, of having to release those feelings and having to communicate about the hard things, but then not getting stuck in it? I feel like that’s a complicated … because sometimes your partner is the only person you can talk about it. Is it like, okay I’m just going to vent about this for a few minutes and then we’re going to move on to a different topic, and then I’m going to shake or dance for five minutes, and then it’s like, have another conversation. I feel like there are ways to strategize around letting yourself shift out of that.

Chris Rose: 16:13 Right, and this is a bigger conversation. We’ll do other podcasts about communication styles and how we can support one another. If it’s a problem that can’t be fixed, if your stressor is a coworker whose personality you don’t get along with, who whatever. If there’s a stressor that can’t be fixed, how much venting will help. And you know it’s like, you can get into loops there. So I just think it’s like each individual has to evaluate, are these loops helpful? Do you feel vented? Or do you feel re-agitated? And to be able to determine that for yourself, and for your partner, and just be able to be like, “Babe, I don’t think this is helping, maybe this might help instead.”

Chris Rose: 16:56 That’s why having this framework, especially if you listen to these podcasts together, and both of you are aware of this, and again, one of our listeners just wrote to us with an example of now that I had this framework, I had a really shitty day at work. And when I parked the car in my driveway, instead of coming right in, I texted my partner and said, “I’ve got some stress to release, I’m walking around the block.” And he took care of a few things inside while I went for a walk. And I came in much happier. So to be able to say to one another, “You seem really stressed out, how do you need to complete that?”

Charlotte Rose: 17:36 It’s been so helpful. I feel like we’ve noticed there are times where we’re getting activated and it’s like, “I need to go complete my stress cycle, and I’ll be right back.” It’s so helpful to just see, I’m activated, I’m pissed off about whatever, or I’m hurt, let me go manage it and then return. Just having that framework is so powerful, because there’s something that we can do with it.

Chris Rose: 17:59 Well, there’s something you can do. And this is so important because a lot of us experience stress as this thing that happens to us. We are the victims of it, and there’s nothing we can do about it. This is what you can do. You can learn how your body can complete the stress cycle and then do more of it. But what this also does within a relationship is it makes really clear what the stressor is. And it asks that question, like why are you so worked up right now? Is it because of me? Or is it what happened at work the other day? Is it because of me, or is it because you got stuck in traffic for an extra hour and that fucked with your day?

Chris Rose: 18:39 Because a lot of times, we bring stress home and then we’re in the domestic space and we look at our partner and we think, if I’m feeling this pissed off, it must be you. And if we don’t name our stressors accurately, it can become really easy to think, “I’m so fucking pissed off because that towel’s on the floor again, and how many times? And bah bah bah.” And you get into your loop. Whereas if you can say, “oh my God, I had this really stressful day, I’m carrying all these stressors, I’m going to complete the cycle.” Then when I come home feeling the relief of that intense workout, feeling the relief of laughing with my friends for 20 minutes, and I walk in, and I see that towel’s on the floor again, I just pick it up, put it on the hook, and come give you a hug. Right?

Chris Rose: 19:29 What would get you to the state where you can accurately feel what you feel for your partner? Because that’s the key of this, is we’re not projecting a bunch of stressors onto our partner and then thinking it’s them. And then, it creates the space when it is them, wheen there is a behavior or an attitude or a pattern that your partner is bringing into the relationship that is a stressor, you can name it as a stressor. When this thing happens between us, it activates me, it causes me so much stress. How do we deal with that together? How do we either eliminate the stressor or recognize its impact and then build in the management of it? It’s just a much more humane way of thinking about stress and how it then influences our day to day life.

Chris Rose: 20:25 And it reveals that for so many of us, the problem sexually isn’t how much we like our partner or how their armpits smell or how they touch our clitoris, like we don’t even get the chance to feel their touch because we’re so activated and stressed out. We can’t even get to that state of do me, baby. When was the last time you were just in that relaxed state, sprawled on the sheets, ready to be done? That state feels really far away for a lot of people in your day to day life, because it’s like, as soon as you lie down, you think of the 10 other things that have to be happening. That, by that way, that hyper to do list syndrome, is part of this.

Chris Rose: 21:10 It’s not that our to do lists are too long, or there’s always more to do, that will always be true. It’s that our attention, when we’re in that stressed out state, and we haven’t completed our stress cycles, we’re searching. Our brains are searching for what needs to be fixed? What do I need to do? What needs to be accomplished? Da da da. It’s looking for the threat and the thing to complete to get back to relaxed. And so you have to do it on purpose. So the movement. Let’s get back to the things that work. So movement, social engagement.

Charlotte Rose: 21:45 Laughter.

Chris Rose: 21:46 laughter and humor are huge. And laughter, by the way, that’s social engagement, because humor is so interpersonal. And then that creates that spasm of the diaphragm, when you have a really good belly laugh. It’s kind of like running a marathon. You get all that breath and movement of all the muscles, so it’s kind of a great hybrid touch for a lot of people, it really works. It kind of taps into your hormonal system and releases an anti-stress cascade of relaxation in the body. So if you can look your partner in the eye, there’s that social connection. Take their hand or their foot and give them some loving, affectionate touch while you connect. It’s hard to complain while you’re getting a foot massage. It’s like, “And then my boss said … that feels good, just keep doing more of that.” Right?

Chris Rose: 22:43 So if you build in affectionate touch on top of the social check in, how does that work? Then sex. For some people, sex can be the stress reliever. Right? A lot of this conversation has been talking about how to relieve your stress so that you can get in the mood to even think about sex. Some people, when they’re stressed out, fucking is … that’s their movement. It’s like, screw the run, I want to fuck. And some people in some relationships can go there. And if you know that works for both of you, and you can both come home from having a stressful week, take a shower, and do your marathon in bed together, and fuck it out. And you’re moving and you’re breathing and you’re touching, and you’re socially connecting, great.

Chris Rose: 23:32 That works for like 20, 30% of people, it turns out, where that activation of stress puts you in the mood. But you have to have a partner who’s also ready to go there. Or if you’re in the mood through your stress, and your partner needs her relaxation and to go through her release cycles to meet you, then you know that, right? So so much of this is about knowing this framework and then building your own architecture of what will work for you. What is a more workable framework for your life to complete your stress cycles, manage your stressors, and be ready to enjoy more pleasure, touch, arousal, orgasm, whatever you want to build on top of that. But this is that foundational work to create the space for pleasure, to create the space for, “Yeah, let’s give each other a massage and then have sex.”

Chris Rose: 24:27 How do you say yes when you’re super stressed out? First, you have to say yes to whatever will complete your stress cycle.

Charlotte Rose: 24:34 I feel like it creates so much responsibility and independence, emotionally, because you’re able to say, “This is mine, I’m feeling this, I have to be responsible for completing this.” And then I’m in a more calm, relaxed, available state to have fun and to connect and to enjoy life with you again. It feels like such a powerful framework. We’ve just been working with it for a few weeks, since we got the book, and it is kind of life changing.

Chris Rose: 25:09 And is it just because … We’ve known this for years, but somehow about how we’ve framed it, it’s been more about do that thing that relaxes you first, and it makes it less urgent somehow.

Charlotte Rose: 25:23 Yeah, totally.

Chris Rose: 25:24 These few weeks, when I’ve been able to be like, “You need to complete the stress cycle, go to the gym.” And it’s not like, “The gym will feel nice to you honey, so go do that.” It takes the burden off of choosing a pleasure when you’re in that activated stress thing.

Charlotte Rose: 25:39 Right.

Chris Rose: 25:40 And it becomes more like, “All right, I’m in this activated stress experience, I’m noticing how it’s affecting my body, I want to get out, here’s my exit strategy.” It’s not like, “I want to go feel pleasure.” It’s like, “I want this to end.” I don’t know what subtle reframing, because we’ve known this information for years.

Charlotte Rose: 26:02 I think it is a time-based thing. Because it’s like, your body is stressed, you need to go complete this right now. Instead of, in general, it’s good to include these things in your life, where you have to prioritize it and time management becomes a piece. Whereas, you’re stressed right now, you have to do this right now to complete it. It just takes top priority in this way that it hasn’t been with a different framework. That’s how I’ve been relating to it. It’s a right now thing in my body.

Chris Rose: 26:32 Well and I think what the book does so beautifully is, it points out that once the stress has happened, the physiological impact has begun. So as soon as the stressor happens, and your blood rate goes up, and the cortisol releases, the physical event has started. And it only completes when it completes. And if it doesn’t complete, you can grind out that cycle of stress in your body for years.

Charlotte Rose: 27:00 That’s really sobering.

Chris Rose: 27:01 It kind of just reminds you that the less I complete, the more I carry. And it doesn’t go away on its own. Which can be intimidating. And especially, it intersects with a conversation around trauma, and I just want to acknowledge that. And we’re just going to set that aside. And there’s so many parallel conversations about how trauma is carried in the body, and it is similar. It’s the same, really. But we will try to stay focused on daily stressors. What do you do to release your stress at the end of the day so you don’t feel like you’re in that daily grind? That’s what we want, is just to create more space in our daily lives to recognize the stressors that are true. All of the pressures that are on us, the pressures of the world, the capitalist patriarchy, that’s all out there. And it will always be out there as we’re dismantling it. Those stressors aren’t going away.

Chris Rose: 28:03 But within that, we have to live these lives and love the people we love, and when we notice that the stress is interfering with our ability to love and be loved, it’s interfering with our ability to come home and feel like we have a safe haven in the world, and that the people who are supposed to love us can wrap their arms around us and hold us. When that is interfered with, we need to take action. That action, it turns out, can be quite simple. This movement, this social connection, the finding ways of moving our body in rhythm and breathing more. Finding ways of completing the stress cycle and managing stress can be really accessible once we know what we’re doing.

Chris Rose: 28:55 I hope that this conversation has motivated you and kind of framed up ways of taking more action in your day to day life so you can complete your stress cycles and then show up for … even if it’s just for yourself. Not even if, this isn’t second best. If it’s for yourself, for all of the relationships in your life, for the people you want to be having sex with, to be able to show up from a state that’s not activated, threat-seeking, stressed out, stress ball of hell. We all deserve better than that, and our bodies need to learn how to reset. The more we do this, the easier it gets. That pleasure/stress switch … Someone actually asked recently, they wrote in an email and asked for the medical references for that. And I’ll try to dig them out for you.

Chris Rose: 29:45 But what we know is that the more we practice flipping between these states of pleasure and relaxation, and maybe completing the stress cycle is a better language for that, right? It is cyclical. It’s like digestion, in and out, in and out. You’re never done digesting, it’s just a cycle. The more we complete the stress cycle, the more the body knows how to do that. And in the Nagoski’s book, they talk about it as wellness is a state of action. So if it’s a state of action, let’s learn how to take those actions. And what actions are most meaningful for you, as an individual. Because we all have different affinities for these things. Is it walking, running, swimming, dancing, martial arts, fucking? What is your methodology to complete the stress cycle and do more of that, and see what happens and report back.

Charlotte Rose: 30:41 Yes, let us know. Just about the action and the wellness, I love this idea that wellness is basically being able to deal with the stressors, be able to be stressed, and then return to a place of calm and rest and relaxation and that you’re able to move through these cycles with grace or completion. And that that is what keeps you well. I feel like that’s so powerful in this world, where sometimes we think we need to never be around negativity. Or things are so …

Chris Rose: 31:17 Positive vibes only.

Charlotte Rose: 31:18 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 31:19 Fuck that, yeah.

Charlotte Rose: 31:21 That’s not wellness, that’s like separation between, separation of things. It just feels very powerful to train ourselves to become more aware of our own bodies. To train ourselves, to be able to deal with life. And then return to a place of rest.

Chris Rose: 31:40 Totally.

Charlotte Rose: 31:41 Within our own bodies, and our own body’s ecosystem. And that we are responsible of that, and we can orchestrate that for ourselves. I just find that so powerful and exciting in a bigger way that we don’t have to go into now. But I feel like it’s inspiring, and I want us all to have that capacity with our own bodies, because what it makes available for the people around us is really profound. They get more of us, more of the good parts of us, and we are able to deal with the hard parts individually. And that’s awesome, and in connection with community, but really be able to ask for what we need. I think it’s so exciting.

Chris Rose: 32:19 Yeah, yeah. And I think this completing the stress cycle is one of those … It’s a chapter out of the how to be human handbook that we never got. For me, this is one of those just foundational frameworks that changes how I walk in the world, how I interact with other humans. A friend just posted on Facebook, “oh my God I was just at a stop light and someone was waving a gun around at the intersection and I’m totally freaked out, and I’m on the way to this really important meeting.” And I’m like … blah blah blah. And I just posted really quickly, “Walk around the block, and run and shake and move.” And she wrote me later how useful that was. And I was able just to remind her of this human thing.

Chris Rose: 33:07 This stressful thing just happened, finish it. Move. And just notice what happens when you start deploying this in your life. We’re excited for you, we’re excited for the people in your life. We’re grateful to the Nagoski’s for bringing so much of this knowledge together in this book. If you have not yet joined us in reading Burnout, there is still time. Grab a copy of Burnout, I’ll put the link in the show notes page. Or just join us this month for conversations about the stress cycle and sexuality. We’re going to be talking about how to create those erotic havens in our lives. More strategies for making sure stress does not interfere with your sex life. And how to tune into pleasure. How do we pay attention to pleasure? All of that is coming up on future episodes of Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics.

Chris Rose: 33:58 Be sure to subscribe on your platform of choice so you never miss an episode. Rate and review us on iTunes if you wish. And if you’d like to be part of our inner circle, come on over to Patreon.com/PleasureMechanics. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N, Patreon.com/PleasureMechanics. And join us with a monthly pledge, and become part of our inner circle for ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, bonus resources, direct access to us, and more. We’d love to see you there. Come on over to Patreon.com/PleasureMechanics. And of course, our home on the web will always be PleasureMechanics.com. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 34:44 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 34:45 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 34:47 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 34:50 Cheers.

Burnout : The Stress & Sex Connection Interview with Emily Nagoski

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Do you ever feel like the daily grind is grinding you down? Burnout – the feeling of never enoughness, of being locked in a non-feeling state of perpetual motion, of feeling like there is no candle left to burn from either end – is the lived experience of so many of us. Burnout is real – but so are the solutions, both personal and collective, that will lead us into a more honest and vibrant relationship with our lives.

Let’s start practicing the solutions, together. Join The Pleasure Pod to unlock our Pleasure Practices library and other member-only resources!

In this episode we cover:

the stress cycle: what it is and why it needs to be completed
the most efficient ways to complete your daily stress cycles
the hidden costs of accumulated stress
how the stress cycle impacts our ability to enjoy sex, relaxed intimacy and affectionate touch
the meaning of finding meaning
the importance of communal joy
why self care is ultimately about social justice
the Human Giver Syndrome – what it is, who has it and how we cure it together
how addressing your burnout can help ignite your eroticism

This book is a GAME CHANGER – an answer to the underlying issue that drives so many of our collective struggles: Burnout. If you have ever felt complete overwhelm, a mounting state of despair and a sense of disconnection, you’ve felt the impact of Burnout.

Check out our interview with Emily Nagoski about sexuality, female orgasm and her book Come As You Are

The Emily Nagoski Interview Encore Podcast Episode

Get more info about the book Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle from Penguin Random House

Transcription of Podcast Episode: Burnout Interview with Emily Nagoski

Chris Rose: 00:00 Hi, welcome to Speaking of Sex With the Pleasure Mechanics. This is Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and on today’s episode, I am thrilled to bring you a conversation with Emily Nagoski. Emily Nagoski is author of one of our favorite sex books ever, ‘Come as You Are’. She’s been on the podcast before from a two-part episode about the surprising science of sex and we’ll link to that in the show note’s page. Because if you are new to Emily Nagoski’s work, you will definitely want to check that out.

Chris Rose: 00:36 Today, she’s here to talk about her new book, ‘Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle’. We talk all about how stress and sexuality are connected, how we all struggle in this culture to complete our stress cycle and find a sense of purpose and joy and belonging. It is an amazing book and we loved it so much, for the next four episodes of Speaking of Sex, we are going to be diving into a little miniseries, a four-episode exploration of the themes that emerge through ‘Burnout’ and this conversation around stress and sexuality. You can find all of our ‘Burnout’ episodes and resources at pleasuremechanics.com/burnout and join our free online course at pleasuremechanics.com/free.

Chris Rose: 01:31 All right, here we go with my interview Emily Nagoski. Welcome to the Speaking of Sex miniseries on sexual burnout.

Chris Rose: 01:41 Emily Nagoski, welcome to Speaking of Sex.

Emily Nagoski: 01:44 I’m so excited to be here.

Chris Rose: 01:45 I should say welcome back because you’ve been on the show before about your first book, ‘Come as You Are’, which is now widely considered to be one of the most important sex books in the field.

Emily Nagoski: 01:56 Is it?

Chris Rose: 01:57 Yes.

Emily Nagoski: 01:57 Wow.

Chris Rose: 01:59 I’m glad to be the one to tell you that. We refer it all the time. It’s one of those books that both professionals and our wide audience both say they have so many ah-ha moments with. Even they start with our interview with you on the podcast and then get the book and were like, “I have no idea how normal I was, how common these struggles I feel are, and how explainable they are.”

Emily Nagoski: 02:25 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 02:26 For anyone who doesn’t have ‘Come as You Are’ on your bookshelf, please get it now and while you’re there, order Emily’s second book, ‘Burnout’. I am so excited to talk to you about this book because you announced the topic of this book a few years ago and I would love to hear your journey of how did you go from writing this book about female sexuality and the science of sexuality to a book about burnout? What is burnout and what’s that link?

Emily Nagoski: 02:54 That’s an hour right there.

Chris Rose: 02:56 Yeah.

Emily Nagoski: 02:57 There’s an origin story here. The usual next step for someone who’s written a book about women’s sexuality would be to write a book about men’s sexuality or couple’s sexuality or something like that, or relationships. When I was traveling around talking to people about ‘Come as You Are’ and the science of women’s sexual wellbeing, people were not saying to me, “Oh, could you write a book about men? Could you write a book about couples?” What they were saying was, “Yeah, Emily, all that sex science that’s really great, but you know what was really important to me was that chapter on feelings and stress.”

Chris Rose: 03:32 Yep.

Emily Nagoski: 03:34 I was surprised. I worked so hard on the sex science and people do appreciate that, but over and over it kept coming back, “You know what really changed my life was that chapter on stress.” I have an identical twin sister and I told her about this. She is a choral conductor who is a conservatory-trained, performance musician. I was like, “When I talk to people they’re like, ‘What really matters to me is this stress part.'” She was like, “No duh.” Because whoever teaches us how to feel our feelings? We grew up in a family that was pretty dysfunctional and we had to learn how to have feelings out of books.

Emily Nagoski: 04:16 I got a master’s degree in counseling psychology. She got a master’s degree in choral conducting. At a certain point, we realized we both got master’s degrees in how to listen and feel feelings, which probably says something about what we left home needing still. She had really struggled in grad school, so we were having this conversation and she said, “You know what? What I finally learned this whole completing the stress response cycle thing, I’m pretty sure it saved my life,” she said. Then, she looked at me and she goes, “Twice.”

Emily Nagoski: 04:48 That was the point when I was like, “Okay. Well, we should write a book about that.” That’s when we decided. It was October of 2015 that we had our first meeting with my literary agent about the next book is not going to be a book about men or relationships. It’s going to be about stress and women.

Chris Rose: 05:05 How timely its release now. I think in the past few years, this conversation about the toll of stress on our bodies, on our relationships, on our creativity, the conversations about gender imbalance of the daily micro-stress, about micro-traumas, all of this conversation has come to the surface in such a big way. This book lands on our laps like a revelation.

Chris Rose: 05:34 I cried when I read it. I’m just going to be totally honest with you. I opened up the pdf you sent and I cried because so much of our conversations with people are getting couples past this hump so they can be in this zone of enjoyment and pleasure together. We realized we had been talking to people for years about the enjoyment phase of sex when you can be in that sensuality, when you can be in pleasure, but that is inaccessible without this book, without the knowledge, the wisdom-

Emily Nagoski: 06:05 Without them dealing with the stress, yeah.

Chris Rose: 06:06 Yeah. So talk to us about that. What is the stress response cycle? What do we need to know about completing it?

Emily Nagoski: 06:12 Okay. There’s two parts I want to talk about. One is the stress response cycle and the other is the gender dynamic that traps women in particular in their stress. The stress response cycle … And, this is in ‘Come as You Are’, and it’s chapter one of ‘Burnout’. Physiologically stress is not just a stress response like you’re confronted with a stressor and that activates stress. It is a stress response cycle. In the environment where we evolved, our stress response was to help us deal with things like being chased by a lion or charged by a hippo.

Emily Nagoski: 06:46 Did you know hippos are the most dangerous land mammals on Earth?

Chris Rose: 06:49 Terrifying.

Emily Nagoski: 06:50 Hippos. You’re being charged by a hippo and your body sees this threat approaching you and it floods you with cortisol and adrenaline and changes your digestive system and your immune system and your hormones. Every body system is affected by this threat coming toward you. All of these changes are in preparation to make you do one thing which is to run like Hell to get away from that threat.

Emily Nagoski: 07:17 So, that’s what you do. At that point, there’s only two possible outcomes. Either you get eaten by the lion or trampled by the hippo or you make it home. You run back to your village and somebody opens the door and you slip right in and the hippo can pound against the wall but can’t to get you. You are safe. You jump up and down and you hug the person who just saved your life. That is the complete stress response cycle.

Emily Nagoski: 07:46 It is not, you’ll notice, getting rid of the stressor, the threat. It is getting through the stress response cycle by doing what your body is telling you to do in order to get to a safe place. These days, we are alas really very rarely charged by hippos. Instead, our stressors are things like our boss and our kids and our sexuality and our body image and traffic. Those are not things that you can literally, physically escape or can you literally physically fight them.

Emily Nagoski: 08:19 I’m an advocate for healthy expressions of rage, but you’re actually not allowed to punch anybody in the face, which is what your body wants you to do. The question is, how do we complete the stress response cycle itself when dealing with a stressor doesn’t do the trick? ‘Cause that’s the hard part, right? You’re confronted with your boss who’s kind of an asshole and your body responds with exactly the same physiological response, the adrenaline and the cortisol and glycogen, oh, my! And, your body wants to get up and run or punch him in the face or whatever, but it’s-

Chris Rose: 08:58 And, most of us have layers of daily, chronic stressors.

Emily Nagoski: 09:02 It’s happening every single day that you have just the little things. Like your kids won’t put on their shoes and you stand over them and you tap your toe and you’re a good parent. Then, they put on their shoes and then you’re five minutes late for work. Then, your boss is a dick about it. It just accumulates and builds up. You’ve got all this stress living in your body and you manage it because you are a grownup and that is what we do, is we manage all of our stressors. Just because you’re managing your stressors doesn’t mean you’re managing the stress itself, the physiological change in your body.

Chris Rose: 09:35 You mentioned there finding the place of safety and then the jumping up and down. Can you bring us into those two moments? So, the safety piece and the movement piece, what are those about?

Emily Nagoski: 09:45 What the physiology of the stress response is saying is your body’s not a safe place right now. You need to do something to move your body into a safe place. You arrive in a place of social connection with someone you love and trust with safe walls around you. And, you’ve already done the running, so physical activity. When you’re being chased by a lion, what do you do? You run. When you are stressed out by your boss and parenting and political world and everything else, what do you do? You run.

Emily Nagoski: 10:17 Physical activity, any movement of any kind is the most efficient strategy. the language your body speaks is body language and what it wants is to move. It doesn’t have to be running. It can be dancing it out in your living room. It can be a Zumba class. It can be literally just jumping up and down. It can be lying in bed still and just tensing all of your muscles as hard as you can. Physical activity is the most efficient way, but there’s also, as the story points out, social connection is an incredibly important stress completing process for humans.

Emily Nagoski: 10:53 We are massively social species. We are basically a hive species. We’re a herd species. We are only safe when we are with our tribe. If you run to safety but you’re still alone, that’s not fully complete. When you run to safety and arrive to some loving affectionate other … in the book Amelia I call it the ‘bubble of love’ … then your body can relax because it knows you are safe with your tribe. This can take the form of small stuff. You know what? Just a happy little chat with your barista, a pleasant ‘hey, how are you doing’ with your seatmate on a train.

Emily Nagoski: 11:31 I know people believe that everybody wants to sit in silence on a train, but it turns out they’ve done research on this, and even though people believe that, if you actually have just a simple polite conversation, people feel better. Both people feel better if they’ve just had that little bit of social connection. It also can take the form of deeper intimacy like a 20-second hug is one of the recommendations. You wrap your arms around your partner and you just hold each other for 20 seconds in a row. That’s a long time to hug, but what happens is that it teaches your body that you are now in a safe place, you are in a place of safety.

Emily Nagoski: 12:11 Of course, this assumes that your partner is a safe enough person whom you can hold for 20 seconds in a row, which is sort of the point of the exercise. John Gottman recommends a six-second daily kiss. Again, that could be an awkwardly long … That’s not six one-second kisses, that’s one six-second kiss. You got to really like and trust your partner in order to make that a thing that can happen in your life. So, it reminds you. It sets your body in this place of safety and connection that I have this place to fall back on when things go wrong. I have a home to come to at the end of a difficult, stressful day.

Emily Nagoski: 12:50 That completes the cycle. It transitions you out of my body is not safe into a place of I am safe and at home now.

Chris Rose: 12:58 What do we know about the science of the connection between that physical embodied feeling of feeling safe and at home with things like desires and willingness to be erotic?

Emily Nagoski: 13:13 On the one hand, we know a lot. On the other hand, we know barely anything. We know for sure that a feeling of safety is pretty necessary for a lot of people to experience pleasure. Desire’s a little more complicated. 10 to 20% of people actually experience an increase in interest in sex when they are in a place of negative affect, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, despair, repressed rage. We’ve all got it. The other 80 to 90% experience no change or else a reduction in their interest in sex. The second makes clear linear sense in the sense of is being chased by a lion a good time to be interested in sex? Probably not, right?

Emily Nagoski: 14:01 Clearly, when you’re feeling stressed out, having sex go away makes sense. But, it turns out for some people, our brains are just wired a little differently. Stress crosses into the activation of the sexual response. It does not increase sexual pleasure. In fact, it might reduce it, but it increases interest in sex because there’s an overall increase in arousability or sensitivity to having all the accelerators in your central nervous system activated. This actually puts people at increased risk for sexual compulsivity or risk-taking behavior that they would not engage in if they were not in a place of negative emotion.

Emily Nagoski: 14:45 The find themselves using sex as a way to manage their stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness instead of using these healthy things. It’s not bad until it feels like you are no longer in control of your sexuality. Your sexuality is control of you.

Chris Rose: 15:03 Again, the scientific knowledge and then self-mapping that onto your reality, I just talked to a guy who recognized he was doing just that. Using sex to relieve stress and using other people in that process. So, he started martial arts and-

Emily Nagoski: 15:21 Hooray!

Chris Rose: 15:21 … it transformed him. Yes, ’cause he had that physical outlet. It was like the touch, the rough, the rumbling around. Then he was like, “And, then I felt like I could choose when I wanted sex for other reasons.” It was like beautiful.

Emily Nagoski: 15:34 Yeah. Specifically, about martial arts, you mentioned the rough and tumble. Play is a primary process that is as natural to humans as sex, which is to say that it comes and goes depending on the context. But rough and tumble play and story play are both innate to humans and they fulfill something really deep inside us the same way that sex can. We can use sex as story play and as rough and tumble play, but if we’re getting enough access to play, that’s another way that we can help to transition out of the stress response cycle into relaxation.

Emily Nagoski: 16:07 We can complete that response cycle through play, rough and tumble play with your kids. Going on a bike race. Or, story play. Acting, creative self-expression, writing, story-telling, those are all other effective ways to complete the stress response cycle.

Chris Rose: 16:25 Okay, so we’re talking about this experience. So many people are now feeling that so deeply like, “Yes, this makes sense to me.” It makes sense to so many of us because it is not an individual experience, it is a cultural … I don’t know if you want to call it an epidemic. It’s a cultural moment we’re in where so many of us are locked in this stress response cycle.

Emily Nagoski: 16:49 I don’t think it’s even close to new. I think what’s new is that we’re noticing it and deciding that it’s actually not okay at all.

Chris Rose: 16:59 Do you think it’s accelerating with ever-on technology, with the pace of modern life? Do you think it’s more a problem now than it was 100 years ago?

Emily Nagoski: 17:10 I just don’t know ’cause 100 years ago we didn’t have antibiotics as well as not having phones. It’s really hard to be able … Our food environment was totally different and it’s impossible to compare. But, one thing that has stayed shockingly the same is this thing that Amelia and I call Human Giver Syndrome on the book.

Chris Rose: 17:32 Tell me ’cause I think I have it. Tell me.

Emily Nagoski: 17:36 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 17:37 What is Human Giver Syndrome?

Emily Nagoski: 17:40 We take the term from this book I highly recommend to everyone on Earth. It’s called ‘Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny’ by a moral philosopher names Kate Manne, M-A-N-N-E. It’s really short but pretty dark. She suggests a world where hypothetically there’s two kinds of people. There are the human beings who have a moral obligation to be their full humanity, the human beings. Then, there’s the human givers who have a moral obligation to give their full humanity to the beings every moment of their time, every drop of their energy, their attention, their love, even their bodies. They’re morally obliged to give everything in service of the beings.

Emily Nagoski: 18:30 Guess which one women are? In this thing that we call Human Giver Syndrome, we have this belief that women have a moral obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the need of others, which includes not expressing any emotional needs of their own. We smile and are nice and try not to make anybody uncomfortable. In order to do that, we are not completing our stress response cycles ’cause we’re not allowed to. There is no space for us to express our fear, to move our bodies, to purge our rage.

Emily Nagoski: 19:10 If Amelia and I had set out to design a system to burn out half the population, we could not have designed anything more efficient. ‘Cause women are trapped in this role of smiling and being pretty and nice and not imposing any of their emotional needs on anybody. It is amazing to me how the Me Too movement keeps having the narrative switched onto look at what you’re doing to the men. Because women aren’t allowed to talk about their own feelings, their own personal experience. We just ignore that.

Emily Nagoski: 19:43 That’s not what the story is about. That can’t be what the story is about. ‘Cause women, that’s not part of how we think about women are too emotionally needy, which we’re not allowed to have any emotional needs. Of course, we feel stuck in the middle of all of these emotions and they’re setting up camp in our bodies. Everybody has a sense of what organs their stress lives in. It’s my digestive system. For Amelia, it’s her joints, her back, and her knees. Some people get migraine headaches.

Emily Nagoski: 20:14 Your stress changes your physiology. Emotions aren’t like these things, these ideas. They are physical events that happen in your physical body and they degrade your health. I have lost count of the number of people who told me, the number of women who’ve told me that they ended up in the hospital because of stress-induced illness and that includes my sister.

Chris Rose: 20:38 To broaden this out, it’s women and then it’s compounded by things like race, class, education-

Emily Nagoski: 20:45 Oh, God, yes.

Chris Rose: 20:46 … environment, where you live, environmental toxins. Yeah. Yeah.

Emily Nagoski: 20:52 Yeah, human givers … The book itself is about gender, but she very clearly acknowledges the ways that people of color in the United States especially, but all over the world, are expected to smile and be nice and accept their own servitude. When we tell stories like in the media about people of color, the stories we celebrate are the times when people of color forgive white people or rise above it. The shooting in the church in South Carolina, we told these celebratory stories about how forgiving these Christians were of this boy who killed so many members of their community, which is a beautiful thing and nobody has a right to expect that of anybody.

Emily Nagoski: 21:43 People are allowed to be enraged and despairing when tragedy strikes their life. How many of us would feel equally comfortable … I’m talking in particular about white people like me. How many of us would feel genuinely, equally comfortable with an expression of rage and despair from the black community at this kind of violence as opposed to forgiveness and generosity and Christian spirit and rising above? I think that the more we can do to create space for the rage and despair of the people who have over generations pulled themselves against white people’s will into a position of any sort of power to have a conversation with us … We need to create space for them to have all the feelings that they have. It’s our moral duty. It is our obligation to allow all of that stuff to complete and to bear witness to the pain that has been inflicted over generations.

Emily Nagoski: 22:45 Am I getting too preachy about this?

Chris Rose: 22:49 I came to this middle section of the book and I said hallelujah out loud because you put in this book these issues of the chronic micro-stressors, the chronic daily traumas that so many people have to embody. It’s a conversation that has been missing from a lot of the self-care narrative of take a bubble bath and it will be okay. Not okay if there’s not food in the pantry for my kids.

Emily Nagoski: 23:17 Right. I talk about you close the door and you’re in a place of safety. What if there’s no such thing as a place of safety for your body in this society? What if you’re a trans woman of color in the United States? Where do you go? where do you put your body where your body is actually going to be genuinely safe? There’s going to be just little narrowly defined places where you can feel genuinely safe.

Emily Nagoski: 23:40 One of the things, I talk about it in the book, is you can gradually build up a way that your body can be a safe place for you to be even when your body is not in a safe place. The more you can build that sense of relationship with your own body … and, it happens most efficiently when you build it in connection with safe people in that bubble of love we talked about … the more you can be protected and inoculated against the noxious environment in which you have to put your body every day to live.

Chris Rose: 24:19 Can you explain this to me? I was thinking the other day of how especially when we get involved in movements or in social causes, we can do extraordinary feats of labor and come home at the end of the day and feel energized and joyous and great. Then, in other moments, especially if we’re doing work we resent or we don’t feel seen for, it doesn’t even have to be that much exertion and we can feel so depleted. So many of us want to rise to get involved but we feel like, “God, I can barely make it through my own day.”

Emily Nagoski: 24:54 Yes.

Chris Rose: 24:56 What is the purpose of tapping into something bigger?

Emily Nagoski: 25:00 Yeah. Okay. The first three chapters of the book are in a section we call ‘What You Take With You’, which is … It’s the Star Wars reference of Luke asking Yoda about the cave, what’s in there. And, Yoda says, “Only what you take with you.” He’s talking about so what is it inside you that you’re going to carry with you into this battle? It’s both the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff. The things we carry are our stress response cycle that lives in our body, our capacity to experience frustration, grief, and joy, and the third thing is our sense of meaning and purpose. We call it your ‘Something Larger’.

Emily Nagoski: 25:39 Meaning is not something you find generally. It is something you make. You make meaning by connecting with something larger than yourself. Sometimes that’s a spiritual something larger, like a God you believe in. Sometimes it is a cultural or ideological something larger, politics or science. Sometimes it’s a social something larger like your family. Sometimes it’s a combination of those things. Sometimes it’s something else entirely. For my sister, it’s art. You find the thing that brings you meaning. There’s a series of three different exercises you can do if you don’t know what your something larger is.

Emily Nagoski: 26:18 You connect with your something larger and that brings you a sense of meaning which makes it easier to continue working hard. There are some days when the ways we engage with our something larger feel intensely rewarding and we really see the difference that we made. Those are the days when we get home and we’re like, “Yeah! I did it.” Even though we haven’t completely … Racism isn’t over. Sexism isn’t over. Not everybody’s having all are orgasms they want to have. Our job isn’t done yet, but we made progress today. Then, there are the days when you work really hard and you’re trying to engage with your something larger and you just don’t feel like you’ve done anything and you feel on empty.

Emily Nagoski: 27:03 Here’s the difficulty. The thing is, when that happens, it’s usually because we’re trying to get our sense of connection with our something larger from something outside of us. When, in fact, our something large is not actually something out there. It’s not actually the God out there or the art out there or the science out there or the kids out there. Our something larger lives inside us. It is the representation of art and science and political change and the environment and our kids that lives inside us so that when bad things happen, it can feel like we’re losing contact with it.

Emily Nagoski: 27:40 I use this analogy in the book that when you’re in an airplane and you hit a pocket of turbulence, you grab onto your chair as if you could hold the plane still by holding onto the chair. You know that that’s not how it works, but your hands don’t know that that’s how it works. Your hands are pretty sure if you grab onto the chair, you’re going to be holding onto something really important. That’s what happens during windows of turbulence in our lives. We grab onto our something larger and hold onto it and it helps the same way that holding onto your chair helps during turbulence.

Emily Nagoski: 28:15 When things get really bad, when tragedy strikes, when really terrible things happen, when the plane crashes, it can feel like we’ve lost contact entirely with our something larger and that’s never actually true. Only if we believe our something larger is outside of us so we really lose contact. When people reconnect with the something larger as it lives inside them, then the fire can never go out. Does that make sense?

Chris Rose: 28:45 Is this a feeling of that belonging feeling? We talked about the very physical embodied feeling of safety and belonging, is what we’re talking about a sense of belonging in the human family?

Emily Nagoski: 29:01 We actually had a really hard time separating the meaning chapter from the connection chapter, in fact. Yeah. A lot of the research there’s this one, I can’t tell if it’s desperately sad or hilarious, study where okay, so you’re a subject in a study and you’re supposed to make a greeting video for your partner who’s in a different room and they’re making a greeting video for you. Then, you watch your partner’s welcome video. Hi, we’re about to be partners. Then, your partner watches your video of them. Your partner watches your video of yourself. Then, you get word back ’cause you’ve been in different rooms all this time.

Emily Nagoski: 29:39 The researcher comes back and says, “Hey, your partner had to leave. They had an emergency.” Or, they say, “Hey, your partner had to leave. They decided they did not want to participate with you. Could you do this one more thing? Just take this one little survey for us?” The survey is an assessment of a person’s sense of meaning and purpose in life. As simple and small a feeling of social rejection as not being welcomed into an experiment with a stranger significantly reduces a person’s sense of purpose and meaning. Our sense of meaning is absolutely connected to our feeling of being welcomed into connection with other people.

Emily Nagoski: 30:28 ‘Cause most of our something largers are about service to our community, to the people we care about. If we’re not allowed to be part of that. If we’re not welcome as part of our community, what purpose is there?

Chris Rose: 30:45 Right now, I know when we talked about the Human Giver Syndrome, we talked about the role of gender there. Right now, I’m thinking about the rejection so many men are feeling right now and just acknowledging the hurt in them often comes from this disconnection with a sense of purpose because they’ve been told their humanity, their manhood, their worthiness is connected to their careers and their erections primarily.

Emily Nagoski: 31:13 Their ability to get access to women’s bodies.

Chris Rose: 31:17 Through their worthiness, right?

Emily Nagoski: 31:18 Yeah, yeah. They can measure their value on Earth by whether or not a woman says yes to them.

Chris Rose: 31:25 As a sex scientist, does it surprise you that we’re having these conversations? If someone just tuned in in the middle of this podcast, if it was on public radio, they might think they’re talking to two spiritual explorers. We’re talking about some really big ideas, but you come at this through the science, through the evidence. How are you thinking? How are you feeling about you’re about to … I think this book is going to be very popular and I hope you have lots of interviews about it in the coming months. How are you straddling this line between science and these bigger questions of belonging and human joy?

Emily Nagoski: 32:04 You know, it’s interesting. Most of the places where I get interviewed, nobody cares about the science, nobody wants to talk about the science, which is fine. I am happy not to talk about the science if that’s not what’s going to persuade people. If I’ve learned anything over the last … No, I’ve learned so much over the last five years, I can’t say that. One of the important things I’ve learned over the last five years is that very few people are big ole nerds like me. Very few people are really excited to talk about the brain science underlying the sense of meaning and purpose. Very few people want to talk about the neurochemistry and the rat research about gendered experiences of stress. Mostly they just want ideas and help.

Emily Nagoski: 32:47 People want help enormously and we trimmed the book hard in order to get it really focused on helping people feel better so that they could do something to get out of these traps.

Chris Rose: 32:59 Can we please put out a geek version?

Emily Nagoski: 33:03 We cut-

Chris Rose: 33:04 Director’s cut?

Emily Nagoski: 33:07 … more than twice as much actual … Yeah, there’s at least 100,000 words of stuff we cut including most … Including a lot of the trauma stuff.

Chris Rose: 33:15 That’s another book waiting. It’s another book.

Emily Nagoski: 33:16 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 33:17 Because I hear you saying that about science, but I also feel like when people have these ah-ha moments, like when we explain the dual model control of arousal for example, and they can map it … And, you do such an amazing job telling stories around the science. Because when people can map this and feel the truth of this in their bodies, it helps them feel more human.

Emily Nagoski: 33:39 Yeah. And, we do talk about the … Neither Amelia nor I could tolerate talking about … Because neither of us is a person of faith. We are not and I know that a lot of self-help books lean hard on the author’s face. We have this chapter on meaning and we talk about how spirituality and connection with God can be a source of meaning and purpose. It can also be a way to complete the stress response cycle. A lot of people experience their connection with the divine as a loving presence that helps them to feel safe. The reason we say people experience that is because they’re accessing the loving, kindness, and compassion inside their own brain, which is changing their biochemistry. It’s changing how their brain works. It’s reducing the stress hormones in their brain when they pray.

Emily Nagoski: 34:32 When you feel supported and loved, it doesn’t matter why. The fact is, that feeling is real. It’s happening in your body and it’s good for you.

Chris Rose: 34:42 You give these options for how to access it. One of the ways we’ve been talking about it is communal joy.

Emily Nagoski: 34:48 Yes.

Chris Rose: 34:48 What is the space of communal joy and that could be birdwatching, right?

Emily Nagoski: 34:53 No, it literally … Yes, most of the examples we give tend to be musical ’cause that’s where Amelia lives.

Chris Rose: 35:01 I was watching a Taylor Swift concert on Netflix the other day just to see what the vibe was like and I was like, “Oh, these teenagers, these young people are experiencing communal joy.”

Emily Nagoski: 35:12 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 35:13 And, we flock to these experiences and sometimes it’s like, “Why do you pay so much money for music you could listen to at home?” We go. I also think about the constellations of pleasure and how do we follow our constellations of pleasure to these places where we feel at home?

Emily Nagoski: 35:31 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 35:31 That could be a video game world competition where you’re … So many of us have not been told to pursue communal joy.

Emily Nagoski: 35:42 Yeah, we don’t even name it as the thing that it is. If I had to name a one thing that is the opposite of burnout, it’s that experience of communal joy. It is literally moving your body in time with other people for a shared purpose. That could be a Taylor Swift concert. It could be singing in church. It could be our rugby team. It could be a Black Lives Matter march. Moving your body in time with other people for a shared purpose brings together all of the things that are most important for fighting burnout. It is physical activity. It is social connection. It is a sense of meaning and purpose. It is the ultimate battery charger. It is the ultimate counterweight against burnout.

Emily Nagoski: 36:38 The only other thing that’s as powerful as rhythmic movement of your body with other people for a shared purpose, the only other thing that’s as powerful is sleep.

Chris Rose: 36:50 I love that answer. I was waiting with bated breath like, “What is it going to be?”

Emily Nagoski: 36:54 What is it?

Chris Rose: 36:55 My two favorite things. And, why sleep?

Emily Nagoski: 36:58 [inaudible 00:36:58].

Chris Rose: 36:58 what does sleep offer?

Emily Nagoski: 36:59 What I love about the shared movement is you don’t … You need to spend a lot of your life asleep. You spend a third of your life asleep, but you only need to do this shared rhythmic thing occasionally, just big moments of it scattered through your year can be enough to maintain a battery charge.

Chris Rose: 37:20 Yes, and I’m also … I’ve started this practice of finding little moments of connection and joy with random people throughout the day. Like you said, the barista, the cashier. I am amazed at how profound those moments are adding up to be. When we recognize, “Oh, you’re a human in a room with me and we both matter.” This is where it’s taking me and the connection then to sexuality. People just feeling, seen, and appreciated especially those bodies that are not seen and appreciated and loved and honored and cherished day to day.

Emily Nagoski: 37:55 Yes.

Chris Rose: 37:56 Bringing some extra love to those interactions has been so life-changing to me.

Emily Nagoski: 38:02 This is one of the places where the science just barely exists for five years maybe 10 years worth of two-person neuroscience where they measured two people’s brains simultaneously while they’re engaged in some sort of shared activity. It turns out what it takes to get two people’s brains to begin in training, which is to say moving at the same rhythm is mere co-presence. Two bodies sharing a physical space will automatically begin to change each other. We are always co-regulating each other all of the time.

Emily Nagoski: 38:38 One of the reasons an introvert like me finds New York or another big city really challenging is that we are all co-regulating each other all the time so I’m feeling the energy and moods and state of mind of all of these bodies around me all the time. They’re regulating me even as I am regulating them. Whereas when I just have a couple of people around me, that’s not too intense and overwhelming an amount of people, which is different from-

Chris Rose: 39:06 I also suspect you choose people who know how to self-regulate.

Emily Nagoski: 39:09 Yeah. Yes. I’m pretty specific and I’m also totally fine when I’m teaching because when you’re in a leadership position, your job is to help the whole group entrain into one big unit. It’s just one pulse instead of being 70 different people’s pulses. You just get everybody in the room moving at one shared rhythm. Amelia does that for a living as a choral conductor, obviously. And, it turns out I do the same thing as a sex educator. I’ve got a group of therapists and needed them to come with me into some deep science, which means I need to get their heartbeats all beating at the same pace as mine.

Chris Rose: 39:49 Okay. So this has been hour one of our conversation about burnout. Thank you so much for this. Can you just bring it home to the bedroom? I really feel like this book is the how-to manual human bodies need right now. If one was to take this book seriously and pull these strategies into our lives and project a year out of embodying these strategies, what would you expect to change in someone’s sex life?

Emily Nagoski: 40:18 Oh, my gosh. Can they read both books? Can I imagine if they read both?

Chris Rose: 40:24 Yes. They’re next to each other on your bedside table, yes.

Emily Nagoski: 40:28 Perfect. They actually go. The covers of the American books are very coordinated. That’s not on purpose. What would happen in a year if you practice the things in the book is your physiological state would down-regulate a couple of notches. Whatever level of stress you feel right now, imagine I gradually just … Just gets a little … Your body gets softer, your muscles get more flexible and responsive, your sleep gets deeper and more restorative, your ability to make eye contact and engage kindly and compassionately with all humans will grow more powerful, and that includes with the people with whom you share your life. If that’s your children, yes, more patience, more kindness, more smile and laughter, less …

Emily Nagoski: 41:25 And, with your partner, more patience, more kindness, more laughter. It also means the sex you have may or may not be more spontaneous. There’ll probably, I hope, be more physical affection even if it’s not sexual. More hugging, more kissing, more holding hands and sitting next to each other, which builds a foundation, a bedrock of friendship and trust on which you can build an erotic connection that’s as comforting or as exploratory and wild as you and your partner feel good building together. The reason I want people to read both is so that they can play with what counts as sexual for them.

Emily Nagoski: 42:13 It’s not just about building safety and trust. It is about building and safety and trust but from there, launching into exploration. The other thing I did this year, which I probably should have mentioned earlier, is there’s now going to be a workbook to go with ‘Come as You Are’. It’s called ‘The Come as You Are Workbook’. It’s coming out in June. It includes worksheets where people think through their sexual history and their breaks and accelerators like you were talking about. I talk about the rituals of play and homecoming that you can use to deepen your sense of connection.

Emily Nagoski: 42:49 The last thing I want to say about what will change a year from now. I want people to know how and have the skill to create a magic circle for sexuality in their lives where they shed the parts of their identity that they don’t want to bring into an erotic connection and they step into their protected social space of connection and joy and play and imagination that can only exist in a place of safety and trust. So that they can connect with a partner in the imaginative space, a spiritual space if that’s right for them, and an exploratory space where this touching of your skin isn’t just the touching of your skin, but the touching of these two people and lives that are tangled together in probably more than just one way.

Emily Nagoski: 43:45 Letting yourself explore that together in a protected space because you are not so overwhelmed by the rest of your life that you can find space for that. Does that make sense?

Chris Rose: 44:00 Yes. What an invitation. What an invitation. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much for your time today and we will link up all of these resources, both of these books in the show notes page at pleasuremechanics.com for this episode and so much more to come. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much.

Emily Nagoski: 44:18 Thank you.

Chris Rose: 44:21 All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Emily Nagoski. Just a reminder, we are going into a four-part series exploring some of the themes in ‘Burnout’, so be sure to grab your copy of the ‘Burnout’ book. There will be links in the show notes page. And, join us next week for a conversation about the connection between sex and stress and how we can all prevent sexual burnout.

Chris Rose: 44:46 Come on over to patreon.com/pleasuremechanics to show your support for this show. That’s patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. And pleasuremechanics.com/burnout for all of the resources related to this miniseries.

Chris Rose: 45:03 All right, I am Chris from pleasuremechanics.com wishing you a lifetime of pleasure. Cheers.

Expanding Erotic Communication with Stella Harris

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We all know communication is essential for healthy relationships and great sex – but how do we begin to level up our erotic communication skills? How do we break through the fear and shame to start talking openly about what we want in bed?

Sex coach and author Stella Harris joins us to explore the tricky terrain of erotic communication. Stella guides us in activating more authentic communication – before, during and after sex.

Find out more about Stella’s classes and coaching at StellaHarris.net

Check out Stella’s book: Tongue Tied: Untangling Communication in Sex, Kink and Relationships

More Speaking of Sex Podcast Episodes On Erotic Communication:

Transcript for Podcast Episode: Expanding Erotic Communication with Stella Harris

Chris Rose: 00:00 Hi, welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. This is Chris from pleasuremechanics.com and on today’s episode, we are joined by the fabulous Stella Harris to talk all about erotic communication and how to get more of what you want in and out of bed.

Chris Rose: 00:21 Before we get started, I want to remind you to come on over to pleasuremechanics.com, where you will find our complete podcast archive and while you were there, go to pleasuremechanics.com/free and sign up for the erotic essentials our free online course. So you can get started implementing some of our favorite strategies and techniques tonight. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free. All right, so let’s dive into our conversation with Stella Harris.

Chris Rose: 00:56 After last week’s conversation about Desires Unfulfilled, I wanted to bring it back around and share some strategies for getting more of what you need and want out of your sex life, and ultimately a lot of that comes back to communication and getting specific about what you want, so you are more likely to receive it. So I called up Stella Harris. She is a fabulous sex coach and author, and her book Tongue Tied is one of the best books I have found about erotic communication.

Chris Rose: 01:32 This is an area where we all have a lot of work to do, and freeing up our voice and learning how to communicate with compassion and love and specificity so we can all get more of what we want out of our sex lives. All right, here is my conversation with Stella Harris. Stella Harris, welcome to speaking of sex.

Stella Harris: 01:57 Thank you for having me.

Chris Rose: 01:59 Can you just introduce yourself in the work that you do?

Stella Harris: 02:02 Absolutely. So I’m Stella Harris, a sex educator and intimacy coach based out of Portland, Oregon. I teach classes for venues and universities, I do coaching with couples and individuals and I write for a variety of venues including a sex column for one of my local papers. And I just had a book come out from Cleis Press called Tongue Tied: Untangling Communication in Sex, Kink, and Relationships.

Chris Rose: 02:29 And your book is so amazing, we will definitely link to it in the show notes page. It is one of my favorite books about erotic communication because it is so thorough, it covers so much beyond the, just kind of open your mouth and say what you want and it acknowledges how hard that can be for people and troubleshoots so much erotic communication. So this week we really wanted to talk about how to get your desires met in and out of bed. And I could think of no one better to join me for this conversation than you, so thank you so much for jumping on the line with us.

Stella Harris: 03:06 I really appreciate that. Thanks.

Chris Rose: 03:08 Ah, I love this book. So let’s dive in. So from what I understand of your history, you got kinky at a pretty early age and you’ve been kind of in the sex community for a long time. So why is your first book about erotic communication? Why this subject and not all the others that you could have covered?

Stella Harris: 03:29 So it turns out this is maybe what I’m the biggest nerd about. When I did get involved in the kink and queer and poly scenes from when I was 17. And then later in college I was busy and sort of not involved with that as much and I realized what I missed the most was the way those people communicated, the way everything was so upfront, so well negotiated and I liked that as much if not more than you know, all the kinky sex things.

Stella Harris: 04:04 And then when I got into this line of work, after a long break got into this line of work full time, I really at first did think that the bulk of what I would deal with was teaching anatomy and teaching touch techniques and sort of the logistics of sex. And what was just happening again and again as the individuals and couples that end up in my office. There was just so much more, it was about the feelings pieces, it was about the communications pieces, you know, it’s about communication even when it’s not about communication. People come in with a sex difficulty and we ended up having to talk about the talking.

Stella Harris: 04:46 And every class that I teach, even classes that are very much focused on anatomy and technique I end up with a really big chunk about how do you talk about those things, because anatomy is different for everybody. When I’m teaching, just a couple of days ago, I did my class mapping the vulva and there is not one kind of vulva. I can show people and be like, “Great, now you’re going to know how everybody works. I can show you a handful of pictures of how it works for some people, but then what I really have to show you is how to talk about it, how to ask somebody what they like.” Here, you can try this touch technique and then modify it with these questions. And so that just kept being at the core of everything I was trying to do.

Chris Rose: 05:37 Yeah, and communication has almost become a cliché in the sex field because it is so important. And yet, most of us do not know how to communicate even about nonsexual things, let alone the charge subject of sexuality. Like these relational skills are so important in our lives and very few people have ever focused on building these skills and received coaching about building these skills and they’re total game changer. It’s something that as you introduce even little pieces of, can really propel you towards a more joyful life, getting your needs met and being able to love one another better. So I love your book so much.

Stella Harris: 06:25 Thank you.

Chris Rose: 06:27 Let’s dive in. What do you think are some of the biggest things that get in the way of people’s desires being met?

Stella Harris: 06:34 Well, I think fear is a huge one, fear of vulnerability, fear of rejection. Even though I do this for a living, I still feel those things, I can write about it and it doesn’t mean that every moment in my personal life those things feel easy to do. So I absolutely get that, so I think the fear is a huge piece with anything to do with sex, especially, we’re expected to know how to do it already.

Stella Harris: 07:04 And so there’s this double edge sword of, it’s frowned upon to be too experienced, that’s also frowned upon to be inexperienced. So basically anything you open up your mouth to say in the bedroom can feel fraud.

Chris Rose: 07:21 Let’s linger there for a moment because I feel like this erotic ego is one of the things that really blocks us from exploring new things and even with a trusted partner and that partner can be a casual partner or a lifelong relationship. We can have that trust, we can have good communication, but if our partner asks us to do something we don’t feel confident in doing, it can cause a total shutdown. How do you see that kind of erotic ego showing up and what are some of the ways we can care for that ego but push past it maybe?

Stella Harris: 07:58 Well, one of the things that I like to do is expand someone’s idea of what sex is. When I have people in my office who are terrified that they’re not going to have sort of a physical skillset, we always end up talking about all of the other young age who see important things, the connection pieces, the empathy, the care, sometimes the love, whatever those things are. And showing people how far those pieces go, and if those are really in place, some of the rest of it can flow from that a bit.

Stella Harris: 08:35 As can sort of the asking and telling what somebody wants, trying to make sure that people have other things that their confidence is based in and those don’t even need to be sexual or relational. If somebody is amazing at a sport or really good at their job, just making sure they have a really solid base of ways that they feel validated. What are your friends turn to you for? What do people ask you for advice on? Because it can start to feel like how good we are in bed is sort of this core element of our worth. And while I certainly think our relational skills are very important, sort of how “good” in bed you are does not define your value as a person.

Chris Rose: 09:28 And yet, sometimes it feels like our entire relationship is threatened if we can’t do that varsity level thing we’ve been asked to do.

Stella Harris: 09:38 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 09:39 And there’s so much of that reciprocal communication and these moments of vulnerability, what are some of the things the person asking for something new? So part of this conversation, we’re coming out of a few weeks of exploring desires. And last week we talked all about desires unfulfilled and kind of reckoning with these things that might never be met in our lifetimes.

Chris Rose: 10:04 And then as couples establish like mutual interest in something, but they’re both totally new added. So let’s take, let’s say rope bondage. Rope bondage is not something anyone has ever expected to know. So how can a couple kind of baby step into that with mutual vulnerability? So one partner doesn’t feel like they have to be the big bad top and know it.

Stella Harris: 10:28 Right. Well, I think that’s actually one of the things that can help is if, A) it’s something neither person knows already and B) it’s not something you are supposed to know how to do already. I often use rope bond there as an example because most of us didn’t learn that in high school. And so it feels more okay not to know that already. So hopefully that levels the playing fields such that both people can be vulnerable and can learn it together.

Stella Harris: 10:58 And it really helps if the thing that you’re learning can also be a little silly so that you can giggle about it when something goes wrong. And again, having it be something that is a little bit outside of a usual sexual skillset, it can feel less, less fraud, less intimidating, lower stakes. And even if it’s not a king skill, even if you go and learn, you know, a board game together, anything like that but skill building together can be a really great experience for bringing folks together. And learning those collaboration skills do end up carrying back over into the bedroom into different kinds of sex.

Stella Harris: 11:41 So teaching folks a new skill together is something I absolutely love, I get to do a lot of that and you can really see the way people work together when they are practicing something new like that. And it’s also really helpful. You know, you were saying, someone has to be the big bad top. I always tell people, even if you’re ultimately probably only going to bottom to a certain activity, you should still at least learn the basics because that helps you look out for safety. Know something isn’t going quite right, something is going to harm your body. So even if people don’t expect to switch, I always encourage them to learn both roles, to learn things from every perspective.

Chris Rose: 12:24 And when you’re teaching couple something like rope bondage, what do you notice between different couples? Like are there patterns of communication that couples use that feel really mutually empowering and healthy versus patterns you see that feel kind of destructive?

Stella Harris: 12:44 Yeah. You can see when people are coming in, having had sort of a long run of frustration with each other. You can see whether people, it takes our partners learning curve sort of in stride and are being supportive or when something goes a little wrong they’re laughing about it, or if someone already seems sort of exasperated and fed up before we’ve even started. So sometimes there are other things to unpack first. Sometimes people have come to me to learn some sort of a kink skill and as soon as they sit down, they’re on opposite ends of the couch, they’re not really looking at each other. And that’s sort of my cue that like, “Oh, we probably have something else to talk about first,” because just learning new kink or bedroom skills is not necessarily a bonded, for everything that’s going on in your relationship. I do think one carries into the other.

Stella Harris: 13:48 I really like seeing when people are able to help each other and give and take that feedback well. So with rope an example, I sometimes see the person who’s being tied up even if they can’t move their hands, sort of gesturing with their face and saying like, “Oh, you need to twist this loop here.” And the other person, smiling and thanking them for the help. So that’s what I really like to see and what I know people are sort of on the right track if both people can offer guidance, make requests, ask questions. And no one’s ever sort of side or rolling their eyes about it.

Chris Rose: 14:26 And I think in these moments of being asked for something new, of feeling that vulnerability, the biggest fear that comes up for people is feeling foolish but also then being rejected. Like, if I don’t do this well, I don’t do this perfectly I might lose this relationship. But how do we negotiate? How do we navigate moments where something isn’t going well? We need to pivot or recalibrate with our partner, but we don’t want to make it so personal. What are your go-to strategies then?

Stella Harris: 15:05 Yeah. Well part of why stopping an activity or saying no, I think feel so scary is because as you said, people don’t want to miss the opportunity to do something with that person. So having a backup plan of some sort of ready to go is really valuable. So if you’re playing with rope bondage and it just feels impossibly itchy on your skin and you’re just not liking it, if you can say, “Hey, this isn’t really working for me, how about we do this other thing instead?” And pivot to another activity immediately, then that can feel like it flows a little bit easier, that can make you feel like you’re showing your partner, you still like them and like doing things with them. It’s the activity that’s not working for you, so that can be a really big one.

Chris Rose: 15:56 In the book you talk about the yes and, that comes from Improv and then you add no but.

Stella Harris: 16:02 Yes.

Chris Rose: 16:02 They’re four really powerful words. Can you expand on yes and, no but?

Stella Harris: 16:08 Absolutely. So, I have a background in theater and if anybody is trying to work on their public speaking skills, I highly recommend you go take an Improv class. I hated every minute of it, but now I’m not afraid of making a fool of myself in front of people, which is a very valuable life skill. And one of the theater exercises is called yes and. There’s this idea that in Improv theater, you never want to say no because that brings us scene to a screeching halt.

Stella Harris: 16:43 So you always agreed to what the other performer has suggested and then you add something to build the scene. So that is absolutely a game that you can play with a partner where you ask for everything and you’re each building on things. But of course in sex, unlike in the theater, you absolutely can and should say no to things. But you can use that same principle of not bringing things to a halt, like I said before, having a backup plan.

Stella Harris: 17:12 So if somebody says, “Hey, can I kiss your neck?” And you can say, “No, but would you stroke my hair?” So whatever it is, you just immediately are pivoting to the next activity. So there’s always something to do, you don’t just come to that screeching halt where you both sort of feel awkward and don’t know what to do next. Of course no, is always a complete sentence, you don’t have to offer another activity. But in the instance where you actually do want things to keep going with this person, that can be a really great way to just keep things moving kind of smoothly.

Chris Rose: 17:51 And what do you do when you’re communicating in bed and one of you just kind of starts spinning out emotionally? Like a lot of times these things can trigger past experiences or past times you’ve been shamed, and we can kind of get out of the moment and into our own personal insecurities or personal trauma histories. Like how do you know when to keep going and when you need to kind of really step back and check in with each other?

Stella Harris: 18:22 Yeah, so part of that takes first a lot of self-awareness and then second, a lot of empathy and awareness of your partner. So if you are someone who knows you have emotional and physical triggers or this is something that could happen for you. It’s really great if you know for yourself some of the early warning signs of that happening, where do you feel it in your body when things are getting away from you a little bit, when anxiety is creeping in.

Stella Harris: 18:51 So if you can catch that a little bit early, that’s really fantastic. It’s also really helpful to communicate to your partner in advance what you would like them to do in a variety of eventuality. So what happens if you start crying, and some kink scenes, maybe that’s good and you keep going. And maybe it means you really need things to stop and you need them to check in.

Stella Harris: 19:17 Are you the kind of person who likes to be held and comforted or are you going to want space or to be left alone? So as much as possible, if you can negotiate that in advanced and let your partner know what you’re going to need, that’s always great.

Stella Harris: 19:31 Some people in those moments go a little bit nonverbal and so that’s also really important that your partner knows what you’re going to need in advanced if you’re not going to be able to tell them in the moment. And if none of this was a negotiated in advanced, anytime a partner seems anxious, not present, they’re not making eye contact, they’re not speaking anything like that, I would say, especially if this is not something you have negotiated for in advanced, that’s when you want to take a pause, check-in, let them calm down, see what they’re going to need.

Chris Rose: 20:08 And then debrief after things have simmered down.

Stella Harris: 20:13 Yeah, I actually suggest that regardless of how things went, having a conversation well after, don’t cut into your aftercare or your afterglow but a day or two later, what are the things that you liked the most? What are the things that you would like to change? That’s how we learn things, it’s from looking at how it went and adjusting it next time.

Chris Rose: 20:37 So it’s clear erotic communication happens in and out of the bedroom before, during and after sex. How do you approach the idea of communicating beforehand? Like how does this become part of the seduction, the flirtation and make it feel less clinical? A lot of people are like, “Well, if I ask for what I want, it doesn’t make it as exciting.” How do you counter that kind of cultural refusal to communicate and ask for what we want? How do we make it thrilling to talk about it?

Stella Harris: 21:14 Yeah, I mean there’s a few pieces there. People do act like if they’ve had to ask for something that receiving it as somehow less sincere or less genuine. So I do think there’s an element of needing to trust our partners that they’re doing things because they want to and because they enjoy them. For the first one to suggest a restaurant or a movie and our partner agrees enthusiastically, we probably don’t spend all of dinner guessing whether or not they really want to be there but we do second guessed that if it’s a sex thing.

Stella Harris: 21:50 So communication, people are worried that it will feel out of the blue or clinical, like you said or awkward. And I think that that’s mostly true if it starts out of nowhere, if it starts out of the blue, if you haven’t set that precedent. So if you’re starting off with somebody new, set that precedent for communication really early. Everything from negotiating what you’re going to do on a date to whether or not you’re kissing at the end, going home at the end, sort of set that precedent that everything is going to be talked about and checked in about. And then when you are in bed and you’re trying to direct how you like your genitals to be touched, that’s not going to be the first time you’ve opened up and given guidance or made a suggestion or a request. So it can help slow with that a lot easier.

Stella Harris: 22:42 It doesn’t have to sound like you were saying, sort of clinical, unless that’s your kink. It can be worked into sort of more dirty talk or sultry talk. Dirty talk doesn’t have to be putting on a particular kind of role, it can just be asking in a low tone of voice, “May I take your shirt off?” Anything like that. If the other person is excited about you doing that, hearing it is usually a turn on because then there’s anticipation, there’s the excitement to know this person that they like wants to do this thing with them.

Stella Harris: 23:28 So you can really work your requests, work your ongoing consent, all of that into something kind of sexy.

Chris Rose: 23:38 Well, for some people who can bring themselves to say it out loud, things like sending texts or writing letters or writing customer erotica can work. Do you think it’s ultimately important really to be able to use your voice and have this communication be verbal communication?

Stella Harris: 23:57 I think that verbal communication is a really great idea. I think verbal face-to-face is the most, it’s the safest way to get consent and ongoing consent in the least likely to be misinterpreted. And also, you’re right, it is really hard for a lot of people. I think doing a lot of the preliminaries by text is just fine. In kink we sometimes say don’t negotiate naked. The closer you are to an activity, the harder it can be to talk about thoroughly. So I think text is a great way to say, “Hey, would you be interested in trying such and such?” Sending links to pictures or stories, text is also a really great way to talk through things like your safer sex talk. So if you’re not right in front of the person, it can be easier to ask and answer questions that might feel a little sensitive or embarrassing.

Stella Harris: 24:58 And if you have some time and distance from when you can do the things, you’re less likely to fudge on any of your personal boundaries because you still want to play. And erotica is really great, sometimes people don’t even know exactly what they want. So if you pick up a book of erotic on a topic, you can just read through for yourself as though it’s a narrative yes no, maybe list and see, well what does turn me on? What sounds sexy to me? And if you find something then share that story with your partner so that you don’t have to use all the words for it yourself, but you can share it with them, you can put the little sticky pointers on a couple of parts you really like, or you can say, “What I like here is you know, the position that they used, or the particular romantic dynamic between the people.”

Stella Harris: 25:55 Something like that, so you can use a lot of these external tools to get on the same page and then hopefully also tweak the details verbally in person when it comes time.

Chris Rose: 26:09 At one point you mentioned the body and I’m curious how you think about the relationship between our body sensations, our internal wisdom and communication. Like, how do we let these things inform one another and pay attention to our bodies enough to know what we even want to say? What are some of the strategies you use to tap into the body’s wisdom?

Stella Harris: 26:38 So this is so tricky because our culture does not value checking in with our bodies about anything, it’s not a skill that we learn. I think some of this is changing a little bit, but at least, back in my day we were telling kids they had to hug people they didn’t like, they had to finish all the food on their plate. We were basically doing anything and everything we could to make it so that people didn’t know how to listen to what their body needed.

Stella Harris: 27:06 And now we’re supposed to turn around and trust our gut. So most of us have a lot of unpacking and reworking to do around all of that. So what it does take is a lot of checking in. There are a few ways you can do it. If you’re someone who goes to the gym or does any sort of sports or workouts, you might be used to sort of the difference between doing one more pull up because your personal trainer is standing there telling you to, and it kind of sucks but you can do it anyway versus maybe twisting your body in a particular way and feeling that little zing of pain, that’s your body saying like there’s going to be harm caused if you can continue.

Stella Harris: 27:55 So that is sort of a physical way of knowing the difference between discomfort, that it’s okay to push through and discomfort that you really need to listen to as a warning. And many of us have those same warnings for the more emotional stuff too. And what it takes really is just trying to check again with your body when those moments are happening and seeing what comes up for you. I really like journaling about these things you can track moods in an app. So for me, something that I’ve learned is that if somebody proposes something to me that I’m excited about, but it’s also like nervous and scary, but the kind of scary that I find exciting and I want to do. Usually my stomach is sort of not about it a little bit.

Stella Harris: 28:44 I have the butterflies in my stomach feeling and if somebody is asking for something and maybe a more unwelcome boundary, pushy kind of way, it’s a little higher for me then I feel it sort of in my chest and sort of a tight chest or heart palpitations you kind of way. So basically, flutters, six to eight inches apart in my body I now know is sort of my body warning me what my response is to something. But it took, you know, a couple of decades of making sometimes not the best decisions to learn what my body was saying and when I was ignoring it and doing something anyway.

Chris Rose: 29:27 And how do you find that process during arousal? Is it more clear to you or less clear what your body is wanting?

Stella Harris: 29:36 That really depends on the person. Arousal changes so much about what’s going on in our brains. Arousal diminishes our pain response, it diminishes our disgust response, which I find so fascinating. So sometimes in the moment things will feel good or sound good that in another non-sexy moment, don’t sound good at all. And so that’s another one where you need to decide when is it okay to go with what your body wants in the moment and are there some hard and fast boundaries or limits that you want to hold for yourself even if your body changes its mind in the moment.

Stella Harris: 30:20 Part of that listening in, if you’ve ever done maybe yoga or meditation, they teach the idea of this body scan. So either starting from the tip of your head or the tip of your toes and just sort of checking in with yourself all the way from top to bottom, seeing if there’s something going on there that you should listen to. And sometimes you can think something out, “Well, what would it feel like if my partner touched me here? What would some gentle touch feel like? What would some rough cuts feel like?”

Stella Harris: 30:53 And sort of thinking it through a couple of steps. The same way you might look at an item on a menu at a restaurant and like, “Oh I don’t know, does the hamburger or the solid sound good?” And think about what it would feel like to eat those things. You can do that with sex stuff as well. Of course, a lot of this necessitates slowing down a little bit. If your whole encounter is going to be a 10 minute quickie, which I am all for now and then, you’re probably not going to have a ton of time to slow down and check in with your body. So making sure that you do have play times that are more expansive and less goal-oriented, so that you have a moment to check in however you check-in.

Stella Harris: 31:36 Do you close your eyes for a minute? Whatever that’s going to be, and making sure your partner helps you create space to do those check-ins and ideally maybe they even want to do them for themselves as well.

Chris Rose: 31:50 I love it. We’ve been talking a lot about interoception, this skill of feeling the internal landscape and really thinking it’s the new sexual superpower we all need to develop. Can we talk a little bit about boundaries? Because I think often we talk about boundaries as what we’re saying no to, but often those boundaries make big yeses possible as well. How do you think about the relationship between desire and boundaries?

Stella Harris: 32:19 Absolutely. Well, if you don’t have any boundaries or you think you don’t or you’re not communicating any, that can actually really limit what you can do. So for most folks who are not intentionally just taking what they want from other people, most folks don’t want to cross somebody’s boundaries. And so if they don’t know where those boundaries are, they’re probably pulling way back from what could be happening. So for example, if you know how hard you like to be spanked and you can sort of communicate to somebody, you check in on a pain scale and you’re like, “Okay, I don’t want anything to go over in eight.”

Stella Harris: 33:03 Well then maybe the person is playing up to sevens. But if you haven’t communicated anything about how hard you like to play or your pain tolerance, maybe they’re doing threes and fours just to play it safe. And that sort of idea carries across to anything sexy, if someone isn’t sure how much is going to be okay, they’re probably taking it very easy and not at all exploring up to those edges.

Stella Harris: 33:32 So it can be really helpful to know, well how far can you go? I mean it’s an emotional guide rail. If you’re ever hiking to some sort of a lookout peak and they have that rail that’s going to keep you from falling off the cliff. If that railing isn’t there, I don’t know if you’re anything like me, you’re probably waiting 20-feet away from the edge because you don’t want to go tipping over and maybe the view isn’t as nice from there. But if the guard rail was saying, “Okay, it’s safe to walk up to this line,” then you can walk right up to it and look over and get that amazing view. So knowing where you have to stop can actually help you do more.

Chris Rose: 34:17 This conversation is really making clear like why I got along so well with your book, because I’m also a pretty risk adverse adventurer. And in the kink scene I really noticed that I’m like a rule follower, but I also really like to push boundaries and I think we’re kindred spirits there. One of the things in your book you really were really generous with is the importance of reliable pleasures.

Chris Rose: 34:46 And I think you talk about in terms of pizza. How do we think about finding and naming our reliable pleasures and having those and honoring them, but then also challenging ourselves to keep expanding our repertoires and discovering new pleasures? What’s that kind of dynamic balance for you?

Stella Harris: 35:09 What’s really nice to have something that is your go-to, so as we’ve talked about, it can feel safe or to try something new if you know that you still have something else you can do to still have intimacy or pleasure if the first thing doesn’t work out. And you discover those over time, either from what your masturbation routine looks like or from the kind of sex you and your partner have already been having. Sort of think back on, when have things float the most easily, when have I felt the most pleasure? And sort of use those to guide you to what’s your go-to activities are.

Stella Harris: 35:53 And having that, again, as sort of a safety net, can make it feel easier to get out of that comfort zone. So for some folks, if experimenting does feel scary, it can be easier just to add a little something to what they already are usually doing. So if your pizza of sex is missionary position sex, well, what would happen if you were going to have missionary position sex but with a blindfold on, or in different outfits that you would normally wear, or maybe with wrists tied to the bed, or maybe with a little sensation life first. So starting from your comfort zone and just enhancing it a little bit at first. And that also makes it really easy if whatever the enhancement is, it turns out not to be pleasurable to just remove that element and continue and absolutely adding new things entirely is so important.

Stella Harris: 37:01 Plenty of people have talked about and shown research about how much we require novelty, and it can help to make sure you have something like that on the schedule if it’s not something that comes naturally to you, planning for it in advance. So for some people that kind of thing is a lot easier when they’re out of their normal space. So I hear from clients all the time that they’re rekindling their best sacks or experimenting with new things when they’re on vacation. So being in a different city, being in a hotel room that can really help people push beyond their norms a little bit. So changing up your space entirely like that can be a huge help.

Stella Harris: 37:46 Having time for it on the calendar, I know people can be a little ambivalent about scheduling but we’re all very busy and sometimes that is what makes things happen. You can keep a little running list of things that you might like to try, and then when it comes time to set a date night, you sort of have some go-to ideas. So you don’t always need to think of things right in the moment, that works for regular date night ideas as well, because I dunno, what do you want to do? That struggle is real and it can get people in sort of a permanent loop of not having an idea of what to try next.

Chris Rose: 38:22 And as we try these things, as we expand our erotic repertoires, I think it’s really important to be very specific, both in what we’re asking for and in recalibrating things that might not quite work. So your example about rope bondage and you might say, no thank you to rope bondage, not because you didn’t like bondage, but because you didn’t like the itchiness of the rope.

Chris Rose: 38:48 And we don’t want to like throw the baby out with the bath water as we’re exploring new things and they don’t quite work. So what are some of the strategies have kind of evaluating both your desires and then your experiences and pulling apart? Like how do we know that it was the rope versus the bondage?

Stella Harris: 39:10 Yeah, well, there’s a couple of things there. So one is I’m always telling people to define their terms. So if one person says, “Here, you went to bondage,” and the other person’s mind immediately flashes to something like an intense suspension or a vacbed or something else that they think is really extreme and that’s what they think bondages, they might say no. But if you can ask, “Well tell me what you mean by bondage?” And then they find out, it’s like, “Well I’d like to tie your hands together with a scarf.” Then like, “Oh well maybe that’s fine.”

Stella Harris: 39:43 So making sure you both mean the same thing by the words because people often do not. And another thing that is certainly a conversation you want to have delicately because we never want it to look like we are pushing against someone’s no, but asking somebody why not and then you can get a lot of valuable information. So you really want to make sure somebody opts into this conversation first, and understands the intention of the conversation. So anything from going through a yes, no, maybe list and then having a conversation about the no’s, to having a conversation about the no, if you just propose something in the bedroom or if someone’s says, “Hey, I don’t want to do that again.”

Stella Harris: 40:27 So finding out the why’s, something that comes up a lot with my clients, maybe one person and a couple is interested in trying anal play and the other person is dead against it, and if you can get to the why conversation, you’ll hear about that one drunken college experience they had with no lube and no warmup and they hated it. And now that’s what they think anal sex is. So then you can find like, “Oh well you certainly don’t have to try again, but here are some things that might make that better.”

Stella Harris: 41:01 And so like you were saying what the rope, if you try some bondage and then you’re having your debrief a couple days later and what did you think of that? Would you like to try a bondage again? And if they’re like, “Yeah, I wasn’t into the bondage.” And then you ask the why, like what about it didn’t work for you? Did you not like the physical sensation? Did you not like feeling vulnerable and dig into that a little bit? Because then if you hear like, “Oh I love feeling vulnerable, it just hurt my wrists,” we’ll venue have options to address what the actual issue is.

Stella Harris: 41:36 And I like using those feelings questions both after the fact to decide what worked and didn’t work and ahead of time to find out what you would even like to do. Because if you can identify that, “Oh I would like to feel vulnerable,” and there are going to be dozens if not hundreds of ways to get to vulnerability and bonded, it’s just going to be a one thing on that list. But there’s going to be so many other you can explore to get to that feeling.

Chris Rose: 42:06 So shifting the question from kind of what do you want to do into how do you want to feel or what do you want to experience. Beautiful, beautiful. And what does that stake here? What do you see shift or change for your clients, for your coaching clients as communication starts opening up? Like how important is this in our overall erotic wellbeing?

Stella Harris: 42:32 I mean I think it is central, I think it’s kind of the most important thing when this hasn’t been working for folks for a while, I think it takes its toll on the whole relationship. I think we’d get to a place where we think maybe sex isn’t that important and the other life building things are what matters. And also humans and most animals can acclimate to a lot of different conditions. And you get used to what your day to day is to the point that you can actually not realize that you’re not happy or not satisfied until you get a glimpse of what’s possible. And then you realize sort of how far you’ve moved away from your pleasure or your happiness.

Stella Harris: 43:19 So seeing some of this start to snap back into place, I mean that’s at the core of why I keep doing this work. Seeing people have that like eye-opening, like, “Oh, this can work, I can feel this thing. We can do that together,” is absolutely amazing and sometimes it is sort of showing a different physical technique, a way to touch or a position to have their bodies in but more often it is the talking piece. It is finding sort of the sticking point or the frustration point with one couple that I got to work with. One partner hadn’t had an orgasm from the other person touching them and this was one of the few occasions where I got to be in the room while they were playing with each other and I’m standing off to the side and I’m sort of offering advice and it was very much like a personal coaching moment because they reached the point where they would normally get frustrated and stop.

Stella Harris: 44:27 And yes, I did suggest, here’s a little ways you could alter what you’re doing. Here are the tools you can use to say, you know, left or right, harder or softer. But the biggest thing was because I was providing accountability and saying like, “Hey, what happens if you keep going?” They ended up having an orgasm for the first time with their partner touching them. And I would love to say it’s because I’m some sort of sex coach superhero, but the biggest piece of it was just not giving up. And that was what I was really providing in that moment was that they didn’t give up.

Stella Harris: 45:08 And so that is a huge piece and sometimes I think we do give up because we’re really concerned about how long something takes were concerned whether or not a partner is really enjoying themselves. And so some of those communication pieces both expressing and trusting that our partners enjoying themselves, that they want to be there, that they want to try the things that can really be where some shifts take place.

Chris Rose: 45:39 And that’s so important for people to hear that asking for you one isn’t selfish, it’s an act of love for yourself and for your partner to externalize these things and give your partner more of a sense of how to please you. Most people want to please their lovers. People are far less selfish than we think of overs.

Stella Harris: 46:04 Well usually really relieved when we know what somebody else wants. We all have to make so many decisions in our day to day life that again, even something as simple as someone saying like, “Hey, I’m going to like pick up this kind of takeout for dinner. Is that okay?” Like just anytime someone else can take the initiative and make a decision ideally with a check in as well, that’s usually a relief where we want to know what people like and we don’t want to have to do all the coming up with ideas. That’s actually a really big one that comes up in my office is people feel burned out by coming up with the ideas of what things should we try.

Stella Harris: 46:42 And that is something I often see in partnerships is that one person is responsible for more of the suggestions than the other, and that can wear people out or take its toll. So yeah, I see that being a problem way more than I see too many requests or suggestions being a problem.

Chris Rose: 47:05 And I know just from being friends on social media that you are dating, is that right?

Stella Harris: 47:11 I am.

Chris Rose: 47:12 So as you explore with new people, as you date, I’m assuming that a lot of the time you are kind of the communication lead that you bring so many skills to your new relationships and flirtations. What are some of the things you do early on to kind of vet someone or feel like if there, are they up for being in that communication game with you? Are there questions you ask or topics you bring up or strategies you use to find people who can meet you more fully?

Stella Harris: 47:48 Yeah, there are few things, I mean you can get a really strong sense for somebody about how they’re presenting themselves, how they’re operating in early conversations. I’m such a word nerd, so I really do like getting to know people by writing. I really pay attention to how people respond to know, it doesn’t always come up super early, but if possible, have a negotiation about something, how do they feel about schlepping across town to meet you at your favorite restaurant? How are they taking requests? Are they taking no for an answer? Again, about stuff that’s really low stakes. Because if even that ends up being contentious, that doesn’t vote well. I always ask people about their previous relationships because how people talk about former partners or if it’s an open relationship, how they’re talking about their other partners now.

Stella Harris: 48:45 You can learn an awful lot about somebody that way, if someone’s willing to tell you why our relationship ended, that’s going to give you a lot of clues. Are people still friends with their exes? I usually have safer sex talks fairly early on, not necessarily because I want to have sex right away, but because I want to know what is somebody stance around safety because that’s going to be a real way I find out if they’re my kind of person or not. And how they have that conversation is just as important as what the answers are.

Stella Harris: 49:22 So if I ask somebody about STI testing and they’re offended or I’ve clearly never had this conversation before, like that, that gives me a lot of clues that, “Okay, they’re not used to having this conversation. So that’s probably not going to work for me.” There she is!

Chris Rose: 49:47 There’s your puppy.

Stella Harris: 49:50 And I also do a lot of the asking early, the things that I suggest I really do, I actually just had a really cute date last night and towards the end we were sitting on the couch and I just said like, “How would you feel about a little bit of kissing?” And I know that most people might think of that sounds ridiculous, but it got me sort of smiles and giggles and a really hot make out. And so yeah, it works. And if the person hated hearing that question, well maybe they weren’t going to like the kissing either.

Stella Harris: 50:28 So again, I would still rather no with my words then sort of lunging it and going for it.

Chris Rose: 50:36 I love that. You talked earlier that you were not maybe a sex coach superhero, but I want to say that you are. And as a sex coach superhero, like what is your mission? What are your hopes and goals for sex culture as we move forward from this point in time?

Stella Harris: 51:03 I would like to completely eliminate shame to do with sex, sexuality, gender, bodies. I don’t know if we’re going to get there in my lifetime, but that is what I would like to see. I would like to normalize people talking about their desires. I would like to normalize all of the different imaginable kinds of sex that people can have, including not wanting to have any at all.

Stella Harris: 51:38 I want people to understand that pleasure is important and to feel empowered to seek that out in their lives as a thing that is just as valid as anything else in our lives. Just as valid as professional growth or anything else that our culture does, sort of say, yes, this thing is good, this thing is not good. Sexual health and wellbeing is just as important as every other kind of health and wellbeing. I’m also really hoping that we can bring other professions along, I do some work with therapists and therapists and training a little bit with doctors and I would like to do more. Because I can’t talk to everybody about everything, I really need other professionals to be giving people good, safe, healthy, complete information about their bodies and about sex.

Chris Rose: 52:36 Stella Harris, thank you so much for all the work you do and thank you for joining us.

Stella Harris: 52:40 Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Rose: 52:42 So we have a couple quick questions from our patrons. Are you willing to stick around and answer a couple questions?

Stella Harris: 52:48 Absolutely.

Chris Rose: 52:49 Awesome. All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. And if you are ready for more from Stella, go to patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. She was gracious enough to stick around after the interview and answer a few questions submitted by our patrons over at patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. Join us with a monthly supporting pledge of a dollar a month or $5 a month and join our inner circle, show your love and support for this show and unlock ad free episodes, bonus episodes, bonus resources, direct communication with us, and much more over at patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. And I will be posting that bonus episode where Stella tackles some very sticky situations for our dear patrons. That’s patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. All right, I am Chris from pleasuremechanics.com wishing you a lifetime of pleasure. Cheers.

What To Do With Desires Unfulfilled

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Your erotic desires may be far more vast than can ever be met in your lifetime. What do we do with desires unfulfilled – so that we can be free to pursue more erotic fulfillment? In this paradox there is a rich terrain of both personal and relational exploration – so you can figure out which of your desires might be met more fully and which may never be touched.

Do you have erotic desires buried under layers of sexual shame? Check out our podcast on How To Overcome Sexual Shame

Dig into the work of leading shame researcher Brené Brown here.

Want to get more specific about your relationship agreements? Check out our podcast on Monogamy Agreements

Podcast Transcript for Unfulfilled Desires Podcast

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

Charlotte Rose: 00:06 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:07 We are the Pleasure Mechanics, and on this podcast we have explicit yet soulful conversations about every facet of sexuality and pleasure. Come on over to PleasureMechanics.com, where you will find a complete podcast archive. And while you were there, go to PleasureMechanics.com/free and sign up for the Erotic Essentials. It is a treasure trove of strategies and resources for you to get started with tonight. That’s PleasureMechanics.com/free.

Chris Rose: 00:42 On today’s episode, we are going to be continuing last week’s conversation and diving into the pools of desire unfulfilled. What do we do when we start to recognize that we have desires, longings, achings, for pleasures that may never be fulfilled right now or in our lifetimes? What do we do with desires unfulfilled so that we can have a fulfilling sex life? There’s a paradox here, and we will be exploring it.

Chris Rose: 01:15 Before we get started, I would love to thank our new sponsor for this podcast, #LubeLife. Lube is a very important ingredient for just about any sex act. So if you need a new bottle of lube, go on over to lubelife.com and check out their line of all natural organic lubricants. They make water based lubricants, and silicone lubricants, and flavor lubricants, oh my. Go to lubelife.com and use the code 20Mechanics for 20% off your entire order. And we’ll also throw a link in the show notes page. That’s lubelife.com. Use the code 20mechanics. Thanks #LubeLife.

Chris Rose: 02:01 All right. Let’s dive in. Last week we talked all about mapping your pleasure constellations. The idea that we are all unique individuals and we can figure out who we are and what life and love we want to make through looking at our unique pleasure constellations.

Chris Rose: 02:22 And this is pleasure in the broadest sense, so what are the activities and hobbies and work that you love to do. But also sexual pleasures. Who are you as a pleasure being? And really doing the internal work of figuring out what lights you up, what is your pleasure constellation?

Chris Rose: 02:44 And then within this work, there is an acknowledgement that not all pleasures can be fulfilled. Certainly not all at once, but perhaps not even in your lifetime. So what do we do? How do we work with the pleasures that are going unfulfilled?

Chris Rose: 03:04 And our focus here will be on thinking about unfulfilled pleasures through the lens of how to become more fulfilled, how to lessen the struggle and the suffering around desires unfulfilled. Yeah?

Charlotte Rose: 03:21 Yeah. It’s such a charged subject. It’s so emotional. I think it creates so much pain and suffering for a lot of people, having this deep well of desires that you feel frustrated, or sad, or upset about, that you can’t have happen right now.

Charlotte Rose: 03:41 And we really want to just dig into that, because we are interested in you feeling less pain around your sexuality. And this is one piece of it.

Chris Rose: 03:52 Totally. And it’s interesting just to start to think about in the broadest category of pleasures, many of us have unfulfilled pleasures. But we can sit with them and feel a little bit more neutral about the fact that we can’t have everything we want all the time. If you think about travel for example, many of us would love to travel more, and may even have specific places on the globe that we would love to go given the chance. But we don’t tend to suffer a lot around the fact that we will never get to Paris, Laos, and Thailand this year. We have a little bit more perspective that this world is a really big place, and we all have to make choices, and we can’t do it all at once.

Chris Rose: 04:42 When it comes to sex, there is a lot more suffering around our unfulfilled desires. And we need to think about why that is. And through this conversation, just know that if you feel unfulfilled in your sex life in general, you are not alone. Very few people we have ever spoken to self report sexual fulfillment. So while this is always something that we want to center, this idea that we can experience sexual fulfillment and that that is a very real goal for us humans. We want to explore what that would feel like and what that would look like for all of us. We want to acknowledge that most of us are starting from a place of deficit, of feeling a lifetime of unfulfilled sexual desires and needs.

Chris Rose: 05:43 So let’s just start there, and I’ll just acknowledge that the thousands of us listening to this around the world are all together in this place of feeling sexual longing and a sense of unfulfilled wants and desires.

Charlotte Rose: 06:00 But also, I want to-

Chris Rose: 06:04 Uplift us Charlotte, come on.

Charlotte Rose: 06:05 This is a very nuanced conversation because it is possible to have a fulfilling sex life currently, presently while also having unfulfilled desires.

Chris Rose: 06:19 Right. There is this paradox here of how do we acknowledge unfulfilled desires, make friends with them, be realistic and mature about that? While also going after that, which would be more fulfilling, and giving ourselves permission to ask for what we want. And set the bar higher. Part of the reason so many of us are so sexually unfulfilled is because we have not been guided in how to reach sexual fulfillment, and the bar is so low. The cultural bar here is so low, that we just need to all raise it up together and ask for more from each other as humans. And we’re going to look at that. All right?

Chris Rose: 07:07 So let’s first acknowledge that there are many categories of unfulfilled desires that we can identify, and they require different kinds of emotional work. So first, the easiest category is the really outlandish desires, the moonshot desires that we can acknowledge as more of a fantasy. Fantasy being the realm where we’re in the erotic imagination and anything is possible. So there are things that you may love to do if given the chance, but we can honestly say the chance of those actually happening are slim to null. Getting a blowjob in a helicopter would be fun. That would be thrilling, but you’d have to find yourself on a helicopter with a willing partner.

Chris Rose: 07:56 So we can allow ourselves to enjoy these ideas and mine them for clues about what we want more of. If the blowjob on the helicopter feels super thrilling, maybe you’re looking for more excitement and thrills and different context for sex. This is a lot of what we talk about when we talk about fantasy, is allowing them to be fantasy only. But that is still a real part of who you are. Fantasies are real because there are real in your mind, and your mind can create very real pleasure in your body when you explore fantasies. So they are part of who you are. But we don’t need to walk around expecting all of our wildest fantasies will ever come true, right?

Chris Rose: 08:44 So think through your unfulfilled desires and think about what might just be fantasy alone, and that’s okay, and they can be a joyful, pleasurable part of who you in fantasy alone. But then there are desires unfulfilled that are actually quite realistic. Things that you could have more in your life, and for many reasons don’t. And these are the desires I think that the most struggle and suffering comes from. It’s the things that we really do want that are realistic within reach, but somehow we’re not getting, and therein is the frustration.

Charlotte Rose: 09:22 Absolutely. And those are things that we could ask for. We could make requests around, and there’s something in the way of that. So that can be feeling like we’re not worthy. it would be shameful to ask. It would be taking up too much time and space, our partner might not want to. There’s a whole list of reasons and justifications why we might feel like we can’t ask for what we most want.

Chris Rose: 09:49 And Charlotte, and we were just talking recently after we got into a good flow of giving each other more massage. And you admitted that you had been longing for, but not asking for a more touch. Can you take us into that moment of you have a willing partner, you know that I’m not going to freak out in a shame response? So why would someone not ask?

Charlotte Rose: 10:16 Yeah. Life gets in the way where I feel like I needed to finish cleaning the house and I felt like you’d been working so hard, and I didn’t want to ask you to do more work at the end of the day. The concern that it’s too much to ask for, that it is uncomfortable to request more from somebody who is already got so much on their plate. All of those can get in the way from just asking. ‘Cause all of that might be true, but it’s still also is lovely to give to a love us. So I didn’t take up space where I could have, for a variety of reasons.

Chris Rose: 10:54 I just wanted to highlight that, because we talk all the time about willingness to receive and the worthiness to receive, and we live this. But it is still hard for us to ask for what we want sometimes. This is not simple. This is not a simple thing to prioritize your own pleasure over the laundry, the dishes, the work, the caretaking, the millions of other things that are begging for our attention. But when we do, something magic happens. When we prioritize our pleasure and say this is something I really want, I’m going to ask for it. You might just get it, and you might just discover that it is exactly what your partner was wanting too, or that you invited them into a very pleasurable experience. And that that in the long run may be more important the dishes getting done tonight.

Chris Rose: 11:56 So sometimes it’s just about taking a step back and realizing that your pleasure matters, that you’re feeling a little depleted, that you want to be filled up. In one way or the other. And asking out loud for what you want.

Charlotte Rose: 12:14 I will say that the first ask is the hardest. That as you do it more and more, it gets so much easier. And once you open that up, it just feels simpler and simpler. So just know that.

Chris Rose: 12:27 But another reason we don’t ask for what we want is because of the big S. Shame. Shame buries our wants and buries our desires under all of these layers of feeling. If we were to ask for what we actually wanted, we would lose love. We would lose our relationship, we would lose our partner’s respect. The worry, the anxiety about being judged for what we want is one of the primary reasons we never even bring our desires to light, let alone ask for them out loud.

Chris Rose: 13:05 So we really need to look at this category of desires unfulfilled. What are the things that you want, that your body responds to with a big yes, but that have been buried by shame, buried by guilt, buried by fear? What is in that cave within you? Because for so many of us, this is perhaps the deepest well of our desires that we haven’t even peered into. So it can be a really beautiful and tender thing to start recognizing and naming the things that we would want if we felt safe to ask.

Charlotte Rose: 13:47 Yeah, this is huge. And we might be concerned about what it means to ask for these things. What it says about us, who we might be seen as, how we might think of ourselves. So I’m thinking about men who might be interested in prostate or anal touch in some way. Women who might be interested in being spanked or any kind of kinky play of any sort. Does that undo being a good girl? We have so many stories about what wanting or desiring these kinds of sex acts mean about us. And if we give ourselves permission just to explore and wonder privately in the safety of our own mind and being, and notice what we notice. So letting ourselves explore what we might feel shame about is so valuable.

Chris Rose: 14:46 And how to work with that shame is perhaps a bigger conversation than we can go into right now. But I will link in the show notes page to a few podcast episodes that we’ve done all about shame and some other shame resources. But what’s important here is when you recognize those desires that are buried by shame, just start asking yourself, where did I learn that that was wrong? Where did these messages come from? And do I agree that it is wrong? Do I inherently believe what I am feeling here?

Chris Rose: 15:21 But the key here is to be gentle with yourself, and as much as possible to stop judging your desires. Self compassion and self empathy are super important when we are in this category of desires buried by shame.

Charlotte Rose: 15:40 Brené Brown talks about this brilliantly. She says, “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially. Secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

Charlotte Rose: 15:57 I just love that. We can bring some kindness to ourselves, and in doing that we can dissolve the shame that we might feel about certain desires that are unfulfilled. That neutralizes the deep shame.

Chris Rose: 16:12 Yeah, we can do this for ourselves to a certain degree. But I also think it’s important to recognize that shame is a social phenomena. And when we’re talking about sexual pleasures and things we might want to ask for, a big part of this is what is the context in your relationship? How judgmental, how open minded, how free do you feel within your relationship to ask for new things, to stretch your comfort zone? Because if you do your own work and then externalize a desire and it is met with harsh judgment, shaming behavior, and negative repercussions, then it is not safe to ask for what we want.

Chris Rose: 17:00 So this is internal work, but it’s also relational work of creating the conditions in your relationship where it is safe to ask for what you want, to try new things, or to at least talk about them. Because as we recognize these desires unfulfilled, as we excavate this shame, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get these desires fulfilled. Right? There’s going to be this process of the excavation and then looking at these things and being like, “Is this realistic given the context of our relationship?” So we will continue to talk about unfulfilled desires and particularly what to do within unfulfilled desires within your relationship.

Chris Rose: 17:48 But first, I want to take a moment and thank our sponsor for this episode. Lubelife.com is our new sponsor. #LubeLife offers a complete line of sexual lubricants for all of your slipping, sliding, stroking needs. Go to lubelife.com and check it out. They have water based lubricants, silicone based lubricant, and flavored lubes if you are into that thing. And you can use the code 20 mechanics for 20% off all of your orders at lubelife.com, or on amazon.com. And we will put that link in the show notes page preloaded with your discount, because #LubeLife is the best selling lube on Amazon for a reason. It’s a great product at a great value. So go to lubelife.com and use the code 20 mechanics for 20% off your entire order. And we will link that up in the show notes below. Big thanks to #LubeLife for sponsoring this episode and making this podcast possible. We love lube and we love you #LubeLife. Alright, back to desires unfulfilled.

Chris Rose: 19:05 And this brings us to our next bucket of desires unfulfilled, which are desires that we can recognize that would be realistic, but that don’t fit into our relationship right now. This could be something like being queer or bisexual, and having a partner of one gender presentation. And having a whole universe of desires for people of other gender presentations. This could be something like identifying kinky desires and you talk to your partner about it. You have really great conversations, but you realize you’re both really submissive and neither one of you wants to be dominant. What do you do then?

Chris Rose: 19:48 This could be recognizing that you want to be in an open relationship and be poly, your partner feels more monogamous at heart. What then? So there’s so many possibilities here where desires can be acknowledged, excavated from the shame, named out loud, and still don’t get fulfilled. Right?

Chris Rose: 20:14 What do we do with these? And this is a category that Charlotte and I are super familiar with because we’ve done a lot of the work of excavating shame, right? We’ve done a lot of the work about learning how to ask for what we want. And we are queer women in a relationship with each other and both of us have both the experience in our past and the desire within for kinds of sex with kinds of people that we are not. So Charlotte, how do you interact with this category of acknowledging desires within yourself that I as your skilled, loving, wonderful, low judgment lover, I cannot provide for you? What do you do with that?

Charlotte Rose: 21:04 Well, I think it’s so much easier in a way in queer relationships, being that we both have had relationships and loved men and trans people, that we really understand that that is, we are not that. And so there is no way, there is no physical way that you could be three different kinds of people.

Chris Rose: 21:24 As if there’s three.

Charlotte Rose: 21:25 Yeah. But as a general broad categories, that’s just not possible. So I don’t want that from you, because that’s physically impossible. So I feel like I have so much love for what we do and who we are together, while also knowing that I have loved and I could love other people and the kind of sex I could be having with them. But it doesn’t become a personal failing of yours or a disappointment in you or our relationship that we are not doing that and we cannot do that.

Chris Rose: 21:59 I want to stop you there because I think yes, it is easier if we think about, “I desire sex with men, and you are not a man. Therefore I cannot expect that from you.” There’s a lot of space and freedom in naming these things and being like, “My desire is bigger than you.” But what this points to is how we can personalize it. If your partner wants to be spanked and you don’t want to spank them, there’s a way you can make that a failing of your own. What in me is not kinky enough to do this? Or if I was more sexually liberated, I would be able to do this. So it’s really important not to personalize this.

Chris Rose: 22:42 The places where your Venn diagrams of pleasure overlap, that is your place where you get to play and explore. But it is not a personal failing if you cannot show up for your partner in all of the ways they desire. And to recognize the charge there of you want to have sex with other women, therefore that means I’m not good enough, I’m not attractive enough. It can be really easy to internalize these things as not enoughness.

Charlotte Rose: 23:12 Absolutely. What I feel like what makes the most sense is looking at the Venn diagram of where you do overlap in the sex that you have, and the kind of pleasures you enjoy together, and going so deep into that and enjoying it so deeply and fully. Because that’s where sexual fulfillment for the two of you can live and can breathe, even with this whole other world of unfulfilled interests and desires on the outside of those two intersecting circles. And I feel like that image is so helpful.

Chris Rose: 23:45 And to know that that Venn diagram shifts and changes, right? And so it’s not a static thing of this is what I want, this is what you want. And we have these five things where it overlaps. So many factors will expand or contract our desire circles, will change how we overlap. So I know this is getting a little bit metaphor-y he and confusing maybe. But the point here is at any given time within the context of your relationship, there are desires that you can fulfill for one another. There are needs, sexual needs you can fulfill for one another. And there are things you can’t. And just to be mature about that, and to recognize that that is both because our desires are more expansive, hopefully, than we can ever fit into a lifetime. And, and this is the crucial point. Your partner has chosen you. In this moment, your partner has chosen you. You are together creating a life and a sex life, and that’s where you need to focus your attention.

Chris Rose: 24:54 So in recognizing all of these expansive desires and being honest about who we are, there is a way that can then take us out of our relationship and start being an energy bleed. And thinking that if I was different or my partner was different, then I would be more fulfilled. This idea of the grass is always greener on the other side. And that is the place of suffering. If I came to bed with Charlotte every night wanting her to have a cock, I’m going to be in for a lifetime of disappointment. But instead, I come to bed with Charlotte every night knowing that within me yes, there is a desire for sex with people with penises. And so many other kinds of desires. With all of that, from that place, I am choosing partnership with her. And in that is a radical devotion and a radical commitment to seeking fulfillment within the container we are creating for one another.

Charlotte Rose: 26:01 And also making space for all those other pieces of your desire to live, and to breathe, and to be okay. They aren’t something that you need to deny or forget or suppress, or ignore. They may not be things that you’re acting on in this moment, but they can live quietly and coexist … Not so quickly, but they can coexist in your being because that is part of who you are as a sexual being. And to try and cut it off would minimize who you are, and what you have loved and what you love. It is part of your pleasure constellation. You just don’t need to suffer about it. I think that’s the piece we really want you all to know is that you can see those desires and they can live with you and they can be okay. And that is powerful.

Chris Rose: 26:48 And they can be part of just your fantasy. Your personal internal fantasies never named to another human being, and still be integrated in who you are. They can be part of shared fantasy. So say you’re really into cuckolding and want your wife to fuck other men, but she doesn’t want to fuck other men. But through conversation, you discover that talking about it turns both of you on. Right? So you have then found that place in your Venn diagram where you can integrate that desire in a way that feels good for both of you, knowing that that is where it’s going to stay, and then savor and enjoy that. You might find out that your partner is okay with you exploring desires through online forums or through specific kinds of porn you watch once in a while. And this is part of the question about monogamy agreements, right? If you are in a monogamous relationship, what does that mean? What are the specific agreements that means? And I’ll link again to that podcast episode in the show notes. But you and your partner can find ways to welcome, and acknowledge, and celebrate all the parts of who you both are as sexual beings, while also acknowledging where you overlap.

Chris Rose: 28:08 Charlotte and I sometimes will be in a restaurant, and she knows the kinds of guys I’m into and I know the kinds of guys she is into. And there’s a lot of overlap there, but then we have our specific interests. And a beautiful man will walk in, and then we will share this smile knowing that the other person has been sparked a little bit. She knows who I’m into, and so we can share that and enjoy that moment of pleasure together.

Chris Rose: 28:38 Or sometimes, we will send one another things that we know the other person will enjoy, or tease that part of one another out. Right? So this is just an example of when you know who you are as a sexual being in your completion, and knowing that that will always change and expand. It’s not a static thing. But when you know who you are and you start sharing that with your partner, your orotic world together can expand and become more permissive even if the sex acts you do don’t change. Just by acknowledging and giving these things space, instead of silencing, and repressing them, and burying them. And we will say again, the context of the relationship in order to be able to share these things has to be worked on. So you might need to baby step your way into this. And I always encourage you to stay on the side of safety within your relationship rather than just blurt it all out and overwhelm and flood your partner with new information. You will have to titrate this depending on your perceptions of how safe and open minded you both are within the relationship.

Charlotte Rose: 29:53 This is such a nuanced conversation because while we want you to accept a notice and honor your huge realm of desires that may be fulfilled or maybe not, and we want you to enjoy what is in your current present reality, we also don’t want you to feel like this is about settling, right? This is not about settling, but it is about acknowledging and appreciating what you do have while also stretching yourself where you can to ask for more of what you want. So this is all very nuanced.

Chris Rose: 30:27 We don’t shy away from the complicated conversations around here. Yeah. When you say settling, there’s this sense … But I struggle with that word because we all settle in some way. We all say this, this is good enough. This is what I want. But, we then have to interrogate that good enough, right? We settle in the sense of we acknowledge that we all have to make choices. And by living in Philadelphia, I’m not living in San Francisco. By being in bed with you, I’m not being in bed with the other billions of people on the earth. And there is as I said, that radical devotion in that and the idea of paying attention to where you are instead of having that suffering of imagining that someone else will be better. Or that if you were different, if you lost weight, if you got a better job, if you had more money, then you would be better.

Chris Rose: 31:32 So I think there is this thing of stopping the aspirational culture that tells us that we constantly need to be better in order to be fulfilled. And but, and/but, we also want to invite you to constantly be expanding your capacity for pleasure, your ability to stay present with one another, your ability to go deep with one another. Because when we talk about unfulfilled desires and acknowledging them, that doesn’t mean you have to be unfulfilled.

Chris Rose: 32:07 Sexual fulfillment is not about having all of your desires met all of the time. Sexual fulfillment for many of us is much simpler than blow jobs in a helicopter and whatever. Penthouse orgies. Sexual fulfillment for many of us comes from the feeling of being seen, and loved, and cherished, and held, and touched, and safe to explore different sides of our sexuality. It can actually be quite simple to feel sexually fulfilled, and yet that is really far away from many of us. Because as a culture, we’re not even at the point of honoring and celebrating, and having people feel safe in the basic sense of who they are as sexual beings. Many of us can’t even look at our own genitals without a feeling of shame. And that’s profound. These things are real. The shame and the fear, and the guilt around sexuality are so real and that is what is preventing us from feeling sexually fulfilled. Not the lack of penthouse orgies.

Charlotte Rose: 33:20 Sometimes it is not about expanding our pleasures to make them bigger, but to learn how to go deeper within the ones that we have and that are in our life, and that that is a pathway to sexual fulfillment.

Chris Rose: 33:36 Yeah. I was working with this couple over email and they’re working through a lot of trauma, and using our massage course to introduce touch back into their relationship. He wrote to me and he said, “I was giving my wife a hand and arm massage because that’s all she can tolerate right now. And at one point, she looked up, our eyes made contact, and I knew she was grateful for my touch.” He wrote to thank me about that moment. And that moment for them was fulfilling, because given the context of their life circumstances, given the context of what has happened to them, they were able to find a very real moment of intimacy and connection and mutual care, and mutual pleasure. That is what is going to push their relationship forward. That is what is going to fill their wells of feeling loved and cared for, and seen. Right?

Chris Rose: 34:34 So we need to stop talking about sexual fulfillment as this idea of doing all the things all around the world all at once, because that is not how our real lives, sex lives work. But just to acknowledge that sexual fulfillment for you right now might just be the simplest of touch with the kindest of intentions, across a kitchen table. How can you find fulfillment in that moment? Because what it means is I am not alone. I have this lover. They are showing up for me how they can. Let’s focus there. Let’s find fulfillment there.

Chris Rose: 35:13 So how do we leave this on a more uplifting note? I would love to hear from people about what sexual fulfillment, this idea of being sexually fulfilled, what that has felt like in different points of your life or what it might look like for you. Let’s help one another paint the picture of what this feels like and looks like together. Yeah?

Chris Rose: 35:40 So be gentle with yourself around this conversation. As I said, we do not want to shy away from the complicated conversations around sexuality. Next week, we will try to bring you a more explicit, fun conversation, because we do want to strike that balance within your feed. What we feed you on this podcast I want to be a balance between these deeper, more intense conversations about what is real around sexuality, and also give you tools to access more joy, and pleasure, and orgasm, and ecstasy in your body. We want to be there on both ends of your holes. Okay. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 36:29 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 36:30 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 36:31 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 36:34 And hey, I didn’t say it before, but if you love this show and you want to support our work, come on over to patreon.com/pleasuremechanics. Patreon.com/pleasuremechanics, and jump in with a monthly pledge so we can continue to fill your feed and holes.

Your Constellation of Pleasures

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You have a unique constellation of pleasures, desires and interests that make you who you are. How well do you know your own pleasure constellations? What are the brightest stars that are easy to go after and express, and what pleasures might be dimmed by shame or fear?

This episode was inspired by the responses to our talk in the Explore More Summit. We will continue next week with a conversation about what to do with desires that can not be fulfilled right now – or ever!

Pleasure Constellations Worksheet Download

Transcription of Podcast Episode: Pleasure Constellations

Chris Rose: 00:00 Hi, 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 give soulful yet explicit sex advice about every facet of human sexuality. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com, where you will find a complete podcast archive, and while you are there, go to pleasuremechanics.com/free, and sign up for our free online course, The Erotic Essentials, so you can get started implementing our best strategies and techniques to start building a happier and more pleasurable sex life on your own terms. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free. Welcome to our new listeners. Last week, we were on the Explore More Summit. It is 10 days of brilliant talks and idea sharing with some amazing, amazing folks. We were honored to be a part of it, and if you were introduced to us through the Explore Sore summit, we are so glad you found us, and welcome to the community and we look forward to serving you over time.

Chris Rose: 01:16 Definitely check out the podcast archive, over at pleasuremechanics.com. There’s 325 episodes waiting for you, and they are all sorted by topic in our index on the site, and be in touch. Send us email. Let us know what ideas sparked for you in the talk, and what you are looking to explore with us. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Explore More Summit is happening right now as you’re listening to this podcast, perhaps, or it is archived so that we will put a link in the show notes page, and you can get a copy of all of those talks, I think ongoing into the future, if you missed the live free event. All right, so today, we are going to start a little two part series, sparked by our Explore More talk. In the talk, we were talking about power, and pleasure, and touch, and intimacy. It was a very …

Charlotte Rose: 02:15 We covered a lot of topics.

Chris Rose: 02:17 We certainly did. We covered a lot of topics, and covered a lot of ground, and one of the ideas that sparked some conversation in the Facebook community, and in some emails we received, is this idea, of we all have pleasure constellations. We all have things we are drawn to. We all have desires, and fantasies, and parts of our sexuality that are being revealed to us at all times, right? We are living, breathing sexual organisms, and so first, how do we learn to explore those pleasure constellations? What does that mean to map those out and come to know ourselves as pleasure beings? Then what we do with desires unfulfilled? I made a little statement about, there is maturity in recognizing that there are some of your desires will never be met, and that seemed to spark some feelings for a lot of people. We’re going to talk in the second part of this, next week, about desires unfulfilled and how to come into a ease-filled relationship with those desires.

Charlotte Rose: 03:24 Great. I was going to say right relationship with our unfulfilled desires. What do we do with them? How do we hold them?

Chris Rose: 03:30 But first, how do we get to know ourselves? How do we know our pleasure constellations? What does this idea mean, in terms of getting to, getting in touch with what those desires are in the first place? Right? Before we know if desires can be fulfilled or not, we need to be able to name and articulate those desires.

Charlotte Rose: 03:54 Sorry, I was just going off into really wanting to paint pleasure. I want to do a painting about pleasure constellations, and I was painting it in my head.

Chris Rose: 04:02 Okay, so that’s really …

Charlotte Rose: 04:03 Now I’m back. Now I’m back.

Chris Rose: 04:04 That’s actually a really good clue. Okay, so how do we know who we are as human beings? How does our individual interests, and pleasures, and desires give us a map to who we are, and our purpose on this planet, and who we might be wanting to be in community with? There’s this idea embedded in this idea that we are all unique individuals within this beautiful human community, and that knowing yourself as an individual is important. If we just start there, that knowing who you are is important, and this includes your sexuality, right? This conversation can be about all pleasures, about what kind of food do you like, what kind of music you like, what kind of art attracts you? What do you want to do on your holiday? Do you want to go camping or do you want to go to the big city?

Chris Rose: 04:57 Right? We can think about this in these very broad terms of pleasure, and then we can also think about it in terms of the most intimate terrain of our sexuality, our core desires, what we want to do when we are naked and sweaty with another human being, even if that is only in our minds. We will try to straddle both of those things, talking about pleasure broadly, because that broad category of pleasure is actually super important, and we all need to know ourselves better there, but also our sexual core pleasures and desires.

Charlotte Rose: 05:34 Yeah. What we do with our time really influences and impacts our entire life. The choices we make about how we spend three hours of time on a Saturday or a Sunday influences how we feel in our body, the level of connection we have with ourself, with our family, with our community, and we are all making different choices all the time, and shaping our lives with the places we go, the food we eat, the communities we’re touching. It’s just really powerful to reflect on sometimes of, is it what you want it to be? What would you desire more of? What would you desire less off,and to sort of do an inventory of your life, and of the amount of pleasures you’re experiencing outside of the bedroom. Then we can think about it also in the bedroom. Sometimes it’s easier to think about in a nonsexual way. We have less …

Chris Rose: 06:28 Baggage.

Charlotte Rose: 06:29 Yeah, we have less emotional like feelings about it, so it’s sort of an easier place to practice.

Chris Rose: 06:35 When you think about your constellations of pleasures, think broadly, and try to pinpoint those stars in your sky that might start shaping who you are, if you are thinking about who you are through the lens of your core pleasures. Forget your identities, your profession, your family. Just think about you as an organism, as a being, and think about what gives you as a being the most pleasure. Is it the ocean? Is it golf? Is it food? Try to get really both broad and then specific, and we will provide you in the show notes page, a PDF, where you can print it out and actually do this on paper, and I think that can be really helpful to start making it graphic, really writing it out, or visualize it, if you’re more of a visual person, but think of who you are as a being, as a constellation of pleasures. Charlotte mentioned in the beginning of this conversation, oh, my mind went to painting this conversation. That is because one of Charlotte’s core pleasures is art, broadly, more specifically, painting, and even more specifically than that, bright, beautiful colors. Is that accurate?

Charlotte Rose: 08:02 Yes, and-

Chris Rose: 08:03 How would you name that?

Charlotte Rose: 08:05 Yeah, I have loved painting and making art, but it is something that I’ve had so much resistance around and I … It’s taken a lot of courage and support to really create, and I think this is true for a lot of people, like trying to make space for something that you feel deeply in you, in your internal landscape that you want to do but are not doing, is a whole relationship that is worth looking at, I think, for a lot of us.

Chris Rose: 08:39 Okay. Let’s transition there in a second. Let’s talk about, what is one pleasure for you that you have not had resistance around, then you’ve had full social permission to just embrace, and go for? What’s an easy pleasure for you?

Charlotte Rose: 08:52 For me, movement, like dance. In my own home, not in like any kind of professional or organized way. I literally mean like dancing in my bedroom, dancing and other big room stretching, all of those kind. That is so joyful for me, and is such an important part of my vitality and wellbeing, and changes my life when I do it, and I love it, and I’m so clear that it is important to me.

Chris Rose: 09:17 These are the good things to look at, so what are the pleasures that have felt easy for you to go for in your life that you’ve felt social permission around, that you have felt social support? Naybe your parents put you in a class when you were a kid, or you got encouragement from other adults in your life. What pleasures and interests of yours have been socially supported and easy to embrace?

Charlotte Rose: 09:41 What about you, honey?

Chris Rose: 09:43 My intellect. That was always my primary thing that people applauded and supported, and so the pleasure of being a student, and getting good grades, and weaving ideas together, and writing. Those were all things that we’re really encouraged for me, and so as an organism, when things are encouraged for you, and you have the adults, your caretakers around you saying, “Good job. Yay, that’s great. You’re so good at that,” it’s natural for us to gravitate towards those pleasures. Right? Because we are confirmed, we are affirmed from the outside, like, those are good things. Go for it. We are getting to sex here, people. Don’t worry. Then think about what are the pleasures that you might feel inside you that were not socially supported, so things like painting, or dancing, things that are outside of your gender box. If you’re a macho boy that loves football and cupcakes, like the football might’ve been applauded, and you were put on teams, and bought uniforms, but when you went to bake with your grandmother, maybe your father came to pick you up and said like, “Take off that sissy apron,” or something. Right? What pleasures were you drawn to as a kid and throughout your life that you were restricted or shamed about?

Chris Rose: 11:02 What are the ones that are just a little more tender and vulnerable? I think the arts, for a lot of people, it’s like, oh, you want to be an artist? Ha ha ha, that’s not realistic. Capitalism and all of these things, like the social pressure of performing and getting a good job, also start interrupting our pleasures. What are the pleasures we would do if we didn’t have to grind it out at our job every day, is also a great lens here. What pleasures do not give your space, time, or permission for? What we’re painting here is this landscape of, we all have these pleasures within us, but over our lifetimes, and within our social conditioning, some pleasures are amplified, and given a lot of space and encouragement around, and other pleasures start to be dimmed, and maybe even quashed, constricted, silenced, shamed.

Chris Rose: 11:56 When we start zooming into our pleasure constellations, and then thinking about our sexual pleasure constellations, this is where these two forces of what has been given social permission, what has been encouraged, and what has been dimmed, silenced or squashed becomes really obvious.

Charlotte Rose: 12:16 Totally.

Chris Rose: 12:17 As you think about your sexual pleasures, your sexual desires, just notice, and be really compassionate and easy with yourself, because we’re all going to have desires that are really easy to express out loud, and desires that feel terrifying to even acknowledge to yourself, and this is because we live in a very narrow window of sexual permission in our culture. It is totally okay for a man to say out loud over a couple beers that he is a boob man, right? For a guy to like be like, oh she’s got nice boobs. I l,ove tits. Not going to really disrupt a lot of social circles, but for that same guy to be like I love feet and sucking on toes. That is not as socially acceptable in that conversation. Right?

Chris Rose: 13:13 This social gaze on our desires matters. It matters what we see representation of, what we see permission around, and then how we hear other people talk about the things that might be lighting us up inside. If you’ve known you’ve always been drawn to feet, and want to suck on toes, and you hear one of your friends or a girlfriend kind of talk about, ugh, those guys with fetishes are so gross. Like, what do they get out of it? Like, what pervs. That causes your inner light to flicker, that causes you to doubt yourself, and it certainly causes you to say to yourself, “Do not reveal this, because if you do, you will be judged.” This is just the reality. And then all of us live within like micro cultures within our relationships, and sub cultures within our communities, and cultures of race, and clas,s and education that have different barometers of what is okay and what’s not okay, what is permissible, what is forbidden.

Chris Rose: 14:13 All of that affects our internal gauge of what is okay to express and go for in life, and what is okay to seek out within our relationships, and integrate as like part of your sexuality versus what has to stay in your shame, and in your most private landscape, and not even be acknowledged to yourself. Then the range between those. Can you masturbate to something but not ask your partner for it? This is all a lot of self reflection. I get that, but it’s also really important in the process of knowing who you are as a sexual being. When we, or your partner, turns to you and say, ‘What do you want to explore next? What do you want to play with? What do you want to experience? What kind of sex do you even want to be having,” that we can have a more specific response to that, we can name our longings more clearly, and know that those longings, just like you’re longing for art or cello music, those longings are part of who you are. They’re part of you as a unique and beautiful individual, and part of what you have to offer this human community. Reel me in, Char. I’m going broad.

Charlotte Rose: 15:33 I love it. I think it’s really valuable, so we can understand all of those as big ideas, and then what does that look like in the body? What are we listening for? What are we observing within ourselves that then we want to notice, so there can be slight flickering of interest.

Chris Rose: 15:53 Wait, just a sec. What are we noticing within ourselves to feel like what are desires? How do we feel a yes? Is that what you’re saying?

Charlotte Rose: 16:00 Yeah. Yeah, because I think that so many of us don’t allow ourselves to really notice what we love, because of that social conditioning, and we have to get into the practice of listening internally in our own flesh, in the landscape of our body, for information, for cues, for twinklings, I want to say, but I have to go keep going on this [inaudible 00:00:16:27], but of information that is telling us actually, you were a little bit interested in this thing over here, that maybe you have some feelings, and judgment, and shame about, but if you maybe explore a little bit more, and give yourself a little bit of kindness and compassion just to explore it. Let’s see what you discover, because that is one of the first pieces to really discovering our constellation, is giving ourselves a space of not so much judgment to explore.

Chris Rose: 16:57 I think that’s a really good question, of how do we notice a yes in our body? How do we pay attention to pleasure in our body, and we’ve been talking more and more about interoception on this podcast, which is that really sexy super power of feeling the feelings inside your body. Not the sensations coming from the outside, but the sensations internally, and paying attention to your yes is a process of interoception, so think of it this way. Let’s just do an exercise right now, so think of one of your favorite places in the world, a place where you feel happy, and secure, and safe, and also maybe even a little sexy or pleasured, and just go there in your mind, and notice how it feels in your body, and pay a specific attention to those sensual details that you love.

Chris Rose: 17:56 Is it the way the light hits the water? Is it the fabric of that couch at your favorite home? Anchor this fantasy in a few sensual details that you know with your body, and start paying attention to how your body feels. Can you feel warmth flowing, buzzing, a streaming sensation? What language can you bring to those sensations around something that feels good to you, or think about one of your favorite sexual experiences, and take this into the arousal realm. We’ve talked about peak erotic experiences on this podcast before, so take yourself into the memory of a peak erotic experience, and really pay attention to how your body feels.

Chris Rose: 18:46 Then take a few deep breaths, notice that in your body, and then we can start summoning a no. Think about a person you don’t like. Think about a situation you don’t want to be in. Think about a worst case scenario, and start noticing, I just felt that shift in my body right away. Just saying the words, notice the constriction, the tension, the tightness, the catching of your breath. This is a process of getting to know what your body is telling you about things based on sensation. It is a super power. It takes time to hone, but you can’t do this without noticing, so next time you’re thinking about going to a restaurant, you’re investing your time, and your money, and what you’re putting in your mouth based on that restaurant choice, so summon up a few choices. Visualize yourself sitting in that restaurant, and figure out where your yes is. Right. Does that?

Charlotte Rose: 19:46 Yeah, totally. I was just wondering if we could take them back to like a pleasant experience so we can like …

Chris Rose: 19:50 All right, so let’s go back to a really pleasurable experience. Let’s go to that peak erotic experience, because that’s one of the best ways to feel a yes, is to make it big. Thinking about a subtle yes between, do I want to join that PTA committee? That might be harder, so go to your big yeses, or go to the everyday yeses, but go into a peak erotic experience and again, locate the sensual anchors. What are the feelings you felt? What are the smells, the sights, the tastes, and then also how did that other person treat you in a peak erotic experience? What are the social cues of that feeling good?

Chris Rose: 20:36 This is complicated in the fact that there are ways we want to be treated, in high states of arousal and eroticism that, that’s not a yes in everyday life, but the process of feeling your yes and no in your body, and people have been talking about this more and more with our talks of consent, and boundaries. How do we know what we want? We have to go inside and give ourselves space and time to feel, and sometimes that means taking time, giving yourself the time for a few moments, pause before making a decision, before making a reaction, and really feeling the landscape of what’s going on. Let’s bring this back to sex, so when you’re mapping your sexual pleasure constellation, there will be those bright stars that you know you like. You love fucking your wife. Awesome. Locate that, and then kind of zoom in and like, what else is within that node in your pleasure constellation?

Chris Rose: 21:36 What do you like about fucking your wife? What are the micro pleasures within that, and then zoom out and it’s like, without social conditioning, without the limitations of real world, what would be in your pleasure constellation? Next week we’re going to talk about, how do we navigate naming and being authentic with the broadest sense of who we are, the most true sense of who we are as sexual beings, and also acknowledging we do live in real world, with real world limitations and conditions, and even something like being interested in more than one gender, or more than one person at a time, that might be a desire you have to live with not fulfilling, if you are in a monogamous relationship. Or things like sucking on toes. If your partner doesn’t like their toes sucked on, what do you do with that? What do we do with a parts of our desire maps, our constellations, that we will not reach in this lifetime?

Chris Rose: 22:38 How do we be in integrity with that? I think that’s a really tender conversation. We will go there next week, but for now, and with the resources in the show notes page, I really invite you to start mapping your pleasure constellations, and then your sexual constellations, and get to know yourself as a sexual being. If I wanted to know who you were as a sexual being, how would you explain that to me through what you enjoy? As we define ourselves, think less about your identities and more about what you enjoy, what pleasures you enjoy giving and receiving, what pleasures excite you, and entice you, and arouse you, and light you up. Let’s go back to that Audre Lorde definition of eroticism. What gives you life? What excites you and sparks your flow of life energy. Start there. Marie Kondo recently is been hitting all the news. What sparks joy, and we need to figure out how do we feel joym and then notice what sparks joy. What creates pleasure in your life. That is the inquiry of this week.

Charlotte Rose: 23:50 Yeah, so this is a lifelong inquiry that is always changing, always evolving, but any time, and attention, and effort you put into exploring this right now can be really valuable, no motto where your partner, if you have a partner, or if they’re interested in exploring this with you, it’s a really valuable personal inquiry that is worth returning to as you discover new interests, and as you’re out in the world, notice and feel for sparks of interest, of warmth, of excitement, about anything, and just let that be information for yourself, that that is a part of yourself that you are noticing.

Chris Rose: 24:31 As you map these pleasures, again, a reminder for self compassion here. As you recognize pleasures that you have longing for, there may be steps to start recalibrating your life, to allow more of those pleasures in. When you recognize, oh, I love swimming and I haven’t been swimming in two years, finding a local pool for a weekly swim might be accessible to you, and there might be pleasures that feel really far away, and there can be a sense of longing, and grief, and mourning that opens up there. This is really what we want to dive into next week, is how do we make friends with desires that feel further away? How do we excavate desires from underneath the shame and secrecy, and even if they stay private, honor our desires a little more? But this is all about getting to know yourself, and feeling a little bit more permission about being who you are, instead of being on the script, the social script that tells us who we should be, and who we ought to be, and start really re-centering into this, the radical diversity of the human family.

Chris Rose: 25:43 We all have so much in common, but we all are really interesting, unique individuals, and as soon as I started going to dinner parties and asking instead of like, oh, what do you do for a living, and we start asking, what excites you? What are you excited about right now? You get into such better conversations, because instead of knowing that someone’s an accountant, I know that they’re really into Greek tragedy opera. I don’t even know if that’s a thing. They’re really into something, and when they told me what they’re into, I see who they are, and we can start there. Tell me about your obsession with opera. When did that begin for you? This is such a better way to get to know each other as human beings, and so let’s all do the work of mapping a little bit, who we are through our pleasures, through our interests, and our excitements, and including our sexual pleasures within that.

Chris Rose: 26:38 Even that process is honoring that sexuality as part of who we are, and our unique sexual pleasures matter. Not only setting you on the path for fulfilling those desires, but even just knowing who you are as a unique sexual being is incredibly powerful. Let’s start doing that a little bit more together. Yeah?

Charlotte Rose: 27:01 Sounds good. Let’s do it.

Chris Rose: 27:03 Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you are a new listener who found us through Explore More, welcome. There is a huge podcast archive to be discovered at pleasuremechanics.com. While you’re there, sign up for our free online course at pleasuremechanics.com/free, and if you have been listening to this podcast for a while, and love what we do, and are delighted by the idea of an influx of new listeners, and more people being exposed to the heart and soul we bring to this topic, then please support us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/pleasuremechanics, and throw in a monthly donation of a few bucks a month to help us do this work in the world, and continue to reach new people, and spark new conversations and ideas for folks. We are so thrilled to be doing this work. Thank you for your support. We love you. We are so happy to be in these conversations with you, and next week we will be back with you, with continuing this conversation about desires, fulfilled and unfulfilled. Yes? I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 28:16 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 28:17 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 28:18 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 28:21 Cheers.

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