Better Sex

389: Adventures in Polyamory

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:54:07 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Natalie Davis about how her marriage shifted from assumed monogamy to swinging and then polyamory after an affair about 15 years into her relationship. Davis describes early insecurity, rules for safety, and how communication and healing helped her and her husband rebuild trust. She explains kitchen-table polyamory, living in a “resident V” with her husband and his other partner (her metamour), and the mundane realities of sharing a household alongside dating others. They discuss jealousy, consent, STI awareness, the lack of legal protections for non-monogamists, and how polyamory can require “graduate level” communication. Davis shares that she wrote a memoir, Saying Yes: My Adventures in Polyamory, publishing January 13, 2026, and where to find her online.Note: Natalie wanted to make sure to credit the person who coined the word "polyamory" in 1990: Morning Glory Ravenheart Zell00:00 Welcome to Better Sex00:44 Meet Natalie Davis01:56 From Monogamy to Poly03:33 Swinging After Infidelity06:23 Healing and Rebuilding Trust11:16 Coming Out and Risks14:11 Writing the Book16:38 Kitchen Table Poly19:09 Life in a Resident V22:54 Jealousy and Communication26:01 Dating Beyond the Household28:16 Sex Life Pros and Cons32:47 Skills for Doing It Well35:21 Book Details and Where to Find36:47 Final Thanks and Wrap UpJessa's quizzes are available:The higher desire partner quiz: https://intimacywithease.com/hdp-higher-desire-partner-mistake-quiz/The lower desire partner quiz: https://intimacywithease.com/ldp-lower-desire-partner-mistake-quiz-organic/BioNatalie Davis is the author of the new poly memoir, "Saying Yes: My Adventures in Polyamory" (pub date Jan. 13, 2026). She is the editor of the online publication Polyamory Today, and her work has appeared in Heart Affairs, Discovering Polyamory, Monogamish, and The Memoirist. Her opinions on polyamory have been published in The Washington Post. She has presented workshops on communication and non-monogamy across the United States. A recovering lawyer, she lives in the Washington, DC, area, with her partner and marvelous metamour. You can find her on Instagram, Medium, and her website as nataliedavisadventures.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

388: [Soapbox] Comfort and Growth Cycles in Long Term Relationships

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 07 May 2026 14:12:35 GMT

In this soapbox episode recorded on the road, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman shares a concept from David Schnarch about the natural rhythm of long-term relationships: alternating comfort cycles and growth cycles. Growth cycles require effort, change, and transformation, and when partners do that work they earn a new “normal” they can relax into until the next growth phase arrives. Jessa explains that couples may be pushed into growth by external changes (such as shifts in sexual functioning or illness) or by complacency, routine, and unspoken dissatisfaction when someone avoids “rocking the boat” until it becomes urgent. She reframes these moments as normal opportunities to adapt, refocus, experiment, and reconnect, and reassures listeners that intense effort is usually temporary and leads back to renewed comfort.00:00 Show Intro00:45 On the Road Setup01:09 Comfort and Growth Cycles01:39 How Growth Creates Comfort02:39 What Triggers Growth02:46 Change and Health Events03:15 Complacency and Avoidance04:20 Reframing Crisis as Opportunity04:50 Reassurance and Takeaways05:08 Outro and Credits

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

387: Bad Marriage Advice

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 May 2026 12:16:22 GMT

On Better Sex, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews relationship coach Monica Tanner about her book Bad Marriage Advice, written initially for her son before his marriage. Tanner shares how her parents’ divorce and her own early marital struggles led her to study relationships and train in Relational Life Therapy and sex-related coaching. They discuss common couple dynamics (pursuer–distancer, fighting, withdrawal), how unskillful communication erodes trust and leads to resentment and “roommate syndrome,” and why thriving marriages require learned relational skills rather than fairy-tale expectations. They address sex myths, the need to discover and communicate desires, and the idea that emotional connection and sexual connection are related but distinct systems requiring intentional work. Tanner critiques clichés like “compromise,” “happy wife, happy life,” “don’t go to bed angry,” and “don’t sweat the small stuff,” and suggests practices like regular “sex talk Tuesday.”00:00 Show Intro00:45 Meet Monica Tanner01:33 Why Relationships Matter04:28 Common Couple Dynamics06:40 Romance Myths And Control08:42 How Sex Gets Impacted10:23 Love Versus Desire12:44 Jess Quick Break13:13 Bad Sex Advice Myth15:12 Compromise Versus Collaboration16:59 Cliche Advice Debunked18:33 Learning Relationship Skills21:17 Healing Childhood Wounds23:34 Rebuilding Spark And Context26:04 Book And Where To Find27:23 Final OutroWant to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.comBio:Monica Tanner, RLT trained, Relationship Coach and host of the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast, transforms marriages with simple communication, connection, conflict resolution and commitment strategies. Her mission is to lower the divorce rate and improve marital satisfaction. Through her engaging podcast, new Amazon Best-Selling book, Bad Marriage Advice, vibrant social media community, and couple’s coaching practice, Monica's expert guidance has impacted thousands of couples, by helping them ditch resentment and roommate syndrome and get back to living their happily ever after love story.www.badmarriageadvice.com www.monicatanner.com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

386: [Soapbox] The Plight of the Higher Desire Partner

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:36:24 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the “plight” of the higher-desire partner who wants sex to be part of a loving relationship but feels stuck in a catch-22: bringing it up can be labeled as pushing and create more shutdown, while staying quiet can make the lower-desire partner assume everything is fine. She encourages finding a “sweet spot” for advocating without nagging, and suggests avoiding framing the issue only as unmet needs and unhappiness, which can increase guilt and pressure. Instead, approach conversations with compassion for the lower-desire partner’s struggle, emphasize the goal of a win-win sex life both can enjoy, and highlight the emotional intimacy and connection sex can provide—not just physical release. 00:00 Better Sex Intro00:45 Higher Desire Dilemma01:57 The Catch 2202:40 Find the Sweet Spot02:58 Talk Without Pressure03:35 Compassion and Win Win04:50 Sex as Connection06:22 Closing and Next Steps

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

385: The 5 Love Languages: in the bedroom

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:31:26 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman talks with Krish Phua, a certified sexologist and intimacy and sexual wellness therapist at Underneath the Moon Singapore, about applying Gary Chapman’s five love languages (physical touch, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, gifts) to erotic connection. They address the common misconception that “physical touch” simply means sex or entitles someone to it, emphasizing that physical touch includes many non-sexual forms of contact and that sex involves more than touch alone. Krish frames love languages in three layers—how we express love, how we want to receive it, and how we love ourselves—arguing self-love and self-awareness underpin erotic connection. He shares practical bedroom examples for physical touch (non-goal-oriented body mapping, post-climax connection), acts of service (preparing a calming space), and highlights the power of words of affirmation. They also discuss rebuilding safety, curiosity, and communication to reduce performance pressure.00:00 Show Intro00:45 Episode Setup01:53 Love Languages Basics04:15 Touch Is Not Sex05:13 Erotic Connection Map07:52 Three Layers Framework09:46 Bedroom Examples11:26 Substack Invite13:42 Reconnecting As A Couple18:25 All Five In Bed20:04 Words Of Affirmation21:42 Gifts And Generosity22:23 Where To Find Krish23:26 Podcast OutroSubscribe to Jessa on substack: https://www.intimacywithease.com/substackBio:Krish Phua is a registered Counsellor, Psychotherapist, Intimacy and Sexual Wellness Therapist and certified Clinical Supervisor. He is also a Board-Certified Diplomate and Certified Sexologist with the American Board of Sexology.Since 2013, Krish has served in diverse settings such as counselling centres, recovery centres, clinics, therapy centres, hospitals, prisons, halfway houses, special schools and educational institutions. He provides therapy in individual, couple, family and group contexts, and has facilitated mental health talks and workshops for varied communities.Krish is also an appointed Adjunct Faculty (Lecturer) for counselling and psychology subjects in private educational institutions for adult learners. He regularly publishes professional insights and reflections through blog articles.Krish holds a Master’s degree in Social Science (Professional Counselling) and Master’s degree in Business Administration (International Management).Fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, Krish integrates multicultural perspectives into his therapeutic and academic work.www.underneaththemoon.com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

384: [Soapbox] Choose to Focus on the Anti-Fear

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:56:00 GMT

In this soapbox episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman shares a client-inspired lesson on how fear-based conversations can spiral into a reactive cycle that fuels negativity and creates the outcomes partners most dread. Drawing on the idea that events lead to thoughts, interpretations, emotions, and then actions, she introduces the concept of the “anti-fear”—the opposite of a feared outcome—and encourages listeners to imagine and reinforce a more empowering story instead of worst-case scenarios. She walks through how one partner relaxed quickly when focusing on feeling supported and loved, while the other found it edgy because it conflicted with a long-held belief that his needs won’t be met. By choosing a positive vision and looking for evidence that supports it, couples can respond more collaboratively and stay connected when bumps arise.00:00 Better Sex Intro00:46 Soapbox Episode Setup01:11 Fear Spiral In Couples02:04 Anti Fear Reframe03:35 Partner A Finds Evidence04:18 Partner B And Life Story05:20 Reinforce A New Narrative06:16 Try This Yourself06:47 Outro And Credits

Want to learn more about my sponsored charity? Charity: Water is committed to providing clean water to every human on the planet, 100% of your contribution will be used directly for water projects around the globe. You can learn more at https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/water.I'm on Substack! This is where I am focusing my energy to connect with the people who I seek to serve. Come visit:

More info and resources:Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcastSecret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcastHow Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz –

https://www.sexlifequiz.comThe Course –

https://www.intimacywithease.comThe Book –

https://www.sexwithoutstress.comPodcast Website –

https://www.intimacywithease.comAccess the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

383: Yoni Mapping with Freya Graf

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:49:34 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Freya Graf about yoni mapping therapy and how she combines it with internal pelvic release work. Freya shares how her own history of shame, body image struggles, and fear around intimacy led her into this work, explains what “yoni” means and why she’s moving toward more clinical language, and walks through a typical 3–4 hour session (extended intake/sex education, home practices, full-body massage, external vulva mapping, and optional internal vaginal/pelvic floor massage). They discuss who seeks the work (prenatal/postnatal support, vaginismus, painful sex, pelvic tension, PMS, education, trauma and consent violations), why pace and client-led consent matter, how trauma can surface, and the importance of thorough training. Freya also offers guidance on vetting practitioners and shares her online course, coaching, podcast, and website for those without local access.00:00 Show Introduction00:45 Meet the Guest02:01 Why This Work Matters05:08 What Yoni Means07:51 How Sessions Work13:07 How Many Sessions14:24 Quick Quiz Break14:51 Who It Helps17:58 Consent and Empowerment20:19 Common Reasons Clients Come21:11 Partner Involvement Question21:27 Partner In Sessions23:24 Trauma Screening Approach27:03 Training And Safety29:26 Finding A Practitioner33:10 Consent And Boundaries34:31 Online Course And Resources38:28 Closing And CreditsTake Jessa's quizzes at https://www.desirediscrepancy.comFreya's Bio:Freya Graf is a Holistic Sex Educator & Coach and Yoni Mapping Therapist with a passion for holistic health and personal development. She keeps it real, raw and relatable when it comes to talking about sex, relating and bodies, and is on a mission to dismantle the shame, taboo and stigma shrouding these important topics by having open and vulnerable conversations about them through her work with women and on her hilarious podcast The Labia Lounge.With a background of study in Kahuna massage, internal pelvic release work, facilitation, early learning, yoga teaching, tantric bodywork and sacred sexuality, Freya works to inspire, educate and empower, supporting you to cultivate a fulfilling and life changing relationship with your body and sexuality!Freya offers one-on-one Yoni Mapping Therapy (YMT) and Internal Pelvic Release Work (IPRW) sessions for vulva-owners, as well as online sex coaching and education programs for the whole gender spectrum. She has launched an epic 3 month online course called Queen Out and pours her heart, soul and lots of laughter into her podcast The Labia Lounge where she interviews incredible guests about all things womanhood, sex, vaginas, relationships, holistic health and self development!- A podcast episode about yoni mapping: https://youtu.be/eO8Plj6-Coc?si=ss8qabcwtC_NqB8t- How to choose a yoni mapping practitioner:Blog: https://www.freyagraf.com/vagina-chronicles-blog/how-to-choose-a-yoni-massage-practitionerYouTube video: https://youtu.be/IVCsP6AmpmA?si=7AQc_QKwFw7-Ac3Y - Online course: https://www.freyagraf.com/online-course- Free mini course on female pleasure - a great place to get started if people are curious: https://www.freyagraf.com/freebies www.freyagraf.comthe Labia Lounge Podcast

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

382: [Soapbox] Activities for connection

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:45:52 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman continues last week’s discussion about the potential of MDMA-assisted couples work, emphasizing she is not encouraging MDMA use because it remains a Schedule I illegal substance outside of research. Drawing from a recent 30-hour MDMA-assisted therapy training, she shares several couple “games” that can be helpful with or without an altered state: an appreciation game where partners slowly exchange gratitudes to deepen connection and nervous system regulation; a curiosity game focused on asking authentic, non-adversarial questions and answering truthfully (or passing); a simple difficult-conversation protocol that names fears, desired outcomes, and invites gentle response; and a win-win brainstorming question to generate solutions that meet both partners’ needs. She invites listeners to try the exercises and share feedback, and closes with podcast housekeeping and credits.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:46 MDMA and Couples Therapy

01:41 Legal Status and Disclaimer

02:51 Appreciation Game

03:51 Curiosity Game

05:04 Difficult Conversation Protocol

06:10 Win Win Brainstorming

07:30 Wrap Up and Listener Call

07:45 Outro and Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

381: The Sure Thing - A strategy to prioritize intimacy with Elana Auerbach

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:49:24 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Elana Auerbach about her book, “The Sure Thing: A Pleasure Practice to Revive the Spark,” and how a consistent weekly intimacy ritual can rebuild connection in long-term relationships. Elana shares her background as a “good girl” who followed an expected life path, her divorce after realizing a lack of chemistry, and later meeting her husband Bill through a San Francisco pleasure community. After years of desire mismatch, resentment, and trying typical sex advice without success, they created a weekly “sure thing” practice focused on intention, closeness, and taking 100% responsibility for one’s own pleasure rather than performance goals. They discuss responsive desire, preparation cues, the guiding question “what would be most pleasurable right now?”, working with partner resistance, addressing shame, and Elana’s “love ripples” actions to spread connection beyond the bedroom.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Meet Elana Auerbach

01:43 Good Girl Conveyor Belt

02:45 Marriage Without Chemistry

04:06 Choosing Divorce Truthfully

05:27 Pleasure Community Awakening

07:22 Parenthood Desire Gap

09:30 Shabbat Sure Thing Idea

11:08 Starting Weekly Practice

12:34 Why It Works Fast

13:34 Embodied Sexy Music

14:07 Midshow Coaching Break

14:35 Intentions Not Sex Goals

16:32 Creative Pleasure Mindset

17:22 Know What You Want

18:19 Sure Thing Ritual Ideas

19:30 Most Pleasurable Now

20:29 When Partners Resist

22:48 Shame On Who

24:14 Love Ripples Practice

25:27 Can Pleasure Change World

26:33 Where To Find Book

28:09 Final Thanks And Outro

How to work with Jessa: https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Elana Auerbach is a lover, mother, mentor, activist, and priestess. She spent her childhood and young adulthood on what she calls “the conveyor belt of life,” being the good girl and doing what others expected of her. This looked like graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA, working on Wall Street for a Japanese investment bank, and marrying someone with whom she felt no chemistry.

It all fell apart in 2001 when Elana realized she’d been living a lie and found the courage to leave her marriage. She entered a world of sensuality and sex in a San Francisco pleasure-centered community. This is where she met Bill, who would become her loverman for life.

While Elana has a wealth of professional experience guiding people deeper into their bodies and their pleasure, The Sure Thing comes directly from her personal life. After years of frustration and failed gimmicks to try to respark the passion in her 20-year marriage, Elana created The Sure Thing. She wrote this book because she wants everyone to have access to this life altering practice.

www. surethingexperiment.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

380: [Soapbox] The potential for MDMA in coupes work

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:51:02 GMT

Sex therapist Jess Zimmerman shares what she’s learning from a 30-hour training on guiding people who choose to use MDMA (Ecstasy/Molly), emphasizing she is not endorsing illegal substance use and is focused on the research and potential pending FDA approval. She describes MAPS’s Phase 3 clinical trials using an MDMA-assisted protocol for severe, treatment-resistant PTSD, noting results where about two-thirds of participants no longer meet PTSD diagnostic criteria, though the FDA has requested more long-term safety data and has not approved it yet. Jessa explains proposed mechanisms such as increased serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin and reduced fear/defensiveness, and discusses why this could be promising for couples therapy by enabling deeper, less reactive conversations and breakthroughs, supported by integration sessions. She invites listeners to follow her work via www.heartweaveforcouples.com.

00:00 Show Intro

00:47 Soapbox Topic MDMA

01:09 Training And Disclaimer

01:46 MAPS Research Update

02:24 PTSD Protocol Results

03:01 FDA Status And Concerns

03:43 Why Couples Could Benefit

04:47 Therapy Breakthrough Potential

06:03 Heart Weave And Next Steps

06:50 Outro And Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

379: Mindfulness Based Porn Addiction Recovery with Jeremy Lipkowitz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:57:49 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Jeremy Lipkowitz about porn addiction (or compulsive/problematic porn use) through a Buddhist-informed lens that frames addiction as using rewarding behaviors to escape or numb unpleasant emotions. Jeremy shares his own history of escalating porn use from childhood into college and describes subtle harms including impacts on intimacy, bedroom functioning, productivity, secrecy and lying, and increasingly unrealistic expectations of partners, alongside neuroplasticity and addiction to novelty. They discuss the Rat Park experiment to emphasize how addiction takes hold more easily in an unfulfilled life, and outline Buddhist concepts such as craving vs. attraction, the “realm of hungry ghosts,” aversion, and equanimity. Jeremy explains toxic shame versus healthy “pro-social” shame (moral shame and moral dread) and highlights recovery pillars: self-awareness, clarifying future direction, training equanimity via meditation, and connection/community with accountability. He mentions his remote men’s group, Unhooked Academy.

00:00 Show Intro

00:54 Porn Addiction Framing

02:18 Jeremy Origin Story

03:38 Buddhist View Addiction

06:33 When Use Becomes Harm

09:57 Rat Park Explained

12:14 Age Exposure Matters

16:02 Crossing Into Problem

19:18 Unrealistic Expectations

21:30 Hungry Ghosts Craving

24:05 Aversion And Suffering

25:06 Toxic Shame Spiral

27:08 Healthy Shame Explained

29:11 Moral Dread And Compass

30:26 Mindfulness For Recovery

35:28 Equanimity Not Escaping

38:57 Community And Accountability

42:58 Unhooked Academy And Wrap

Take the quizzes at https://www.desirediscreapancy.com

Bio:

Jeremy Lipkowitz is a former Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, and ICF-certified executive coach who helps high-achieving men break free from compulsive behaviors—especially porn addiction—and build lives of integrity, discipline, and deep fulfillment. With over 13 years of meditation experience and hundreds of days spent in silent retreat, Jeremy blends ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science to guide individuals toward emotional resilience and personal freedom.

A former genetic researcher who earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Genetics & Genomics and pursued a PhD at Duke University, Jeremy left academia after confronting his own struggles with addiction, shame, and self-judgment. A brief period of monastic training in Myanmar deepened his mindfulness practice and marked the start of a lifelong commitment to personal growth and service.

As the founder of Unhooked Academy and host of the Unhooked Podcast, Jeremy is a leading voice in destigmatizing porn addiction and educating the public on effective, science-based recovery strategies. His work helps men overcome shame, understand the neuroscience of addiction, and create lasting transformation through mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and habit change.

For over a decade, Jeremy has taught at universities, recovery centers, and global companies across the U.S. and Asia. His calm, grounded presence and ability to bridge analytical thinking with inner work make him a sought-after guide for professionals and executives looking to reclaim their lives from digital distractions and self-sabotaging patterns.

unhookedacademy.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

378: [Soapbox] When neither person wants sex

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:36:22 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman answers a listener question about what to do when both partners have low desire for sex. She explains that if both people are happy not having sex, there is no problem to solve. If the couple wants sex to be part of their relationship but neither experiences spontaneous desire or initiates, she recommends understanding and working with reactive desire—where interest may arise only after getting started. Zimmerman suggests intentionally creating time for gentle physical connection and finding a slow “on-ramp” that feels good, such as talking, sipping tea, cuddling, caressing, or massage, then seeing where it goes. She emphasizes communicating about what feels good in the moment and allowing that it won’t always lead to arousal or sex, but that even occasional success increases sexual connection.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Today’s Listener Question

01:35 No Sex Is Okay

02:13 Understanding Reactive Desire

03:00 Create Intentional On Ramps

03:45 Communicate and Remove Pressure

04:13 Key Takeaway and Wrap

04:38 Outro and Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

377: Menopause BioType - Individualizing Care with Dr. Jennifer Berman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:27:05 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman hosts Dr. Jennifer Berman to discuss menopause, sexual health, and individualized hormone care. Berman explains how witnessing the medical disparity after Viagra’s rise pushed her to pioneer women’s sexual health, and how her own early perimenopause shaped her work with hormone replacement therapy (HRT). They address common menopause symptoms and argue sexual health is clinically significant and tied to overall wellness. Berman emphasizes that estrogen does not cause breast cancer, critiques the legacy of the WHI study and synthetic oral hormones, and explains current bioidentical approaches and why testosterone for women is often compounded. She introduces her genetic test, the Menopause Biotype, which aims to predict symptom patterns, disease risks, and hormone metabolism to tailor treatment, discusses a subgroup still struggling with mood issues and emerging ketamine therapy, and shares how she evaluates patients using labs, genetics, symptoms, and sometimes pellet timing.

00:00 Show Intro

00:45 Menopause Episode Setup

01:49 Why Dr Berman Cares

02:13 Viagra Era Wake Up Call

04:07 Her Perimenopause Journey

06:16 Why Care Is Changing Now

07:37 Reframing Menopause Aging Well

09:10 Hormones Beyond Symptoms

11:41 Sexual Health Is Health

13:14 Desire Gap And Libido Mismatch

15:25 Midroll Free Resources

15:51 HRT Myths And WHI Fallout

18:02 Bioidentical Vs Synthetic Hormones

19:12 Testosterone Access Challenges

19:40 Personalized Hormone Dosing

20:50 Menopause Biotype Genetic Test

21:19 Predicting Symptoms and Risks

22:13 Genes and Mental Health Subtypes

24:54 Ketamine and Neuroplasticity

27:31 Treatment Workflow and Labs

29:19 Pellets and Individual Targets

31:39 Perimenopause Signs and Timing

33:29 Starting HRT Later in Life

35:33 Where to Follow and Peptides

38:24 Podcast Wrap Up

All of Jessa's desire discrepancy resources: https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Modern feminism fought for equal pay, representation, and choice — but the next frontier of equality is biochemical. Despite decades of research proving the benefits of hormone therapy for cognition, vitality, and longevity, women remain under-treated, under-tested, and over-pathologized.

Dr. Jennifer Berman argues that access to hormone therapy, especially testosterone, isn’t a luxury — it’s a fundamental right tied to a woman’s ability to live, work, and age with autonomy and strength. Denying women evidence-based HRT isn’t just a medical gap; it’s a civil rights issue rooted in gender bias.

This conversation goes far beyond hot flashes. It’s about productivity, mental health, neuroprotection, and the freedom to perform at full biological capacity — without stigma, fear, or institutional barriers.

A pioneer who founded UCLA’s Female Sexual Medicine Center, Dr. Berman now leads what she calls the next revolution in medicine: biochemical equality. Through her Menopause Biotype™ — a DNA and AI-powered tool that ends hormone guesswork — she’s redefining how women age, reclaiming their capacity, power, and edge in every arena of life.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

376: [Soapbox] The lower desire partner feels like they can't win

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:17:32 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman shares a “soapbox” episode addressing a common belief among lower desire partners: “I can’t win; it’ll never be enough.” She explains this mindset becomes self-defeating when the goalposts are set by the higher desire partner’s satisfaction instead of treating intimacy as a shared playing field where both meet in the middle. Zimmerman outlines the lower desire partner’s role as being willing to engage in the topic, identify and address obstacles that create stress or block pleasure, and explore what could help them access desire, arousal, or enjoyable physical pleasure some of the time. She also notes the higher desire partner’s work includes adjusting expectations, broadening what counts as sex, focusing on pleasure and connection, clearly asking for what they want, and celebrating “no” when needed.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Soapbox Topic Setup

01:07 Why It Feels Hopeless

02:21 Lower Desire Partner Work

02:59 Accessing Desire and Pleasure

03:43 Higher Desire Partner Work

04:04 Reframing as Teamwork

04:28 Outro and Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

375: When Money Stress Creates Distance in the Bedroom with Heather Howard

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 13:52:55 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Heather Howard, a sexuality counselor and financial coach, about the strong parallels between money and sex in couples’ relationships. Howard shares how pelvic pain shifted her from a finance career into sex counseling and later into financial coaching after repeatedly seeing money conflicts fueling distance, resentment, and desire problems. They discuss patterns like one partner becoming the “driver” while the other withdraws, how power imbalances show up in both sexual desire discrepancy and finances, and how financial control can undermine authentic consent. They explore the role of entrenched narratives and upbringing in shaping beliefs about sex and money, the impact of shame and secrecy including financial infidelity, and Howard’s solution-focused approach emphasizing safety, skills training, accountability, and aligning money behaviors with values. Howard explains how to contact her for online coaching via heatherhoward.com/meet.

00:00 Show Intro

00:45 Meet Heather Howard

01:46 From Finance to Sex Therapy

03:25 Why Money Enters the Bedroom

05:10 Desire and Money Dynamics

07:52 Power Imbalances and Entitlement

09:46 Consent Needs Financial Safety

11:55 Unpacking Sex and Money Stories

14:40 Heather’s Coaching Approach

18:32 Masterclass Break

19:02 Sharing Financial Responsibility

19:43 Fixing Money Patterns

20:48 Money Anxiety and Skills

22:07 Building Self Trust

23:21 Financial Infidelity Secrets

27:57 Drama Debt Cycles

28:34 First Steps and Support

32:51 Finding a Coach

35:19 Closing and Credits

Jessa's Webinar: https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Bio:

Dr. Heather Howard is a sexuality counselor and financial coach who helps individuals and couples build healthier relationships with sex, money, or both. Using a nonjudgmental, education-based approach, she supports clients in clarifying values, developing practical skills, and creating systems that align daily behavior with what matters most. Heather works with clients to reduce shame, strengthen communication around traditionally taboo topics, and build shared understanding and decision-making that fosters emotional connection and long-term sexual and financial well-being.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

374: [Soapbox] How there is hope even when they close the door

Jessa Zimmerman — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:46:17 GMT

In a soapbox episode, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman responds to an email from a listener whose wife says she isn’t interested in fixing their sex life and accuses him of only caring about sex. Jessa explains there can still be hope and outlines three areas to explore: the overall relationship (conflict, lack of emotional connection, feeling like roommates), the couple’s entrenched desire-difference dynamics (pressure, focusing on frequency, treating the lower-desire partner as the problem, goal-oriented sex that creates obligation), and individual factors affecting the lower-desire partner (stress, exhaustion, mental health, parenting demands). She encourages higher-desire partners to build connection, show compassion for the guilt and shame lower-desire partners often feel, reduce pressure, and invite conversations about what’s in the way so intimacy can become fulfilling for both.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Soapbox Setup

01:01 The Unsubscribe Email

02:37 Three Hopeful Angles

02:39 Rebuild Connection First

03:50 Desire Difference Traps

04:54 Compassion Over Pressure

08:00 Life Stress Blocks Desire

08:54 Closing Hope and Next Steps

09:43 Outro and Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

373: Hormonal Optimization, Metabolic Health, and Longevity for Better Sex with Jay Campbell

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:29:29 GMT

Sex therapist Jess Zimmerman interviews biohacker and author Jay Campbell about hormone optimization and metabolic health as foundations for wellbeing, longevity, libido, and sexual function. Campbell shares how discovering very low testosterone after a sports injury led him into researching therapeutic hormones, peptides, and lifestyle interventions, eventually writing bestselling books and a new book on GLP-1 peptides and proper microdosing with supportive lifestyle changes. They discuss endocrine disruption, common hormone deficiencies, and key labs and hormones to assess—especially free testosterone, estradiol, and progesterone—emphasizing women being underserved in testosterone therapy after the WHI. Campbell outlines symptoms like fatigue, low dopamine/brain fog, belly fat, and insulin resistance, and recommends insulin-controlled eating, resistance and cardio training, stress reduction through daily mind-stilling practices, and consistent routines to improve health and sexual wellbeing.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Meet Jay Campbell

01:48 Testosterone Wake Up Call

03:26 Biohacking To Author

05:43 Endocrine Disruptors

07:53 Metabolic Health Link

08:33 Key Hormones Explained

10:28 Women And HRT Myths

16:02 Microdosing GLP One

17:08 Midroll And Coaching

17:37 Symptoms And Sex Signs

19:29 Therapeutic Hormone Jumpstart

20:39 Libido and Sexual Function

23:14 Biohacker vs Clinical Goals

23:45 Diet and Insulin Control

25:37 Training for Longevity

28:23 Blue Zones and Leanness

29:04 Incline Walking for Fat Loss

30:24 Stress and Stilling Mind

34:39 Where to Find Jay

35:52 Podcast Wrap Up

Want to work with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Jay Campbell is a 5x international bestselling author, globally recognized authority on hormone optimization, metabolic health, and longevity. He’s passionate about educating individuals on how to optimize their hormones and metabolism for long-term vitality, energy, and performance. Jay’s work helps people break free from conventional “sick-care” systems and embrace health strategies that promote longevity, peak performance, and overall well-being. He is widely recognized for his cutting-edge insights into peptides, metabolic repair, and sustainable aging.

jaycampbell.com/free-info

biolongevitylabs.com JAYC code

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

372: [Soapbox] The three biggest apology mistakes

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:42:48 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman shares a soapbox episode on three common apology mistakes that prevent real relationship repair. First, apologizing too quickly can skip the empathy your partner needs to feel understood, so she encourages “climbing into their movie” before taking accountability. Second, phrases like “I’m sorry you feel that way” or “I’m sorry that happened to you” misuse “I’m sorry,” which she reserves for responsibility and remorse, and can sound judgmental; she suggests using clearer empathic language instead. Third, adding “but” after an apology turns it into an explanation or excuse that undermines repair, so an apology should fully own the specific behavior and its impact.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Soapbox Setup

01:22 Mistake One Too Fast

02:51 Mistake Two Misusing Sorry

04:31 Mistake Three Sorry But

05:25 Wrap Up Take Ownership

05:51 Outro And Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

371: People pleasing is ruining your sex life with Darshana Avila

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:52:40 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Darshana Avila (featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love & Goop) about “erotic wholeness,” defined as integrating all parts of ourselves and relating to eroticism as life-force vitality that can fuel sexuality, creativity, and relationships. They explore how people-pleasing functions as a protective strategy—suppressing authenticity to maintain connection—and how it undermines both pleasure and intimacy. In long-term relationships, this often appears as partners (often women in heterosexual dynamics) not knowing what they like, feeling shame about needs such as taking longer to warm up, or fearing rejection for expressing desires. They discuss sexual scripts, shame, disappointment tolerance, consent (including Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent), and practical steps: identify people-pleasing, work with fear/scarcity, clarify authentic desires and boundaries, and build communication skills with professional and relational support.

00:00 Show Introduction

00:49 Meet Darshana Avila

01:51 Her Path to This Work

03:26 Erotic Wholeness Defined

06:18 Choiceful Self Leadership

07:32 People Pleasing Explained

09:08 How It Shows Up in Sex

12:41 Owning Desire Without Shame

15:16 Rewriting the Sex Script

18:19 Mid Episode Quiz Break

18:47 Mutuality Helps Both Partners

19:38 Mutual Desire Basics

20:24 People Pleasing Blocks Intimacy

21:26 Building Disappointment Tolerance

22:18 Shame Spirals and Meaning

23:03 Dont Yuck the Yum

23:38 Golden Shower Lesson

24:42 Responding with Gratitude

25:19 Finding the Venn Overlap

27:19 Consent and the No

28:36 No as a Pivot

29:36 First Steps to Change

33:08 Vulnerability as Litmus Test

35:47 Support and Where to Find Her

36:55 Podcast Wrap Up

My quizzes can be found at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Darshana Avila is a trauma-informed somatic educator, practitioner and international speaker who helps people reconnect with the most essential aspects of themselves — their truth, their desires, and their capacity for profound pleasure and power.

Known for her grounded, candid, and relational approach, she bridges the worlds of embodiment, emotional intelligence, and personal agency with depth and accessibility.

Darshana’s work has been featured on Netflix’s Sex, Love & goop, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and numerous leading podcasts.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

370: [Soapbox] Choose a more empowering story

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:50:57 GMT

In this soapbox episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the power of staying positive by questioning the stories and interpretations our brains create. She explains how people often react to filtered, meaning-filled perceptions rather than reality, then reinforce negative narratives—especially in relationships—by focusing on blame, hopelessness, and how stuck things feel. Jess argues this mindset is inaccurate, disempowering, and self-sabotaging because it shapes how we show up with our partners and invites defensiveness, conflict, or withdrawal. She encourages listeners to develop skepticism about their interpretations, broaden perspective, and choose thoughts and emotions that feel better and create more possibility. By focusing on what’s on “your side of the court,” including how you feel, think, and act, you can change the relational dynamic and move toward the connection you want.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:44 Soapbox Episode Setup

01:55 Why Stories Trap Us

03:35 The Cost of Negative Narratives

05:19 Challenge Your Interpretation

07:18 Control Your Side

07:42 Invitation to Shift Mindset

08:12 Outro and Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

369: Protecting Sexual Freedoms with Mandy Salley

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:13:31 GMT

Sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Mandy Salley of the Woodhull Foundation about sexual freedom as a human right rooted in bodily autonomy and the ability to say yes or no. Mandy shares how peer sex education in college, graduate training in social work and human sexuality, and years volunteering with Woodhull led to her advocacy work blending sexuality, policy, and activism. They discuss how shame-based sex education limits curiosity and knowledge, and how free speech and online censorship affect sexual health information. Mandy outlines Woodhull’s current policy work, including opposing a proposed South Carolina abortion ban, Colorado’s trans bathroom ban, and state age-verification laws that threaten privacy and data security. She also notes concerns about intersex medical interventions and gender-affirming care bans. The episode ends with practical ways to get involved locally and how to find Woodhull’s resources.

00:00 Show Intro

00:56 Meet Mandy Sally

01:52 Her Path to Woodhull

06:17 Sex Ed Gaps and Shame

09:50 Defining Sexual Freedom

11:06 Censorship and Algo Speak

13:12 Quick Quiz Break

13:39 US vs Global Perspectives

17:02 Woodhull Policy Priorities

18:20 Age Verification and Privacy

22:46 Intersex and Care Bans

23:51 How to Get Involved

26:42 Find Woodhull Resources

28:55 Closing and Credits

Take my quizzes at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Mandy Salley brings her passion for social justice and love for humanity to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation as its Chief Operations Officer (COO). Since 2014 when she first served as a volunteer coordinator, Mandy plays an integral role at Woodhull, now managing its day-to-day operations and community efforts – from its Human Rights Commissions to the monthly Censorship of Sexual Freedom Series. Mandy is also a licensed Social Worker and has experience in inpatient hospitals, geriatric day programs, and rape crises. She is based in Brooklyn, NY.

www.woodhullfoundation.org

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

368 [Soapbox] The transformative potential of a couples' intensive

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:27:07 GMT

In this soapbox episode of the Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman explains why some couples may benefit from a couples intensive instead of weekly or biweekly therapy. She describes limits of short, spaced-out sessions—often spent catching up or addressing the latest conflict—and how real emotional breakthroughs can require uninterrupted time for nervous systems to settle, vulnerability to emerge, and old patterns to loosen. Jessa outlines how intensives provide extended, immersive hours that allow couples to stay in the process long enough to repair ruptures and gain a clearer “balcony view” of their dynamics while practicing new behaviors with in-the-moment support. She also discusses the potential for ethically guided altered-state work—specifically mentioning MDMA and psilocybin training—to reduce fear-based defenses, increase empathy, and enable difficult conversations without typical shutdown or blame. Jessa shares who might consider an intensive (repeating conflicts, unresolved rupture, separation decisions, or a desire for deeper connection) and who should not (abuse, an unwilling partner, or severe mental health issues). She emphasizes intensives are a significant investment of time, money, and energy—often 6–10 hours—but can be transformative when regular therapy hasn’t created enough traction.

00:00 Show Intro

00:46 Why Consider Intensives

01:07 Limits of Weekly Therapy

02:22 How Intensives Work

03:24 Breaking Old Patterns

04:23 Insight Into Action

05:05 Altered State Options

05:50 MDMA and Psilocybin

06:21 What Changes in Session

07:32 Who Should Consider It

08:01 When Not Recommended

08:44 Cost and Commitment

09:13 Wrap Up and Credits

Want to learn more? Visit https://www.heartweaveforcouples.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

367: Supple, Luscious, Fuller Breasts with Jillian Wisborg

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:51:00 GMT

Jessa Zimmerman interviews Jillian Wisborg, founder of Booby Grow, about a natural breast growth and firming program combining herbal supplementation, breast/nipple massage, and nutrition changes. Jillian shares that she created the program after losing weight and losing breast volume, and wanted an alternative to implants due to cost, maintenance, and reported health issues. She explains her background studying herbal medicine, how she researched plant compounds and breast health, and how her formulation evolved through trials into a lifestyle-based approach when some participants needed adequate calories and fat intake for results. The conversation covers what breasts are made of, the role of healthy fats, circulation, and estrogen receptors, and why the program emphasizes daily massage and specific herbs. They discuss broader effects some users report (without official claims), cautions around pregnancy and cancer, and an explanation of different estrogen sources including xenoestrogens and phytoestrogens.

00:00 Welcome to the Better Sex Podcast (Show Intro)

00:44 Meet Jillian Wisborg & Booby Grow: Natural Breast Firming/Growth Overview

01:34 Jillian’s Origin Story: Weight Loss, Losing Breast Volume & Avoiding Implants

05:57 From Herbal Medicine to a Formula: Researching Plant Compounds & Early Trials

10:10 Breast Biology 101: Fat, Circulation, Massage & Estrogen Receptors

12:55 Beyond Breast Size: Other Reported Benefits + Who Shouldn’t Use It

14:44 Safety Talk: Estrogen, Xenoestrogens vs Phytoestrogens & Cancer Concerns

19:16 Is This for the Male Gaze? Choice, Body Autonomy & Postpartum Clients

21:46 Dragons’ Den/Shark Tank Experience: Pitching Booby Grow & Calls for Studies

25:31 How the Program Works: 4-Month Plan, Guarantee, Results & Maintenance

28:25 Where to Find Jillian + Final Wrap-Up

Interested in resources to bridge desire discrepancy? Go to https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio: I’m Jillian Wisborg — a Herbalist, Registered Nutritionist, and Clinical Iridoloist who’s been rooted in the holistic health world since 2009.

Jillian had her company Boobygrow recently featured on the show Dragon’s Den & is taking the world by storm to enrich the masses on education of herbalism for vitality.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

366: [Soapbox] Should i tell her about the viagra?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:20:41 GMT

In this soapbox episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman responds to a coaching-call question: whether to tell a partner when you’ve taken Viagra. She describes a client who has a prescription, experiences no negative side effects, and has been taking the medication without telling his wife to avoid creating pressure or expectations for sex. Jessa explains that Viagra helps maintain an erection rather than automatically causing one, so taking it without having sex isn’t inherently harmful, but guessing can lead to mismatches—sometimes he’s prepared and sometimes he isn’t—potentially leaving his wife confused or personalizing inconsistent erections. She suggests considering a daily medication like Cialis for more spontaneity and encourages an honest conversation that leads with the intention to avoid pressure, clarifies there are no adverse effects if sex doesn’t happen, and invites the partner into shared decision-making, including the option for the partner to initiate by suggesting he take a pill if she’s interested in sex. She closes by encouraging listeners to communicate in ways that reduce pressure while increasing collaboration and connection.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex (Podcast Intro)

00:45 Soapbox Topic: Should You Tell Your Partner You Took Viagra?

01:35 The Real Issue: Guessing, Mixed Signals & Partner Anxiety

02:08 Quick Viagra Myth-Busting: What It Does (and Doesn’t) Do

03:31 Practical Options: Daily Cialis vs. Planning Ahead

03:55 How to Bring It Up Without Creating Pressure

05:01 Invite Your Partner In: Shared Decision-Making & Desire Signals

05:59 Wrap-Up: Communicate About ED Meds as a Team

06:18 Outro, Links, Reviews & Credits

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

365: Polyagony - Common Mistakes in Ethical Non-Monogamy with Candace Sjogren

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:51:15 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with Candace Sjogren about the intricacies and common mistakes involved in polyamory, as addressed in Sjogren’s book, 'Polyagony'. They discuss personal experiences, motivations behind polyamorous relationships, and essential strategies for maintaining healthy open relationships. The conversation touches on setting boundaries, ethical non-monogamy, agreements, and navigating the dynamics of multiple partners, including poly parenting. Sjogren emphasizes the importance of communication, consent, and the continuous evolution of relationship agreements.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:49 Guest Introduction: Candace Sjogren on Polyamory

01:25 Candace's Personal Journey with Polyamory

02:13 Challenges and Advocacy in Polyamorous Relationships

03:34 The Rise of Ethical Non-Monogamy

07:09 Defining Ethical Non-Monogamy

08:33 Common Mistakes in Open Relationships

12:42 Forming Agreements in Open Relationships

16:43 Exploring Hopes and Fears in Relationships

16:59 The Importance of Moving at the Slowest Pace

17:30 Maintaining Relationship Cadence

18:02 Invitation to Share Personal Stories

18:31 Dealing with Stagnation in Relationships

20:19 Understanding Consent Within and Outside the Couple

22:26 Navigating the Role of a Hinge in Polyamory

25:04 Challenges of Poly Parenting

28:31 Group Dynamics in Polyamory

30:12 Conclusion and Resources

If you want to share your story on the show, email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Candace Sjogren is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and transformational leader whose work spans finance, technology, and human development. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, she graduated from the Salmon P. Chase College of Law and practiced law before founding and leading multiple mission-driven companies. She served as CEO of Bad Girl Ventures, a microfinance firm investing in female founders, and later founded Somolend, one of the first nationally available crowdfunding platforms. Through this work, Candace played a key role in shaping the JOBS Act, the legislation that made securities-based crowdfunding legal in the United States.

Over the past fifteen years, Candace has served in senior executive and C-suite roles across venture-backed startups and global payments companies, including Chief Commercial Officer of Lynx, a healthcare payments company, and Senior Vice President of Embedded Finance at FIS, a global payments firm with more than 66,000 employees.

She is also the former co-author of Typhoon Honey: The Only Way Out Is Through, a book on emotional intelligence and transformational growth.

Today, Candace leads The Liberation Company, where she facilitates emotional intelligence, somatic healing, and identity-based workshops designed to support deep personal and collective transformation. She lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with her husband Andrew, their son Ivar, and their two dogs, Pan and Cinder.

Website: https://www.polyagony.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@candacesjogren7056

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidethemindofcandaceklein/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candacesjogren/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candace.klein/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

364: [Soapbox] Avoid the Quota Trap

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:12:24 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the challenges of setting quotas for sexual frequency in relationships. She shares insights from a recent coaching call, emphasizing that focusing on frequency can often lead to feelings of obligation and resentment, particularly for lower desire partners. Instead, Jessa advises couples to create flexible, pressure-free spaces to nurture desire and intimacy naturally.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:46 Welcome and Episode Overview

01:02 Discussing Reasonable Amounts of Sex

02:11 The Problem with Setting Quotas

04:05 Creating Flexibility in Intimacy

05:09 Avoiding Obligation and Duty

05:37 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

05:59 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

06:47 Credits and Acknowledgements

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

363: Anal Sex for Beginners with Dr. Evan Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:43:29 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host and sex therapist, Jessa Zimmerman, interviews Dr. Evan Goldstein, an expert in anal sexual wellness and author of 'Butt Seriously.' Dr. Goldstein discusses the fundamentals of anal sex for beginners, focusing on key aspects such as muscle relaxation, preparation, and safety. They delve into common myths around anal sex, the anatomical considerations, and the importance of using the right products for a pleasurable experience. The conversation also explores the performance of safe hygiene practices, effective communication with partners, and techniques to mitigate potential issues. Dr. Goldstein emphasizes the importance of proper education and preparation to enhance the anal sex experience, debunking societal taboos and misconceptions.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:48 Exciting Topic: Anal Sex for Beginners

01:32 Meet Dr. Evan Goldstein

02:50 The Birth of Bespoke Surgical

03:46 Common Anal Issues and Myths

06:40 Anal Play for All Genders

08:21 Understanding Anal Anatomy

14:01 The Future Method and Anal Dilating Kit

20:45 The Importance of Uniformity in Vaginal Dilators

21:33 Jessa's Quick Break: How to Get Help

22:01 Misconceptions About Anal Preparation

22:35 Solo Anal Play: Learning Your Body

23:20 Incorporating Dilators into Sex Play

24:17 Positions for Anal Success

26:56 Choosing the Right Lube for Anal Sex

29:06 Gut Health and Anal Play

31:48 Douching: Best Practices and Misconceptions

34:59 Post-Play Hygiene Tips

36:36 Final Thoughts and Resources

Want to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Evan Goldstein is the leading anal health expert in the United States, founder of Future Method, and one of the few surgeons in the world whose practice, Bespoke Surgical, is dedicated to treating and restoring the human butt. He holds a perennial spot on the list of top doctors for the New York metro area and Crain’s New York Business listed him as one of their notable LGBTQ+ leaders and executives. He has been featured in national publications including GQ, Well+Good, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Out, and Shape; is a popular podcast guest; and in demand as a speaker for both medical and sex-positive industries. His first book, Butt Seriously: The Definitive Guide to Anal Health, Pleasure, and Everything In Between published in May 2024.

www.bespokesurgical.com

www.futuremethod.com

www.buttseriously.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

362: [Soapbox] What “My Love Language Is Touch” Gets Wrong

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:11:36 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the focus is on the concept of love languages and their impact on intimate relationships. Zimmerman discusses the common misunderstanding that having 'touch' as a love language equates to a need for sex, and how this misconception can create pressure and resistance in relationships. She emphasizes the importance of exploring various kinds of touch and incorporating all love languages into a satisfying sexual relationship. Listeners are encouraged to visit the podcast's website for show notes and additional episodes, and to rate and review the show on iTunes.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:55 Exploring Love Languages and Touch

02:15 Misconceptions About Love Languages and Sex

02:49 Integrating Love Languages into Sex

03:38 Avoiding Entitlement and Pressure in Relationships

04:37 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

361: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved with Joan Price

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:30:37 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, guest Joan Price discusses her book 'Sex After Grief.' Joan shares her personal journey of rekindling her sexual life after the loss of her beloved Robert. She emphasizes the unique timeline every individual experiences in returning to sexual pleasure post-grief and addresses common challenges, such as the misconception of betraying a lost partner, societal judgments, and the importance of clear communication with new partners. Joan also highlights various strategies for rediscovering sexuality, including erotic massage and finding a 'pilot light lover.' She offers actionable advice and sample scripts for coping with external pressures and finding supportive communities. The episode aims to provide valuable insights and hope for those navigating their sexuality after loss.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Welcoming Joan Price: Sex and Aging

02:05 Sex After Grief: Joan's Journey

03:32 Navigating Sexuality After Loss

06:38 Challenges and Misconceptions

11:21 Reconnecting with Sexuality

16:00 Online Dating and Finding Connection

19:25 Navigating Conversations About Future Relationships

21:01 Recognizing Readiness for New Relationships

22:58 Handling External Opinions and Advice

25:14 Addressing Sexuality in Grief Support Groups

28:43 The Role of Erotic Massage in Healing

31:15 Reconnecting with Past Lovers

34:39 Promoting the Book and Final Thoughts

Bio:

Joan Price calls herself an advocate for ageless sexuality. She has been called other things by the media: “senior sexpert,” “the woman leading a sex revolution for seniors,” and—her favorite—“wrinkly sex kitten.” Joan is the author of four books about sexuality, including the award-winning and newly updated Sex after Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality after Losing Your Beloved and Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, recently chosen by the New York Times as one of the eight best books about sex. An internationally popular public speaker and sex educator, Joan, now 82, has been writing and speaking about senior sex since 2005. Find Joan’s books, tips, webinars, and blog—including her sex toy reviews from a senior perspective!—at https://joanprice.com/. In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, guest Joan Price discusses her book 'Sex After Grief.' Joan shares her personal journey of rekindling her sexual life after the loss of her beloved Robert. She emphasizes the unique timeline every individual experiences in returning to sexual pleasure post-grief and addresses common challenges, such as the misconception of betraying a lost partner, societal judgments, and the importance of clear communication with new partners. Joan also highlights various strategies for rediscovering sexuality, including erotic massage and finding a 'pilot light lover.' She offers actionable advice and sample scripts for coping with external pressures and finding supportive communities. The episode aims to provide valuable insights and hope for those navigating their sexuality after loss.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Welcoming Joan Price: Sex and Aging

02:05 Sex After Grief: Joan's Journey

03:32 Navigating Sexuality After Loss

06:38 Challenges and Misconceptions

11:21 Reconnecting with Sexuality

16:00 Online Dating and Finding Connection

19:25 Navigating Conversations About Future Relationships

21:01 Recognizing Readiness for New Relationships

22:58 Handling External Opinions and Advice

25:14 Addressing Sexuality in Grief Support Groups

28:43 The Role of Erotic Massage in Healing

31:15 Reconnecting with Past Lovers

34:39 Promoting the Book and Final Thoughts

Bio:

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

360: [Soapbox] They put effort into every other problem

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:00:16 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman explores the common misunderstanding surrounding lower desire partners in relationships. She discusses how a lack of evident effort towards sexual intimacy problems is often misinterpreted as indifference. Jessa explains that it's more about a lack of hope and feeling stuck rather than a lack of care. The episode provides insightful reframing strategies for higher desire partners, emphasizing understanding and teamwork to address intimate relationship challenges. Listeners are encouraged to connect to the idea that change is possible and to approach these issues with optimism and shared goals.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

01:02 Understanding Lower Desire Partners

03:21 The Importance of Hope in Sexual Relationships

04:11 Encouragement and Resources

04:28 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

359: [Personal Story] Working through vaginismus with a surrogate partner

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:13:13 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Junvi Ola, who shares her personal story of overcoming vaginismus, a condition that prevented her from having intercourse until the age of 36. Junvi discusses her journey, which included working with a sex therapist, using dilators, and eventually hiring a surrogate partner. The episode provides insights and inspiration for those facing similar struggles, highlighting the bravery and determination required to break through such challenges.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

01:46 Junvi's Personal Story Begins

02:30 The Impact of Early Experiences

03:42 Struggles with Intimacy and Seeking Help

06:09 Discovering Vaginismus

07:46 Therapy and Overcoming Mental Barriers

14:28 Exploring Sex Surrogacy

19:37 Choosing a Therapist

19:53 The Triad Therapy Experience

20:42 Invitation to Share Your Story

21:11 Overcoming Fear and Dilator Use

22:16 First Steps with the Surrogate Partner

23:18 Sensate Touching and Emotional Challenges

24:22 The Turning Point

25:43 Achieving Penetration

28:25 Focusing on Pleasure and Education

32:03 Reflecting on the Journey

34:07 Normalizing Vaginismus and Surrogate Use

38:02 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

358: [Soapbox] We should be talking about sex

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:06:39 GMT

In this soapbox episode of 'The Better Sex Podcast,' sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman emphasizes the importance of talking about sex more openly. Jessa explores the cultural taboo surrounding discussions about sex and how it leads to feelings of isolation and shame. Sharing her personal experiences and observations, she highlights the common struggles couples face and encourages listeners to initiate conversations about sex with their partners and friends. By normalizing these discussions, Jessa argues, people can alleviate feelings of inadequacy and seek the support they need. The episode ends with a challenge for listeners to talk about sex with at least one person in the coming week.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:58 The Taboo of Talking About Sex

01:10 Real-Life Conversations and Observations

02:50 Common Struggles in Sexual Relationships

04:18 Encouragement to Open Up

05:31 Conclusion and Call to Action

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

357: Brain Health and Trauma with Dr. Hector Rodriguez

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:46:16 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman is joined by psychiatrist Dr. Hector Rodriguez to discuss the effects of trauma on sexual desire, libido, pleasure, and satisfaction. Dr. Rodriguez shares insights on how trauma can impact intimate relationships and how the brain can be rewired to facilitate healing and enjoyment of sex. He dives into the role of dopamine and oxytocin, the difference in trauma's impact on individuals, and how simple actions like hugging and handholding can promote healing. The episode highlights the importance of understanding and caring for the brain to improve overall sexual wellness.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:52 Guest Introduction: Dr. Hector Rodriguez on Trauma and Sexual Health

01:40 Understanding Trauma and Its Impact on Intimacy

03:44 Brain Patterns and Trauma Responses

05:39 Trauma's Effect on Sexual Wellness

08:52 The Brain's Role in Desire and Intimacy

11:18 Self-Soothing and Healthy Sexual Practices

12:23 Quizzes for Better Intimacy

12:50 Trauma and Self-Soothing Behaviors

13:49 Integrating Dopamine and Life Management

14:59 Addressing Trauma and Brain Health

16:02 Hope and Brain Scan Validation

18:45 Emotional Intelligence and Forgiveness

19:52 Reconnecting Couples Through Simple Gestures

23:00 Understanding the Brain's Complexity

24:18 Resources and Final Thoughts

Take any of my quizzes at https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Hector Rodriguez is a psychiatrist, brain expert, and speaker specializing in trauma, brain health, and sexual wellness. With a background in neuroscience, advanced brain imaging, and lifestyle psychiatry, he helps people reframe struggles with intimacy, libido, and confidence through both science and soul. Known for his unapologetic yet compassionate approach, Dr. Hector blends trauma-informed care with practical strategies for resilience, emotional intelligence, and thriving relationships. His core message is simple: you’re not broken — you’re wired to survive, and you can rewire to thrive.

www.whitebutterflyclinic.com

Doctor_hector

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

356: [Soapbox] The problem with trying to fix your partner's desire

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:37:31 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses the common issue of differences in sexual desire among couples. She emphasizes the importance of open communication and partnership when addressing this issue, rather than resorting to quick fixes like CBD gummies or sex toys without mutual consent. Jessa explains why these well-intentioned solutions often backfire and are perceived as pressure or blame. Instead, she encourages couples to work together in improving their intimate relationship through shared responsibility and understanding.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 Today's Topic: Enhancing Desire in Relationships

01:15 Case Study: Alcohol and Connection

02:09 The Trap of Quick Fixes

02:47 The Importance of Communication

04:10 Working Together as a Team

05:29 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

355: Truly Connecting In This Digital Age with Dr. Jacquie Del Rosario

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:00:44 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Dr. Jacquie Del Rosario about the invasive impact of technology on relationships. They discuss how excessive screen time can weaken intimacy and emotional connections, and how couples can set boundaries to deepen their face-to-face interactions. Dr. Del Rosario shares insights on how technology has altered dating and wooing practices, the importance of intentional communication, and strategies for couples to reconnect. They also touch on the challenges of addressing a partner's technology use and the benefits of seeking professional help to maintain a healthy relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Impact of Technology on Relationships

04:04 Challenges of Modern Dating

07:44 Maintaining Connection in the Digital Age

13:16 Setting Boundaries for Better Intimacy

15:12 The Impact of Technology on Intimacy

15:38 Introduction to Jess and Her Services

16:06 Setting Boundaries with Technology

17:07 The Importance of Face-to-Face Communication

20:08 Using Conversation Cards to Reconnect

22:17 Leveraging Technology Positively

23:26 Addressing Technology Concerns with Your Partner

26:35 The Role of Professional Help in Relationships

29:00 Dr. Jacquie's Trauma Treatment Cohort

30:45 Conclusion and Contact Information

Work with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Jacquie’s meteoric rise into the relationship and marriage arena has

deemed her America's Marriage Coach™. Her magnetic appeal and

practical solutions to relatable issues captivates her audiences worldwide.

Dr. Jacquie’s mantra derives from the idea that the foundation of any society

starts within an individual’s home. For the past 20 years, Dr. Jacquie has

evangelized couples everywhere with her philosophy of the seven pillars of

compatibility. She has engineered a host of tools to cultivate healthy

relationships and marriage. These tools include: Curricula, The Marriage

University, Best Marriage Keys, and created the Compatibility Quiz. In

addition to this curricula, Dr. Jacquie hosts conferences and intensive

trainings that provide skill-based learning that induces a shift in

trajectories.

drjacquie.com

@askdrjacquie

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

354: The Strategic Keys To Peak Sexual Performance with Mitch Hartwell

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:19:33 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, legendary adult film actor Mitch Hartwell shares his unique insights on male sexual performance. Drawing from his two-decade career in the adult film industry and his expertise in neurolinguistic programming, Mitch discusses the psychological and physical strategies men can utilize to improve their sexual experiences, focusing on control, mindset, and overcoming common issues like erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. Mitch emphasizes the importance of understanding one's own anatomy, being strategic in the bedroom, and building self-confidence through incremental success. Listen in for expert advice, practical tips, and an in-depth conversation about navigating and enhancing intimate relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Guest Introduction: Mitch Hartwell

01:56 Mitch's Journey and Expertise

05:27 Understanding Male Performance

11:06 The Three Levels of Sexual Satisfaction

20:58 Belief Systems and Performance

25:31 Recognizing and Utilizing Tools for Change

26:08 The Dangers of 'I Hope' Thinking

26:54 Strategies for Erectile Dysfunction

27:25 Understanding Sensations and Performance Pathways

30:54 Psychological vs. Physical Erections

38:39 Strategies for Premature Ejaculation

39:07 The Five Minute Marker

40:15 Position Strategies for Lasting Longer

43:19 Building Confidence and Avoiding the Doom Loop

44:18 Conclusion and How to Reach Out

Desire discrepancy resources are at: https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Erik Everhard (Mitch Hartwell) is a best-selling author, elite men’s coach, and former top-ranked adult film star who helps men get harder, last longer, and satisfy women faster — by increasing their “SQ” (sexual intelligence).

His methods combine tactical psychology, proven techniques, and strategic bedroom positioning — not theory. With over 5,000 real-world sexual encounters and a master-level certification in neuro-linguistic programming, Erik brings a rare, lived perspective that helps men eliminate limiting beliefs, master their performance, and lead with confidence in the bedroom.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

353: [Soapbox] We don't have to decide right now

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 14:50:52 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses a practical strategy for improving communication and collaboration in intimate relationships. She emphasizes the importance of understanding each other's perspectives and removing the pressure of making immediate decisions. By fostering empathy and seeking a win-win solution, couples can create a more harmonious decision-making process. The episode provides actionable steps on how partners can share their views and reach mutually beneficial outcomes.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:52 Communication Strategy for Couples

01:31 Understanding Each Other's Perspectives

02:33 Collaborative Decision Making

04:11 Seeking Win-Win Solutions

05:45 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

352: Act pregnant now to get pregnant later with Gabriela Rosa

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 14:37:53 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jess Zimmerman, a sex therapist, speaks with Gabriela Rosa about overcoming difficult fertility challenges. Rosa shares her journey into the field of infertility, which started with a broad interest in nutrition and naturopathy, leading her to specialize in reproductive health. They discuss the impact of minor factors on fertility, the importance of acting pregnant now to get pregnant later, and the role of chronic stress. Rosa also explains her approach to working with patients, diagnosing issues, and collaborating with physicians globally. The episode emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing underlying health issues and the benefits of proactive care for enhancing fertility.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Guest Introduction: Gabriela Rosa on Fertility Challenges

02:07 Gabriela's Journey into Fertility and Reproductive Health

07:00 Understanding Infertility Trends and Misconceptions

11:01 Act Pregnant Now to Get Pregnant Later

17:21 Lesser-Known Causes of Infertility

21:11 Understanding Homeostasis and Fertility Challenges

22:25 Healthcare Systems and Fertility Treatments

26:05 The Role of Stress in Fertility

30:49 Working with a Fertility Specialist

34:37 Virtual Fertility Clinic Operations

37:17 Getting in Touch and Additional Resources

Take my quizzes at: https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Gabriela Rosa is a fertility specialist, reproductive health educator, Harvard University-awarded scholar, and an accomplished business leader and entrepreneur. She created the world’s first entirely virtual and holistic fertility clinic. As the founder and CEO of The Rosa Institute, which serves patients across every continent except Antarctica, Gabriela leads a team of holistic specialists.

Her treatment methodology is a recognized authority in the industry, identifying and addressing biochemical obstacles to help couples overcome infertility and recurrent miscarriage, even after previous reproductive challenges and failed treatments.

Through various programs, Gabriela and her team have educated over 140,000 couples in more than 110 countries. She is also the host of the TalkSex with Gabriela Rosa™ podcast.

www.fertilitybreakthrough.com

https://rosa.institute/FBYT

https://rosa.institute/FertilityChallenge

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

351: [Soapbox] Don't apologize too fast

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 16:23:34 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the concept of not apologizing too quickly in intimate relationships. She explains why immediate apologies can often miss the mark and how important it is to first listen and empathize with your partner's feelings and experiences before apologizing. Jessa elaborates on why understanding the emotional impact on your partner and providing a space for them to express their hurt is crucial for a sincere apology. She also explores different motivations people have for quick apologies and provides strategies to avoid misunderstandings in the future.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:44 The Importance of Not Apologizing Too Quickly

01:52 Understanding Your Partner's Experience

04:43 The Right Way to Apologize

06:06 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

350: Coming out later in life with Emily Rich

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:33:07 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman is joined by Emily Rich, who shares her personal journey of questioning her sexuality and coming out later in life. Emily discusses the factors that disconnected her from her sexuality, her 'wake-up moment,' and the subsequent process of coming out to herself and others. The conversation explores the intersection of beliefs, upbringing, and self-discovery while highlighting the challenges and rewards of embracing one's true self. Emily also provides valuable resources and advice for those who may be on a similar path, emphasizing the importance of support and professional help. Tune in for an enlightening and supportive discussion that sheds light on the complexities of sexual identity.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:48 Emily Rich's Personal Story Begins

02:00 The Wake-Up Moment

03:52 Navigating Identity and Relationships

05:58 Childhood Influences and Survival Strategies

10:54 Therapy and Self-Discovery

13:23 Coming Out and Relationship Challenges

18:52 Impact on Family and Relationships

20:04 Recognizing and Accepting Yourself

20:09 Coming Out to Others

20:29 The Never-Ending Process of Coming Out

20:55 Support from Unexpected Places

22:10 Sexuality in a Heterosexual Marriage

22:36 Purity Culture and Its Impact

26:00 Realizing True Desire

28:38 Resources for Questioning Sexuality

32:45 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

34:34 Podcast Conclusion

Share your personal story on the podcast by emailing us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Emily Rich is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and certified Medical Family Therapist based in Seattle, WA. For the last decade, she has supported individuals, couples, and families in healing from trauma, disordered eating, and relationship challenges.

Emily is especially passionate about body-based, nervous system-informed approaches, in part because of the impact they’ve had on her own life. Through addressing trauma and reconnecting with her body, she came to understand and embrace her queer identity in adulthood. Today, her personal and professional paths continue to inform one another as she supports others in their own healing and self-discovery.

Documentary: 1946

@emilyofftheclock

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

349: [Soapbox] The problem with sensate focus

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 15:36:11 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman critiques the traditional sensate focus technique frequently recommended in sex therapy. She outlines her concerns about its sequential, goal-oriented nature, the problematic idea of doing things to a passive partner, and the lack of emphasis on pleasure. Jessa shares her alternative approach, which focuses on pleasure and connection through exercises where the receiving partner is in control, and highlights the importance of mutual desire and advocacy in intimate relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:44 Critique of Sensate Focus

01:49 Problems with Sensate Focus

04:47 Alternative Approaches to Intimacy

07:07 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

348: Dealing With Rapid Ejaculation with Andre Lazarus

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:57:27 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman is joined by sexual wellness coach Andre Lazarus to discuss rapid ejaculation, formerly known as premature ejaculation. They explore how this condition impacts intimate relationships and offer strategies for managing and extending sexual pleasure. The conversation delves into Andre's background, causes of rapid ejaculation, psychological and physical techniques to address it, and ways partners can support each other. They emphasize the importance of practice, communication, and self-awareness for improving sexual experiences. Andre also highlights the role of solo sex in training and stresses that achieving a fulfilling sex life is possible with the right mindset and tools.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:55 Guest Introduction: Andre Lazarus

03:10 Defining Rapid Ejaculation

09:47 Causes and Psychological Aspects

11:54 Strategies and Techniques

17:01 Solo Practice and Partner Support

25:03 Confidence and Intimacy

28:35 Conclusion and Resources

Find out how to work with Jessa: https;//www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Andre Lazarus is a Somatic Intimacy Guide and media-recognised voice on relationships, sexuality, and embodied connection. His career has followed an unconventional path: from serving in the U.S. Marines to guiding people through the complexities of intimacy and desire. That breadth of experience gives him a distinctive perspective on courage, vulnerability, and human connection.

He is best known for his role on the UK television series Virgin Island, where he appeared as a professional surrogate partner helping participants confront intimacy challenges alongside licensed therapists. The program drew national attention, and Andre’s presence on screen highlighted how intimacy work is not about performance but about safety, consent, and the courage to connect.

Through his practice, Coming Closer, Andre supports individuals and couples across a wide range of needs: men facing midlife performance concerns, survivors of trauma seeking safety, long-term partners wanting to revive passion, and those exploring alternatives such as ethical non-monogamy. Equally, he works with couples committed to monogamy who want to strengthen trust and rediscover each other. His approach, rooted in the Somatica® Method of sex and intimacy coaching, emphasises learning through the body and replacing shame with curiosity.

While Andre has also taught workshops introducing kink and alternative practices, he situates them within a broader conversation: how people of all backgrounds can embrace intimacy as part of their wellbeing. His message consistently comes back to honesty, communication, and self-awareness as the foundations for connection.

Today, Andre balances private coaching, workshops, and a men’s online course on sexual communication with growing media visibility, including the upcoming second season of Virgin Island.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

347: [Soapbox] Are we even watching the same thing?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 13:50:46 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman addresses a fascinating question from a coaching call about whether couples receive the same information from the same course. She explains how different interpretations arise due to the brain's filtering and meaning-making processes. She emphasizes the importance of curiosity and communication in bridging these gaps in understanding, using this phenomenon as an opportunity to build empathy and rapport within relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:30 Fascinating Coaching Call Question

01:32 Understanding Different Perspectives

02:27 Neuroscience of Perception

04:03 Interpreting and Challenging Thoughts

05:57 Building Empathy and Rapport

06:19 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

346: Connection and Intimacy after Addiction and Trauma with Vanessa Carlisle

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:09:01 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman engages in a meaningful conversation with Vanessa Carlisle about reclaiming intimacy and pleasure after addiction and trauma. Vanessa discusses her personal and professional experience in navigating violence, trauma, and sex work. They explore the gaps in support for sexual recovery among trauma and addiction survivors, the cultural and systemic challenges in discussing sexuality, and the path to reconnecting with one's body and pleasure. Vanessa emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, sensory pleasure, and effective communication in intimate relationships. The episode also highlights the role of community and support networks in healing and thriving.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:49 Reclaiming Pleasure After Trauma

01:51 Personal and Professional Insights

03:51 Challenges in Recovery and Sexuality

05:53 Impact of Trauma on Sexual Behavior

07:05 Navigating Sobriety and Intimacy

09:09 Sex Work, Substance Use, and Trauma

13:18 Seeking Healing and Integration

18:16 Path to Self-Awareness and Connection

21:06 Taking It Slow: Understanding Your Pace

22:06 Communicating with Your Partner

24:52 Navigating Hookups and Relationships

27:52 The Importance of Self-Care

28:38 Exploring Themes in My Novel

30:27 Vision for a Connected World

36:31 Upcoming Events and Resources

38:45 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Take my quizzes at https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Vanessa Carlisle, PhD, MFA (they/them), is an author, coach, and educator in the fields of gender, sexuality, and trauma. Dr. Carlisle’s lived experience includes over twenty-five years in sex work and fifteen years of advocacy for the sex-working community. As a survivor of both intimate partner and institutional violence, Dr. Carlisle now crafts programs that combat stigma and improve conditions for their communities, including trauma-informed self-defense training, somatic coaching, and end-of-life care services.

Along with many essays and articles, Dr. Carlisle authored the award-winning novel Take Me with You about a queer sex worker who must face her grief to be able to build the life she wants. Learn more about them at www.vanessacarlisle.com.

vanessacarlisle.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

345: Loving the partner we have with Dr. Corey Allan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 16:28:36 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes guest Cory Allen to discuss the concept of learning to love the spouse you have, rather than an idealized version of them. They delve into topics such as managing expectations, taking personal responsibility, and the challenges that arise in intimate relationships. Cory emphasizes that love has no strings attached and involves acceptance as well as personal growth. They also discuss the importance of owning one's choices, the stages of relationship evolution, and dealing with significant issues like financial deceit or addiction. This conversation includes practical advice for maintaining love and connection while navigating the complexities of marriage.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:48 Introducing Corey Allan

01:01 Loving the Spouse You Have

01:43 The Idealized Spouse

04:12 Phases of a Relationship

11:18 The Evolution of Marriage

14:52 Desire Discrepancy Resources

15:18 Sexual Expectations and Realities

17:03 Facing Relationship Challenges

21:26 Savoring Intimacy: Slowing Down for Connection

22:33 Navigating Sexual Differences in Marriage

23:22 Embracing Choices in Relationships

24:06 Personal Growth Through Challenges

25:08 Handling Minor Annoyances with Grace

30:15 Confronting Major Relationship Issues

32:03 The Courage to Love and Grow

37:02 The Evolution of Marriage

37:51 Where to Find More Resources

Interested in all my desire discrepancy resources? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Corey Allan (if you want to be formal it’s Dr. Corey Allan, but he's usually pretty casual) is a husband, father, author, speaker, as well as a Marriage and Family Therapist with a Ph.D. in Family Therapy. He and his wife Pam host a weekly podcast, Sexy Marriage Radio, where they help frame conversations and actions that help couples create a marriage fully alive.

Corey has a practice online and is the founder of SMR, an online resource aimed at helping marriages not just survive, but thrive.

Marriage is more about developing character and wisdom as a human than it is about the two people being happy.

Love is a process, not just a feeling. It produces action. Added to this, life is choice (so is marriage). Therefore we work to help people:

Grow deeper Spiritually

Keep it simple

Be passionate

Live in community with others

Enjoy the ride

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

344: [Soapbox] What if I have zero desire for sex?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:08:22 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the focus is on helping partners with low or zero libido. Jessa discusses strategies to uncover obstacles that block desire, such as health issues, trauma, and mental health concerns, and provides methods to unlock potential desire. She highlights the concept of reactive desire and offers practical advice, encouraging solo exploration, use of fantasies, and finding alternative ways to share pleasure and connection with a partner, even one of you have zero desire for sex.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:00 Understanding Low Libido

01:31 Identifying Obstacles to Desire

02:01 Unlocking Reactive Desire

04:00 Exploring Solo Pleasure and Fantasy

05:25 Sharing Pleasure with Your Partner

06:37 Acceptance and New Norms

07:27 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

08:16 Closing Remarks

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

343: Sex after Prostate Cancer Treatment with Dr. Jennifer Valli

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:34:24 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman talks with Dr. Jennifer Valli about the impact of prostate cancer and its treatments on sexual health. Dr. Valli shares insights from her personal and professional experiences, emphasizing the lack of information patients often receive about sexual health post-treatment. They discuss the physical and psychological impacts of prostate treatments like prostatectomy and radiation, and the importance of early and consistent penile rehabilitation to maintain and possibly regain sexual function. The episode also delves into practical advice for men and their partners to adapt to changes in their sexual relationships, including tips on dealing with incontinence, changes in orgasm, and how to maintain connection and pleasure. Dr. Valli highlights the importance of communication and exploring new ways to experience intimacy.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Guest Introduction: Dr. Jennifer Valli

01:00 Impact of Prostate Cancer Treatments on Sexual Health

02:24 Challenges Men Face Post-Treatment

05:31 Desire, Arousal, and Orgasm Post-Prostatectomy

08:49 Radiation vs. Prostatectomy: Differences in Impact

16:24 Penile Rehabilitation: Methods and Importance

17:53 Practical Tips for Penile Rehabilitation

23:20 Resources and Support for Men

24:46 Mid-Show Break: How to Get Help

25:16 The Long Road of Rehab

25:32 Awareness and Communication in Prostate Cancer Rehab

26:43 Importance of Early and Consistent Penile Rehab

27:53 Managing Incontinence and Sexual Function

30:28 Psychological Aspects of Sexual Dysfunction

37:54 Partner Support and Communication

47:15 Final Thoughts and Resources

www.uandme.com Prelude pump

www.jennifervalli.com

Want to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Jennifer Valli, PhD, is a seasoned psychotherapist with 30 years of clinical experience in psychiatry. She is a licensed therapist in Tennessee and is nationally certified as a Sex Therapist through AASECT, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, a rigorous credentialing program in sex therapy. A portion of Dr. Valli’s AASECT training was completed with faculty from Johns Hopkins University in the area of paraphilias and fetishes. In 2014, she completed a comprehensive post-graduate program in sex therapy at the University of Michigan. She holds a PhD in Clinical Sexology and, as a lifelong learner, earned a second doctorate from the University of Southern California focused on Macro Social Change, Innovation, and Social Work. Dr. Valli is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and a proud member of both the Urology and OB-GYN departments. She has delivered national presentations on sex after cancer for the American Society of Breast Surgeons Foundation, SMSNA, and OUTCARE, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of care for medical providers working with LGBTQ+ patients. She is so grateful to be with us today.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

342: [Soapbox] The magic key of empathizing with the lower desire partner

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:32:51 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist and host Jessa Zimmerman explores the critical importance of focusing on the lower desire partner in relationships struggling with mismatched libidos and desire discrepancy.

Drawing from real insights from a recent couples coaching call, Jessa reveals why higher desire partners need to shift their perspective and develop deeper empathy and understanding for their lower desire counterparts. This episode is essential listening for any couple dealing with libido differences, sexual desire issues, or intimacy challenges.

What You'll Learn:

✅ How to support the low libido partner in your relationship

✅ Effective communication strategies for couples with desire discrepancy

✅ Ways to rebuild trust after sexual tension and conflict

✅ How to create a safe space for vulnerable conversations about sex

✅ Why empathy and patience are crucial for resolving mismatched desire

✅ How to listen to your partner's struggles and pain without rushing to fix everything

✅ Strategies for overcoming sexual tension in long-term relationships

✅ Steps toward achieving a more fulfilling sex life together

Perfect for couples experiencing sexual frustration, relationship conflict, or anyone wanting to improve their sexual relationship and intimate connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:02 The Value of Focusing on the Lower Desire Partner

02:53 Breakthroughs in Communication

06:16 Steps to Reconnect and Understand

09:10 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

09:47 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

341: Liberating the full orgasm reflex with Rob Kancler

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:06:45 GMT

Welcome back to the Better Sex Podcast! In this powerful episode, host Jessa Zimmerman reunites with returning guest Rob Kancler for an in-depth conversation about transforming your intimate life through body-based practices.

🔥 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

✨ Erotic Circuitry & Sexual Wellness

Understanding your unique erotic circuitry and how to activate it

Unlocking your full orgasmic potential through body awareness

How to cultivate body intelligence for better sex

💨 Breathwork for Intimacy

The transformative power of the "Yes Breath" technique

Breathing exercises for sexual enhancement

Physiological aspects of breathing and their impact on arousal

❤️ Emotional & Physical Connection

Emotional self-regulation strategies for intimate relationships

How to reconnect with your body for deeper intimacy

The crucial role of emotions in sexual experiences and overall well-being

This episode is packed with practical tips, actionable strategies, and expert guidance to help you enhance your intimate connections, improve relationship satisfaction, and optimize your personal sexual health.

Perfect for anyone looking to:

Improve their sex life naturally

Strengthen intimate relationships

Learn body-based practices for better intimacy

Understand the mind-body connection in sexuality

Develop emotional intelligence in relationships

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 Welcoming Back Rob Kancler

01:47 Exploring Erotic Circuitry

04:32 Understanding Breathwork and Somatics

10:07 The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

11:31 The Role of Cranial Nerves in Emotional and Physical Health

13:24 The Connection Between Emotions and Physical Health

21:33 The Impact of Suppressed Emotions

40:58 Practical Steps to Open Circuitry for Better Sex and Emotional Health

46:12 The Power of Breathing

46:58 Breathing Techniques for Mental Health

48:41 Practical Breathing Exercise

57:01 The Impact of Breathing on Sexual Health

01:00:09 The Role of Emotions in Physical Health

01:03:34 Integrating Breathwork into Daily Life

01:11:20 The Orgasm Reflex and Sexual Potential

01:19:02 Resources and Next Steps

Find all the Better Sex special collections at https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

Bio:

Rob Kancler is an artist, athlete, entrepreneur, and modern mystic. He runs Men of Substance™, a sexual mastery program serving men worldwide. His revolutionary work gives all people access to the profound sexual experiences hidden in the most obscure spiritual traditions—radically expanding a conversation most people take for granted and revealing the blind spots about sex that everyone carries but no one sees. The truth is this quietly keeps men and women from the confidence, vitality, love, meaning, and deeper fulfillment available in every part of life. Check him out at robkancler.com, take the free assessment at bedroomcompass.com, or explore the foundational Men of Substance™ program at robkancler.com/blueprint.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

340: [Soapbox] Menopause is a destination

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 16:36:27 GMT

In this soapbox episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman addresses the common misconception that menopause is a temporary phase. She explains that menopause is a permanent change, where hormone production reverts to levels similar to those of a young child. Drawing on a conversation with Dr. Irwin Goldstein, she emphasizes the importance of adapting to or treating this change, often through hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Jessa encourages listeners to research, talk to their doctors, and consider the best approach for them and their partners. She also mentions prior episodes featuring experts on the topic of HRT.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:44 Soapbox Episode Introduction

01:00 Understanding Menopause: A Permanent Change

01:50 Insights from Dr. Irwin Goldstein

02:47 Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Discussion

03:25 Adapting to Menopause

04:10 Conclusion and Further Resources

04:28 Listener Engagement and Support

04:58 Credits and Acknowledgements

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

339: Sexual Emergence - Surprising Twists in our understanding of ourselves with Jess Levith

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 21:52:23 GMT

Jessa Zimmerman, host of Better Sex, welcomes back Jess Levith to discuss 'sexual emergence' – the fluid nature of sexuality and its changes over time. They delve into personal experiences and professional insights, covering the impact of life stages and contexts on sexual identity. Jess Levith explains how her unexpected crush led to a journey of self-discovery and the concept of sexual emergence. They also discuss the application of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and the 'sexaflex' model in understanding and navigating changes in sexuality. This episode aims to inspire listeners to explore and understand their sexual identity through different life contexts.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Guest Introduction: Jess Levith on Sexual Emergence

02:11 Personal Journey and Realization

03:31 Understanding Sexual Emergence

05:30 Sexual Contextualism and Ecosystems

09:58 Exploring Sexual Fluidity

12:26 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

17:22 Practical Applications of ACT in Sexuality

18:34 Introduction to Sex Therapy

18:48 Deconstructing Sexual Issues

19:37 Exploring Values and Spirituality

21:22 Present Time Awareness and Acceptance

23:05 Sexual Emergence and Midlife Challenges

25:48 Proactive Sexual Exploration

28:59 Writing and Resources

31:10 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Find my new quizzes:

For the higher desire partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdpmistake

For the lower desire partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldpmistake

Bio:

Jess Levith is a certified sex therapist through AASECT (the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists) seeing therapy clients within the state of CA. She teaches at various colleges around the Bay Area and has specialized training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Attachment Focused EMDR, Out of ControlSexual Behaviors (OCSB), and Modern Attachment Theory (interpersonal neurobiology).

In the past few years she's taken a deeper dive into buddhist psychology, completing a certificate program at The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Currently she's working on a book that takes a deep dive into ACT and sexual emergence later in life.

@jesslevith_cst

sexualcontextualism.com

east-baytherapy.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

338: [Soapbox] The problem with "you're not meeting my needs"

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 15:45:11 GMT

n this episode of The Betters Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the focus is on exploring the implications of framing sexual desires as needs within intimate relationships. Jessa discusses the potential problems that arise when individuals feel their sexual needs aren't being met by their partners, and stresses the importance of viewing desires from a mutual perspective. She encourages listeners to reflect on what they truly gain from sex and consider if those desires can be met through other means or in varied ways with their partners, emphasizing collaboration and shared experiences for a more fulfilling relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:06 Exploring Sexual Desires as Needs

02:28 Understanding the Pressures on Sex

04:10 Shifting the Focus to Mutual Desires

06:51 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

337: From infidelity to full f&ck yes with Britton and Carolee Beckham

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:09:35 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, guests Britton and Carolee share their transformative journey from a strict Mormon upbringing to a deeply connected and sexually fulfilling relationship. They discuss the challenges of infidelity, the lack of support within their church, and the pivotal role of trauma-informed healing practices, including psychedelics and yoga. The couple's story unfolds from dealing with church disciplinary actions to exploring substances like cannabis and mushrooms, leading to profound emotional and sexual healing. They also highlight their decision to leave the church, undertake an 18-month pilgrimage, and engage in extensive self-discovery and spiritual growth. Carlee and Briton's story provides valuable insights into overcoming deep-seated trauma and embracing a life of authenticity and connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Meet Carolee Britton: A Journey of Transformation

02:05 Struggles Within the Church

03:58 The Healing Process and Discontent

07:48 Exploring New Paths

14:56 The Role of Psychedelics in Healing

16:46 Mushroom Experience and Church Realization

18:31 Carolee's Healing Journey with Mushrooms

20:40 Transforming Sexual Relationships

23:44 Sexual Reeducation and Moving to Bali

26:32 Raising Children with New Perspectives

28:48 Healing from Infidelity

33:35 Promoting Their Healing Journey

Find Jessa's resources for navigating libido mismatch at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Britton and Carolee, raised in the strict dogma of the Mormon church, and with infidelity threatening their marriage and family, found themselves at a cliff’s edge. Through a deep commitment to heal, these two left everything they knew to find themselves. Over a period of five years, they rebooted their relationship and traveled the world seeking their truth with four kids in tow. They have emerged on the other side as an embodied and awakened couple with a powerful message to share.

www.themagicalstoryofus.com

@ mystic and witch

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

336: [Soapbox] What makes a healthy sexual relationship

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 16:11:40 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman explores what it means to have a healthy sexual relationship. She introduces the six principles of sexual health as identified by the World Health Organization: consent, non-exploitation, honesty, shared values, safety, and pleasure. Jessa delves into each principle, explaining its importance and providing insights on how couples can apply these concepts to strengthen their intimate relationships. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on these principles and consider areas where they can improve to enhance their sexual health and relationship satisfaction.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:48 Defining a Healthy Sexual Relationship

01:56 Principle 1: Consent

04:40 Principle 2: Non-Exploitation

07:01 Principle 3: Honesty

08:25 Principle 4: Shared Values

09:47 Principle 5: Safety

11:08 Principle 6: Pleasure

13:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

13:28 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

335: Rewriting sexual scripts with Lauren Elise Rogers

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 13:57:14 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Lauren Elise Rogers, a certified holistic sexuality educator and intimacy coach. They discuss the journey from a sex-negative upbringing to crafting a fulfilling and values-aligned sex life. Lauren shares her personal story of overcoming restrictive beliefs rooted in a conservative religious background, through education, therapy, and self-discovery. They explore the concept of sexual scripts and the importance of integrating positive sexual beliefs and values into one's life. The discussion touches on the impact of societal and cultural narratives on sexuality, the role of media, and the significance of writing one's own sexual values mission statement. The episode aims to inspire listeners to rethink and reclaim their sexual identities.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:48 Guest Introduction: Lauren Elise Rogers

02:02 Lauren's Background and Upbringing

03:47 Marriage and Personal Struggles

05:01 Turning Point and Seeking Help

07:33 Rebuilding and New Beginnings

10:48 Professional Journey and Current Work

13:08 Exploring Sexual Scripts and Beliefs

16:20 Exploring Sexual Scripts and Improv

17:32 Revisiting Sexual Beliefs and Values

19:17 Crafting a Sexual Values Mission Statement

21:33 Integrating Sexuality into Everyday Life

25:00 The Role of Erotic Literature

29:14 Connecting and Resources

30:35 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Find my quizzes at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Lauren Elise Rogers is a Certified Holistic Sexuality Educator and Embodied Intimacy & Relationship Coach, celebrated for her warm and approachable style. Her holistic and embodied approach to education and coaching is deeply rooted in her own pain-to-purpose journey. Lauren brings an empathetic and non-judgmental approach, offering practical tools that empower her clients to take ownership of their pleasure and grow in confidence and connection. She is known for creating shame-free spaces, where she invites individuals and couples to navigate complex topics like long-term partnerships, consensual non-monogamy, life transitions, purity culture and LGBTQIA+ issues.

www.sexedforyou.com/free consult

podcast: The Partnership Podcast. Sex Ed for You

@sex_ed_for_you

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

334: [Soapbox] What do you do about the lack of sex in your relationship

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 20:46:38 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, listeners are guided through the complexities behind the lack of sexual intimacy in relationships. Zimmerman discusses the factors that contribute to this issue, such as changes in brain chemistry, desire discrepancies, emotional connection, and life stressors. She provides insight into common feelings, like shame and inadequacy, and offers practical strategies for couples to improve their intimate lives. Emphasis is placed on the importance of addressing relationship problems, rediscovering emotional connection, adapting to changes, and open communication without blame. Professional help is recommended for persistent issues, with advice on seeking certified sex therapists. The episode aims to reassure couples that they are not alone and provide actionable steps to enhance their sexual and emotional bonds.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:57 Understanding the Lack of Sex in Relationships

01:41 Normalizing Sexual Struggles

03:12 Addressing Desire Discrepancies

04:13 Identifying Relationship Strengths

06:13 Common Reasons for Reduced Sexual Activity

13:06 Rebuilding Emotional and Physical Connection

19:43 Seeking Professional Help

21:16 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

333: Writing about sex to explore your sexuality with Tash Doherty

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:58:22 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes author Tash Doherty to discuss her work on a spicy coming-of-age novel and a sex writing journal. Doherty shares her goal of helping people explore their sexuality and desires through writing while confronting shame. The conversation delves into her personal experiences, creative process, and the impact of sharing intimate stories publicly. The episode also highlights an upcoming Kickstarter for Doherty's journal, aiming to guide individuals in their sexual exploration. Listeners are encouraged to visit her blog and join the project. Overall, the discussion offers insights into the power of writing to deepen one's understanding of sexuality and reduce shame.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Guest Introduction: Tash Doherty

01:41 Tash's Journey in Writing

02:50 Exploring Personal Experiences in Writing

04:30 Challenges and Vulnerabilities in Writing

07:33 The Impact of Writing on Personal Growth

13:23 The Benefits of Sex Journaling

21:38 Kickstarter and Final Thoughts

23:17 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Want to share your personal story on the podcast? It can be done anonymously. Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Tash Doherty is a British-Irish-American writer and author. She is the creator of Misseducated, a blog, and podcast on a mission to help the world be shamelessly sexy. She started writing her first novel, These Perfectly Careless Things, when she was 14 years old and self-published the book in September 2023 (finally achieving her childhood dream). These Perfectly Careless Things is a spicy, coming-of-age Young Adult novel set in London. Tash has also gone viral on TikTok for over-sharing her birth control experience.

‍

Tash graduated from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where she studied Business Analytics and Management. In other lives, she worked in analytics at Postmates and Vox Media and still does corporate consulting to pay them pesky bills. She lives in Mexico City.

misseducated.substack.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

332: [Soapbox] Why do women fake orgasm

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:40:59 GMT

Why do women fake orgasm — and what does it really mean for the relationship? In this video, we dive deep into the real reasons women pretend to climax, from avoiding conflict and protecting their partner’s ego to feeling pressure to “perform.” You’ll learn what’s actually happening beneath the surface, why faking it can create emotional distance, and how couples can rebuild honesty, safety, and genuine pleasure in bed.

If you’ve ever wondered:

Why do women fake orgasm even when they love their partner?

What does it say about desire, communication, or compatibility?

How can couples start having real, connected sex again?

This conversation will help you understand the dynamics at play — and how to shift from performance to true intimacy.

Listen now to explore the psychology behind why women fake orgasm, and how both partners can move toward honesty, ease, and real satisfaction.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:56 Why Women Fake Orgasms

03:09 The Cost of Faking Orgasms

04:21 How to Address Faking Orgasms with Your Partner

04:55 A Real-Life Example

06:44 Encouragement for Open Communication

07:46 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

331: Should you take HRT? with Dr. Sarah Daccarett

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 12:51:43 GMT

Should You Take HRT? | Hormone Replacement, Menopause & Perimenopause Explained

Are you navigating perimenopause or menopause and wondering, “should I take HRT?” In this video, Dr. Sarah Daccarett and I break down hormone replacement therapy (HRT), how it works, risks, benefits, and who might be a good candidate. We also explore the hormonal shifts during perimenopause and menopause, and ways to manage symptoms naturally (or with medical support).

Topics covered include:

What HRT is and how it replaces lost estrogen and progesterone

Typical symptoms of perimenopause and menopause (hot flashes, low libido, mood swings, vaginal dryness)

Pros and cons of taking hormone replacement therapy

Different HRT options: bioidentical vs. synthetic, delivery methods (pills, patches, creams)

Underlying health factors to consider (heart health, cancer risk, bone density)

Signs that HRT may be helpful — and when to avoid it

Complementary strategies: diet, lifestyle, herbal supports, stress reduction

How to talk to your doctor about HRT and make an informed decision

If you're asking, “Is it safe? Will it help me feel like myself again?” — this is the conversation for you.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:51 Guest Introduction: Dr. Sarah Dakkar on Hormone Balance

01:32 Dr. Dakkar's Journey into Hormone Therapy

02:11 Understanding Hormone Imbalances

03:24 Challenges and Misconceptions in Hormone Therapy

05:14 Common Hormone Imbalances and Their Effects

12:21 Environmental and Lifestyle Factors

18:15 Sexual Health and Hormone Imbalances

20:37 The Role of Estrogen in Women's Health

21:56 Challenges Women Face with Medical Professionals

23:04 Effective Hormone Replacement Therapy

25:41 Understanding Individualized Treatment

29:41 Risks and Benefits of HRT

34:45 Product Information and Accessibility

37:03 Conclusion and Resources

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

330: [Soapbox] Can a sexless marriage be happy?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:05:02 GMT

Can a Sexless Marriage Be Happy? | Understanding Low Desire, Intimacy, and Relationship Satisfaction

Can a marriage without sex still be a happy one? In this episode, we explore what it really means to be in a sexless marriage—from couples who are mutually content without sex to those where one partner feels lonely, rejected, or frustrated.

We’ll look at the common reasons for a sexless marriage, including conflict, emotional distance, mismatched libidos, sexual dysfunction, trauma, menopause, and avoidance patterns that quietly erode connection over time. You’ll learn practical steps to rebuild intimacy, overcome sexual avoidance, and start creating a healthy, fulfilling sexual relationship again.

And for those facing a partner who’s unwilling to address the issue, we’ll talk about what it means to choose happiness, fulfillment, and self-respect—whether or not the sexual dynamic ever changes.

If you’ve ever wondered whether love can last without sex—or how to bring desire back when it’s faded—this conversation is for you.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:58 Can You Be Happy in a Sexless Marriage?

01:47 Understanding the Causes of a Sexless Marriage

02:27 Addressing Sexual Avoidance and Rebuilding Intimacy

05:26 When One Partner is Unwilling to Work on the Relationship

06:03 Making the Final Decision

07:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

329: Sex Attractant Pheromones with Dr. Winnifred Cutler

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 14:34:16 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Dr. Winnifred Cutler to discuss her extensive research on pheromones and their impact on human sexuality. Dr. Cutler, a passionate researcher, shares her journey from psychology graduate student to becoming a leading expert in the field of pheromones. The conversation covers the history of pheromones, the different types, and their effects on human attraction, fertility, and romantic behavior. Dr. Cutler also highlights her development of pheromone products and shares testimonials of their impactful use. Tune in to learn about pheromones' scientific basis and their potential to enhance intimate relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:53 Guest Introduction: Dr. Winnifred Cutler

01:53 Dr. Cutler's Journey into Pheromone Research

03:33 Understanding Pheromones

04:54 Types of Pheromones

07:17 Sex Attractant Pheromones

10:57 Developing Pheromone Products

13:32 Testing and Results

18:59 Pheromones for Men

21:37 Chemical Compounds and Romantic Gestures

21:56 Tracking Sexual Behaviors

24:04 Testimonials and Effects of Pheromones

26:32 Natural Production of Pheromones

29:50 Pheromones and Same-Sex Attraction

30:58 Global Reach and Customer Insights

33:57 Impact of Pheromones in Academic Settings

38:48 Athena Institute and Women's Health

40:35 Conclusion and Podcast Information

Jessa's desire discrepancy resources can be found at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Dr. Winnifred Cutler, B.S. in Psychology cum laude from Ursinus College in 1973, earned her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979 followed by postdoctoral work in behavioral endocrinology at Stanford University. In 1985 she co-founded the Women's Wellness Program at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She has published over 50 scientific papers, is co-inventor on 5 patents and author of eight books on women's health translated into 7 languages - including the 2020 (3rd) edition of Love Cycles: The Science of Intimacy chronicling both her discovery of Human Pheromones and development of successful formulas as well as her book, Hormones and Your Health: The Smart Woman's Guide to Hormonal and Alternative Therapies for Menopause with essential information for women over age 35 to achieve their 'personal-best' health.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

328: [Soapbox] Change takes practice

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 15:37:44 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the crucial role of experiential practice in improving intimate relationships. She underscores the importance of embodying the knowledge gained through communication, challenging myths about sex, and understanding desire. Drawing on her Intimacy With Ease Method, Zimmerman highlights the need for hands-on experiences to truly transform one's sex life. Listeners are provided with valuable resources and are encouraged to actively practice the concepts discussed to achieve meaningful change in their intimate lives.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:02 The Importance of Experiential Practice

01:21 The Intimacy with Ease Method

02:55 Practical Exercises and Analogies

03:39 The Giver Receiver Exercise

04:39 The Role of Experiential Learning in Sex Therapy

05:35 Resources and Conclusion

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

327: The role of sex toys in women's sexual trauma recovery with Dr. Holly Wood

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:05:05 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

326: [Soapbox] How to bring up going to sex therapy

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:34:51 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman addresses the challenging topic of how to approach your partner about going to sex therapy. Drawing from her experience with clients, Jessa provides valuable insights on framing the conversation in a positive light. She emphasizes the importance of mutual cooperation and understanding, and the need to avoid blame or shame when discussing sexual concerns. Jessa offers practical advice on breaking down barriers and seeking professional help to improve intimacy and strengthen relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:51 Discussing Sex Therapy with Your Partner

02:24 Understanding Both Partners' Perspectives

03:43 Approaching the Conversation Positively

05:04 Conclusion and Additional Resources

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

325: Exploring Human Sexual Potential with Rob Kancler

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:13:56 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman is joined by Rob Kancler to discuss the potential for human sexual experience and the steps needed to enhance intimate relationships. Rob shares insights on how individuals often start with the wrong paradigm about sex and offers practical strategies to think differently about sexual fulfillment, connect with partners, and achieve true intimacy. He delves into the importance of downregulating the nervous system, using body intelligence over cognition, and the integration of ancient sexual traditions. The episode also covers practical exercises like 'belly to belly' and other co-regulation techniques that couples can implement to improve their sex lives. Rob emphasizes that sexual mastery can lead to overall personal development, enhancing one's life and relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:50 Exploring Human Sexual Experience with Rob K.

01:20 Rob K.'s Journey and Passion

03:52 Defining Sexual Fulfillment

04:14 Theories on Sexuality and Orgasm

06:21 Masculine and Feminine Sexual Needs

09:39 The Role of Intuition in Sexuality

17:16 Body Intelligence vs. Cognition

26:12 Practical Exercises for Intimacy

30:37 Understanding Sexual Operating Systems

33:01 Unlocking Hidden Potential: Pelvic Work and Sexual Shame

33:56 The Need for Cultural Change in Sexual Health

35:04 Misconceptions About Sexual Exploration

38:18 The Path to Sexual Mastery: Programs and Processes

39:48 The Importance of Integrity and Responsibility in Relationships

42:02 Exploring Masculine Sexual Expression and Group Learning

43:31 Personal Journey and Overcoming Sexual Shame

44:13 The Three Levels of Sexual Mastery Programs

47:33 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

49:18 Practical Exercises for Couples

52:18 The Science of Connection and Entrainment

Bio:

www.robkancler.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

324: [Soapbox] Think of sex like tapas

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:54:03 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the importance of moving away from a goal-oriented, all-or-nothing approach to sex. She explains how this mindset can be a barrier for partners with "reactive" desire, and offers alternative metaphors like viewing sex as a playground or a tapas bar, where the focus is on enjoyment and exploration rather than completion. Jessa emphasizes that this shift can help reduce the pressure and improve intimacy within relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:49 The All-or-Nothing Approach to Sex

03:36 Changing the Perspective: Metaphors for Better Intimacy

05:37 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

323: Gay Relationships and Intimacy with Tom Bruett

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 13:50:21 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host, and sex therapist, Jessa Zimmerman, talks to therapist Tom Bruett about the unique aspects and challenges of gay male relationships and sex life. Tom discusses the nuances of gay relationships, including the impact of heteronormative upbringing, the importance of differentiation, and specific sexual education needs. They explore the developmental stages of queer relationships and how to maintain vibrant intimacy and connection over time. The discussion also touches on the role of monogamy, agreements in relationships, and practical advice for enhancing sexual experiences.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:48 Guest Introduction: Tom Bruett on Gay Relationships

01:41 Challenges and Opportunities in Gay Relationships

03:51 Sexual Differentiation and Communication

10:50 Developmental Stages in Queer Relationships

14:30 Monogamy and Agreements in Gay Relationships

19:28 Keeping the Spark Alive in Monogamous Relationships

22:38 Resources and Conclusion

You can find all of Jessa's desire discrepancy resources at https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio;

Tom Bruett, LMFT is a therapist, trainer, consultant, and author who works extensively with the queer community. He is the founder of the Queer Relationship Institute, which provides therapy for queer folx and training for therapists who work with queer relationships. Tom has trained under Drs. Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson in the Developmental Model of Relationship Therapy, which he now trains other therapists in. His book The Go-To Relationship Guide for Gay Men: From Honeymoon to Lasting Commitment is published by JKP. In his downtime, he loves theatre, travel, and collaborating with his partner to keep their rescue dog, Millie, from causing too much mischief. Instagram: @QueerRelationshipInstitute Website: www.QueerRelationshipInstitute.com

Book: The Go To Relationship Guide for Gay Men

www.thequeerrelationshipinstitute.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

322: [Soapbox] The importance of celebrating 'no'

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 14:26:18 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman delves into the importance of being able to say 'no' in intimate relationships. She discusses how the ability to decline is crucial for fostering a healthy and enjoyable sex life, free from distress and negative experiences. Through a session example and advice for both partners, she explains the positive impact that setting boundaries can have on mutual satisfaction. Listeners are encouraged to understand the difference between a definitive 'no' and a potential 'maybe,' and to use these insights to improve their intimate connections.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:47 The Importance of Saying No

01:12 Client Case Study: The Consequences of Not Saying No

04:30 Exploring the Maybe: When to Say Yes

06:56 Encouragement and Final Thoughts

08:06 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

321: Sexual pain in people with penises with Dr. Susie Gronski

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 13:15:20 GMT

In this episode of the 'Better Sex' podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman talks with Dr. Susie Gronski about the role of pelvic floor physical therapy for men, particularly focusing on pelvic pain. Dr. Gronski shares her journey into the field, driven by the courage of men seeking help for pelvic issues amidst a healthcare landscape that often overlooks male pelvic floor therapy. They discuss common conditions treated by pelvic floor physical therapy, such as erectile dysfunction, incontinence, and chronic pelvic pain syndromes. The discussion delves into the biopsychosocial approach to diagnosis and treatment, emphasizing the integration of physical, emotional, and social factors. Dr. Gronski explains the examination process, stressing the importance of creating a comfortable and safe environment for patients. The episode highlights the need for increased awareness and tailored care for men’s pelvic health.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:48 Exploring Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy for Men

01:59 Guest Introduction: Dr. Susie Gronski

03:55 Understanding Pelvic Pain in Men

04:49 Causes and Symptoms of Pelvic Pain

13:48 Emotional and Psychological Factors

19:08 Role of Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

20:55 Understanding Pain and Its Role

21:38 Empowering Through Knowledge and Experience

22:56 Clinical Philosophy and Movement-Based Therapy

24:07 Touch Therapy and Sensory Integration

25:41 Creating a Safe and Collaborative Environment

26:32 The Initial Exam Process

28:12 Detailed Examination and Patient Comfort

30:07 Addressing Patient Concerns and Misconceptions

34:46 Finding and Connecting with Dr. Susie G

35:36 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Take Jessa's quiz at https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

With over a decade of expertise in pelvic and sexual health, Dr. Susie Gronski is a Licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy, Pelvic Health Specialist, AASECT Certified Sex Counselor and Educator, and the founder of a multidisciplinary pelvic health clinic in Asheville, North Carolina. As a leading influencer and content creator on YouTube, she educates and empowers individuals by addressing taboo pelvic and sexual health topics, actively working to dispel misinformation. To learn more about her and her team, visit drsusieg.com.

https://drsusieg.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@DrSusieGronski

patreon.com/drsusieg

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

320: [Soapbox] Is there hope for my sex life?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:31:53 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman tackles one of the most common and vulnerable questions: “Is there hope for my sex life?” Jessa explores the roots of hopelessness in intimate relationships, explains how communication and teamwork can reignite connection, and shares practical strategies for couples to rediscover joy and fulfillment in their sex lives. Whether you’re struggling with mismatched desire, stress, or just feeling stuck, this episode offers hope, insight, and actionable advice.

[0:46] Common concerns: Feeling hopeless about sex and relationship struggles.

[1:18] The foundation of hope: Love, friendship, and goodwill in relationships.

[1:43] Communication and teamwork as keys to improvement.

[2:17] Avoiding polarization: Working together against the problem.

[2:41] Redefining sex: Moving beyond rigid expectations and goal orientation.

[3:29] The stress of goal-oriented sex and how to shift perspective.

[4:24] Two types of sexual desire: Proactive vs. reactive.

[4:42] Understanding and embracing reactive desire.

[5:40] Building hope: Challenging assumptions and valuing both partners’ experiences.

[6:17] Introducing the “How Big a Problem Is My Sex Life?” quiz.

[6:45] Using the quiz to assess your relationship and find hope.

[7:08] Encouragement and support for finding hope in your sex life.

[7:21] Outro: Where to find more resources and episodes.

[7:36] Thank you message and invitation for feedback and reviews.

[7:56] Closing credits and theme music.

Take the quiz: https://www.sexlifequiz.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

319: Sex after childbirth with Stephanie Konter-O'hara

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 15:58:46 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the guest is Stephanie Konter-O'Hara, a therapist and mother of a 19-month-old baby. Stephanie shares her personal and professional insights on how having children can impact sex life and intimate relationships. Key topics discussed include the physical, emotional, and relational challenges faced by new parents, the misconceptions around postpartum recovery, the perimenopausal state induced by breastfeeding, and the importance of communication and shared values in maintaining intimacy. Stephanie also talks about the role of compassion, understanding, and seeking therapy when necessary, to navigate the complex dynamics of parenting and relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:49 Guest Introduction: Stephanie Konter-O'Hara

01:22 Personal Story and Passion for Sexual Health

03:21 Physical and Emotional Challenges Postpartum

04:00 Common Barriers to Postpartum Intimacy

08:42 Relational Dynamics and Mental Load

24:31 Communication and Compassion in Relationships

26:44 Seeking Help and Resources

27:54 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to share your story on the podcast? It can be anonymous! Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Stephanie Konter-O'Hara, LPC, ACS is passionate about making space in the world for everyone to be themselves and live in the most connected and authentic way that they can. She is a Mom, Podcaster, Licensed Mental Health Therapist, and a Group Practice Owner in Colorado. She is originally from the East coast and enjoys living out West where its a bit more peaceful and can spend most of the year enjoying the outdoors. When Stephanie is most joyous and free she is spending time with her friends, family (including her daughter), and her dogs. She truly loves to help people explore their relationships with themselves and believes that we should all surround ourselves with more opportunities to connect with our village.

www.wellmindedcounseling.com

Workbook: Becoming Mommy

https://a.co/d/d6EGJ1K

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

318: [Soapbox] Are you more attached to your partner's orgasm than they are?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:53:33 GMT

In this episode of 'Better Sex,' host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the common issue of being overly focused on pleasing one's partner in a sexual relationship. She explores how this can lead to unintended pressure, diminishing genuine intimacy and connection. Through examples from her client interactions, Jessa illustrates how detaching from the expectation of sexual pleasure and being genuinely receptive to a partner's desires can enhance the relationship. Key strategies include slowing down, truly listening to one's partner, and honoring their current wants and needs, whether they are sexual or not.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:01 The Pitfalls of Wanting to Please Your Partner

02:19 Understanding Your Partner's Desires

03:19 Practical Tips for Improving Intimacy

05:34 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

317: Sex Therapy in the Digital Age with Vanessa Cushing

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 15:09:21 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with ASSECT certified sex therapist Vanessa Cushing about her new innovative project, Sex Therapy Pro—an online closed AI resource and soon-to-be app. They discuss the challenges and accessibility gaps in sexual health information, Vanessa's journey through the creation of this custom AI, and how it aims to provide vetted, accurate information to individuals and other clinicians. They also cover the importance of trauma-informed care, the limitations of AI in handling mental health, and the ultimate goal of encouraging people to seek professional help while reducing shame around sexual health concerns.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Guest Introduction: Vanessa Cushing

01:56 The Birth of Sex Therapy Pro

03:23 Challenges and Solutions in Sex Therapy

04:22 AI in Sex Therapy: Benefits and Concerns

06:48 Accessibility and Inclusivity in Sexual Health

11:05 Trauma-Informed AI and Its Limitations

14:25 Future of AI in Therapy

21:05 Conclusion and App Launch Details

Take my sexual health quiz at https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

Bio:

Vanessa Cushing, MS, LPC, NCC is a sex therapist certified by University of Michigan, trauma-informed clinician, and the founder of Sex Therapy Pro a digital platform offering AI-guided, shame-free support for sexual wellness and intimacy.

She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Virginia, an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Johns Hopkins University, and completed her sex therapy certification through the University of Michigan.

Vanessa specializes in helping individuals and couples navigate sexual pain, desire discrepancies, trauma recovery, and communication breakdowns and now brings that expertise to a scalable, tech-powered format aimed at making healing more accessible than ever.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

316: [Soapbox] How healthy is your sex life?

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:06:14 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman explores what it truly means to have a healthy sex life. She challenges the common misconception that frequency alone defines a healthy sexual relationship and discusses the importance of mutual enjoyment, desire, engagement, and presence. Zimmerman also talks about the signs of an unhealthy sex life, such as sexual avoidance and lack of communication, and emphasizes the need for a fun and easy sexual relationship that works for both partners. Listeners are invited to take a comprehensive quiz to assess the health of their own sex life and get personalized tips for improvement.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:58 Defining a Healthy Sex Life

02:30 Key Elements of a Healthy Sex Life

03:16 The Sexual Avoidance Cycle

03:39 Positivity and Desire in Sexual Relationships

04:19 Presence and Intentionality

05:43 Conclusion and Quiz Invitation

06:10 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

Take the quiz at https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

315: Stories of Compassionate Sex Work with Remi Newman and Lilith Foxx

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:08:09 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jess Zimmerman speaks with Lilith Foxx and Remi Newman about their new anthology, 'Hands-On.' The book is a collection of stories from sex workers that highlight the compassion, connection, and healing found in their work. The guests elaborate on the misconceptions surrounding sex work, the role of social justice, and their personal journeys within the profession. Lilith shares her empowering experience as a former sex worker and educator, while Remi details her path as a surrogate partner. The episode emphasizes the emotional and physical healing that sex work can provide and advocates for a broader understanding and acceptance of this profession.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:52 Sound Issues and Guest Introduction

01:53 The Origin of 'Hands-On' Anthology

04:17 Lilith Foxx's Journey and Passion

06:07 Social Justice and Sex Work

07:08 Misconceptions About Sex Work

08:40 Personal Stories of Entering Sex Work

14:15 Support from Loved Ones

16:58 Ethics and Sex Work

19:11 Healing Through Sex Work

22:34 Reflecting on Personal Growth and Experience

23:05 Exploring the Reasons Behind Seeking Surrogate Partners and Pro Dom Services

23:39 The Role of Companionship and Loneliness in Seeking Services

24:33 Shame and Vulnerability in Kink and Fetish Work

25:21 Drivers for Seeking Surrogate Partner Therapy

29:05 The Importance of Boundaries and Therapist Involvement

30:41 Reading an Excerpt: Holding Hands

37:54 Book Information and Closing Remarks

Bios:

Lilith Foxx (she/her) is a BIPOC, queer, neurodivergent, kinky and polyamorous marketing professional turned Board-certified sexologist, AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, professional speaker, coach, and inclusivity consultant. She is a graduate of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University’s Human Sexuality Intensive program, and is certified by Johns Hopkins University in psychological first aid. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Public Health.

Her work focuses on the intersectionality of marginalized identities, alternative sexuality, and social justice. Informed by her personal and professional experiences, she provides BDSM and nonmonogamy cultural competency consulting for clinical, academic, and research settings, and facilitates workshops on sexuality justice and inclusion. Her expertise has been featured in several publications including Cosmopolitan, Glamour, HuffPost, Kinkly, GQ, Playboy, Men's Health, and in LiveJasmin's 'Life in Red' docu-series.

Remi Newman is a sexuality educator, writer and surrogate partner. She is the editor of the new anthology Hands On: Stories of Sexuality Work, Intimacy, and Healing. Remi has over 25 years working in the field of sexuality empowering people of diverse backgrounds to live healthy and fulfilling sex lives. She received her Master's in sexuality education from NYU. She is the proud mama of a teenage son, three naughty kitties and two adventurous crayfish.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

314: [Soapbox] What's under the anger?

Jessa Zimmerman — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 12:40:58 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman dives into the concept of anger as a secondary emotion. She discusses how anger often masks more vulnerable feelings like fear, sadness, hurt, and shame. Zimmerman explains the importance of identifying and expressing these underlying emotions for better intimate relationships and effective communication. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their true feelings to foster empathy and connection with their partners.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:50 Understanding Anger as a Secondary Emotion

02:00 Exploring the Emotions Underneath Anger

03:26 Practical Steps to Address Anger

05:11 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

313: Psychedelic Pleasure Liberation with Dr. Nicole Thompson

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 13:41:57 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Dr. Nicole Thompson about her journey from purity culture to sexual liberation, focusing on how psychedelics can aid in this transition. They discuss the impact of purity culture, the importance of community, and the principles of set and setting in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Nicole shares her experiences and insights on how to use psychedelics to enhance sexual pleasure and dismantle shame. They also touch on the significance of communication, consent, and the importance of feeling safe in sexual experiences.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:01 Guest Introduction: Nicole Thompson on Sexual Liberation

01:56 Nicole's Journey from Purity Culture to Sexual Freedom

03:05 Challenges and Transformations in Sexual Liberation

06:01 Therapeutic Approaches and Sexual Healing

14:41 Exploring Psychedelic Integration in Therapy

17:14 Creating a Safe and Intentional Space for Psychedelic Therapy

18:36 The Importance of Graduated Dosages in Psychedelic and Sexual Experiences

20:18 Applying Set and Setting to Sexual Liberation

22:04 The Role of Community and Safe Practices in Psychedelic and Sexual Experiences

25:08 Recognizing Boundaries and Red Flags in Sexual Relationships

27:33 The Power of Communication and Integration in Sexual Experiences

29:52 Hopes for the Future: Ending Rape Culture and Closing the Orgasm Gap

32:19 Resources and Final Thoughts

Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com if you'd like to explore how to work with me.

Guest bio:

Nicole is a queer Sex and Relationships psychotherapist and the host of the Modern Anarchy podcast. She’s the author of The Psychedelic Jealousy Guide: Crafting Secure Non-Monogamous Relationships and conducted the first published academic study on Relationship Anarchy.

Nicole is widely recognized as a leading theorist on non-monogamy and sexuality. Through her private client work with The Pleasure Practice, she helps people liberate pleasure, navigate desire, and create deeply connected relationships rooted in authenticity and expansion.

www.modernanarchypodcast.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

312: [Soapbox] Measure sexual desire in the middle

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:12:34 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the concept of proactive versus reactive desire in intimate relationships. She delves into how these different types of desires function and the importance of recognizing them. Zimmerman emphasizes not measuring desire at the beginning but rather in the middle, once the 'engine' has warmed up. This shift in perspective can help partners feel more desired and reduce stress around sexual relationships. The episode provides valuable insights for partners dealing with different levels of desire, aiming to improve their intimate connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:01 Understanding Proactive and Reactive Desire

02:09 The Importance of Feeling Wanted

02:50 Measuring Desire in the Middle

04:23 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

311: Overcoming Negative Sentiment Override with Zach Brittle

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:47:07 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

310: [Soapbox] 5 signs you need to focus on your relationship first

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:47:34 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

309: Staying married is the hardest part with Bonnie Comfort

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:10:05 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman talks with psychologist and couples counselor Bonnie Comfort about her book 'Staying Married is the Hardest Part,' which delves into the complexities of her 30-year marriage. Bonnie shares her motivations for writing the book, driven initially by grief after the loss of her husband, Bob. The conversation explores Bonnie's personal experiences with the ebbs and flows of her marriage, particularly the struggles they faced around sexual incompatibility and fetishes. Through their discussion, Bonnie emphasizes the importance of honesty, empathy, and self-advocacy in maintaining a long-term relationship. The episode also addresses broader themes such as the unrealistic expectations set by society about marriage and sex, and provides insights for both therapists and individuals struggling with similar issues.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Meet Bonnie Comfort: Author and Psychologist

01:52 The Journey of Writing Through Grief

02:23 Therapists Are Not Perfect: Personal Struggles

04:25 Navigating Marriage Expectations

05:30 The Romance Industrial Complex

06:27 Dealing with Sexual Incompatibility

15:58 The Impact of External Stressors on Marriage

18:04 Balancing Self-Care and Partner Support

19:35 Navigating Sexual Differences in Relationships

20:48 Balancing Personal Desires and Partner's Needs

21:36 The Role of Empathy and Compromise

22:27 Manipulation vs. Coercion in Relationships

24:48 Overcoming Sexual Insecurities

26:06 The Importance of Honest Communication

29:22 Deciding to Stay or Leave a Relationship

31:23 Psychological Insights into Relationship Dynamics

32:41 Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

33:57 About the Book and Final Thoughts

Want to take my quiz? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Bonnie Comfort is the author of "Staying Married is the Hardest Part," a new memoir that explores the complexities of long-term love. She has been a practicing psychologist for 30 years. She has an MSW from the University of Manitoba and a PhD in psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology Los Angeles. Her novel, “Denial,” a psychological thriller from Simon & Schuster, was published in eight countries and translated into five languages. As an expert on marital therapy, she has been a guest multiple times on podcasts about marriage and has taken extensive workshops with marital and sex experts like Terrence Real, David Schnarch, John Gottman, and Marty Klein. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her long-time partner. Find out more about her at http://bonniecomfort.com.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

308: [Soapbox} Preset limits are as unhelpful as expectations

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 14:16:22 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist, Jessa Zimmerman, discusses the concept of reactive desire, where individuals may not initially feel in the mood for sex but can become aroused through the process. She emphasizes the importance of entering intimate situations with an open, flexible mindset without predefined expectations, allowing for the possibility of reactive desire to manifest. Jessa advises against making upfront decisions about the sexual outcome and advocates for focusing on pleasure and connection. She also highlights the significance of mutual flexibility between partners to enhance intimate experiences. Listeners are encouraged to keep an open-ended 'maybe' attitude in intimate moments to foster spontaneity and deeper connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:51 Understanding Reactive Desire

02:19 The Importance of Flexibility in Desire

02:57 Avoiding Preconceived Notions

04:36 Final Thoughts and Outro

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

307: Issues that impact women's sexual desire with Dr. Jenn Kennedy

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:22:02 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Dr. Jenn Kennedy to discuss the specific challenges women face around sexual desire. Dr. Kennedy shares her passion for women's health and the importance of inclusive research. Key topics include body image concerns, the impact of cultural messages, attachment theory, the role of EMDR in overcoming sexual trauma, and strategies for women to advocate for their own pleasure. The discussion also highlights the significance of relationship dynamics, the influence of upbringing, and how societal expectations shape women's experiences with sexuality. Dr. Kennedy also introduces her group work with The Pleasure Circle as a means to support women in their sexual journey.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Welcoming Dr. Jenn Kennedy

00:55 Challenges in Women's Sexual Desire

02:47 Body Image and Its Impact

06:48 The Journey to Self-Acceptance

10:13 Understanding EMDR Therapy

14:12 Overcoming Negative Beliefs

19:04 People Pleasing in the Bedroom

21:02 Understanding Women's Disconnect from Sexual Desire

21:29 Generational Differences in Sexual Attitudes

22:48 The Impact of Pain and Communication in Sexual Relationships

24:26 Strategies for Women to Advocate for Their Sexual Needs

27:49 Factors Influencing Women's Sexual Desire

29:42 Attachment Theory and Sexual Strategies

33:05 The Role of Pleasure and Self-Care in Sexual Satisfaction

38:19 Exploring Female Sexuality in Group Settings

39:39 Resources and Final Thoughts

Want to work with me? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Jenn Kennedy is a clinical sexologist and licensed marriage and family therapist based in Santa Barbara. She specializes in the areas of relationships, sex, addiction and LGBT. In 2023, Dr. Jenn launched The Pleasure Project, which is dedicated to helping us all have a better sex life. Through this venture, she hosts a podcast called Pleasure Project: Sex & Relationships and offers small group intensives for women and couples. She recently launched a self-guided course and is coming out with a Pleasure Circle workbook in 2025.

Dr. Jenn has been quoted in Redbook, Reader’s Digest, Forbes Health, DailyOm, Shondaland, Parade, Allure, Yahoo!life and others. She is often tapped to discuss intimacy and sexuality for therapists and physicians.

Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jenn-kennedy

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjennkennedy

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennkennedy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RivieraTherapy

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

306: [Soapbox] Address your emotional connection first

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 14:34:39 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses the importance of addressing and repairing intimacy and connection in a relationship before focusing on improving one's sex life. She talks about the common issues couples face when there are differences in libido and how these can lead to emotional disconnection. Jessa emphasizes the need for open, heartfelt communication, positive focus, gratitude, and fun in restoring emotional closeness. She also covers how to understand desire discrepancy, the sexual avoidance cycle, and the common mistakes higher desire partners make. The episode concludes with strategies for preparing and engaging in constructive conversations about sex, aiming to turn the topic into a positive aspect of the relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:54 The Importance of Addressing the Relationship First

03:21 Resetting Intimacy and Connection

07:00 Understanding Desire Discrepancy

08:51 Preparing for the Conversation About Sex

09:59 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

305: Body Image in the LGBTQ community with Nick Demos

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 15:41:16 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with Nick Demos about his new documentary, 'Body Electric,' which delves into body image issues within the queer community. The discussion covers the unique challenges faced by gay men, the root causes of body dysmorphia, the impact of the AIDS crisis, and internal bullying within the community. Nick shares his personal journey, addressing childhood sexual abuse and body dysmorphia, and reflects on societal pressures and the patriarchal influences affecting body perception. The conversation also touches on the universality of body image struggles, aging, and the path to self-acceptance.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:48 Meet Nick Demos: Filmmaker and Advocate

01:40 Exploring 'Body Electric': The Documentary

02:12 The Gay Male Gaze and Body Image

04:38 Universal Struggles with Body Image

05:44 Bullying and Self-Esteem in the Queer Community

08:49 Personal Stories and Healing

16:48 The Impact of the AIDS Crisis on Body Image

22:04 Turning Inward: Self-Reflection in the LGBTQ Community

22:36 Impact of the Documentary: Personal Transformations

24:06 Dating Apps and Body Image in the LGBTQ Community

25:46 Patriarchy and Masculinity: A Deeper Dive

27:12 Challenges Faced by Feminine Gay Men and Trans Women

29:23 Body Image and Suicidality in the LGBTQ Community

32:19 Aging and Invisibility: The Harsh Realities

36:25 Final Thoughts: Acceptance and Moving Forward

39:42 Conclusion and Future Projects

Want to share your personal story on the podcast? Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Tony Award-winning producer Nick Demos has mastered the art of transformative storytelling. As the founder of The Impact Academy and the StorySelling Lab he draws on his three decades of entertainment industry expertise to help visionaries find their authentic voice on stage.

Nick's journey spans producing Broadway shows to creating award-winning documentaries including Body Electric and Invisible which are both available on Amazon Prime. giving him a unique perspective on what makes audiences lean in.

Additionally, Nick has been a meditation, breath work and yoga teacher for over two decades

By combining theatrical prowess, and spiritual practice with deep business acumen—having run a multi-million dollar business—Nick works with his clients to turn their expertise into unforgettable stories and performances that leave lasting impressions and drive real results.

www.thenickdemos.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

304: [Soapbox] Sex not worth having

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 13:23:27 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses a common issue faced by couples: the lower desire partner consistently having sex to meet their partner’s needs, leading to resentment. Jessa shares insights from a recent coaching session where a woman expressed deep frustration from decades of unfulfilling sexual encounters with her husband. Jessa emphasizes the need for both partners to realize their role in co-creating this dynamic and offers strategies for transforming their intimate relationship into one that is mutually fulfilling, rather than obligatory. She urges lower desire partners to focus on their own pleasure and encourages higher desire partners to reconsider their expectations and seek a more balanced and joyful connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:47 The Issue of Lower Desire Partners

01:09 Real-Life Example: Decades of Unfulfilling Sex

02:13 Co-Creation of Unpleasant Sexual Dynamics

03:08 The Impact on Higher Desire Partners

05:17 Steps to Change and Improve Intimacy

06:32 Mutual Fulfillment and Connection

08:29 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

303: Tackling Gender Gap in Sexual Dysfunction Treatment with Dr. Maria Sophocles

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 13:12:02 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman engages in a comprehensive discussion with Dr. Maria Sophocles, an OB GYN specialized in menopause and women's sexual health. They explore the often neglected topic of sexual health during menopause, debunk myths, and recommend safe, effective treatments like vaginal estrogen. The conversation touches on the societal stigmas surrounding women's sexual health, the importance of communication between partners, and strategies to maintain intimacy and pleasure. Dr. Sophocles also highlights the need for better medical education on menopause and offers practical advice on using lubricants and testosterone therapy to enhance sexual well-being during midlife.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:50 Discussing Menopause with Dr. Maria Sophocles

02:03 The Importance of Addressing Sexual Health

08:42 Understanding the Bedroom Gap

16:31 Challenges in Medical Education and Sexual Health

19:09 Misconceptions About Estrogen Therapy

20:35 The Financial Benefits of Estrogen Therapy

21:04 Maintaining Genital Health with Vaginal Estrogen

22:11 The Role of Lubricants in Sexual Health

23:54 Communicating About Sexual Health in Midlife

24:24 Rehabilitating Vaginal Tissue

26:45 Addressing Trauma and Therapy in Sexual Health

27:41 The Importance of Communication in Sex Therapy

29:23 Enhancing Sexual Desire Through Erotic Media

33:34 Testosterone and Female Libido

34:51 Resources and Final Thoughts

Interested in my podcasts about desire discrepancy: www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Maria has been a practicing gynecologist for 29 years and is an internationally respected expert in menopause and female sexual function.

She is the founder of Women's Healthcare of Princeton, a progressive gynecology practice serving over 30,000 women in the U.S. To meet the needs of international and remote U.S. patients, in 2024 she launched The Thinking Woman, a virtual consultation practice.

She completed a BA in English with honors and distinction from Duke University, attended medical School at Jefferson Medical College and completed her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

She is board certified in ob/gyn, a certified menopause practitioner, and has been named a fellow to national societies (ISSVD and ISSWSH) for her contributions to gynecology.

As one of the first U.S clinicians to recognize the need for a non-estrogen option to treat vaginal atrophy, in 2015 she pioneered the use of Co2 Laser in the U.S.; she has taught clinicians this technology on five continents.

A passionate advocate for reproductive freedom and contraceptive access, she fought for seven years alongside Senator Shirley Turner to achieve passage of New Jersey Bill S275, a part of the historic Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act which became law in 2023.

Appalled by the pervasiveness of the gendered healthcare gap, she is developing a Women’s Health clinic in rural Kenya.

Her TED talk “What Happens to Sex in Midlife” has garnered nearly a million views and her forthcoming book, The Bedroom Gap will be released in late 2025.

She is currently at work on a documentary about Sex, Menopause and Gender Equality called HOT!.

She is married with four children.

https://www.mariasophoclesmd.com

Instagram: @mariasophoclesmd - https://www.instagram.com/mariasophoclesmd/

TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/maria_sophocles_what_happens_to_sex_in_midlife_a_look_at_the_bedroom_gap?language=en

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

302: [Soapbox] Desire is not the same as attraction

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 13:07:42 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the often misunderstood distinction between desire and attraction in intimate relationships. Zimmerman explains how many people confuse a decrease in spontaneous desire with a loss of attraction toward their partner. She details how desire can shift from proactive to reactive, particularly as relationships evolve, with age, stress, and familiarity. Listeners will gain insight into maintaining a healthy sex life by adapting to these changes instead of misconstruing them as a loss of attraction. Finally, she emphasizes the importance of deepening connections beyond physical appearances for long-term sexual fulfillment.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:58 Understanding Desire vs. Attraction

02:48 The Shift from Proactive to Reactive Desire

04:45 The Role of Brain Chemistry in Desire

06:26 Adapting to Changes in Attraction

07:44 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

301: Embodied Receiving with Rosalyn Dischiavo

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:51:24 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jess Zimmerman engages in a deep conversation with Rosalyn Dischiavo, who runs the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment. They discuss Ros's journey into sexuality education, the five levels of intimacy, and the concept of embodied receiving. The conversation covers the importance of embodiment in building intimacy, the challenges posed by modern technology and societal norms, and the distinction between sexual and sensual experiences. Ros also explains her workshops, designed to help people connect deeper with their bodies and build meaningful, intimate relationships. This episode emphasizes the need for graduated risks, learning to feel and process emotions, and the power of in-person connections.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:55 Meet Ros Dischiavo: Expert in Sexuality Education

03:09 The Shift to Public Workshops

07:38 Understanding Intimacy Levels

13:47 The Concept of Embodied Receiving

20:14 The Misconception of Mindfulness

20:57 The Fascination of Embodied Presence

22:55 The Impact of Advertising on Relaxation

24:39 Defining Deep Practice

25:01 Practicing Embodied Receiving

30:34 The Importance of In-Person Workshops

34:59 Distinguishing Sexual from Erotic

38:49 About the Institute for Sex Education and Enlightenment

40:19 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Interested in a bunch of resources about desire discrepancy? Visit: https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Dr. Rosalyn Dischiavo is the Founder and Director of Institute for Sex Education and Enlightenment, a professional training program for clinicians, therapists and educators. She was President of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) from 2022-2024 and served as Professional Education Steering Committee Chair on the AASECT Board of Directors from 2018-2020. She is the author of “The Deep Yes: The Lost Art of True Receiving.” Roz is a professor, author, an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator (CSE) and Sex Educator Supervisor (CSES), She has a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy and a Doctor of Education in Human Sexuality. She was also co-host of a women's interest radio show on TIC FM in Hartford, CT, and brings humor and insight into all of her education.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

300: [Soapbox] The power of positivity in improving your sex life

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:15:52 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman delves into the power of positivity and its impact on sexual relationships. Discussing common struggles faced by couples, Jessa emphasizes the importance of shifting focus from negative feelings to cultivating hope and enthusiasm. She shares her own journey into sex therapy and provides expert advice on making sex a joyful and light-hearted part of life. Jess encourages listeners to envision a future where sex is easy, natural, and fun, and offers resources through her platform 'Intimacy with Ease' to help achieve this transformation.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 The Power of Positivity in Sex Life

01:22 Understanding the Struggles in Sexual Relationships

03:08 Creating Hope and Positivity

05:24 Envisioning a Positive Sexual Relationship

06:00 Taking Action Towards Improvement

07:43 Resources for Transformation

08:03 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

299: Men, Infidelity, & Disenfranchised Grief with Dr. Elliott Kronenfeld

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:18:56 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman delves into the intricacies of infidelity recovery with Dr. Elliott Kronenfeld. They discuss the complex emotions and traumas associated with infidelity, the process of rebuilding trust and security, and how couples can address the underlying issues that lead to cheating. Dr. Kronenfeld also introduces his books, 'Couples by Intention' and 'Unspoken Loss: Men, Infidelity, and Disenfranchised Grief,' which offer further insights into intentional relationships and infidelity recovery. The conversation deepens the understanding of trust, forgiveness, and the need for both partners to address their personal wounds in the path to healing.

00:00 Introduction

00:45 Guest Introduction

00:45 Dr. Elliott Kronenfeld on Infidelity

02:04 Understanding Infidelity

02:46 Stages of Infidelity Recovery

07:01 The Concepts of Forgiveness, Trust, and Security

22:43 Crisis and Trauma Phase

23:35 The Reality Phase

24:26 Rebuilding Trust and Security

30:49 Challenges in Infidelity Recovery

44:38 Conclusion

Want to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Kronenfeld is an internationally known author, sex therapist, educator, TEDx speaker, veteran, and yoga teacher. His work has focused on helping people find, maintain, and grow their best relationships even when faced with the challenges of infertility, infidelity, challenged intimacy, parenting, and other complex life situations. He is a frequent guest on podcasts and other media outlets talking about the realities of relationships. As a university educator, he teaches sex and gender in China and the U.S. at the master’s and doctoral levels. Elliott is often on the road giving keynote talks and lectures at government agencies, universities, national organizations, conferences, and private practices on topics that relate to the human experience. He is the author of Couples by Intention and the new release, Unspoken Loss: Men, Infidelity, and Disenfranchisded Grief. A lover of travel, Elliott has been on every continent and brings his cultural experience and sensitivity to his work because he believes the human experience has commonality and uniqueness at the same time. He currently lives in Maine with his family where he is a yoga practitioner and constantly planning his next journey somewhere across the globe.

www.drelliottk.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

298: [Soapbox] You and your partner may start with different goals

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 15:47:23 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses the different challenges faced by partners with differing levels of sexual desire. She explains the emotional impact on both higher and lower desire individuals and highlights the common feelings of rejection, guilt, frustration, and resentment. Zimmerman emphasizes the importance of helping couples understand each other’s experiences and working towards a shared vision of enjoyable and natural sexual intimacy. She also invites listeners to seek further help through her courses and therapy sessions.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:56 Understanding Desire Discrepancies

02:35 Challenges Faced by Higher Desire Partners

03:11 Challenges Faced by Lower Desire Partners

04:25 Creating a Shared Vision for Intimacy

05:54 Inviting Lower Desire Partners into a New Vision

08:06 Conclusion and Resources

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

297: Revitalizing your sex life when you have young kids with Lauren Ditzian

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:10:11 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses how parents can maintain a thriving sex life despite the challenges of raising young kids. Joined by special guest Lauren Ditzian, a couples and sex therapist, they explore common issues such as desire discrepancy, feeling touched-out, and managing resentment. They also offer practical advice on communication strategies, redefining sex, and prioritizing intimacy amidst the chaos of parenting.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview

01:06 Guest Introduction: Lauren Ditzian

01:42 Lauren's Journey Into Sex Therapy for Parents

06:50 Common Challenges for Parents' Sex Lives

07:38 Desire Discrepancy Issues

10:25 Strategies for Rekindling Intimacy

17:37 Managing Resentment and Communication

22:58 Key Takeaways and Closing Remarks

Desire discrepancy podcasts available at:

https://www.desiredisrepancy.com

Bio:

Lauren Ditzian is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in Massachusetts and California and an AASECT certified sex therapist specializing in working with parents of young children. She is passionate about helping couples discover deeper connection and new pleasure in this stage of their sexual journey together.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

296: [Personal Story] Our six year drought is over

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 14:13:56 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman welcomes a former student who shares his personal journey of overcoming years of intimacy struggles in his marriage. The guest recounts how early retirement and his wife's menopause led to a five-year period of no sexual contact, deteriorating communication, and his eventual realization of the depth of his wife's unhappiness. He discusses the transformative impact of joining Jess’s program, which guided him to listen actively, practice mindfulness, and change his behavior. The episode provides a heartfelt exploration of how vulnerability, patience, and open-hearted communication can lead to profound relationship improvements, culminating in a complete turnaround in their sex life and emotional connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 A Personal Story of Struggles and Triumphs

02:16 The Beginning of the Journey

04:50 Facing the Reality of Intimacy Issues

06:00 The Turning Point: Joining the Program

08:00 Transformative Changes and New Insights

11:08 Deepening Communication and Understanding

14:45 The Impact of Active Listening

18:28 Overcoming Challenges Together

23:08 Reflecting on the Journey and Moving Forward

24:58 Discovering the Exit Plan

25:18 Slow Progress and Patience

29:04 Positive Shifts in the Relationship

35:18 A Dramatic Change

44:33 Advice for Others in Similar Situations

46:58 Conclusion and Gratitude

Want to inspire and help others by sharing your story anonymously? Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

295: Erectile Dysfunction with Dr. Anne Truong

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:07:54 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman and guest Dr. Anne discuss the prevalence of erectile dysfunction (ED), its underlying causes, and various treatment strategies. They explore how lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise, can significantly improve sexual health and why it's crucial to address the root causes of ED rather than just the symptoms. Dr. Anne shares her expertise on innovative treatments like stem cell therapy, shockwave therapy, and the use of Botox to enhance erectile function. This episode provides valuable insights for men and women alike on maintaining and improving sexual health.

00:00 Introduction

00:44 Understanding Erectile Dysfunction

01:41 Personal Motivation and Approach

05:28 The Importance of Sexual Health

08:44 Prevalence and Modern Factors

14:09 Lifestyle and Dietary Changes

25:45 Innovative Treatments

19:41 Differences Between ED and Performance Anxiety

35:20 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Take the quiz at https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Dr. Anne Truong has 25+ years of experience in anti-aging and cellular medicine. She is an expert in intimate health and a leader in biologic regenerative medicine. With her expertise as an author, podcaster, influencer, and entrepreneur, Dr. Truong has impacted millions of people.

She is a board-certified physician who treated over 7000 men with ED. Dr. Anne is starting a men's sexual health revolution! Ditch the short-term fixes and dive deep into evidence-based solutions for lifelong sexual vitality naturally without medication or surgery.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

294: Soapbox - Who is ready to transform their sex life

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 15:58:12 GMT

Join sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman in this episode of the Better Sex Podcast as she explores how otherwise happy couples can transform their sex lives. With 15 years of experience and working with over a thousand couples, Jessa shares insights on the importance of addressing sex and intimacy issues, understanding desire discrepancies, and removing the societal expectations that can hinder sexual satisfaction. She emphasizes the significance of mutual respect and love between partners, sharing practical advice and strategies for creating a fun, easy, and enjoyable sex life. Listeners are encouraged to embrace a new perspective on sex and use helpful exercises to achieve a balanced and fulfilling intimate relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:49 Transforming Your Sex Life

01:40 Understanding Relationship Dynamics

02:53 The Vision for a Better Sex Life

07:09 Practical Steps and Exercises

08:11 Conclusion and Next Steps

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

293: Men, Sex, and Vulnerability with Dr. Paul Abramowitz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 14:51:05 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes back Dr. Paul Abramowitz for a deep dive into vulnerability in men and its impact on their intimate relationships. They explore the different stages of male development and how vulnerability manifests, the importance of understanding and embracing this vulnerability, and strategies to enhance intimacy and connection. The discussion covers biological and psychological aspects, the role of pornography, and practical steps for couples to foster deeper connections. Key insights from notable experts like Brene Brown and Peggy Klein Platz are also highlighted.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 Welcoming Dr. Paul Abramowitz

00:56 Exploring Male Vulnerability in Sex

02:12 Defining Vulnerability

03:58 The Origins and Impact of Vulnerability

09:56 Stages of Male Sexual Development

14:50 Fluid Vulnerabilities and Their Effects

20:22 Insecurity vs. Vulnerability

25:10 Steps to Overcoming Insecurities

25:56 Inviting Vulnerability in Relationships

30:40 The Importance of Vulnerability in Relationships

31:37 Creating Safe Spaces for Men to Express Emotions

33:32 Steps Men Can Take to Foster Vulnerability

35:35 Understanding Emotional and Sexual Hard Wiring

36:47 The Role of Mentorship and Men's Groups

38:18 Practices to Enhance Intimacy and Vulnerability

39:25 The Impact of Porn on Relationships

41:37 The Biological and Psychological Aspects of Male Sexuality

45:00 The Transformative Power of Sexual Intimacy

57:06 Final Thoughts and Resources

Interested in desire discrepancy resources? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio

As a sex and intimacy therapist, Dr. Paul Abramowitz incorporates both Eastern and Western traditions. (Totality Therapy and a PhD in Human Sexuality)

A child of a Gynaecologist and Sex Therapist, Paul fast became fascinated by the challenges in heterosexual relationships, including how sex hormones affect men's ability to form meaningful intimate and sustained relationships. Often, inner conflict and ambivalence arise because of our compulsive and habitual sex-oriented actions and behaviours that tend to disrupt our capacity for discernment, executive function, and intimacy, which can feel like a hijacking.

Moving beyond this predicament and becoming more self-sexually empowered, his book SeXed-Hardwired by Nature - Evolving by Choice (a resource for-journey men and women and therapists alike) is offered as a map to better understand men’s often complex "hardwired for sex" nature, and as an antidote to old limiting sexual beliefs and behaviours, towards a more expanded and evolutionary way of being human and sexual.

With more than 25 years’ experience in workshop and therapy space, using his own integrated methodology (The Abro Method), Paul works with men and women who long to experience more joy, ease and pleasure in partnership, intimacy, and sex.

You can contact Paul at abrap@iafrica.com

His book can be found here: www.sexed.global

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

292: [Soapbox] Don't believe everything you think

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 29 May 2025 14:11:15 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman dives into the concept of questioning our thoughts, which she argues is crucial for enhancing intimate relationships. Using the acronym CT FAR (Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, Results), Zimmerman explains how our automatic thought processes affect our emotions, behaviors, and outcomes. She provides practical examples, like interpreting someone's actions in traffic or a partner's habits at home, to illustrate her points. Zimmerman emphasizes that our thoughts are often shaped by life experiences and unconscious training, making it pivotal to question their validity. She also explores the concept of perception filters and how shared realities in relationships can lead to misunderstandings. By being mindful of our thoughts and open to alternative interpretations, we can create deeper connections and improve our intimate relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:47 The Power of Thoughts: Don't Believe Everything You Think

01:12 Understanding CT FAR: Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, Results

03:16 Real-Life Examples: Traffic and Relationships

06:47 The Impact of Upbringing on Thought Patterns

08:27 The Gorilla Experiment: How Our Brain Filters Information

11:28 Questioning Reality: The Importance of Different Perspectives

14:58 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

291: Misconceptions about HRT with Dr. Kelly Casperson

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 May 2025 16:42:13 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman chats with urologist and women's sexual health advocate Dr. Kelly Casperson. They delve into the myths and fears surrounding hormone replacement therapy (HRT), particularly focusing on menopause and its implications. Dr. Casperson explains why many common concerns, such as the belief that HRT causes breast cancer, are unfounded. She also emphasizes the importance of individualized care, informed consent, and the numerous benefits of hormone therapy, including improved sexual function, mood, and overall quality of life. The conversation covers bioidentical hormones, testosterone for women, and the often overlooked role of progesterone. Jessa and Dr. Casperson aim to empower listeners with knowledge so they can make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:53 Meet Dr. Kelly Casperson: Advocate for Women's Sexual Health

01:09 Debunking Myths About Hormone Replacement Therapy

01:52 The Impact of Menopause on Sexual Health

02:54 Understanding the Role of Hormones in Women's Health

10:04 The Controversy of the WHI Study

17:38 Invitation to Share Your Story

18:08 Addressing Myths and Misconceptions About Hormone Therapy

21:32 Hormone Myths and Breast Cancer

22:24 Individualized Hormone Therapy Decisions

23:42 The Safety and Benefits of Estrogen

26:34 Testosterone for Women: Myths and Facts

35:41 Progesterone: The Overlooked Hormone

40:26 The Future of Menopause and Hormone Therapy

41:36 Conclusion and Resources

Interested in sharing your personal story (anonymously!) on the show? Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Dr. Kelly Casperson is a board-certified urologic surgeon, renowned public speaker, sex educator, and host of the top-ranking podcast You Are Not Broken. Dedicated to empowering women, Dr. Kelly blends humor, candor, and science to demystify sexual health, intimacy, and midlife wellness. Through her podcast and online courses, she tackles myths about desire and normalizes conversations around healthy, fulfilling sex. Her work also provides essential education on hormones and midlife health. Connect with Dr. Kelly on Instagram (@kellycaspersonmd) or visit kellycaspersonmd.com.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

290: [Soapbox] Women Writing Erotica

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 22 May 2025 12:37:32 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman delves into the topic of eroticism and the empowering act of writing one's own erotica. She discusses how writing personal erotic stories can help individuals explore their fantasies, reclaim power, and ignite their arousal. Jessa also introduces her new project, Women Writing Erotica, a community for women to share and discuss their writings in a safe and supportive environment.

00:00 Introduction

00:45 Exploring Eroticism Through Writing

01:42 Benefits of Writing Erotica

03:46 Jess' New Project: Women Writing Erotica

05:57 Conclusion

06:31 Credits

Opt in for Women Writing Erotica: https://intimacywithease.com/wweoptin

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

289: Navigating Faith Transition as a Couple with Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 May 2025 16:48:17 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses faith transitions and the impact on intimate relationships with guests Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema, co-hosts of the Sex Evangelicals podcast and founders of an international coaching business. They delve into deconstructing purity culture, gender roles, and high-control religions, sharing personal stories and professional insights. They emphasize the importance of communication, managing stress, and supporting each other through deconstruction processes. The episode offers valuable strategies for individuals and couples coping with these complex dynamics.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Introducing Guests: Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema

01:47 Jeremiah's Journey: From Faith to Sex Therapy

04:18 Julia's Story: Overcoming Purity Culture

06:46 Defining Purity Culture and High Control Religion

10:53 Deconstructing Harmful Beliefs

13:30 Reconstructing Values and Desires

17:15 Triggers for Deconstruction

19:35 Managing Differences in Relationships

23:05 Break and Resources from Jess

23:45 Navigating Different Paces in Deconstruction

25:02 Gender Dynamics in Deconstruction

27:55 Challenges in Mixed-Faith Relationships

29:22 The Role of Therapy in Relationship Dynamics

31:35 Purity Culture and Its Long-Term Impact

40:55 Resources and Support for Deconstruction

42:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Work with Jessa: https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Julia Postema and Jeremiah Gibson are the co-hosts of the podcast Sexvangelicals: The Sex Education the Church Didn't Want You to Have. They are both Boston-based licensed psychotherapists and certified sex therapists. They have a relationship coaching practice called Let's Heal Together which helps couples with negative religious backgrounds discover sexuality and communication that works for their partnership. They enjoy traveling to places that tend to fly under the radar, long-distance hiking, cooking very spicy food, unexpected conversations, and introverted days filled with reading and drinking fancy tea.

www.letshealtogether.org

Sexvangelicals podcast

www.sexvangelicals.substack.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

288: Soapbox - Exploring Eroticism

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 15 May 2025 16:28:46 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman delves into the fun and crucial topic of eroticism. Building on her previous discussion of nine competencies necessary for a great sex life, Jessa focuses specifically on the ninth competency: exploring what truly turns you and your partner on. She defines eroticism as more than just physical acts but the subtleties and energies that arouse us. Jessa provides strategies to identify and discuss erotic preferences with your partner, encouraging a shame-free and understanding conversation. She emphasizes the importance of finding overlap in erotic preferences to enhance intimacy and enjoyment in intimate relationships. The episode includes valuable tips like sharing scenes from media and using a 'yes, no, maybe' list to navigate these discussions.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:47 Exploring Eroticism: The Ninth Competency

02:20 Understanding Your Erotic Template

05:21 Communicating with Your Partner

07:04 Finding the Overlap and Playing Together

09:50 Conclusion and Resources

Resource bundle, including Yes/No/Maybe list: https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com/pl/2147554402

Podcast with Michael Bader:

https://bettersexpodcast.com/179

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

287: Freedom from Body Shame with Nikita Fernandes

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 May 2025 12:43:21 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses body acceptance, freedom from body shame, and the broader implications on sexual intimacy and pleasure with guest sex therapist Nikita Fernandes. They explore the sources and impacts of body shame, the unique challenges faced by diverse communities, and practical steps towards body acceptance and empowerment.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:46 Jessa's Intro on Body Shame

01:52 Nikita's Background and Motivation

04:32 Populations and Approaches in Therapy

06:39 Low Sexual Self-Esteem and Intimacy Issues

10:47 Sources of Body Shame

26:37 The Role of Media and Queer Communities

27:16 Closing and Contact Information

28:41 Final Thank Yous and Outro

Need resources on desire discrepancy? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio

Nikita Fernandes (she/her) is a psychotherapist and certified sex therapist in New York City. She is an active member of the kink scene and brings her lived experiences to her work. Nikita's clinical identity lies in supporting people seeking culturally sensitive, poly & kink-friendly, and gender-affirming therapists. She works with individuals and people in relationships. Nikita prioritizes fostering self-compassion in the face of systemic oppression, rather than just numbing pain. Rooted in evidence-based techniques, her methods acknowledge the impact of trauma and embrace diverse cultural perspectives. Nikita graduated from New York University with a Master in Mental Health Counseling and is also an AASECT certified sex therapist.

healingwithnikita.com

nikita@texgibson.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

286: [Soapbox] Sex is so much more than just a physical release

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 08 May 2025 13:51:11 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the significance of sex in intimate relationships. Addressing the common concern from lower desire partners who often feel misunderstood or inadequate, Jessa delves into why sex is more than just a physical act—it is a profound emotional connection. She explains how openness and vulnerability during sex create a unique bond between partners. By exploring these dynamics, Jessa offers insights and strategies for both lower and higher desire partners to improve their intimate relationships. The episode encourages open communication and understanding, highlighting the multidimensional nature of sexual intimacy.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:49 The Importance of Sex in Relationships

01:15 Understanding Lower Desire Partners

03:21 The Emotional Significance of Sex

04:07 Vulnerability and Connection in Sex

06:10 Communicating About Sexual Needs

07:30 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

285: Sexual Empowerment with Ann Russo

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 May 2025 15:18:48 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Ann Russo, an expert on sexual empowerment. They discuss the concept of sexual empowerment, its importance for individuals across different sexual orientations and gender identities, and the benefits and barriers to achieving it. Ann shares insights from her work and personal experiences, exploring how societal and cultural messages, particularly around religion and female sexuality, contribute to disempowerment. They also discuss how people can begin to unlearn harmful messages and reclaim their pleasure and sexual identity. Throughout the conversation, they touch on topics such as trauma, marginalized communities, and practical steps for achieving sexual empowerment.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:56 Interview with Ann Russo: Sexual Empowerment

02:18 Defining Sexual Empowerment

03:48 Barriers to Sexual Empowerment

08:34 Unlearning Cultural Messages

20:06 Challenges for Marginalized Communities

23:18 Addressing Trauma in Sexual Empowerment

25:45 Finding the Right Therapist

27:48 Conclusion and Contact Information

Interested in sharing your personal story on the show? Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Ann Russo, LCSW, MA, Theology is a mental health advocate, therapist, and thought leader specializing in healing religious trauma, sexual empowerment, ethical non-monogamy, queer identity, and inclusivity in mental health. With over two decades of experience, she combines professional expertise and lived experience to inspire transformation and foster meaningful conversations about often-stigmatized topics. Ann is currently writing her first book under contract with PESI, which introduces the Religious Trauma Treatment Model (RTTM). She is also the founder and clinical director of AMR Therapy, a boutique mental health practice serving clients with a focus on culturally competent, accessible care for marginalized communities.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

284: [Soapbox} Are you entitled to sex

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:16:32 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman addresses the complex question of whether individuals are entitled to sex within their relationships. She explores both sides of the argument, emphasizing the importance of mutual satisfaction and highlighting the pitfalls of entitlement. Jessa underscores the significance of a fulfilling sex life for both partners and the need for self-reflection and teamwork. The episode also discusses common misconceptions and harmful attitudes towards sex and provides strategies for creating a balanced, enjoyable, and sustainable intimate relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:51 The Entitlement Question

01:58 Healthy Sexual Relationships

04:42 Addressing Desire Discrepancies

04:57 Listener Comments and Misconceptions

07:32 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

283: Peak Pleasure- How to Achieve Flow in the Bedroom with Dr. Emily Jamea

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 13:31:02 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with couples and sex therapist Dr. Emily Jamea about her new book, 'Anatomy of Desire: Five Secrets to Create Connection and Cultivate Passion.' They discuss the concept of achieving a flow state during sex, which involves being so fully absorbed in the moment that time seems to disappear and there's a profound connection with one's partner. Emily shares insights from her research, including the importance of curiosity, adapting to life's challenges, and maintaining emotional intimacy. She also emphasizes that this state is accessible to everyone, regardless of age or physical condition, as long as both partners are equally committed. Additionally, the episode covers practices for individuals to explore their own sexuality and ways to integrate small, novel changes to enhance sexual experiences.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:52 Meet Emily Jamea: Author and Sex Therapist

01:03 Exploring the Concept of Flow in Sex

01:54 The Anatomy of Desire: Five Secrets

04:37 Research Findings on Flow and Sexual Satisfaction

06:38 Practical Tips for Achieving Flow State

09:16 The Role of Emotional Intimacy and Vulnerability

12:26 Flow State Beyond the Honeymoon Phase

22:52 Applying Flow State Principles to Self-Pleasure

26:00 Conclusion and Where to Find More

Take the quiz at https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Dr. Emily Jamea is an award-winning sex and relationship therapist and USA Today best-selling author of Anatomy of Desire: Five Secrets to Create Connection and Cultivate Passion.

Emily speaks nationally and internationally to a diverse range of audiences including educators, health and mental health professionals, executive and corporate groups, and the general public. Her expertise has been featured in Oprah Magazine, CNN, USA Today, NBC, and more. She offers online workshops as part of her mission to make her knowledge accessible to everyone. Dr. Jamea is an award-winning columnist for Healthy Women. She hosts the Love and Libido podcast and writes for Psychology Today. She posts across all the social media channels @dremilyjamea. 

In her free time, Emily enjoys spending time with her husband and children, traveling as much as possible, and salsa dancing and painting when she gets the chance.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

282: [Soapbox] The plight of the lower desire partner

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 16:31:34 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the challenges faced by the lower desire partner in a relationship. She addresses the common issue of desire discrepancy and emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding. Jessa shares insights from her work with clients and highlights the guilt and feeling of brokenness that often accompany lower desire. By changing the conversation and creating a safe space, couples can co-create a better sexual relationship. Real-life feedback from her Intimacy With Ease program illustrates the positive impact of this approach.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

01:01 The Plight of the Lower Desire Partner

03:40 Understanding the Lower Desire Partner's Struggles

06:34 Changing the Conversation and Finding Solutions

07:26 Success Stories and Positive Feedback

10:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

If you're a Higher Desire Partner and curious how you may be making it worse, you can access my special training - 5 things you're likely doing to push your partner away: https://intimacywithease.com/stop5

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

281: Permanent Sexual Side Effects from Commonly Prescribed Medications with Dr. Irwin Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 13:08:56 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host sex therapist, Jessa Zimmerman, engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Irwin Goldstein from the San Diego Sexual Medicine Clinic. They discuss the often overlooked and lasting sexual side effects of widely prescribed medications, including birth control pills, SSRIs, and finasteride (Propecia). Dr. Goldstein explains the mechanisms by which these medications impact sexual health and shares research findings and patient experiences. Listeners are informed about the importance of recognizing these side effects and considering alternative treatments where possible.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Welcoming Dr. Irwin Goldstein

01:02 The Hidden Dangers of Common Medications

02:52 Deep Dive into Birth Control Pills

05:01 Exploring Alternatives to Birth Control Pills

05:56 Research Findings on Birth Control Pills

06:48 Impact of Birth Control Pills on Androgen Receptors

09:32 Long-Term Effects of Birth Control Pills

12:33 Introduction to Antidepressants and Sexual Side Effects

15:37 Impact of SSRIs on Sexual Health

15:52 Mechanisms Behind SSRI-Induced Sexual Dysfunction

16:37 Animal Studies and Findings

17:53 Persistent Erectile Dysfunction in Young Men

18:24 Treatment Options for PSSD

19:08 Challenges in Treating PSSD

19:56 Gender Differences in PSSD

21:13 Introduction to Finasteride and Its Side Effects

22:42 Mechanism of Finasteride and Its Impact on Hormones

24:29 Health Risks of Finasteride

27:42 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Want to work with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970's. He has authored more than 350 publications as well as multiple book chapters and edited 6 textbooks in the field. His interests include penile microvascular bypass surgery, surgery for dyspareunia, sexual health management post cancer treatment, genital dysesthesia/persistent genital arousal disorder, physiologic investigation of sexual function in men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women. Dr. Goldstein is Director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital, Clinical Professor of Surgery at University of California, San Diego and practices medicine at San Diego Sexual Medicine. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Sexual Medicine Reviews and past Editor of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. He is a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health and of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America. He holds a degree in engineering from Brown University and received his medical degree from McGill University. The World Association for Sexual Health awarded the Gold Medal to Dr. Goldstein in 2009 in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the field, in 2012 he received the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health Award for Distinguished Service in Women’s Sexual Health, in 2013 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, and in 2014 he received the ISSM Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Sexual Medicine. He is happily married to his college sweetheart Sue, and together they have three children and five grandchildren.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

280: [Soapbox] Using the Giver Receiver Exercise for Growth

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:36:06 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses how to use the giver receiver exercise for personal and relational growth. Jessa provides detailed insights on recognizing personal progress, identifying challenges, and reflecting on experiences to foster meaningful breakthroughs in intimate relationships. The episode offers guidance both for the receiver and the giver in the exercise, emphasizing the importance of communication, self-awareness, and practice. Listeners are encouraged to use the exercise repetitively for continuous improvement and transformation.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:49 Overview of the Giver Receiver Exercise

03:08 Reflecting as the Receiver

09:29 Reflecting as the Giver

16:28 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

279: Kink, BDSM, and Mental Health with AJ Cheyfitz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:20:38 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews AJ Cheyfitz about kink and BDSM, discussing misconceptions, mental health, and trauma-related aspects. They explore how individuals can safely engage in kink, the importance of negotiation, identifying red flags, and how to find kink-aware therapists. The conversation emphasizes destigmatizing kink and ensuring a supportive environment for those exploring or involved in BDSM.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:59 Exploring Kink and BDSM with AJ Schitz

01:56 Mental Health and Kink: Navigating Stigma

06:55 Understanding Kink: Myths and Realities

09:16 Defining Kink and BDSM

16:19 Trauma and Kink: Intersections and Safety

29:11 Finding Kink-Aware Practitioners

33:29 Conclusion and Resources

Want Jessa's desire discrepancy resources? Go to https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Amy Julia (AJ) Cheyfitz (she/her) is an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and a BDSM Educator who has been teaching about kink for well over a decade. In her DC area sex therapy practice (Fox & Owl Psychotherapy) she focuses on kink/BDSM practitioners, ethically non-monogamous and LGBTQ+ clients, as well as supporting clients exploring fat liberation and their relationship with their own bodies.

One of AJ’s passions is working to de-stigmatize kink, and she regularly teaches and consults for non-kink professionals, particularly in the mental health and medical fields. Within the kink community she has taught all over the country and for international groups, and focuses on mental health, power exchange relationship dynamics, and self-exploration and advocacy. AJ has been on numerous podcasts discussing kink and mental health, as well as being quoted in many articles about BDSM, sex, and relationships, including in the New York Times. If you want to hear AJ talk about something besides sex, ask about her mischievous cat, Rosalind.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

278: [Soapbox] Go to the playground

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:17:35 GMT

In this 'soapbox' episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the concept of transforming sexual encounters into playful, pressure-free experiences akin to visiting a playground. Highlighting the pitfalls of goal-oriented sex, Zimmerman suggests focusing more on pleasure and connection rather than specific outcomes. She provides strategies for reducing pressure and creating a more flexible, enjoyable intimate relationship. Listeners are encouraged to embrace this approach, which can enhance spontaneous and satisfying sexual experiences.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:56 The Playground Concept in Sex

01:55 Removing Pressure and Embracing Pleasure

04:31 Navigating Arousal and Flexibility

07:33 Conclusion and Invitation to Explore

07:46 Podcast Outro and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

277: Pole dancing and sexual expression with Elle Hamilton Wohl

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:32:08 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman converses with Elle Hamilton Wohl about the multifaceted benefits of pole dancing. Wohl details how this practice serves as a powerful means of embodying sensual movement, aiding in sexuality, trauma recovery, pleasure, awareness, and body acceptance. They explore the therapeutic potential of pole dancing, how it integrates physical fitness with mental health, and its ability to connect individuals to their sensuality. Wohl also shares her personal journey into pole dancing and its transformative impact while offering insights into how listeners can seek suitable classes fitting their needs. This engaging and informative discussion underscores the empowering and healing essence of pole dancing.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Guest Introduction: Elle Hamilton Wohl

01:54 The Origins and Evolution of Pole Dancing

02:48 Pole Dancing for Empowerment and Healing

06:24 Personal Journey: Elle's Path to Pole Dancing

08:11 Connecting Pole Dancing to Sexuality and Therapy

11:42 Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Pole Dancing

18:13 Finding the Right Pole Dancing Studio

19:52 How to Connect with Elle Hamilton Wall

21:13 Conclusion and Listener Engagement

Interested in the special collections of podcast episodes?

https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

Bio:

Eleanor Hamilton-Wohl is a therapist and coach who specializes in sex and trauma therapy for people pleasers. She helps people get their needs met- even if they don't know what they are yet! Whether she's helping women heal on the therapy couch or in the pole studio, Eleanor believes in a world that is free from shame, one in which sensuality, creativity, and connection are prioritized.

ellehamilton.co

embodied_elle IG

groundedhealthnola.org

elle.wohl@gmail.com for couch class

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

276: [Soapbox] The most powerful exercise for change

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:06:49 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the importance of experiential practice in improving intimate relationships. She introduces the Giver-Receiver Exercise, a powerful tool from her sex therapy practice and online course, 'Intimacy with Ease.' She explains how this exercise integrates nine essential skills for a thriving sex life, such as prioritizing intimacy, learning to communicate about sex, and practicing mindfulness. Listeners are guided through the instructions of the exercise and its benefits. She also shares the origins of the practice and emphasizes the importance of practicing regularly for long-lasting change. The episode concludes with reminders about the natural challenges that may arise and the significance of personal growth and patience in the process.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

01:21 The Giver Receiver Exercise Explained

03:26 Detailed Instructions for the Exercise

06:38 Addressing Common Challenges

08:08 Integrating the Nine Skills

15:20 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

17:40 Closing Remarks

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

275: Potential Negatives from Hormonal Birth Control with Mia Neustein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:38:13 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman delves deep into the topic of hormonal birth control with nurse practitioner Mia Neustein from San Diego Sexual Medicine. The discussion covers various forms of hormonal and non-hormonal birth control, their side effects, and the specific impact of hormonal birth control on sexual health. Mia explains the vestibule, its role in sexual functioning, and how hormonal birth control can sometimes cause pain, itching, and burning during sex. The episode also explores the importance of testosterone in women's bodies, how hormonal birth control can affect these levels, and the potential benefits and drawbacks of birth control beyond pregnancy prevention.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:49 Guest Introduction: Mia Neustein

01:30 Mia's Journey into Sexual Medicine

04:14 Overview of Birth Control Methods

04:33 Non-Hormonal Birth Control Options

07:06 Hormonal Birth Control: Types and Effects

09:48 Unexpected Side Effects of Hormonal Birth Control

14:00 Impact of Hormonal Birth Control on Testosterone

19:46 Understanding Birth Control Side Effects

20:16 Personal Insights and Expertise

20:44 Impact on Libido and Sexual Health

21:17 Jess's Mid-Show Break

21:40 Benefits of Birth Control Beyond Pregnancy Prevention

22:36 Managing Menstrual and Reproductive Health Issues

24:22 Addressing Hormonal Imbalances and Conditions

25:23 Effectiveness and Limitations of Birth Control Methods

25:48 Investigating and Resolving Birth Control Side Effects

27:26 Hormonal Treatments and Their Applications

31:25 Growing Awareness and Medical Practices

34:53 The Role of Lab Work in Hormonal Treatments

38:49 Finding the Right Medical Support

41:04 Conclusion and Resources

Want to work with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Mia Neustein, MSN, RN, WHNP-BC, NCMP is a board-certified Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner. She obtained her BA in Economic History at Barnard College of Columbia University and her BSN-equivalency and Masters of Science in Nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. (After five years in Alabama, Mia says “y’all” and loves country music.) Mia appreciated her time working at Planned Parenthood, which provided her extensive training in general gynecology. Her interest in sexual medicine peaked when she encountered male and female patients with sexual dysfunction, and she joined the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH). Mia’s interest in menopause management led her to become certified by The Menopause Society. Mia prides herself on providing gentle, trauma-informed care that is patient-centered. Mia lived in Lima, Peru and speaks fluent Spanish with what she hopes is a Limenian accent.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

274: [Soapbox] 9 skills to master for great sex

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:32:49 GMT

In this episode of The Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses nine essential competencies for creating and maintaining a great sex life. Jessa emphasizes the importance of prioritizing intimacy, effective communication about sex, accessing desire, enjoying the journey, being present, celebrating 'no,' balancing being selfish and giving, and exploring eroticism. These competencies focus on internal mindsets and skills rather than physical techniques. She also emphasizes the need for practice and understanding one's and their partner's erotic preferences for a fulfilling intimate relationship.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:58 The Competencies for a Great Sex Life

02:09 Prioritizing Intimacy

03:54 Communicating About Sex

05:35 Accessing Desire

07:01 Enjoying the Journey

08:39 Being Present

09:57 Celebrating 'No'

12:36 Being Selfish and Giving

14:27 Exploring Eroticism

17:57 Conclusion and Next Steps

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

273: People Pleasing Does Not Help Sex with Bea Albina

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 12:53:09 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman talks with Bea Albina about 'emotional outsourcing' - a concept she coined to describe chronic people-pleasing and codependency. Bea shares her personal journey of detachment from her body and how she transitioned to a more joyful and authentic life. They discuss the overlap between people-pleasing and codependency, how these behaviors manifest, and their impact on intimate relationships and sex. Bea offers practical advice on reconnecting with one’s body, establishing healthy boundaries, and reducing resentment in relationships. She also introduces techniques to calm the nervous system and the importance of self-awareness in fostering deep, meaningful connections.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:46 Guest Introduction: Bea Albina on People Pleasing

03:11 Understanding Emotional Outsourcing

05:27 Impact of Emotional Outsourcing on Relationships and Sex

08:10 Connecting with Your Body and Overcoming Disconnection

12:01 Practical Steps to Reconnect with Yourself

26:21 Tools to Calm the Nervous System

28:29 Conclusion and Resources

Interested in Jessa's resources for desire discrepancy? Visit https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP (she/her) is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of the forthcoming "End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits" (expected Sept 30, Hachette Balance) and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems and rewire their minds, so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy.

She is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a Masters degree in Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Béa grew up in the great state of Rhode Island. She has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife, Billey Albina. You can find her on Instagram @beatrizvictoriaalbinanp and listen to her podcast, Feminist Wellness, here.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

272: [Soapbox] Escaping the sexual avoidance cycle

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 20:46:11 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman delves into the sexual avoidance cycle, a term she coined to describe a common issue in intimate relationships. She explains how negative experiences and unmet expectations lead to avoidance, creating a cycle of increasing pressure and anxiety around sex. Jessa discusses various factors that contribute to this cycle, such as personal insecurities, relationship conflicts, and external life stressors. She emphasizes the importance of challenging unrealistic expectations, addressing negative feelings, and communicating openly with one's partner to break free from this cycle and enhance intimate relationships.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:50 Introduction to the Sexual Avoidance Cycle

01:17 Understanding the Cycle

05:36 Factors Contributing to the Cycle

08:16 Challenging Expectations and Breaking the Cycle

09:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

271: Men Hardwired by nature and Evolving by choice with Paul Abramowitz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:42:15 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman talks with Paul Abramowitz, author of 'Sexed: Hardwired by Nature, Evolving by Choice,' about the intrinsic preoccupation men have with sex due to biological hardwiring. They discuss how this drive impacts men's lives and relationships, the importance of understanding and managing it, and the potential benefits of reflective engagement. Abramowitz shares insights from his book on men’s reproductive biological intelligence, the socio-cultural and biological aspects affecting men's and women's sexual behaviors, and the concept of 'intoxicated masculinity.' They also explore the implications of such understanding for enhancing intimacy and connection in heterosexual relationships, moving beyond the 'romance industrial complex.'

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:42 Guest Introduction: Paul Abramowitz

01:41 Paul's Journey and Inspiration for Writing

04:26 Understanding Male Sexual Drive

08:17 Impact of Biological Hardwiring

14:43 Female Partners' Perspective

22:55 Intoxicated Masculinity vs. Toxic Masculinity

38:34 Romance Industrial Complex

44:50 Conclusion and Contact Information

Interested in sharing your personal story on the show? This can be done anonymously! Email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Paul's Bio:

Having followed a rather circuitous route into his formal training in Human Sexuality by studies in both Eastern (Totality Therapy) and Western traditions (Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (PhD)), Paul is a long-time student of yoga and meditation, a painter, sculptor, and singer-songwriter who has dedicated most of his adult life to exploring creative avenues of expression and practice that lead to a fuller understanding of the lived human experience.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1962, Paul graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA in 1985 with a Doctorate in Dental Medicine and a Post-Doctoral Specialty Certification in Periodontology in 1990, upon which he held post-doctoral teaching positions as Assistant Professor of Periodontology at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate Professor of Periodontology at Temple University before returning to private practice in Cape Town.

Links:

sexed.global

abrap@iafrica.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

270: Soapbox: Reactive Desire

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:53:05 GMT

In this solo episode of the Better Sex Podcast, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the spotlight is on the two distinct types of sexual desire—proactive and reactive. Zimmerman explains how proactive desire involves thinking about sex and feeling aroused independently, while reactive desire requires specific conditions and stimuli to become aroused. She discusses the common misconceptions surrounding these types of desire, their impact on relationships, and offers strategies to accommodate and embrace reactive desire. By understanding and working with these concepts, couples can enhance intimacy and reduce desire discrepancies in their relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:58 Understanding the Two Types of Desire

02:03 Proactive Desire Explained

03:05 Reactive Desire Unveiled

05:01 Bridging the Desire Gap

06:24 Creating Space for Reactive Desire

07:58 Flexibility and Intimacy

11:22 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

269: Overcoming Anxiety in Sex with Paula Leech

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:18:05 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman is joined by Paula Leech, a therapist and author who returns to discuss her book on overcoming anxiety in sex and relationships. The conversation delves into how anxiety manifests in intimate settings, including performance anxiety, body image issues, and past traumas. Leech explains the importance of understanding and interacting with one's anxiety, offering actionable steps for fostering a healthier mindset, relaxing the body, and improving intimate connections with partners.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:44 Guest Introduction: Paula Leech on Anxiety in Sex

01:55 Understanding Anxiety and Its Impact

07:31 Anxiety in Sexual Performance and Body Image

10:17 Managing Anxiety in Intimate Relationships

20:53 Practical Steps to Overcome Anxiety

30:05 Conclusion and Resources

Want to take my quiz, How big a problem is your sex life? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Paula's Bio:

I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Family and Human Development at Arizona State University and then went on to receive my Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of Massachusetts, at Boston. Post family therapy licensure, I became AASECT (American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) certified as a Sex Therapist and worked with individuals, relationships, and families in private practice in Quincy, Massachusetts for over ten years. In that time, I received AASECT certification as a Supervisor of Sex Therapy, and co-founded a sex therapy agency and training institute where we saw clients in addition to training therapists to become competent, confident sex therapists themselves. I continue to regularly present at various training institutes as well as Universities and therapy agencies across the US.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

268: Soapbox Episode - Desire discrepancy pitfalls

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 14:20:28 GMT

Navigating Desire Discrepancy: Common Traps and Solutions

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the universal issue of desire discrepancy in intimate relationships. Jessa explains the frequent traps and mistakes made by both higher and lower desire partners, which often exacerbate the problem. She emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing these pitfalls with compassion and offers strategies to improve communication and intimacy. The episode aims to provide listeners with hope and practical advice for navigating their differences in libido.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:57 Understanding Desire Discrepancy

02:41 Common Traps for Higher Desire Partners

07:54 Common Traps for Lower Desire Partners

11:03 Co-Creating Solutions

11:52 Conclusion and Next Steps

Visit https://www.desirediscrepancy.com for more resources

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

267: Keys to Pleasure with Susan Morgan Taylor

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 17:22:43 GMT

Join host Jessa Zimmerman on the Better Sex Podcast as she interviews sex therapist Susan Morgan Taylor. They discuss the concept of blocks to pleasure and how different types of tension—mental, emotional, and physical—can impede sexual satisfaction and connection. Susan shares her personal journey from a sexless marriage to becoming a sex therapist dedicated to helping others experience their full sexual potential. They explore strategies for overcoming these blockers, including relaxation, presence, and awareness, and discuss the importance of redefining sex beyond goal-oriented outcomes. They also touch on societal myths, particularly around female sexuality, and the importance of an education that encompasses pleasure and intimate connection.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:55 Guest Introduction: Susan Morgan Taylor

01:44 Susan's Personal Journey to Sex Therapy

04:45 Understanding Blocks to Pleasure

08:56 Principles for Relieving Tension

13:51 Connecting with Your Partner

19:14 The Myth of Low Desire in Women

25:02 Resources and Conclusion

Desire Discrepancy resources: https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Susan Morgan Taylor, MA, is a leading somatic sex therapist who helps couples deepen their intimacy and create lasting, fulfilling connections. With over 25 years of experience in somatic healing, she developed The Pleasure Keys Process™, a powerful approach to reigniting sexual and emotional harmony in relationships. After a personal awakening from a sexless marriage, Susan became passionate about helping others remove obstacles to pleasure, love, and orgasm. She is also the creator of the Pleasure Keys Retreats and host of the Sex Talk Café Podcast. When not working, she enjoys hiking and singing karaoke in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

https://www.pleasurekeys.com

https://www.pathwaytopleasure.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

266: Soapbox Episode: Desire Discrepancy 101

Jessa Zimmerman — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 13:26:22 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the nature of desire discrepancy in intimate relationships. She explains what desire discrepancy is, how it can emerge over time in all couples, and its universal nature. Jessa highlights the relative and situational aspects of discrepancy, emphasizing that roles of higher desire (HDP) and lower desire persons (LDP) can change. She also delves into the inherent control and pressure dynamics in such situations, and how they affect self-worth, relationship tension, and the meaning of sex. Future episodes will address common traps and strategies to bridge these gaps.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

01:08 Understanding Desire Discrepancy

01:35 The Universality of Desire Discrepancy

02:50 Relative Nature of Desire Discrepancy

03:58 Control Dynamics in Desire Discrepancy

06:12 Emotional Impact on Relationships

08:05 Pressure and Desire Discrepancy

09:05 Conclusion and Future Topics

09:33 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

265: Navigating the Impact of Life Transitions on Libido with EJ and Tarah Kerwin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:27:16 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

264: The HSDD diagnosis pisses me off - soapbox episode

Jessa Zimmerman — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 17:14:34 GMT

In this episode of the BetterSex Podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman discusses the concept of hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). Jessa delves into why she believes HSDD should not be classified as a disorder, arguing that a lack of sexual desire is influenced by various legitimate obstacles such as trauma, body image issues, relationship struggles, and larger life concerns. She explains the distinction between proactive and reactive desire, emphasizing that reactive desire is a common and normal experience. Jessa rejects the notion that low sexual desire is a pathological condition and offers resources for those navigating desire discrepancies in their relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:44 Host's Soapbox: Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

01:08 Understanding Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

01:58 Factors Affecting Sexual Desire

04:26 Proactive vs. Reactive Desire

06:48 Resources and Conclusion

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

263: Menopause Before and After with Susan Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:26:35 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Susan Goldstein, a sexuality educator at the San Diego Sexual Medicine Clinic. The conversation delves into the intricacies of menopause, including personal stories and the experiences of patients. Goldstein emphasizes the benefits of monitored hormone replacement therapy and dispels myths surrounding menopause and hormone treatments. She addresses common symptoms, the importance of a tailored medical approach, and the need for informed decision-making. The episode underscores the significance of understanding one's body and seeking appropriate medical care for menopause-related issues.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex Podcast

00:44 Introducing Susan Goldstein: Sexuality Educator

01:37 Susan's Journey into Sexual Medicine

03:25 Understanding Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy

05:21 Debunking Myths About Menopause and Hormone Therapy

09:01 The Importance of Monitored Hormone Care

16:54 Historical Perspectives on Hormone Treatments

18:51 Introduction to Clinic Data and Research

19:39 Unique Cases and Specialized Treatments

20:31 Understanding Neuroproliferative Vestibulodynia

21:48 Menopause and Its Impact on Skin Health

23:39 Symptoms and Treatments for Menopausal Women

26:31 Addressing Low Libido and HSDD

28:46 Personal Experience with HSDD Treatments

32:04 Finding the Right Clinician and Clinic Information

34:27 Conclusion and Contact Information

Interested in my desire discrepancy resources? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Ms. Goldstein, a graduate of Brown University, is Sexuality Educator and Clinical Research Manager at San Diego Sexual Medicine, responsible for sexual medicine educational programming and clinical research. She works with the SDSM team to develop clinical research projects, write protocols and oversee clinical trials. She also arranges for training in sexual medicine for medical students, residents, fellows and clinicians from all over the country. She works with regional support groups to provide education to providers, students and the public. In addition, she develops programs for The Institute for Sexual Medicine, a charitable corporation dedicated to research and education in the field. Ms. Goldstein co-authored When Sex Isn’t Good to provide education and empowerment to women with sexual dysfunction. She is managing editor of Sexual Medicine Reviews. She is an associate editor of Textbook of Female Sexual Function and Dysfunction, and Female Sexual Pain Disorders, and author of multiple peer reviewed papers. Mrs. Goldstein is Past President of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health (ISSWSH) as well as Industry Relations Chair. She serves on the Scientific Oversight Committee of the International Society for Sexual Medicine (ISSM) as well as the Educational Projects, Fellowship and Female Sexual Function Committees of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA). She has contributed educational content for the ISSM Online University as well as the AUA Core Curriculum and SMSNA Fellowship Curriculum. She is also a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP). She is an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator and an ACRP Certified Clinical Research Coordinator. Ms. Goldstein, an ISSWSH Fellow, received the Distinguished Service Award from ISSWSH in 2017 as well as from SMSNA in 2017.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

262: Normalizing Kink with Emma Xin Velicky

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 13:10:44 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Emma Xin Velicky about how to explore fantasies and kink interests within a loving relationship. Emma shares her personal journey to kink, discusses defining kink and BDSM, and offers advice on communicating and exploring these interests with a partner. They delve into the importance of vulnerability, play, and the benefits of understanding one's erotic interests both individually and with a partner. The conversation also touches on common misconceptions about kink, the role of roleplay, and Emma's company, Saturday Box, which helps couples explore their kinky side through curated adventures.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:44 Exploring Fantasies and Kink Interests

01:27 Guest Interview: Emma Xin Velicky's Journey

03:45 Defining and Understanding Kink

07:21 Bringing Up Kink with Your Partner

13:26 Role of Solo Exploration in Kink

21:22 Benefits of Exploring Kink Together

29:30 Saturday Box: Enhancing Couple's Kink Exploration

31:28 Conclusion and Listener Invitation

Want to share your personal story on the podcast? You can do it anonymously! Reach out at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Emma Xin Velicky, a 26-year-old romance author, filmmaker, mobile game writer, and “sexpert” created Saturday Box to redefine kink and make it easier for couples to turn toward each other for fantasy fulfillment. Growing up in a religious community that shunned any talk of sex before marriage, her early interest in kink left her feeling confused and ashamed. As she moved away from the church, she began to experiment, but as a sexually submissive Asian woman, it was difficult to be true to herself without encouraging stereotypes.

Inspired by the erotic exploration that occurred in her own marriage, she's created immersive, date night adventures to help couples to embrace their true (kinky) selves and see each other in a new light.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

261: Vaginal Gymnastics with Bel Di Lorenzo

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 16:16:15 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

260: Benefits of Reading Erotica with Avalon Lust

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 13:36:24 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses the impact of written erotica on mental stimulation and sexual desire with her guest, erotic author Avalon Lust. Avalon shares her journey from writing romance to focusing on erotica, and how it helped rejuvenate her own libido. They explore the benefits of erotica for individuals and couples, including mental visualization, tapping into fantasies, and offering quick yet engaging reads. Avalon also provides insights on where to find quality erotica and her process of creating stories that cater to different fantasies. The episode offers valuable advice for anyone looking to spice up their intimate life through the power of the written word.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:43 Introduction to Erotica with Avalon Lust

01:22 Avalon's Journey into Writing Erotica

05:11 Benefits of Erotica for Relationships

09:56 Exploring Fantasies Through Erotica

14:51 Where to Find and Explore Erotica

18:23 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Interested in the quiz? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Meet Lust, the provocative name behind scorching hot erotica that ignites passion and desire.

With a focus on short, tantalizing reads, Lust's stories are crafted to arouse and captivate, perfect for those seeking to spice up their intimate moments.

But beware, these tales come with a trigger warning, ensuring readers are prepared for the steamy journey ahead.

So, whether you're indulging alone or with a partner, dive into Lust's world and let your imagination run wild.

Now, ENJOY!

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

259: Somatic Approaches to Anxiety During Sex with Indigo Stray Conger

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 13:04:11 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews sex therapist Indigo Stray Conger about the impacts of anxiety on sexual experiences. They delve into the common sexual concerns clients bring, such as libido discrepancies, erection issues, and orgasm control, and explore how anxiety can exacerbate these problems. Indigo shares her expertise on using somatic, body-based approaches to manage and alleviate anxiety, emphasizing the importance of breathwork, mindfulness, and creating awareness of subtle pleasure cues. The discussion also touches on the significance of sexual health for overall well-being, the cultural taboos surrounding conversations about sex, and strategies for enhancing intimate connections with partners.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:46 Introduction to Anxiety in Sex

01:31 Guest Interview: Indigo Stray Conger

03:27 Common Sexual Concerns and Anxiety

06:26 Somatic Approaches to Anxiety

10:20 Practical Exercises for Couples

15:03 Breathing Techniques for Relaxation

21:13 The Importance of Sexual Pleasure

22:40 Cultural and Educational Barriers

24:55 Conclusion and Resources

Interested in the special podcast collections? https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

Bio

Indigo has been a psychotherapist since 2008 and has over a decade of therapeutic training, including as one of the few AASECT certified sex therapists at a supervisory level. She trained as a therapist in San Francisco, a mecca for awakened sexuality and alternative lifestyles, before moving back to her hometown of Denver and co-founding Mile High Psychotherapy PLLC with her husband. Indigo holds a master’s degree in somatic (body integrated) psychotherapy. She addresses mental health and relational dynamics from the perspective of our embodied selves, utilizing applied neuroscience and mindfulness practices to soften protective defenses and re-inhabit physicality. Utilizing an attachment theory lens, Indigo guides her clients towards reclaiming the space between them as joyful and exciting. She is frequently consulted as a sexuality and open relationship expert in publications such as Women's Health, Mind Body Green, and The New York Times.

facebook.com/MileHighPsychotherapy, website: milehighpsychotherapy.com

www.choosingtherapy.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

258: Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder with Dr. Irwin Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 13:36:52 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex with host Jessa Zimmerman, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Dr. Irwin Goldstein to discuss Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD). They explore the history, symptoms, and numerous potential causes of PGAD, ranging from physiological to neurological issues. They also delve into various diagnostic methods and treatment options available for managing this often misunderstood and debilitating condition.

00:00 Introduction

00:42 Interview with Dr. Irwin Goldstein

01:03 Understanding PGAD

05:17 Initial Approaches to Treatment

07:05 New Discoveries in PGAD Research

22:08 Success Stories and Challenges

30:13 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Interested in Desire Discrepancy resources: https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Irwin Goldstein, MD

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

257: Non-monogamy and sex addiction with Ari Lewis

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 15:55:23 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Ari Lewis to discuss the often conflated topics of consensual non-monogamy and compulsive sexual behavior. They delve into the misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding consensual non-monogamy, such as its conflation with sexual addiction and the perceived elevated risk of STIs. Ari explains the important distinctions between consensual non-monogamy and compulsive sexual behavior, highlighting key factors like informed consent, honoring values, mutual respect, and mutual benefit. The conversation also touches on coercive non-monogamy and the role of shame in driving compulsive sexual behavior, concluding with a proposed model for understanding and treating such behaviors.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:49 Exploring Consensual Non-Monogamy with Ari Lewis

01:34 Distinguishing Non-Monogamy from Compulsive Sexual Behavior

01:52 Ari Lewis on Personal Journey and Professional Insights

11:07 Common Misconceptions and Stereotypes

16:54 Coercive Non-Monogamy and Its Implications

26:05 Understanding and Treating Compulsive Sexual Behavior

32:31 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Ari Lewis, M.A.P.P., M.A., Ed.M., LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist in NYC; an associate at the Sexuality, Attachment, and Trauma Project; and an adjunct professor of social work at Touro University. He earned a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (M.A.P.P.) studying positive sexuality at the University of Pennsylvania, and he earned two master's degrees in mental health counseling at Columbia University, where he also earned an Advanced Certificate in Sexuality, Women, and Gender focused on consensual non-monogamy. Ari has a chapter on treating compulsive sexual behavior coming out in the Routledge Handbook of Positive Sexuality, and his essay on distinguishing consensual non-monogamy from compulsive sexual behavior will be featured as part of the 2nd edition to Kathy Labriola's book, Love in Abundance. Ari has trained for over three years on working with compulsive sexual behavior under Dr. Michael M. Crocker, DSW, founder of the Sexuality, Attachment, and Trauma Project in New York City.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

256: Trans Attraction with Dr. Herb Coleman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 14:35:56 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

255: Psychedelic Sex Therapy with Dr. Steven Radowitz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:19:17 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman is joined by Dr. Steven Radowitz, a primary care doctor and ketamine clinic practitioner. They delve into the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly ketamine, in therapy and how it can positively impact mental health and relationships. Dr. Radowitz discusses how psychedelics help treat mental health conditions, the science behind ketamine's effectiveness, and the potential for its future use. He also explains the importance of integration and proper settings for these treatments, and how they can lead to profound personal and relational growth.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:42 Introducing Psychedelic Therapy

00:58 Meet Dr. Steven Radowitz

01:11 The Power of Psychedelics in Mental Health

04:46 Ketamine: The Legal Psychedelic

05:13 How Ketamine Works

07:38 Applications of Ketamine Therapy

10:32 The Future of Mental Health Treatment

18:32 Ketamine and Relationships

21:20 The Psychedelic Experience

26:16 Accessing Ketamine Therapy

31:19 Other Psychedelics on the Horizon

34:29 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to take the quiz - How big a problem is my sex life?

https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Starting his career in New York during the peak of the opioid and AIDS crises, Dr. Steven Radowitz has a wealth of experience seeing the effects trauma and addiction can have on our physical health. Dr. Radowitz joined Nushama, at the intersection of science and spirituality, to oversee and develop treatment modalities. He believes psychedelic medicine’s framework of neuroscience, mystical experience, and integration therapy is the future of mental wellness, and current solutions often fall short, treating symptoms without addressing underlying issues.

Known for his compassion, yet unafraid to be controversial, Dr. Radowitz sees the source of disease as a “dis-ease” that results from a misalignment of mind, body and spirit. He has a passion for preventive medicine, getting to the root of a health problem before it manifests. In contrast to traditional medicine, he views psychedelics as powerful tools to help us become aware of the origin of imbalance and guide us toward wholeness, health, and wellbeing, healing from within. He and the Nushama team have administered more than 10,000 ketamine journeys for mood disorders and are known to be best-in-class and most experienced globally.

In addition to Nushama’s ketamine-assisted therapy protocol for mood disorders, he leads Ketamine for the Reduction of Alcohol Relapse (KARE), an innovative, highly efficacious protocol that clinical studies have shown to be 86% effective. Nushama’s team is the first to bring this revolutionary treatment to New York City, using the power of psychedelics to transform addictive behaviors. Prior, Dr. Radowitz worked at St. Vincent’s NYC Midtown medical center, where he was medical director of the inpatient alcohol and opiate detox and treatment unit. With a history of being part of the solution, he has been a DEA-licensed provider for buprenorphine maintenance treatment for opiate dependence for over a decade.

He most recently co-authored the largest IV ketamine for PTSD study to date — available as a preprint and pending peer review. The landmark findings make the case for a psychedelic therapy paradigm as 75% of participants gained clinically meaningful improvements and 61% showed remission of symptoms.

Coming from a sheltered Montreal community, Dr. Radowitz was not raised with a spiritual background but felt something was missing. Upon moving to New York, he explored the city’s culture and nightlife on a journey to expand his consciousness—the study of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, transcendental meditation, and various forms of yoga resonated deeply. After seeing significant improvement in some of his patients who chose to explore psychedelics for different medical and psychiatric conditions, he witnessed their profound transformation, serendipitously meeting Co-Founder Jay Godfrey and Richard Meloff, who invited him to join Nushama.

Dr. Radowitz has been practicing internal medicine since 1998. He currently mentors master’s students attending the Columbia School of Social Work interning at Nushama for their field practicum, and prior, he supervised Columbia medical students and residents. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Anatomy and Cell Biology from McGill University and his medical degree at The Chicago Medical School with an internal medicine residency at Rush University Medical Center. Before Nushama, Dr. Radowitz also ran the primary care program at a number of top-tier investment banks for more than 10 years and held a private practice specializing in general medicine, HIV care, and preventive medicine. Overall, he saw the connection between chronic stress and health and wanted to make a difference, leading to his career transition to psychedelic medicine.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

254: Sex After First Baby with Dr. Ashley Staats

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:12:09 GMT

Join host Jessa Zimmerman on the Better Sex podcast as she converses with Dr. Ashley Staats about the challenges of maintaining intimacy after the birth of a child, particularly the first baby. The discussion dives into common myths, like the six-week readiness period, and details the emotional and physical complexities that couples face. They explore how to foster communication, manage expectations, and the significance of mutual support and understanding during this transformative life stage. The episode is packed with personal stories, expert advice, and practical strategies to help couples sustain a healthy intimate relationship post-childbirth.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:45 Guest Introduction: Ashley Staats on Sex After Birth

01:08 The Myth of the Six-Week Window

01:32 Ashley Staats's Journey into Sex Therapy

03:10 Challenges of Sex After First Baby

04:34 Impact of Birth Experience on Intimacy

09:27 Role Changes and Communication Post-Baby

13:55 Maintaining Intimacy and Connection

26:00 Encouragement and Seeking Help

29:34 Conclusion and Resources

Want my special podcast collections?

https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

Bio:

After years of dedicated work in private practice, Ashley Blu Staats, PhD and Certified Sex Therapist, recognized a growing need for high-quality sex therapy education and training. This realization led her to establish TalkSex Institute, a place where aspiring sex therapists can receive comprehensive, expert-level education to make a real difference in the lives of their clients.

At TalkSex Institute, we're committed to providing top-tier education that positively impacts the field of sex therapy and mental health counseling at large.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

253: Sexual Sovereignty and Pleasure with Dr. Saida Desilets

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 15:08:04 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with Dr. Saida Désilets about women's sexual pleasure and the idea of sexual sovereignty. Dr. Désilets shares her personal journey starting from childhood, discussing the impacts of trauma, the cultural stigmas around female pleasure, and the importance of creating a safe space within one's own body. They delve into the physiological benefits of pleasure, breathing techniques, and practices to enhance sensual and sexual wellbeing. Listeners are provided with actionable tips to connect more deeply with their bodies and embrace their own sexual sovereignty.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Interview with Dr. Saida Désilets

01:32 Understanding Women's Sexual Pleasure

03:20 The Impact of Trauma on Sexuality

10:29 Exploring Sexual Sovereignty

27:58 Practical Tips for Connecting with Your Body

35:39 Conclusion and Resources

Want Jessa's resources for either the higher or lower desire partner? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

Dr. Saida Désilets wants to live in a world filled with audacious, sexually sovereign people, living life on their own terms. As a TEDx speaker, researcher, counter-culture creatrix, body-philosopher, and author, her work has touched the lives of millions globally. Dr. Saida's innovative approach to PsychoSexuality, desire, and pleasure invites both the public and professionals to better understand the importance of accessing their erotic genius. Her medically-endorsed method integrates somatic awareness, neural and cellular re-patterning and robust reframes of sensuality and sex which all work in harmony to support the erotic individuation process. This work is an essential part of a medical protocol to support sexual optimization as well as part of the BrainTap App. When not researching or creating transformational programs, Dr. Saida enjoys leading Wilderness Safaris in South Africa and swimming in the Aegean Sea.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

252: Sex, shame and addiction with the SAT project team

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 17:12:18 GMT

In this episode, the host talks with Michael Crocker, Sean Peknic, and Ari Lewis from the Sexuality Attachment and Trauma Project (SAT Project) about issues related to shame, sex, and addiction. The discussion begins with introductions, highlighting their roles and the objectives of the SAT Project. The conversation delves into how they prefer the term 'out of control sexual behavior' over 'sex addiction,' focusing on promoting healthy relationships with one's sexuality rather than advocating for sobriety. They explore the impact of shame on individuals' sexual behaviors, the importance of addressing attachment trauma, and the role of curiosity in therapy. The episode also discusses societal impacts on sexual behavior, the influence of technology, and the nuances in gender responses to sexual issues. Finally, they touch on how partnerships often influence individuals seeking help and emphasize a de-shaming, harm-reduction approach that treats people, not problems.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introductions

01:48 Understanding Out of Control Sexual Behavior

13:03 The Role of Shame in Sexual Behavior

20:42 Exploring the Cycle of Shame and Sexual Behavior

25:36 Impact of Background and Upbringing

28:26 Understanding Shame and Neglect in Sexual Behavior

29:23 Empathy and Solutions for Shame-Driven Behaviors

30:27 Exploring Definitions of Shame and Addiction

31:11 Cultural and Religious Influences on Sexuality

33:54 The Role of Technology in Sexual Behavior

40:17 Fantasy vs. Behavior: Navigating Sexual Interests

44:10 Gender Differences in Sexual Behavior

50:13 Attachment Styles and Sexual Behavior

52:21 Couples Therapy and Sexual Behavior

56:40 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to work with Jessa? https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bios:

Michael Crocker, DSW, LCSW, MA

As Founder and Clinical Director of the Sexuality, Attachment, and Trauma Project, Michael is a passionate advocate for shame reduction when treating out-of-control sexual behavior. At The SAT Project, they don’t judge or pathologize the sexual behavior of patients. His extensive research in childhood trauma informs his work with clients, as he has seen firsthand how emotional neglect impacts sexual behavior and relationships in adulthood. Trauma robs us of choice.Michael helps clients discover (or, sometimes, rediscover) their connection to joy, play, and intimacy.

Shaun Peknic, MSW, MA Psychology

Shaun is a therapist and the SAT Project’s Director responsible for client intake, staffing, operations, and educational programs for clinicians. He wears many hats and enjoys them all. For twenty years, Shaun explored the human condition onstage as a theatre director, developing work about queer identity, family trauma, and the subconscious. Now, he supports clients as they tell their own stories offstage. Learning to communicate needs effectively is essential in all partnerships. Shaun brings a deep knowledge of storytelling, communication, and relationship-building into work with individuals, couples, groups, and creative teams.

play assessment https://thesatproject.typeform.com/to/Sd2CbXuC

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

251: Better Sex Through Science with Dr. Molly Maloof

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 15:20:41 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, Jessa Zimmerman interviews Dr. Molly Maloof, a physician who explores the significant impact of relationships on health and longevity. Dr. Maloof delves into the connection between human relationships and overall well-being, highlighting the innovative Adamo method she developed to enhance passion, connection, and sexual satisfaction among couples. The discussion covers various topics, from the basics of energy metabolism to the science of love, trauma-informed sex therapy, and the promising future of AI in medicine. The episode offers listeners valuable insights into how healthy relationships and sexual health contribute to living a longer, happier life.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:48 Interview with Dr. Molly Maloof

02:27 The Importance of Relationships for Longevity

03:34 Energy Metabolism and Human Connection

05:49 Adamo: Enhancing Sexual Relationships

08:04 Sexual Satisfaction and Overcoming Dysfunction

18:11 The Adamo Method Explained

26:12 Trauma-Informed Sexual Healing

30:24 Future Trends in Sexual Health

32:01 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to take the quiz - How big a problem is my sex life? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio

Dr. Molly is a pioneering force in healthspan extension and longevity medicine. Her expertise spans personalized medicine, digital health technologies, biofeedback-assisted lifestyle interventions, and scientifically-based wellness products and services. Her groundbreaking book, "The Spark Factor," is the first biohacking book for women.

As the founder and CEO of Adamo Bioscience, Molly is also at the forefront of bringing modern sex education to couples with a groundbreaking intimacy program developed through a study of the science of love. The Adamo Method is a program designed for couples looking to optimize and improve their sexual and relational function. Designed with top experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, and somatic sexuality, the program is a comprehensive and enjoyable intimacy education for modern adults. In 2024, Adamo ran an IRB-approved study on love, intimacy and sexual function in long-term relationships and observed the efficacy of The Adamo Method. Preliminary results showed significant statistical improvement in sexual satisfaction, wellbeing and communication and improvements in love, intimacy and passion. Results will be published in late 2024.

Follow Dr. Molly on Instagram:

@Drmolly.co

@LivingAdamo

my coupon code: JESSA10

www.livingadamo.com

www.drmolly.co

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

250: Fascia for Better Sex with Anna Rahe

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 13:55:22 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman engages in a detailed discussion with Anna Rahe about fascia, a system of connective tissues in the body. They explore how fascia impacts sexual health, pain, pleasure, flexibility, and overall bodily function. Rae shares insights from her personal journey of overcoming severe health issues through understanding and working with her fascia. Listeners learn about the relationship between fascia and various body systems, the importance of movement and hydration for fascia health, and practical strategies to improve fascia function. The episode also includes a demonstration of exercises beneficial for pelvic floor health and enhancing sexual pleasure.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Understanding Fascia with Anna Rahe

01:38 Anna Rahe's Personal Journey with Fascia

04:55 What is Fascia?

07:51 The Importance of Fascia in Overall Health

09:49 Maintaining Healthy Fascia

16:02 Fascia and Movement Practices

20:47 Fascia's Role in Sexual Health

23:28 The Pelvic Floor and Diaphragm Connection

24:45 Understanding Pain and Fascia

25:42 The Insula and Fascia's Role in Sensory Processing

27:24 Fascia's Impact on Sexual Health

34:50 Practical Exercises for Fascia Health

39:07 Integrating Fascia Health into Daily Life

41:14 Resources and Closing Remarks

Interested in resources on desire discrepancy? https://www.desirediscrepancy.com

Bio:

For the past 25+ years, Anna Rahe has delved deep into a liberating and empowering relationship with fascia so that as many people as possible can invest in their health, restore their vitality, and heal themselves with the proprietary tools she has created. As the founder, CEO and educator of GST Body, Anna has spoken about holistic body care through fascia around the world, partnered with top athletes, surgeons, physicians and celebrities, and been featured in various publications, from Shape to Elle, Net-a-Porter to The Wall Street Journal.

Link for exercise demo video

https://gstvitalifestudio.com/checkout/new?o=194964

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

249: Healing from Sex-Negative Religion with Beverly Dale

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 12:50:30 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman talks with Reverend Beverly Dale, who discusses her journey in helping people heal from sex-negative teachings in religion. They explore how sexuality and spirituality intersect, the sexual wounds caused by rigid religious structures, and the path towards embracing one's authentic sexual self.

00:00 Introduction

00:45 Guest Introduction and Topic Overview

02:24 Reverend Beverly Dale's Background

02:49 The Church's Role in Sexual Shame

03:17 Understanding Sexual Wounding

03:24 Intersection of Faith and Healing

03:43 Analyzing Structural Issues

10:25 Sexual Wounds in Society

11:47 Strategies for Healing

23:02 Reverend Dale's Book and Resources

29:45 Finding Support and Community

30:26 Conclusion and Contact Information

Would you like to share your personal story of sexual healing or empowerment on the show? Email me at info@intimacywithease.com

Rev. Dr. Beverly Dale has made a career of teaching a pleasure-centered, justice-focused and sex-positive Christianity as an ecumenical campus minister at the University of Pennsylvania and by writing, producing, and performing in a one-woman show titled, An Irreverent Journey from Eggbeaters to Vibrators. In 2013 she founded the Incarnation Institute for Sex & Faith that provides training for clergy and sexual health professionals on how to help people rethink harmful religious teaching that creates intimacy issues for couples and problems for individuals self-esteem. Believing in an inclusive, science-friendly, and sex-positive Christianity she developed the curriculum for this cutting edge and unique educational opportunity as well as co-wrote the text in her first book, Advancing Sexual Health for the Christian Client, Data and Dogma (2019). In addition, she has taught seminarians sexuality and faith classes at Lancaster Theological Seminary and is now touring for her second book, “Who Told You That You Were Naked? Meditations on the Sexual Body.” She has a passion for those in the pews and those who have left them because of the rigid or judgmental views about the body that, from her view, is too-often proclaimed in the church and is totally contrary to the Christian faith.

www.beverlydale.org

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

248: Using ART to heal sexual trauma with Brooke Bralove

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 14:12:10 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

247: How Stress Blocks Desire with Danielle Savory

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:29:08 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman engages with mindfulness and pleasure coach Danielle Savory to explore the intertwined roles of mindfulness, self-compassion, and stress management in enhancing sexual desire and intimacy. The discussion delves into the physiological and psychological impacts of stress on sexual connection, emphasizing the different ways men and women handle stress and the resulting challenges. Practical techniques to improve mindfulness and awareness during sexual interactions are provided, alongside strategies for managing stress individually and within relationships. The episode also outlines personal experiences and transformations, underscoring the importance of self-regulation, creating personal safety, and fostering deeper connections using self-compassionate practices.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex

00:50 Introducing Danielle Savory: Mindfulness and Pleasure Coach

01:36 Danielle's Journey to Mindfulness and Pleasure

06:07 The Connection Between Mindfulness and Sexual Pleasure

09:03 Understanding Stress and Its Impact on Pleasure

14:35 Gender Differences in Handling Stress and Sexual Pleasure

17:25 Navigating Relationship Dynamics

17:45 Creating Personal Safety

18:34 Bridging the Gap with Partners

19:53 Managing Stress and Self-Regulation

21:08 Practical Stress-Relief Techniques

25:00 Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

30:05 Resources and Final Thoughts

Take the quiz at https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio

Danielle Savory is a master-certified coach, public speaker, and passionate advocate for women’s pleasure, bringing science-backed data into the life-altering power of pleasure. With a deep, personal understanding of the challenges women face, Danielle is devoted to helping them reclaim their sexuality and reconnect with their bodies. She has successfully guided hundreds of women to overcome body shame, break free from societal expectations, and embrace the passionate lives they deserve. Danielle believes that pleasure isn’t a luxury—it’s essential to a woman’s overall health and happiness.

Rooted in neurology, Danielle’s approach emphasizes that every woman is inherently wired for pleasure, and tapping into that pleasure is crucial for optimal well-being—enhancing immunity, focus, creativity, and vitality. Having overcome her own struggles with body image, mixed messages about sex and past traumas, she now shares her wisdom and experience with others, helping them step into their power and fully embrace their pleasure. Whether through her coaching, speaking engagements, podcast, or courses, Danielle is on a mission to help women live lives they are truly in love with—where they are deeply satisfied, fully alive, and boldly standing up for what they believe.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

246: Elevating Sexual Pleasure with Aaron Michael

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:18:26 GMT

In this enlightening episode of Better Sex, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman converses with sex and relationship coach Aaron Michael. The discussion unpacks Aaron's journey into sexual health, beginning with his experiences in massage therapy and addressing his personal challenges. Key topics include 'suction sex,' 'embodied consent,' and 'embodied love,' offering a fresh approach to sexual pleasure, intimacy, and mutual satisfaction. Practical insights about overcoming numbness, understanding psychological and physical barriers, and the role of self-pleasuring in building confidence are explored. Additionally, the episode highlights the disparity within the sexual wellness industry, advocating for better education and higher standards for practitioners. Aaron also introduces 'Embodied Love University,' a platform designed to elevate sexual education and integrate wellness practices into broader medical and educational frameworks.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

00:48 Meet Aaron Michael: A Journey into Sex and Relationship Coaching

03:39 Understanding Suction Sex: A New Approach to Shared Pleasure

07:59 Embodied Consent: Tuning into Your Body's Yes, No, and Maybe

09:46 Embodied Love: Building Intimacy Through Truth, Trust, and Celebration

11:19 Overcoming Numbness and Secondary Pleasure in Sexual Relationships

15:54 Awakening the Sensual Woman: A Six-Week Program

17:04 Masterclass Break: Making Sex Fun and Easy

17:49 Understanding the Pleasure System

19:37 Challenges for the Giver

21:47 Alleviating Performance Anxiety

24:58 Exploring Fantasies and Communication

28:09 The Future of Sexual Wellness

32:26 Introducing Embodied Love University

33:37 Programs and Resources

37:38 Conclusion and Contact Information

Interested in my webinars that talk about desire discrepancy? You can sign up at https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Bio

Aaron Michael, author of Optimal Sex life, creator of Bedroom Masterclass, and a Relationship, Intimacy and Sex Coach. He is your Coach’s coach and has dedicated himself to helping others discover, explore and integrate their sexual sovereignty by providing a no bs, adult, sex positive sex education.

With over +5000 hours of sexological body work, his work has influenced over 100,000 people, two venture funded startups, and he is the founder of Embodied Love™, Embodied Consent™ and Suction Sex™—a new method for the embodiment of penetrative sex.

He has created multiple online courses, from “9 Naughty Nights” to “YEAHFAP” to “Awakening The Sensual Woman”, which support individuals to be able to give and receive ecstatic pleasure as well as enhance their mental and physical arousal. Aaron is sought out for his innovative approach to resolving issues such as genital pain, anaorgasmia, premature ejaculation, penetration anxiety, mis-matched arousal, and mental arousal. His method is at the core of the Kama sex app practices and tools, as well as the Adamo Bioscience medical protocol for transforming sexual dysfunction.

He has an Elite MA in Cognitive Semiotics and an BA with Honors in Linguistics where he specialized in adult romantic attachment, courtship and how the brain interprets love. With over 20 years of experience as an embodiment coach in the field of dating, relationship and sex he crafts bespoke embodiment programs for you and your loved ones.

He and Dr. Saida are concentrating all of this work and expertise by co-founding the comprehensive, sexual wellness, learning platform at embodiedloveuniversity.com, which is a university like education and community, for sexual fluency and free education for all.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

245: Reverse Your Menopause Symptoms with Dr. Irwin Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 13:50:39 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Dr. Irwin Goldstein (Dr, G(, a pioneer in sexual medicine, to discuss the intricacies of menopause and women's sexual health. The conversation delves into the hormonal changes during menopause, common misconceptions, and the benefits of seeking treatment even though menopause is a natural phase. Dr. G emphasizes the importance of understanding the Genital Urinary Syndrome of Menopause (GSM) and its symptoms, and discusses various reversible treatment options including bioidentical hormones. The episode highlights the significant impact of monitored hormone management on improving women's health and the importance of educating women and medical professionals about the changes menopause brings. Jessa and Dr. G also touch on the societal tendency to overlook women's sexual health and the necessity for more comprehensive research and treatment guidelines. They conclude by discussing how women can find the right care in their areas through organizations like ISSWSH, and Jessa urges listeners to subscribe and rate the podcast for more insights.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

00:45 Introduction to Dr. G and the Importance of Sexual Medicine

01:07 Understanding Menopause: Symptoms and Misconceptions

01:50 Dr. G's Personal Story and Approach to Menopause

04:20 Hormonal Changes and Their Impact on Women's Health

07:19 The Importance of Testosterone in Women

08:53 Challenges in Treating Menopause: FDA and Gender Bias

09:42 Natural vs. Treatable: The Debate on Menopause

12:04 Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause (GSM)

16:31 The Role of ISSWSH and Urology in Women's Sexual Health

20:39 Treatment Options for Menopause

23:50 Monitoring and Administering Hormone Treatments

35:37 Finding the Right Provider and Conclusion

37:03 Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement

Work with Jessa? Learn more at https://www.intimacywithease.com

Bio:

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

244: The Art of Listening with Christine Miles

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 15:36:05 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Christine Miles, an expert in the skill of listening, to discuss its significance in intimate relationships and beyond. The conversation delves into the importance of actively cultivating listening skills rather than relying on innate ability. Christine shares her own background and how understanding her mother's underlying pain led her to become an empathetic listener. The episode explores common pitfalls and barriers to effective listening, such as digital distractions and emotional defenses, and offers strategies to overcome them. Christine elaborates on a structured approach to listening, presenting six foundational tools that help engage with the speaker's story comprehensively. She emphasizes the power of understanding in fostering connection and resolving conflicts. The discussion also touches on the importance of empathy and how it naturally follows structured listening. Christine is launching a classroom program aimed at teaching children listening skills, highlighting the broader applicability of these techniques. The episode aims to encourage listeners to integrate these principles into daily interactions to strengthen their relationships.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

00:47 The Importance of Listening in Relationships

01:30 Christine Miles' Journey to Becoming a Listening Expert

04:11 The Impact of Listening on Relationships

05:33 Common Pitfalls in Listening

11:04 The Role of Empathy and Curiosity in Listening

17:01 Barriers to Effective Listening

20:03 Tools and Strategies for Better Listening

20:17 Mastering the Listening Path

20:34 The Four Stops of a Story

22:31 Facts and Feelings in Storytelling

23:38 The Six Most Powerful Questions

25:53 Reflecting and Summarizing

28:06 The Water Filter Technique

30:18 Listening as a Skill

33:03 Integrating Listening Skills in Daily Life

34:29 Resources and Final Thoughts

Interested in the private podcasts?

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

Bio:

CHRISTINE MILES is the founder and CEO of EQuipt, an award-winning author, professional keynote speaker, consultant, executive coach, thought leader, entrepreneur, and world-renowned expert in the field of listening differently. With a background in psychology, Christine has spent 25+ years working with individuals and organizations to unlock the power of emotional intelligence to drive business and personal results, solve complex problems, and build enduring relationships.

Christine believes listening, not speaking, is the most powerful form of communication. Dealing with her mother’s pain and adversity, from a very young age, Christine learned to listen differently. Her ability to listen is what has always set her apart. In contrast, throughout her career, Christine recognized the inability to listen as a common thread in the failure of relationships, leaders, salespeople, projects, and businesses. She also recognized, while we’re taught the importance of listening, we are rarely taught how. She founded EQuipt to change this. To create a Listening Movement, revolutionizing the communication paradigm, where listening to understand, not speaking, is recognized as the most important and powerful form of communication. Christine is passionate about creating a reality where educators, business leaders, and corporations invest time and resources – in listening – to cultivate a future with more unity, and less division, more curiosity and collaboration, and make room for more innovation and humanity.

To scale EQuipt’s Listening Movement, Christine published the award-winning book, What Is It Costing You Not to Listen?: The Power of Understanding to Connect, Influence, Solve & Sell (2021). Based on the principles outlined in her book, she created the Listening Path®, a game-changing approach to teaching people how to listen differently, to transform their personal and professional lives.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

243: Talking to Your Kids About Sex with Melissa Kilbride

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 15:15:28 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman speaks with Melissa Kilbride about the importance of open and honest conversations with children regarding sex, sexuality, and pornography. Melissa shares her background in social work and emphasizes the necessity of early and age-appropriate sex education to prevent sexual abuse, promote sexual health, and reduce shame. They discuss the impacts of societal and parental silence on sexual topics, providing practical advice for discussing these topics with children from a young age. The episode also touches on the challenges and considerations for parents monitoring their children's online activity and introduces Melissa's resources and workshops designed to support parents in fostering healthy, informed views on sexuality in their kids.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Guest Introduction: Melissa Kilbride

00:58 The Importance of Talking to Kids About Sex

01:36 Melissa's Background and Passion

04:02 Challenges and Strategies for Parents

04:57 Breaking Down the Conversation by Age

11:29 The Role of Pleasure and Consent

22:31 Discussing Pornography with Kids

27:51 Parental Controls and Monitoring

30:54 Conclusion and Resources

Want to take the quiz? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Melissa Kilbride is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist. She is the owner of a group therapy practice in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC and has 20 years of experience in direct client contact. Melissa is an advocate for early sexual health education and, as both a clinician and a mother, believes passionately in the necessity of teaching young children about their bodies and sex as an issue of safety and a path to later healthy relationships. Melissa offers workshops and consultations to parents in support of these ideals to help them feel more “askable” and help them navigate sex talks and related challenges that may come up along the way. Melissa is also the co-author of Working with Worry: A workbook for parents on how to support anxious children.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

242: Overcoming religious sexual shame with Natasha Helfer

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 15:06:26 GMT

Addressing Religious Sexual Shame with Jessa Zimmerman and Natasha Helfer

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman chats with sex therapist Natasha Helfer about religious sexual shame. They discuss its origins, the impact it has on individuals, and ways to overcome it. Natasha shares insights from her personal background, professional experiences, and offers practical advice through the 'pep talk' approach (Permission, Education, Practice, Talk). The episode also explores various religious teachings and their effects on sexual behavior and health, delivering valuable information for those trying to reconcile their sexual and religious identities.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Guest Introduction: Natasha Helfer

01:19 Understanding Religious Sexual Shame

03:02 Purity Culture and Its Impact

05:51 Sexual Shame and Its Consequences

08:53 Navigating Sexual Shame in Relationships

10:44 Recognizing and Addressing Sexual Shame

13:25 Therapeutic Approaches to Sexual Shame

16:32 Managing Sexual Shame Within Religious Contexts

22:17 Practical Steps to Overcome Sexual Shame

30:24 Resources and Support for Sexual Shame

37:25 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to be a guest on the show to share your personal story? Don't worry, it can be anonymous! Reach out at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Natasha Helfer is an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist/Supervisor and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with almost 25 years of experience (licensed in UT, KS & WI). Her expertise lies in the intersection of conservative religious upbringings and sexuality, specifically in the area of deconstructing internalized sexual shame. She runs a group practice, Symmetry Counseling, where services focus on helping people with religious trauma, reclaiming sexual desire, mixed-faith relationships, coming out journeys, healing sexual shame or trauma, and exploring sexual authenticity. Natasha is the author of two books: Check Your Baggage: Unpack the Messages Getting in the Way of Your Sex Life and One Family, Two Views: How to Fortify Your Mixed-Faith Mormon Marriage. She’s the Director of the Program in Religion and Mental Health Treatment at the Buehler Institute at the Buehler Institute (learnsextherapy.com) where she provides a 12-hour APA approved competency certificate called: Sex, Love & Conservative Faith. Natasha was excommunicated from the Mormon church in 2021, for her advocacy in regards to sexual health. You can find her at natashahelfer.com and @natashahelfermft where she podcasts, runs a membership and offers you all kinds of helpful resources.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

241: Sex and Our Stress Response with Rachel Posner

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:51:54 GMT

Understanding Stress Responses and Mindfulness in Intimate Relationships

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Rachel Posner, who discusses the importance of understanding and managing stress responses in intimate relationships. Rachel explains the body's stress mechanisms like fight, flight, or freeze responses, and how these can affect our connections and sexual encounters. She emphasizes the significance of mindfulness and practical techniques like breath awareness to regulate the nervous system, aiming for greater safety, connection, and pleasure in relationships. Various strategies and the benefits of mindfulness are explored to help listeners lower their stress levels for improved intimacy.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:53 Interview with Rachel Posner: Understanding Stress Responses

01:59 Exploring the Nervous System and Stress Triggers

12:29 Impact of Stress on Relationships and Sexual Experiences

16:52 Mindfulness Practices for Reducing Stress

20:51 Practical Tips for Mindfulness and Relaxation

28:10 Conclusion and Resources

Special Collections of the Better Sex Podcast: https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

https://www.rachelposner.com/take-5-practice

Bio

Rachel Posner, C-IAYT, E-RYT, is a yoga therapist and mindfulness coach helping people reduce stress, build resilience and thrive. She offers individual yoga therapy sessions, mindfulness courses, yoga memberships and retreats. Her work is informed by the intersection of mindfulness, neuroscience and psychology and her teachings integrate best practices for the mind, body and brain. Rachel has been in the wellness field for 24 years and is driven by a deep desire to help people feel calm, connected and engaged in their lives. You can learn more at www.rachelposner.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

240: Making and Keeping Agreements with Martha Kauppi

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 15:40:05 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes back guest Martha Kauppi for a vibrant discussion on the art of making and keeping agreements in relationships. They explore the importance of having explicit conversations to establish trust and understanding between partners. Topics include identifying when and what types of agreements should be made, the significance of revisiting and renegotiating agreements, and developing the skills needed to navigate these discussions constructively. The episode also delves into distinctive challenges faced by both monogamous and polyamorous couples, providing insights into maintaining integrity and trust. Listeners are guided on how to uphold agreements effectively and the potential pitfalls of inadequate or overly detailed agreements.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:51 The Importance of Agreements in Relationships

03:29 Common Areas Requiring Agreements

07:20 Revisiting and Keeping Agreements

11:15 The Skills for Making Good Agreements

22:31 Trust Building Through Transparent Agreements

24:10 Mid-Episode Break: Resources for Desire Discrepancy

25:04 Revisiting Agreements: The Importance of Flexibility

25:13 Experimentation in Agreement Making

26:27 The Collaborative Nature of Agreements

26:54 Understanding Your Partner's Needs

28:32 Building Trust Through Hard Conversations

30:14 Monogamous vs. Polyamorous Agreements

33:17 Avoiding Pitfalls in Agreement Making

39:17 The Consequences of Breaking Agreements

40:50 When Agreements Become Deal Breakers

48:35 Resources for Better Relationships

Want access to the secret podcasts regarding desire discrepancy?

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

Bio:

Martha Kauppi is a marriage and family therapist, educator, author, speaker, and AASECT-certified sex therapist and supervisor. She has a lifelong career in health and sexuality, and is a senior trainer of the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy. Martha trains therapists all over the world to work more effectively with relational intimacy challenges and sex issues. She is the author of Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients).

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

239: Peyronie's Disease with Dr. Irwin Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 14:03:04 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman discusses Peyronie's disease with Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a pioneer in sexual medicine. They explore the causes, diagnosis, and treatment options of the disease, and offer insights into both men's and women's perspectives on the condition.

00:00 Introduction

01:29 Guest Introduction

01:52 Understanding Peyronie's Disease

03:11 Causes and Risk Factors

11:09 Symptoms and Diagnosis

17:37 Treatment Options

34:33 Patient Perspectives

36:30 Conclusion

Looking to work with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

238: Spicing up your sex life with Dan Purcell

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:53:19 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, Jessa Zimmerman is joined by Dan Purcell, creator of the app Intimately Us, to discuss how to truly spice up your sex life through intimacy and personal growth. Dan shares his personal journey and insights about overcoming sexual ruts, improving communication, and embracing eroticism in marriage. Together, they offer practical advice and tips for couples looking to reignite their connection.

00:00 Introduction

01:35 Meeting Dan Purcell

01:49 Dan's Personal Story

03:04 The Catalyst for Change

07:09 Starting the Journey Together

10:48 The Role of Novelty and Growth

14:09 Common Advice and Why It Fails

19:22 Effective Communication

25:17 Exploring Eroticism

34:28 Overcoming Differences in Desire

41:26 Dan's Resources and Final Thoughts

Want to take the quiz? https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Dan's Bio:

Dan and his wife Emily Purcell are the founders of Get Your Marriage On! They are on a mission to help millions of couples overcome obstacles to significantly improve sex and intimacy in their marriages by making lovemaking incredibly fun and deeply connecting.

Dan is a sex and intimacy coach. They are also the creators of the popular Intimately Us and Just Between Us apps that have been downloaded over 750,000 times. They are the host of the popular Get Your Marriage On! podcast with over 1.2 million listens. They have directly helped thousands of couples enjoy a great sex life and deeper intimacy through their coaching programs, romantic couples retreats, and workshops.

Dan and Emily met in middle school and have been married for over 20 years and have 6 kids. Dan loves cracking dad jokes, running marathons, planning the next creative date night with his sweetheart, and enjoys the magnificent outdoors around their St George home.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

237: Understanding your relationship with Alex Iantaffi

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:46:21 GMT

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

236: The Transformative Handjob with Lee Jagger

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 14:22:05 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman interviews Lee Jagger, a sex coach specializing in helping women with male partners. Lee shares her journey from an unexpected start in erotic massage to becoming an expert with over 2000 clients and developing 69+ techniques for pleasuring men. They discuss the importance of communication, confidence, and overcoming discomfort in the bedroom. Lee emphasizes how women can enhance their intimate relationships by initiating and mastering various techniques while fostering stronger connections with their partners. The episode also covers practical advice for overcoming aversion to genital touch, techniques for men with erectile issues, and how mutual improvement in sexual skills can benefit both partners.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Meet Lee Jagger: From Homelessness to Sex Coaching

01:37 Lee's Journey into Erotic Massage

04:36 Transforming Personal and Professional Life

07:02 Empowerment Through Erotic Massage

08:17 Impact on Personal Relationships

12:55 Encouraging Women to Take the Lead

20:17 Overcoming Discomfort with Genital Touch

21:43 Non-Genital Touching Techniques

22:42 Introducing Intimacy Through Kindness

23:43 Understanding Male Anatomy

29:46 Communication and Consent in the Bedroom

37:50 Resources and Final Thoughts

Want to share your personal story on the podcast? It can be done anonymously. Send us an email at info@intimacywithease.com

Get the free training at https://www.rockthebedroom.com

And/or get 10% off your first month of the Spice It Up membership: Go to https://www.rockthebedroom.com/membership and use JESSA10 at checkout.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

235: Porn Literacy with Diane Gleim

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 12:47:46 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex podcast, host and sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman is joined by expert Diane Gleim to discuss the concept of porn literacy. Diane explains the importance of understanding porn as a form of entertainment and not education, recognizing its business nature, and being aware of the sophisticated filmmaking techniques used. The conversation delves into the moral incongruence many viewers feel, the unrealistic expectations set by mainstream porn, and how these can impact real-life intimate relationships. Diane also shares information about her online course designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of porn literacy.

Interested in the special collections of Better Sex Podcast episodes? Visit https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

00:00 Introduction

01:20 What is Porn Literacy?

04:10 Defining Porn Literacy

08:12 Ambiguities in Porn

16:35 Viewership Statistics

23:07 Suspension of Disbelief

33:11 Dealing with Erotic Conflict

35:27 Conclusion and Contact Information

Diane Gleim is an award-winning Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and AASECT Certified SexTherapist and Supervisor practicing in person and via telehealth in California. She treats the many diverse issues related to sexual identity, sexual expression, sexual behavior, and sexual relationships. Her clients include everyone with a sexual concern: individuals and couples ages 18-85, and the LGBTQ+, kinky, and poly populations.

her website: http://www.dianegleim.com/

porn literacy 101 online course: https://courses.dianegleim.com/

that PT blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/underneath-the-sheets/202201/the-wife-upset-about-her-husband-s-porn-viewing

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

234: Overcoming Sexual Inhibitions with Martha Tara Lee

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:31:34 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman chats with certified sexuality educator Martha Tara Lee about overcoming sexual inhibitions, particularly in Asian cultures. They discuss the impact of cultural, religious, and educational backgrounds on sexual expression and provide practical advice to help individuals and couples enhance their sexual knowledge and intimacy.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Guest Introduction: Martha Tara Lee

01:24 Understanding Sexual Inhibitions

02:08 Cultural Influences on Sexuality

03:17 Challenges and Misconceptions

05:11 Therapeutic Approaches and Techniques

11:59 Client Experiences and Success Stories

12:25 Break: How to Get Help

12:55 Expanding Sexual Awareness

14:49 Communication and Comfort in Intimacy

23:46 Final Thoughts and Client Feedback

25:10 Conclusion and Contact Information

Interested in working with Jessa? Visit https://www.intimacywithease.com to learn more.

Bio:

Dr. Martha Tara Lee of Eros Coaching is a highly sought-after and respected sex expert in Singapore, holding a Doctorate in Human Sexuality and a Masters in Counseling. Her expertise and experience have made her a frequent media presence, as she works tirelessly to help individuals and couples achieve self-actualization and pleasure in their lives. Dr Lee has the distinction of being the only certified sexuality educator and sexuality educator supervisor by AASECT in Asia. She was recognized as one of ‘Top 50 Inspiring Women under 40’ by Her World in July 2010, and one of ‘Top 100 Inspiring Women’ by CozyCot in March 2011. She has authored four books on personal growth and sexual empowerment. In addition, Dr. Lee has been appointed as the Resident Sexologist for organizations such as Singapore Cancer Society, Of Noah.sg, OfZoey.sg, and Virtus Fertility Centre.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

233: Talking to Your Doctor About Sex with Dr. Maureen Ryan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:03:38 GMT

In this episode of BetterSex, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews nurse practitioner and sexual health expert, Maureen Ryan. Topics include the importance of discussing sexual health with medical providers, tips for patients to advocate for their sexual health, and the common issues like erectile dysfunction, low desire, sexual performance anxiety, and painful sex. Maureen shares her journey into the field, emphasizing the need for healthcare providers to ask the right questions and provide a safe, non-judgmental environment for patients to discuss intimate concerns. She also highlights the necessity of ongoing education and skills for medical professionals to improve patient care.

00:00 Introduction to BetterSex Podcast

00:46 Meet Maureen Ryan: Passionate About Sexual Health

01:29 Maureen's Journey into Sexual Health

04:43 Challenges in Addressing Sexual Health

06:18 Importance of Healthcare Providers in Sexual Health

09:49 How to Advocate for Your Sexual Health

14:13 Overcoming Dismissive Healthcare Responses

16:32 Educating Healthcare Providers on Sexual Health

22:33 Conclusion and Contact Information

To view and subscribe to any of our podcast special collections, visit this link: https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/collections

As a nurse practitioner and sexuality counselor, I believe that love and intimacy are essential to human happiness. Through confidential virtual sessions, I support individuals and couples in overcoming barriers to sexual satisfaction, allowing for deeper connections and enhanced love and affection.

I hold a Doctorate in Nursing Practice and am dual licensed as an Adult Health Nurse Practitioner (AHNP) and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner (WHNP). Additionally, I am an AASECT Certified Sexuality Counselor (CSC) and am a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC).

As an approved Continuing Education Provider (CEP), I hold accreditation from both the California Board of Registered Nursing and the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).

Acknowledging the profound influence that addressing sexual health concerns can have on people’s lives, I am deeply passionate about educating healthcare providers on matters of sexual health, emphasizing its significance in enhancing the overall quality of life.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

232: Repair after Relationship Rupture with Dr. Chelsea Burton

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 15:34:35 GMT

In this episode of BetterSex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes therapist and sex expert Chelsea Burton to discuss the concept of relationship ruptures and how to repair them. The conversation covers both major ruptures like infidelity and smaller, everyday breaches of trust. Chelsea explains the importance of acknowledging and repairing these ruptures to maintain and improve intimate relationships. The episode delves into attachment theory, the role of empathy, and strategies for reconnecting emotionally and physically with your partner, even after significant betrayals. Practical advice for couples on maintaining connection and rebuilding trust is shared throughout the discussion.

00:00 Introduction to BetterSex

00:52 Understanding Relationship Ruptures

01:34 Defining Ruptures and Repairs

03:17 The Importance of Repairing Small Ruptures

05:14 Effective Repair Strategies

14:58 Impact of Ruptures on Sexual Intimacy

19:57 Repairing Big Ruptures: Infidelity and Betrayal

26:47 Conclusion and Contact Information

To register for the webinar, use this link: https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Chelsea Burton's bio:

I am a licensed psychologist providing adult psychotherapy, couples therapy, sex therapy and family therapy. I approach therapy from a relational perspective, and enjoy working collaboratively with clients and their strengths to create change. I am particularly interested in working with clients around family of origin issues, relationship issues, trauma, sexual relationships and sexuality. I work with couples on communication, strengthening relational dynamics and sexual or intimacy concerns. I also work as an AASECT certified sex therapist and am open to working using an open and mindful approach whether you come as a couple or as an individual. I also work with people experiencing depression, stress, anxiety or grief.

I earned my Doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from William James College in Newton, MA after first earning a Masters of Arts in Counseling Psychology from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. I completed my APA-accredited internship training at Y.O.U. Inc. where I provided individual and family therapy as well as psychological testing and assessment. I also completed an APA-accredited post-doctoral fellowship at Tufts University’s Counseling and Mental Health Services. I have clinical experience in a number of other settings, which include: eating disorder treatment, community mental health centers, an acute-care inpatient residential center for children and a group psychotherapy practice for adults.

www.drchelsealevy.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

231: Am I normal and other FAQ with Michael Castleman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 13:34:48 GMT

Am I Normal? Exploring Common Sexual Concerns with Michael Castleman

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes back Michael Castleman to discuss the most frequently asked questions about sex that he has received over the past decade. They delve into the pervasive 'Am I normal?' question, addressing the cultural confusion surrounding sexuality, the impact of upbringing on sexual attitudes, and the normalization of diverse sexual practices. The conversation also touches on the influence of pornography, social media's effects on intimacy, and the progress in societal acceptance of various sexual behaviors. Castleman shares insights from his extensive experience as a sex columnist and educator, emphasizing that most sexual behaviors are normal unless they involve criminal activity.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:47 Guest Introduction: Michael Kasselman

01:35 Am I Normal? Common Sex Questions

02:23 Solo Sex and Cultural Stigmas

09:01 BDSM and Fifty Shades of Grey

16:31 The Impact of Pornography

20:19 Teens and Pornography

28:31 Social Media and Sexual Health

33:42 Conclusion and Resources

Take the quiz: https://www.sexlifequiz.com

Bio:

Michael Castleman is the world's most popular sexuality writer. His twice-monthly blog on PsychologyToday.com, "All About Sex," launched in 2009, has amassed more than 59 million views. The free Question & Answer site he has published since 2010, GreatSexGuidance.com, has attracted 2 million more. January 2021 saw the publication of his book, Sizzling Sex for Life, a cradle-to-grave sexuality guide. His two previous sexualitacy guides—Sexual Solutions (1980) and Great Sex (2004)—have sold more than 600,000 copies. He also writes a free, weekly sex-related blog on Substack.

He has answered more than 12,000 sex questions from people around the world of all ages and sexual inclinations. In addition to his Question & Answer site, he spent 10 years (1997-2007) answering sex questions from customers of Xandria, then a major sex toy marketer, and five years (1991-1995) answering the sex questions submitted to Playboy's "Advisor" column. He has also answered questions for WebMD and several other websites, magazines, and call-in radio shows.

In 1978, he earned a Masters degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley. From 1979-2007, he wrote more than 1,500 health articles for newspapers, magazines, and Web sites about all of the above, including the New York Times, WebMD, Salon.com, PlanetRx.com, AARP, Reader's Digest, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Self, Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, Prevention, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Men's Journal, Natural Health, Mother Jones, and The Nation. Library Journal called him "one of the nation's leading health writers."

In 2007, he retired from health journalism but has continued to write about sexuality. Why? "The thank-you notes. Readers appreciated my health writing, but I've gotten many more thank-you notes from answering sex questions and providing sexuality information and counseling."

Castleman grew up in a Long Island suburb of New York City. He earned a BA in English from the University of Michigan and graduated Phi Beta Kappa (1972). He lives in San Francisco.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

230: Sexual Behavior Analysis with Nicholas Maio-Aether

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 14:57:55 GMT

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host Jessa Zimmerman interviews Nicholas Maio-Aether, a pioneer in sexual behavior analysis. They dive into the behavioral approach to changing sexual behaviors, emphasizing consensual goal-setting and positive reinforcement. Nicholas explains the methodologies used in behavior analysis, the importance of reducing punishment, and how this field can be beneficial both for individuals with disabilities and neurotypical clients. They also discuss the differences between traditional sex therapy and sexual behavior analysis, as well as the populations best suited for each. Nicholas shares insights into his practice, his training program for professionals, and his personal motivations for working in this field.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex Podcast

00:50 Exploring Sexual Behavior Analysis

01:41 Defining Behavior Analysis

02:56 Challenges and Misconceptions in Behavior Analysis

03:49 Behavior Analysis in Sexual Relationships

08:26 Behavior Analysis in Disability Support

16:08 Behavior Analysis for Neurotypical Clients

31:11 Training and Finding a Sexual Behavior Analyst

35:04 Conclusion and Contact Information

Want to take Jessa's quiz - How big a problem is your sex life? Find it at https://www.sexlifequiz.com

BIO:

Nicholas owns Empowered: A Center for Sexuality in St Louis, where he and his occasional teams of partnered Universities' students work to assist humans with and without disabilities to achieve sexual access, sexual freedom, gender affirmation, and self-control of compulsive behaviors. Nicholas works throughout the US training BCBAs/Behavior Analysts so persons in Individualized Supportive Living (ISL) programs gain access to applicable and generalizable comprehensive sex ed and sexual opportunities. Nicholas provides Sexual Behavior Analysis, and has assisted polycules, kinksters, gay couples, trans and nonbinary humans, among others, on their journeys. Trained by GLSEN in 2003, Nicholas started Gay-Straight Alliances across Alaska while in high school, and provided them sex ed materials and trainings. Nicholas spent five years managing Hustler Hollywood in St Louis before moving into Behavior Analysis, and joined AASECT, where he currently sits on two committees. He then completed a Sex Therapy practicum under Linda Weiner, LMSW, CSTS, in 2019 before getting a second Masters in Marriage & Family Therapy, and meeting those hour requirements under Angela Skurtu, LMFT, CST, along with his LGBTQIA+ Family Systems Specialist certificate in 2021. He also ABD for a PhD in Clinical Sexology.

IG handle: @empoweredcenterstl

www.empoweredcenter.com

www.facebook.com/empoweredcenterstl

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

229: Overcoming Purity Culture with Esther Hooley

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:30:48 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman talks with Esther Hooley to address the impacts of purity culture on individuals and their sexuality. They explore how purity culture influences sexual scripts, the resulting shame, and how one can begin to heal and embrace their true sexuality. Esther discusses her book, 'Embracing Erotic Wholeness,' and how curiosity and reframing spirituality can assist in overcoming the detrimental effects of purity culture.

00:00 Introduction

00:45 Guest Introduction and Topic Overview

01:15 Esther's Background

03:09 Defining Purity Culture

02:28 Impacts of Purity Culture

10:15 Shame and Sexuality

08:25 Disconnect and Reconnection

19:47 Reframing Sexual and Spiritual Beliefs

24:36 Closing Remarks

Want to share your personal story on our podcast? This can be done anonymously! Just email us at info@intimacywithease.com

Bio:

Dr. Hooley has been a clinician for over a decade and is currently a licensed psychologist in Waco, Texas. She specializes in sex therapy, trauma recovery, eating concerns, and spirituality concerns. She is currently in private practice working with people across the U.S. seeking healing. She recently published her first book entitled "Embracing Erotic Wholeness: From Shame to Curiosity" which focuses on embodied healing after living through purity culture.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

228: The Orgasm Gap Revisited with Dr. Laurie Mintz

Jessa Zimmerman — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:52:34 GMT

In this episode of Better Sex, hosted by sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman, the topic of discussion is the orgasm gap between heterosexual men and women. Joined by Dr. Laurie Mintz, an expert who wrote 'Becoming Cliterate', they explore the reasons behind this gap, which includes the lack of clitoral stimulation for women and societal misconceptions about female pleasure. Dr. Mintz shares insights from her research and teaching experiences, highlights the improvements since her book's publication in 2017, and discusses ways to enhance sexual pleasure through communication, use of vibrators, and changing cultural narratives around sex. The episode provides valuable information for both women and men to improve their intimate relationships and achieve a more fulfilling sex life.

00:00 Introduction to Better Sex

00:48 Understanding the Orgasm Gap

01:02 Guest Introduction: Laurie Mintz

01:39 Defining the Orgasm Gap

04:59 Cultural Influences on Female Pleasure

05:43 Statistics and Research on Female Orgasm

08:45 Barriers to Female Pleasure

19:09 Strategies to Close the Orgasm Gap

19:40 The Role of Vibrators in Sexual Pleasure

23:10 Empowering Women and Men in Sexual Relationships

26:55 Closing Thoughts and Resources

27:55 Podcast Outro

Interested in Jessa's private podcasts?

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

Dr. Laurie Mintz is a professor, author, speaker, and therapist. As an Emeritus Professor at the University of Florida, she teaches the Psychology of Human Sexuality to hundreds of undergraduate students each year. She has published over 50 scholarly articles and six chapters in academic books. She is the author of two popular press books, both written with the aim of empowering women sexually and both with published studies demonstrating their effectiveness: Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It (HarperOne, 2017) and A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex: Reclaim Your Desire and Reignite Your Relationship (Adams Media, 2009). With this same goal of providing scientifically-accurate, sex-positive information to enhance female pleasure, Dr. Mintz gives presentations and workshops to professionals and lay audiences, including a TEDx talk with over two million views. For over 30 years, Dr. Mintz has also maintained a private practice, working with individuals and couples on general and sexual issues. Dr. Mintz is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, indicating that her work has had a positive national influence on the field of psychology. In 2023, she was named one of Forbes “50 over 50” woman innovators.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

227: The Cure for ED with Dr. Jeff Nuziard

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:18:31 GMT

Understanding and Treating Erectile Dysfunction with Dr. Jeff Nuziard

In this episode of Better Sex, host Jessa Zimmerman welcomes Dr. Jeff Nuziard to discuss erectile dysfunction (ED). They delve into the misconceptions around ED, particularly the false notion that blood flow is the primary issue. Dr. Nuziard shares his personal journey with ED, beginning at age 40, and his research which led to developing a patented treatment protocol that focuses on hormone balance and collagen regeneration. The episode explores traditional and new treatment methods, including hormone replacement therapy, PRP shots, and acoustic shockwave therapy, emphasizing the importance of treating the root cause rather than just the symptoms. They also touch on the broader implications of hormone imbalance and collagen loss in both men and women, showcasing innovative treatment options available through Sexual Wellness Centers of America and RegenMax.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex: Unveiling the Show

00:51 Diving Deep into Erectile Dysfunction: A Tough Topic

01:40 Dr. Jeff Nuziard's Personal Journey and Breakthrough in ED

06:29 Unraveling the Myths of Erectile Dysfunction

08:50 The Hormonal Connection: Testosterone's Role in Aging and ED

13:58 A New Perspective on Hormone Levels and Health

16:02 The Future of Hormone Testing and Management

18:36 Navigating Sexual Wellness: Understanding Hormonal Balance

19:19 Breaking the Silence: Addressing Desire Discrepancy

20:01 Exploring Traditional Treatments for Sexual Dysfunction

22:17 Innovative Solutions: Beyond Conventional Therapies

26:37 Revolutionizing Sexual Health: The RegenMax Protocol

29:30 Expanding Horizons: Treating Women's Sexual Health

33:23 Beyond Sexual Functioning: Broader Applications of Regenerative Techniques

34:20 Accessing Treatment: How to Connect with RegenMax

36:30 Closing Thoughts: The Journey to Sexual Wellness

Interested in those private podcasts about desire discrepancy?

The higher desire partner podcast: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

The lower desire partner podcast:

https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

After a twenty-year career as a CFP, Dr. Jeff Nuziard completely reinvented his life after finding himself wholly a-sexual and unable to perform at the age of 40. After selling his financial book of business, he was determined to fix this performance issue without the use of pills or surgery. After 15 years of study, research, development, and testing, he discovered the actual cause of Erectile Dysfunction and how to reverse and cure the problem. After completing a 250-patient clinical study, this discovery led to a Doctorate in Bio-Medical Science and the issuance of the only Globally patented cure for Erectile Dysfunction with a 97.2% success rate. This patented multi-modality cure is known as REGENmax®.

Jeff Founded and oversees Sexual Wellness Centers of America, LLC in 2020, located in Colleyville, Texas, where his staff treats both ED and Vaginal dysfunction. While maintaining a 97.2% success rate and the Patent issued, Jeff now spends his time teaching and working with practitioners to obtain licensure for his protocols and help people worldwide.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

226: Healing After Infidelity with Rich Heller

Jessa Zimmerman — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:36:03 GMT

Healing After Infidelity: Insights and Strategies with Rich Heller

In this episode of the Better Sex Podcast, host sex therapist Jessa Zimmerman welcomes back relationship expert Rich Heller to discuss the complex issue of infidelity recovery. They explore the various reasons behind infidelity, the different forms it can take, and the steps toward healing after a breach of trust. Rich emphasizes the importance of understanding and recognizing both partners' roles in the relationship dynamics that may lead to infidelity. The conversation covers topics such as emotional versus physical infidelity, the necessity of honest communication, personal responsibility, and the steps required to rebuild trust. Rich also shares his professional experiences and introduces his mental and emotional release techniques aimed at relationship healing.

00:00 Welcome to Better Sex: Navigating Infidelity

00:52 Understanding Infidelity: Definitions and Dynamics

02:24 Exploring the Gray Areas of Infidelity

03:59 The Impact of Children and Intimacy Challenges

04:25 Navigating Emotional Connections and Trust Breaches

08:38 Recovering from Infidelity: Accountability and Healing

16:23 The Role of Communication and Responsibility in Relationships

20:59 Inviting Reflection on Contribution and Culpability

22:36 Confronting Denial in Relationships

24:24 The Signs of Infidelity: A Deep Dive

25:43 Healing from Infidelity: Steps and Strategies

25:54 Understanding the Dynamics of Infidelity

28:14 The Role of Personal Responsibility in Healing

35:09 Exploring Solutions: Therapy and Beyond

39:07 Accessing Support: Workshops and Consultations

Interested in Jessa's free masterclass about How to Make Sex Easy and Fun for both of you? You can register at https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Rich Heller MSW, CPC, ELI MP

Rich is a "Conflict Coach" who works with people engaged in high levels of conflict so that they can create cooperation out of conflict. He works with individuals and couples, focusing on how they can have a relationship that works with minimum friction and maximum support for their children. Additionally Rich helps organizations and businesses transform destructive conflict into a vehicle for change and innovation.

He went to Vassar College for his BA, Hunter School of Social Work for his MA, a trained in mediation with the Center for Understanding in Conflict, and trained in Parent Coordination through the AFCC. He is a Certified Professional Coach, and an ELI Master Practitioner.

No stranger to conflict, Rich Heller grew up in NYC, is a child of divorce, has been divorced, and successfully remarried. He and his partner Katherine have been married for over 20 years and launched six children into the world.

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

Ep225: Boozy Bestie Advice for Sex and Relationships – Desiree Simone

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 03:33:09 GMT

For the final episode of the Better Sex Podcast, blogger Desiree Simone shares her journey on divorce and how it led to her blogging her feelings as she was going through the process. More than a decade later, through her blog that evolved into a podcast, Desiree lets us in on the most common mistakes that she gets from people regarding relationships, dating and sex and the kind of advice she gives on every challenge and mistake.

With the onslaught of social media, one common mistake is still having a social media communication with your ex-partner. It is one thing when you just want to see what the other person is up to, but even just looking is a form of engagement. There is a slippery slope in this scenario, although still on a case-by-case basis, of becoming a little bit obsessed as to what they’re doing and looking at it every day. There’s a great danger of going down that rabbit hole of really trying to get additional information. You then would wonder why it is important to you suddenly? Are you just platonic Facebook friends? The emotional response is the one that you need to be careful of because it can get you asking whether you still have feelings for your ex? Am I really over this person? Am I ready to move on?

You also must think about the effect it would have on your current partner once they find out that you still have that emotional connection that you are holding on to. Ask yourself: How would you feel if your partner was doing the same thing? If you realized you wanted to get back to your partner, you must be honest even if it will make you look bad.

Another problem still related to social media is the need to make all aspects of the relationship public. It tends to create chaos because you are inviting other people to put their two cents in. Ask yourself: Why do you need to do it and to what gain? Creating an image of a perfect relationship or marriage on social media is dangerous as it feels the need to compete.

Top bad decisions people make about sexual relationships

The biggest mistake people make is not openly communicating to their partner the things that they like and do not like. It is important to let your partner in. We all must be better at being able to talk effectively to our partner about things that work or do not work for us. Sex is about you too and not just your partner. It is important to find ways to make the experience amazing for both parties. Fake orgasms do not serve anybody, and you will be miserable doing it.

Another thing in line with this is talking about things that you might want to try. Do not repress it because you might end up being resentful in the end. You should feel comfortable enough with your partner to open up. If you are on the receiving end of this, you should welcome any conversation without judgement, even if it is something you don’t have any interest in doing. Be accepting, even if you are not interested and try to find a happy medium. There should be no kink shaming.

Another thing is the issue of watching porn and masturbating. Some people think that this is a form of cheating. If this is an issue, it is important to step back and really understand where your partner is coming from and why they have this thought about porn and masturbation. From there, start to peel the layers to understand but whatever you do, do not feel like it’s your responsibility to change your partner’s mind.

Biography:

Desiree Simone is a blogger and host of the “Break Bottles, Not Hearts” podcast. She’s known as “The Boozy Bestie”, your go-to friend who helps with relationship issues with love and good cocktails. Originally from Georgia, Simone has a dual degree in Public Relations and Rhetoric and worked for Carnival Cruise Lines for over 10 years as a Production Singer. Her take on love, sex and dating is equal parts honest, funny, inappropriate and vulnerable. Never shy to make fun of herself and learn from her mistakes, she enjoys being a safe space for all those who venture in the world of love, hoping they are not alone.

Resources and links:

Podcast: Break Bottles, Not Hearts

Instagram: @iamdsimone

Blog: Desiree-Simone.com

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

224: Pregnancy and Postpartum Challenges for Sex – Paula Leech

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 22:28:51 GMT

In the quest to know the various kinds of things that get in the way of sexual desire, sex therapist Paula Leech walks us through two situations that probably have the most profound impact on sex life and interest in being sexual for couples, particularly in women: pregnancy and having a baby. What are the challenges and opportunities, as well as strategies for people who are in either of these stages?

Fertility is getting more and more challenging nowadays because of the life that we live in, so more and more couples are struggling to get pregnant and needing to have intervention. What we know as a natural human process now becomes an intense one, and all the anxiety can just hijack it and make it all so hard. As a result, sex can become something that is very clinical, high stress, high pressure, and obligated. The fun and the casual nature of it can shift. Having to do the process month after month on a somewhat scheduled basis can have a dramatic change in the nature of a couple’s sex life and can really impact their experience and interest in being sexual.

Barriers to intimacy after giving birth / adding a child to the family

Giving birth or having an addition to your family changes your life, and your sexuality is profoundly impacted by this. Your world just flipped upside down, and the reality is that your body will be in survival mode. It will take different amounts of time to recover. The baby’s needs are so consuming; your spouse’s sexual needs can easily go down the priority list. Physically, changes after birth can also complicate sexuality. Chemically, having sex with the partner can be replaced by bonding with the baby as mothers get the same kind of hormones. So, the biological reality is you can easily lose desire to have sex during this period for the first one or so years.

Reconnecting with partner

During these two phases, challenges around sex and finding connection with your partner are discovered. On top of the insane amount of change happening, you can also find yourself renegotiating the roles in your relationship with your partner, as well as getting to know your partner as a co-parent. This is also the phase where you will be finding yourself, as well. When you can’t find yourself, you are not going to feel good about sharing yourself with another person. Desire is such a complicated recipe. You got to feel tethered to yourself enough and be comfortable in your own skin to be able to show yourself.

How to maintain a sense of intimate connection, maintain some focus on pleasure and presence

There is no going back to normal after either of these processes. Anxiety is the primary culprit for most sexual dysfunctions. if you are stressed, the body shuts down sexual functioning. Also, this may be the first time that you will be confronting a big change to your sex life, but it definitely won’t be the last thing you are going to adapt to because your sexual life will just undergo natural changes (as you get older, for example). Bear in mind that this is a season. This is a hard, painful, and vulnerable experience for couples to go through, and there is no going around it. It may require talking again about what intimacy means now, how to expand that definition of intimacy and find ways to get connected with your partner. Seek help if needed. Most importantly, give yourself a lot of credit and grace as you are navigating the most profound amount of changes in such a small amount of time.

Biography:

Paula received her bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development at Arizona State University and then went on to receive her master’s degree in Family Therapy at the University of Massachusetts, in Boston. Post family therapy licensure, Paula became AASECT (American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) certified as a sex therapist and worked with individuals, relationships, and families in private practice in Boston, Massachusetts for ten years. In that time, she received AASECT certification as a Supervisor of Sex Therapy and co-founded a sex therapy agency and training institute where we saw clients in addition to training therapists to become competent, confident sex therapists themselves. Paula continues to regularly present at various training institutes as well as Universities and therapy agencies across New England.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.paulaleech.com/

Instagram: @paulaleechtherapy

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

223: Premature Ejaculation – Keeley Rankin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 18:15:55 GMT

Keeley Rankin joins me in a conversation to talk about solutions for Premature Ejaculation. She talks about the anxiety attached to this problem, various approaches and why they don’t work, and her five-model approach to help with early ejaculation.

What Qualifies as Premature Ejaculation

Keeley’s work as a sex coach is oriented around connecting and communicating with one’s body and focusing on making the experience pleasurable. She defines the experience of early ejaculation as ‘an anxious feeling of how long one is going to last during the act’. While for many it’s a matter of normalizing and educating on what’s expected. For others, it’s an ‘anxiety response to arousal’. She categorizes each case as either severe, moderate or mild.

Where Does Anxiety Start?

Keeley believes this anxiety could either be traced back to someone’s early sexual experiences or could cultivate in the later part of life. She notes that many of her clients are unaware of the anxiety they’re experiencing in everyday life and warns people not to take random advice.

Thoughts on Conventional Treatments

She refutes some conventional approaches to early ejaculation, such as thinking about something not sexy during sex, strengthening one’s kegel muscles, using SSRIs, and numbing sprays. She presses the importance of being present and connected with your body’s sensations during sex rather than numbing them.

Five-Model Approach

Keeley talks about her five-model approach to help people with early ejaculation. She takes us through the five steps of breath, anal breath, arousal and anxiety curve, and spreading erotic energy through the whole body. The approach focuses on being able to slow down, relax the sphincter and pelvic floor area, breathe down your body and master the ability to hold the higher arousal state without anxiety.

Tune into the episode to learn about each step in the five-model approach!

Pleasure Work as Individuals and for Couples

People work on this individually to understand the theoretical process and lay a foundation through self-pleasure until one can become capable of enjoying sex without the anxiety. They can then increase the stimulation through movement, noise or by adding new things, and then lastly bringing in a partner. She adds that a partner could be included to do bodywork.

How Can a Person Bring it Up with Their Partner?

Keeley advises partners to communicate around pleasure without pressuring the other person or consulting a professional to help when communication gets difficult.

Biography:

Keeley Rankin is a sex and relationship coach, pleasure advocate and a sexy-preneur. She works with individuals and couples who want to embrace their innate desires, build sexual confidence, and fully realize their sexual potential.

Keeley received her master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and has been featured in media outlets such as The Huffington Post and Oprah Magazine. She’s trained in Hakomi Therapy and Recreation of the Self, both body-based mindful therapeutic modalities for uncovering and healing subconscious and childhood wounds. For seven years, she worked closely with the world-renowned author and transpersonal psychotherapist who coined the phrase ‘spiritual bypass’, John Welwood.

As an expert in male sexual struggles, she created the Premature Ejaculation Mastery Video Course for men to learn to last longer in bed from the privacy of their own homes.

She also specializes in facilitating deep erotic connections for couples. Pre-Covid, she would meet couples in Paris for the unique-extreme-sexy-connected date night – private sessions aimed to prep the couple for an evening at a sex club.

Resources and links:

Website: keeleyrankin.com

Course: https://www.keeleyrankin.com/premature_ejaculation_video_course_sale

Instagram: @Just.The.Tip.Sex.Coach

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

222: Testosterone for Women – Dr. Matt Chalmers

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 18:47:31 GMT

This episode talks about hormones and how it affects sexual function and overall health of women in particular. Dr. Matt Chalmers explains two primary hormones in women, testosterone and estrogen, and what we can do to keep their levels in check and keep your sex drive up.

Testosterone and estrogen

Dr. Chalmers said the problem he ran into is people think that women should focus on their nestrogen levels, which is not really the case. For sexual conversation purposes and if you are experiencing hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, headache and/or joint pains, we need to look at the estrogen level. Otherwise, we look at your testosterone level, because as we start raising that, the body will convert testosterone into estrogen, balancing the two hormones.

What is the function of testosterone in women?

For health purposes, testosterone helps regenerate muscles (your heart is a muscle, your blood vessels all have muscles in them, so this aspect is important). But for sexual functions, testosterone in men can make a lot of things better from a physiological standpoint such as erection. What people fail to remember is that the clitoris is the same tissue embryonically, so you can also get more nerve functions and more blood flow into the clitoris if you give women the right amount of testosterone. A stronger orgasm, for example, is often noticed with higher levels of testosterone.

Are there any lifestyle changes that are going to affect testosterone levels?

Stress plays a big part, so your stress level will be evaluated first. We bring nutrients level back to where they’re supposed to be, and then we work on your mind so you can learn how to deal with your stress. That can naturally bring testosterone levels up. However, there is a point in time where your stress, your genetics and everything plays a big role where if we cannot bring it up after that, then we go to the injections, and that will get us where we need to be.

Are there risks/potential side effects for women using testosterone supplementation?

Clotting is a safety factor to look at. With higher testosterone, blood gets thicker, so you need regular blood tests. Typical side effect in men is hair loss. With women, some experience acne, darkening of hair, and a good chance that you will gain weight. It ramps up your metabolism so you’ll lose fat but gain muscle, so you may look skinnier but not lose weight on the scale. In that aspect, it will not help with weight loss but will work on fat loss.

Hormone therapy

Hormone therapy is recommended to be done for the rest of your lives for its physiological benefits – osteoporosis, heart functions, sexual functions. If we can find a way to take the stress away and bring testosterone levels naturally back up to 100, that is better than medical intervention. But in this time that we live in, there are lots of factors that affect our hormone levels – bad nutrition, bad sleep, high stress and environmental toxins. With hormone therapy intervention, we are increasing the quality of life by changing the physiology a little bit so we can have all the functions that we want to have. Dr. Chalmers underscored, however, that we still need to look hard at the stress level because even with even with high-level testosterone, high sex drive may not be possible. It could be that you fix how your days are structured first before we change the chemistry in your body.

Biography:

Dr. Matt Chalmers is a health and wellness expert, author and speaker who specialises in the areas of long-term wellness, nutrition, women’s health, weight loss, athlete wellness and holistic healing.

With a client list that includes professional athletes, business executives, politicians and celebrities, Dr. Chalmers takes a holistic-based approach with patients to identify and treat the source of their issues. Medical doctors regularly refer patients to Dr. Chalmers when traditional medications and treatments are not working with their patients.

Dr. Chalmers works with patients to identify, treat and manage a wide variety of issues, including weight loss/gain, digestive problems, chronic fatigue, pain, injuries, celiac disease, chiropractic problems, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome and plantar fasciitis. He also provides patients with hormone therapy guidance and treatment.

 Dr. Chalmers is the author of the bestselling book “Pillars of Wellness,” which helps readers cut through the information overload about wellness, exercise and diet to figure out the actions they can take that will have the greatest impact. The book details how to fuel the body physically, mentally and spiritually.

“How the Chiropractor Saved My Life” by Deborah Bain, M.D. is about her personal journey as a patient through a broken medical system. It details the problems caused by traditional medications and treatments and prominently features Dr. Chalmers as one of the doctors who helped her finally overcome severe health issues and end years of pain and suffering.

Dr. Chalmers received his degree of Doctor of Chiropractic from Parker Chiropractic College in Dallas. He has a Bachelor of Science in Health and Wellness, is a Certified Clinical Chiropractic Neurologist, a Certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner and has additional certifications in spinal decompression and quantum reflex analysis. He currently lives in Dallas with his wife.

Website: https://chalmerswellness.com/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

221: Sexual Communication – Dr. Tara

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 20:15:12 GMT

Do you know the real secret to having an amazing sex life? After years of research and talking to thousands of respondents, Dr. Tara might have unlocked the answer to that big question. Learn what you can do to start having better sex with your partner and how to get that satisfaction that we need in our sex lives.

What is sexual satisfaction?

Sexual satisfaction is a subjective measure of how you feel about your sex life. There could be a lot of factors affecting this, but generally, it’s not merely counting how many times you are having sex with your partner to say that you have a healthy sexual relationship, but it’s about a subjective evaluation of your life. Do you feel good about your sex life? Are you having great sex with your partner? Do you find your intimate encounters pleasurable?

How to achieve that high sexual satisfaction

Results from Dr. Tara’s study showed that sexual communication is the strongest variable – inside or outside sex – in predicting sexual satisfaction in couples in the long run. Sexual communication can mean easily having sex talk with your partner. It also covers communication during sex and how much you are able to express yourself verbally and non-verbally. Other strong indicators are sexual confidence and sexual self-esteem. Simply put, this is about feeling confident about yourself during sex as well as having a positive feeling about your body and sexuality. It is important to know, though, that before achieving all of these, you must first practice sexual mindfulness – being mindful during the act of sex, being extremely present and consumed by the moment.

Sexual communication in and out of sex

Becoming aware that you want to improve your sex life is critical because sexual communication is not something that you can force on people. No matter how you emphasize the importance of sexual communication, deciding to want to have better sex is a personal choice at the end of the day. Dr. Tara suggests doing regular sex talks or “sexy check-ins” where you and your partner can genuinely express any concerns about your sex life, if any. Sexual communication can be vulnerable so approaching it in a positive way is also important.

During sex, you can verbally express your pleasure or perhaps verbally adore your partner. If you’re not the talking type, you can also do so many things non-verbally to relay your message to your partner and maintain that positive sexual communication.

Still having sexual problems?

People usually avoid sex talks because they’re afraid to hear bad news or hear criticisms or despair and they wouldn’t know what to do. If it’s obvious that you are having sexual problems in a long-term relationship, do not hesitate to seek help from professional sex/relationship therapists. A lot of times sex issues are not just about sex so it’s easier to have a third professional person to know what the problem really is. While you’re at it, be mindful of your own body as a sexual being, work on yourself and be with yourself first.

Biography:

Dr. Tara is a tenured professor of relational and sexual communication at California State University Fullerton, an award-winning researcher, a relationship coach at luvbites.co, and a podcast host at Luvbites by Dr. Tara podcast. She recently gave a TEDx Talk titled Become Sexually Powerful that highlights her 5,000-participant study examining variables that predict sexual satisfaction, and her journey from a sexually anxious girl from Thailand to a sexually confident woman.

Headshot: Attached

Links:

My website

https://www.luvbites.co/

TEDx talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/become_sexually_powerful

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

220: Body Freedom – Elizabeth Dall

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:40:54 GMT

Elizabeth Dall talks about “body freedom,” the antidote to body shame and self-consciousness that many of us, if not all, experience at some point in our life. Body image issues affect mostly women and are often a great barrier to be interested in sex in an otherwise healthy relationship. In this episode, learn how to accept your body the way it is and take that first step to your own “body freedom.”

What is body freedom?

Freedom is the ability to experience something how you want to experience it. It does not mean being immune to having difficult days with our bodies, but it does mean being able to make the choice to step into freedom. It all boils down to having a choice: you can choose to stay stuck or frustrated in a negative body image or choose to step into the body image that you want to create for yourself.

Acceptance before change

One way to start a change on our body is actually by learning to accept the body that we have so we can work with it. It is about learning how to work with your body to create the change so that it’s sustainable. Allow yourself first the freedom to the change that you want and step into that identity before you even begin the change.

What does “working with your body” mean?

Whenever we want to change something in our body, we tend to detach from that body and we seemingly wanting to be another person with that change. When you work with your body, you see and acknowledge where your body is as well as where you want it to go, and the only way to be able to get there is if I learn how to work with it. To do that, we learn how to sustain habits that we enjoy so that we can keep going.

You are capable of creating change

We have been told by media, influencers and other “outside voices” that this is the way you’re supposed to look, this is what you’re supposed to exercise, or this is the way you’re supposed to eat. But it is a losing battle if we follow what they want us to do because if you don’t see results then you will just be frustrated. Know that you are capable of creating change within yourself. You are capable of choosing movements that you enjoy, dealing with your emotions, and knowing when to eat or stop eating. Your body speaks to you but there’s so much noise outside telling you things that are not really suitable for you.

What do you say to people who don’t love their body to the point that it’s affecting relationships?

Step into the idea of body freedom. It is a safe space to see your body for the good that it is. When you start to show up in this way, you give yourself unapologetic permission to show up as you are so you can then show up in that relationship. You may also want to start a gratitude practice and be thankful for what your body does for you every day. Then find a body freedom practice – an action you take that will help you step into this idea of feeling body acceptance, freedom, and love.

Biography: 

Elizabeth Dall, M.S., CEP, is the owner of awomanofwellness.com and helps women heal their relationship with food and their bodies and experience joy in wellness. Elizabeth believes every woman has the knowledge of what she truly needs deep within herself and that they can learn to love their bodies, heal their relationship with food, and find joy in exercise and movement. She helps by offering online programs and personalized coaching to women searching for food freedom and a desire to live a happy, healthy lifestyle without limitations.

SHOW NOTES LINKS:

Elizabeth’s two free guides to help you overcome emotional eating and ditch the diets without ditching your goals:

Overcome emotional eating free mini course: https://a-woman-of-wellness.ck.page/overcome-emotional-eating

Intro to intuitive eating guide: https://awomanofwellness.com/nomorediets

If you’re interested in healing your relationship with your body and food for good and experience a lifetime of freedom from dieting, emotional eating, body shame, and never hitting your goals, join the waitlist for Elizabeth’s signature Food Freedom program experience” http://awomanofwellness.com/foodfreedom

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

219: No, this is not your soul mate – Tracy Crossley

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:51:20 GMT

This is not your soul mate

How we were raised as kids, how consistent our parents (or caretakers) were, and how safe and loved we felt when we were young can shape our attachment style during our adulthood. Tracey Crossley walks us through secure and insecure attachments in relationships and how our upbringing plays out in our intimate relationships as adults.

Insecure and secure attachments

Our relationship with our caretakers from the time we are born greatly affects our having either a secure or insecure attachment with other people in our adulthood. Secure attachment starts when the child trusts the caretakers and feels an emotional bond with them. They don’t worry that if you leave the room you’re not coming back. On the other hand, if there is insecure attachment, the child can have different reactions and could become avoidant. These experiences as kids, we bring with us to adulthood.

How does insecure attachment show up?

It shows up in a variety of ways, but many people don’t realize where it’s coming from. Naturally, deep down, all of us want to be securely attached and feel loved. But our conditioning says something different, so we seek what we know. We repeat the same sort of familiar feeling and situation that we had as a child. It affects how we feel and how we act. This sometimes led to confusion and even attracting dysfunctional relationships. Even though we want something different, part of us wants the familiar, which doesn’t serve us so well.

Do we have a soulmate?

People would be looking for a unicorn when they look for their soulmate. People who are securely attached do not say they found their soulmate. They usually are just happy that being with their partner feels good and there is no need to give it a label. When you do not have that sense of security, that’s when you tend to come up with labels as though it’s some sort of magical thing that’s going to happen. The idea of happiness and satisfaction about finding your soulmate is a moment in time and not related to reality. It’s just about the fantasy you have about what the other person is bringing to you and how it will make you feel.

How do insecurely attached people respond to sex vs securely attached people?

Insecurely attached people usually perform acrobatics in the bedroom. They’re all about how great they are at sex and that’s like their secret weapon. They’re going to hook you through sex and do whatever it takes to hold on to you, so you don’t go away. Very strong feelings of desperation are usually involved in insecurely attached people. Meanwhile, securely attached relationships are not so much about just sex but how you are creating intimacy. Sex is a part of the relationship, but it is not the whole relationship, and the intimacy comes from emotions rather than the physicality.

Anxiety in relationships

Tracey Crossley paints a picture of anxious-avoidant, anxious and avoidant people and how they react whenever they are in a relationship, or lack thereof. She stresses that one big thing missing in a healthy relationship is anxiety. Instead, there should always be progression. Moreover, do not dwell in a fantasy land looking for that perfect partner. Always do a reality check, be in the moment and deal with all the disappointments it could bring rather than living in fantasy and prolonging your agony.

Biography

Tracy Crossley is a behavioral relationship expert, author, and podcast host, who specializes in treating individuals with unhealthy life and relationship patterns. Tracy helps clients transform, impostor syndrome, insecure attachment, negative belief systems, breaking the cycle of narcissistic damage, destructive self-talk, and more. With a background in psychology, an innate emotional intuition, which draws from her own personal experience, Tracy shows her clients how to permanently change the repetition of the unhealthy, unhappy and unfulfilled cycles personally and professionally. Tracy’s popular weekly mental health podcast, Freedom from Attachment: Living Fulfilled, Happy and in Love offers listeners a different perspective when it comes to breaking the cycle of unhealthy behaviors that keep them stuck repeating pain-inducing actions on auto-pilot. The podcast addresses folks who want to deal with their emotional baggage and get unstuck, happy, and have a clear mindset. She also has a monthly podcast called Moving On, where she invites guests to speak about their life experience in overcoming difficult times to be successful and happy in their lives.

Resources and links:

Website: https://tracycrossley.com/ 

Instagram: instagram.com/tracylcrossley/?hl=en

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

218: [Personal Story] A Journey Through Miscarriage – Jessica

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 01:59:36 GMT

A Journey Through Miscarriage

This episode talks about a very sensitive topic – miscarriage. Losing a baby is heartbreaking, no matter when it happens, and Jessica bravely shares her experience when she and her husband lost their baby. She reveals how she healed – physically, mentally, and emotionally – what moms who suffered the same should know about their options when going through this, and how the experience impacted her relationship with her husband.

Women have options

When you suffer a miscarriage, you would be going through a traumatic loss, but life goes on. You should try and take care of yourself by sticking to a regular sleep schedule, eating well, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Jessica also underscores the fact that women should know the options that each person can take to navigate the process in a way that’s best for them and to honor that process of grieving that needs to happen.

The journey after a miscarriage

Pregnancy loss is only the beginning. What your mind and body will have to go through are completely different journeys unique to every mother. Jessica’s body did not know that it stopped the development of the baby for a couple weeks already until they went for what’s supposed to be just routine checkup. Jessica shares what they did to help her body resolve the miscarriage and start the process of healing.

Impact of the experience on intimacy?

Jessica shares that the bitter and painful experience brought her and her husband so much closer. There was bickering as they were both grieving but she said they just kept coming back and remembering that they are on each other’s team and were in it together. They took a few days off apart from each other and the space allowed them to reflect and integrate the process.

Time to heal and grieve

Time is often the best healer. After a pregnancy loss, the body needs time to get back to normal and so does your mind and emotional health. Allow yourself to go through the grieving process and spend time to stop and acknowledge the loss. Jessica bravely shared her journey because as she felt the surge of grief from other people, she also felt that these very same people might have losses of their own that are left ungrieved.

You are not alone

Amidst the feeling of guilt, anger, shock, sadness and sense of failure, Jessica emphasizes that no one should feel alone during the process. As Jessica put it, we can ask for help and we can be out loud about what we are quietly shouldering in this journey. We should talk more about the whole fertility process – not just in trying to conceive but also about being parents. We should try to bring discussions about this to the foreground rather than in the background, so we don’t have to do it alone.

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/218-personal-story-a-journey-through-miscarriage-jessica

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

217: Overcoming Anger and Resentment – Rich Heller

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 20:04:42 GMT

“Conflict Coach” Rich Heller enlightens us on resentment, anger, and other negativities that couples can get into that can get in the way of their sex life. If you or your partner is buried in resentment, this episode will help you get on the same team again and work on your sex life.

How do people get buried in years of negative feelings?

In the beginning of a relationship, there is often a honeymoon stage where everything seems perfect, and you are deeply in love with each other. At some point, this stage ends. Not that you stop loving each other, but reality hits and suddenly you are not the center of each other’s universe. It becomes clear you are not with the fantasy partner you may have imagined. All the little unresolved resentments and feelings about different expectations can build over time, creating a structure of resentment and even hostility. It’s also possible one partner is doing harmful stuff to the other that just can’t be overlooked.

When anger gets in the way of intimacy

Firstly, check if there is something in your past that was triggered that made you angry. Writing it in a journal helps so you can eventually share it with your partner. Since anger is most likely a mechanism to feel powerful when one cannot express their more vulnerable, underlying emotions, it is crucial for partners on the other end of angry expressions to understand what emotions and factors are driving the anger. Expressing differences freely is important to a more positive outcome.

What about make up sex?

Some couples say they have sex when mad because it is a way of reconnecting and resolving their issues. Very often, sex is a way to release anger. But the more this dynamic builds up and the more the fighting becomes regular, then the angry sex is going to stop too. Yes, sex can be a release or a form of connecting, but over time, if what’s behind it isn’t dealt with, even that’s going to drop out.

Forgiveness and moving on

How do you forgive and forget about the past? We need to see our partners wrestle with remorse and accountability in order to move forward. That’s where healing would come from. You need to know why they did what they did and what to look out for in the future so you can both talk about it as it’s coming up – before it happens again. You need to understand the why to figure out how to heal and grow and make the relationship better.

Biography:

Rich Heller MSW, CPC, ELI MP

Rich is a “Conflict Coach” who works with people engaged in high levels of conflict so that they can create cooperation out of conflict. He works with individuals and couples, focusing on how they can have a relationship that works with minimum friction and maximum support for their children. Additionally Rich helps organizations and businesses transform destructive conflict into a vehicle for change and innovation.

He went to Vassar College for his BA, Hunter School of Social Work for his MA, trained in mediation with the Centre for Understanding in Conflict, and trained in Parent Coordination through the AFCC. He is a Certified Professional Coach, and an ELI Master Practitioner.  

No stranger to conflict, Rich Heller grew up in NYC, is a child of divorce, has been divorced, and successfully remarried. He and his partner Katherine have been married for over 20 years and launched six children into the world. 

Resources and links:

Website: https://richinrelationship.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richinrelationship/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richinrelationship/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVj35RVXHgu-4irxB0_5ukQ

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rich-in-relationship/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/richinrelationship/_created/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/217-overcoming-anger-and-resentment-rich-heller

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

216: Co-Creating a Sex Life Over Time – Chelsea Wakefield

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 19:07:28 GMT

Co-Creating a Sex Life Over Time

What does it really take to make a sex life last? How do archetypes about sex, expectations, and love capacities all come together to be a starting point for you and your partner to have conversations and do things differently to co-create a lasting relationship and sex life? Psychotherapist Dr Chelsea Wakefield explains how to co-create a sex life that you can be excited about for the rest of your life, and how you can build soulful relationships that endure challenges and changes.

Sexuality and long-term relationships

Couples in long-term relationships commonly struggle with sexuality at some point and begin to have questions about what can be done to help the relationship move forward to maintain a meaningful connection during the arc of the relationship. What are the elements that can make a relationship and sex life thrive over time?

Prioritize personal development

Sexuality should be a priority for couples. Some questions that may be asked before committing to co-creating a sex life: Why would you want to engage in co-creating a sexual relationship? What would it bring in your life? Co-creating a sexual relationship encompasses so many dimensions of relationship including knowing one’s self and defining one’s self as a sexual being. It takes a lot of personal development in each of the parties, otherwise it will not thrive. You don’t change your partner but rather, both need to work on themselves in order to co-create a dynamic sex life.

Communication is key

Sex is far from being a natural process. Communication is key to making it last. And communication is not just about talking and saying what you want but knowing who in you is talking and being able to do the necessary shifts. How do I get in touch with my sensual self? How do I access my playful self? How do I shift out of “responsible mother self” to “responsible lover” or “playmate”? How can I and my partner get there together?

Labyrinth of Love

In her latest book Labyrinth of Love, Dr Wakefield talks about love capacities that can be applied to any aspect of a relationship, including sexuality. Learn about commitment, courage, curiosity, communication, compassion, and creativity and how these affect the success of a relationship.

Teamwork

Self-awareness is crucial in making a relationship thrive. But at the end of the day, it’s teamwork that will make it happen. Once you discover your own history, anxieties, trauma, etc., you share that with your partner and work together as a sexual team and make it a journey of mutual growth. When couples are distressed about the limits of what they’ve tried and feel stuck, know that these roadblocks may not just simply go away but can be transcended by personal growth. Make co-creation of your sexual relationship worth it and something that both of you want to engage in. Step out of the box and encounter each other anew to open the possibility that the other person can engage in the process.

Biography:

Dr. Chelsea Wakefield is Director of the Couples Centre for University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.  She is a psychotherapist, educator, conference facilitator, public speaker, and author.  Dr. Wakefield has written 3 books:

– Labyrinth of Love

– Negotiating the Inner Peace Treaty

– In Search of Aphrodite: Women, Archetypes and Sex Therapy

She is also creator/facilitator of the Luminous Women Weekend

Dr. Wakefield believes:

The time we invest in healing wounds of the past, rewriting limiting life scripts, and becoming more consciously aware helps us to make more responsible, respectful choices in life.  It determines the quality of our relationships. Our level of consciousness and presence benefits everyone around us, life partners, friends, co-workers, community and ultimately our world. 

Resources and links:

Website: http://chelseawakefield.org/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaWakefieldPhD

Twitter: @LuminousWoman

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/216-co-creating-a-sex-life-over-time-chelsea-wakefield

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

215: The Wonderful World of Sex Toys – Searah Deysach

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 01:03:53 GMT

The World of Sex Toys

Sex educator, Searah Deysach, takes us to the fun and playful world of sex toys. Founder and owner of Early to Bed, Chicago’s first woman-owned sex shop that sells high-quality sex toys, Searah shares her expertise on the different kinds of sex toys and why people use them. For people in a relationship, learn how to talk to your partner about it, how to use it as a couple and how to introduce it to your sexual play. Haven’t tried using a sex toy? Have a listen to know how it could be beneficial and fun!

Why do sex toys exist and why do people seek them out?

On the most basic level, sex items exist to enhance people’s sex lives. To some people, they may have more therapeutic uses, or tools to solve a certain problem. But for a lot of people, sex toys are used to make sex more fun. Interestingly, the word sex toy has gotten a bad rap all of a sudden, so instead, for marketing purposes, people are calling it a “wellness item” instead of a vibrator. Calling them a different name does not really change anything, but if calling it a wellness item gets it into someone’s hand, then it’s great. The more people see it as part of a healthy sex life, the better it is for everybody.

What is a good entry point for people who want to own their first sex toy?

There is still a lot of stigma surrounding these products, but there are a lot of sex toys that are discreet that you can easily take with you. Vibrators are always a good entry point. They are versatile and do not interrupt a person’s sex life. Getting the first toy can be intimidating, so whether you plan to buy in store or online, do not hesitate to ask questions. Making an informed choice before you start gives you the best chance of making the toy work for you.

When in a relationship, how do you bring it up to your partner?

Talking about sex is one of the hardest conversations people have, but it can also be one of the most vital to having good sex. If you want to bring a sex toy in a relationship, do not frame it as a problem solver. If you want more sensation or more orgasm, make it sound more fun as opposed to not having good enough sex with your partner. Finding toys geared towards couples can also be helpful. As with almost anything, communication is key.

Do men find sex toys emasculating?

Men are burdened with the thought that they’re supposed to give their partners pleasure and that using a sex toy is somehow emasculating. It is not emasculating to get help from toys. What’s worse and actually a disservice to partners is having to fake orgasms just to make the partner feel good about themselves. In the end, we are all responsible for our own pleasure, and we enlist our partner with that. Using toys to elevate the experience and make us all happy should be fully embraced.

Biography:

Searah Deysach is a sex educator and the owner of Early to Bed and FtM Essentials. In addition to running her retail store and websites, she lectures to community groups and colleges around the country on topics relating to masturbation, sex toys and positive sexuality. She is committed to working to create a culture where everyone has access to honest information about sexuality and all folks have access to the services they need to protect their reproductive rights.

Searah is a proud member of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community and has been featured in numerous outlets including New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Shape, Women’s Health, Playgirl, Glamour and many, many more.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.early2bed.com/

Instagram: @early2bed

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/215-the-wonderful-world-of-sex-toys-searah-deysach

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

214: Self-Leadership and Erotic Rope Play – Edward Willey

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 19:52:08 GMT

Edward Willey talks about his seemingly two separate interests and pursuits – rope play and self-leadership – and his ingenious idea of combining them together to develop and practice. How do rope play and self-leadership intersect?

How it started

Prompted by his partner’s brilliant idea, Edward Willey started to introduce some movements and meditation practices he used in self-leadership training into his rope play sessions. He quickly realized that people started to learn rope tying techniques but, more importantly, the connection between partners greatly increased. Since then, each session became more about how to stay deeply connected to the partner and less about the technical side of learning how to do each fancy knot.

“The knot that binds together”

In rope plays, there are two Japanese terms often used: “Shibari,” which means to tie; and “Kinbaku,” which means “to bind tightly.” But more importantly, the word “Misubi,” which means “the knot that binds together” or the thread that ties all of creations together. The true focus of rope play is on the connection that happens between you and your partner, allowing true intimacy and connection to develop. Before getting caught up with the techniques of rope tying, create a foundation of relaxation and confidence with your partner. Make the experience between you and the partner as opposed to you and the rope.

How does exploring rope play and leadership make you a better leader and lover?

Being able to stay present and relaxed and confident can make your partner feel a lot safer in the bedroom, and it can develop intimacy and more trust between the two of you. If they feel safer, more respected, and more heard, they are more likely to follow the guidance you’re bringing. The same thing applies to leadership. If you can approach your leadership with a relaxed body that’s strong, vibrant, and healthy, with an open heart that’s full of love and connection, people will naturally follow you. The rope is just a tool to develop deep connection and intimacy in order to create a container of safety for your partner.

Is self-leadership different when you’re the one being bound?

The person trying has more responsibility to take care of the safety of the other, but the person being tied up also has responsibility to be able to speak up if something doesn’t feel right or have questions or concerns. It’s a co-creation and it’s important to speak up. To be able to relax your body is also very important because being tied up can bring up fear and vulnerability. Keeping the mind calm for when it starts to spin up and feel panicky is the same training you give in self-leadership.

Resources and links:

Websites: https://www.knot-love.com/

https://www.willeyleadership.com/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/214-self-leadership-and-erotic-rope-play-edward-willey

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

213: Shameless Parenting – Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:22:30 GMT

Many parents find normal sex behavior and development confusing. Parents often wonder if their child’s sexual behavior is normal. Certified sex therapist Dr. Tina Sellers talks about parenting and sexual health and give parents a better understanding of “what to expect and when” in terms of their child’s sexual development.

Resources for Shameless parenting

In her newest book, Dr. Tina’s goal is to help parents or caregivers foster healthy sexual choices and attitudes in their children. She believes comprehensive sex education is the best way to protect children when they get involved with sex later, to make safe sexual choices, to lower teen pregnancy rate, to lower STI rates, etc. The book was made to be a handout that doctors, teachers, parents, therapists, and other educators could easily use and refer to when dealing with sexual developments in young children.

Moreover, since shame is one of the things that could get in the way for parents to become the best sex educator that they wanted to be, Dr. Tina also emphasizes ways to soothe the self and heal from that, along with streamlined resources and websites that could effectively help overcome that shame.

Sexual Development in children

It is critical for parents and caregivers to get a greater understanding around sexual development and behaviors in children. Dr. Tina’s book was developed in hopes of creating a better understanding of these developments. It can be difficult to recognize that, like adults, children are sexual beings. Children will be curious about sex, sexuality, and the human body. The book can serve as cheat sheets for parents to get some general information on common and uncommon behaviors based on age groups. Parents can also find suggestions for conversations that parents can have with their children to help encourage healthy sexual development.

Normalizing sexual behaviors

Healing comes from knowing that there are sexual behaviors that are normal in children and that shame was never an appropriate feeling. Kids will do what kids will do from harmless curiosity. The evolving sexuality that we have is always beautiful and creative, and the fact that the society that we live in has just never gotten it right is tragic. Wrong notions and misinformation can crush a child’s developing sexuality and can get traumatized with profound effects.

Managing reactivity for parents

It is important to ask your kids questions and listen very carefully to what they have to say about what’s going on in their world. It can be scary for parents to get sort of a bird’s eye view of what the world is like for their kids but not knowing will not be helpful either. Parents need to learn to manage reactivity within themselves.

Joining a parents’ group where you can start talking to each other about what it is like for you or just having a place to talk through your own reactivity and your own fear can be helpful. Know that your kids need your calm presence and just knowing that you got their back no matter what. Parents need to be conscious of their reactions because kids could easily pick it up as shaming or judging.

Biography:

Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD has had a distinguished career as a marriage and family therapist, medical family therapist, and certified sex therapist. She is also a professor, researcher, author, and speaker. She has won numerous awards and been featured on radio, TV, and podcasts. As the founder and Medical Director of the Northwest Institute on Intimacy, and the community group ThankGodForSex.org she speaks to audiences across the country about the difference sexual health and sexual health training can make for the individual and professional.

Her award-winning book, Sex, God, and the Conservative Church – Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy reveals the devastation caused by sexual shame in the wake of the purity and abstinence-only movements and reveals the path to healing for both clinician and client. When not speaking and writing, you will find Tina delighting in her year-old granddaughter!

Resources and links:

www.tinaschermersellers.com

www.instituteonintimacy.com

www.4-DNetwork.com

www.ThankGodForSex.org

www.SheIsCalled.com

Instagram: @drtinashameless

Affiliate links to books:

Sex, God, and the Conservative Church – Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy – https://amzn.to/2H2vTVV

From Diapers to Dating: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Children – From Infancy to Middle School – https://amzn.to/2Ew4oCi

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/213-shameless-parenting-dr-tina-schermer-sellers

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

212: Performance Anxiety – David Khalili

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 20:37:31 GMT

Feeling anxious before sex is normal. But how about feeling nervous that you cannot have or enjoy sex for fear that you will be unable to “perform” during sexual activities? Sex therapist David Khalili talks about sexual performance anxiety, predominantly among men, and what can be done to overcome that fear or condition.

“Men don’t ask for help”

David shares from personal experience how men would come in looking for certain toys, prostate massagers, cock rings, lubricants, and the like – shrouded by shame and anxiety. Mostly men are affected by sexual performance anxiety because of society’s expectations of what they should be doing during sex. Because of the men-don’t-ask-for-help narrative, they are afraid to come into sex shops to look for things that could amplify pleasure or to seek intervention from professional sex therapists and admit that they are having trouble in sex.

There’s a whole body to explore, not just the penis

The pressure that men are under usually focuses on the “performance” of their penis – to get hard fast, stay hard for a long time, etc. As David puts it, penises are wonderful, and they’ve got lots of purpose and pleasure. But you are whole as a human and there’s also the rest of your body to play with and that could give you pleasure. The body is a whole map, and we need to learn how to explore that map. There might be lots of nerve endings in the genitalia, but there are lots of nerve endings all over the body. So, relieving that penis-centric pressure on men really opens their repertoire and their definition of intimacy, connection, and pleasure.

How to cope with performance anxiety

The first step to coping with performance anxiety is recognizing and normalizing that the penis, just like any other body part, cannot always perform as expected. Also important is removing any shame you might be feeling about not having an optimal sex life. David also underlines the fact that men who do not hit one or all the criteria/markers associated with “expected sex performance” should not feel like it’s their failure as a man. Men should build that self-compassion and accept that it’s not going to be perfect all the time and that good is enough.

Be creative in getting sexual

The truth is you can be sexual without needing an erection. David explains the circular model of sex versus the linear model that most people know about. With or without penetration, learn how to spice up that sex life and how to potentially help in relieving performance anxiety.

Get help and communicate your anxiety

Sexual performance anxiety is a valid concern but should not be a reason to avoid having sex altogether. Figure out a way to communicate it to a partner or potential partner in a way that it’s normal and that it’s okay to go slow to soften expectations. If you feel safe enough with the other person, it is important to talk about the anxiety and explore it together. It is a normal ebb and flow of human function and getting sex therapy intervention is perfectly normal. Learn more about different treatments or interventions you can use to help with performance anxiety.

Biography:

David F Khalili, LMFT is a sex and relationship therapist licensed in California. He works with individuals, relationships and runs groups for men who experience anxiety around sex and dating. His principal areas of focus are sex and anxiety, kink and open relationships, multiheritage couples, and first-generation American-born individuals. David recently released a workbook called “Sex Worriers: A Mindfully Queer Guide to Men’s Anxiety Around Sex and Dating.”

Links:

https://linktr.ee/worriertherapy

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/212-performance-anxiety-david-khalili

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

211: Juicing up Your Sex Life – Alicia Davon

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 21:44:13 GMT

Alicia Davon

Juicing Up Your Sex Life

A fun topic today. This one’s about juicing up your relationship, enlivening it again. Or if you’re single, preparing for when you are in a relationship. My guest is Alicia Davon. She and her husband have an organization that does training with people around increasing presence, awareness, communication, pleasure, and energy in people’s sex lives.

We talk about what that looks like, how people practice it, and what its first step might be. I think a lot of it really revolves around getting out of autopilot, which we can do when we’re with the same person. We’re busy with stuff and we can just sort of not pay attention and go through the motions. Or we could get really present and have a sense of newness. Even with a partner that we’ve been with for decades.

What does “Juice” look like over time?

Generally, Alicia feels that the chemistry and the passion decreases in a relationship by default, and everybody knows that, but not everybody knows what to do about it. Or even knows that something can be done about it outside of just becoming complacent, maybe complaining about it, or splitting up or having affairs.

She thinks that there’s a very natural wanting to have things be fun and turned on with our partners over time. But then the longer it goes without that – when certain forces come in, like longevity, or kids and growing up and more responsibilities – it can get harder and harder to reconnect.

How to go about juicing it back up.

Alicia believes there’s a newness that can be brought into the relationship. When the novelty wears off, it’s just not as exciting. But there’s a lot of inherent chemistry in everybody’s bodies. She has never in her 20 years of working with singles and couples found that somebody’s body was the source of no passion or no chemistry.

She says it’s often a mindset thing. We get distracted with technology at our fingertips. Or distracted by work and solving problems and managing day-to-day stuff. And also, there are certain skills that are necessary that sort of come easily, or maybe even naturally when we’re first in a relationship.

So, the path, first of all, is presence into the relationship again. Sometimes we find we’ve been on autopilot for months and years and maybe decades. Bringing that presence could look like just simply like bringing awareness to the fact that we the couple would like more excitement in the relationship.

Communication is key

Alicia and her husband Erwan have daily practices that they teach their students. One of them is meditation, which is a great pathway to being in the present and noticing what’s going on. Then there’s what they call psychological inquiry, which is a way of connecting with your partner, sharing what’s going on with you and going on in your heart and going on in your mind.

A full spectrum

Alicia and Erwan have touching practices that range from close non-sexual touching physical connection all the way down the spectrum to sexual touching and technique.

She mentions the touching skills are important with couples that want to get back connected. Erwan and Alicia have a set of 12 touching practices that introduce skills like going really slowly, and certain communication skills.

There’s much more to this fascinating conversation, including how this concept could be utilized by singles as well. Alicia recommends carving out some time to practice and implement “juicing” into your sex life, it’s well worth it!

About Alicia Davon

Over the past 25 years, Erwan and Alicia Davon have successfully taught over 12,000 singles and couples how to have exceptional relationships. Erwan and Alicia have become the go-to experts for those seeking a higher level of relationship support. Erwan is the founder, senior teacher and president of San Francisco based Erwan Davon Teachings. Together with Alicia, they specialize in supporting singles in getting into passionate and successful relationships, and helping couples take their relationships to new heights of romance and intimacy. Being based in the Bay Area, Erwan and Alicia provide a high-end boutique service that gives their clients an effective way to enhance their relationships. They also offer all their coaching and classes online and support students all over the world.

Resources and links:

Free Love Life Consultation:

Text 415 308 9580

Web – https://erwandavon.com/consult/

Website: http://www.pleasurecourse.com

More info:

The Desire Spa – https://thedesirespa.com

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/211-juicing-up-your-sex-life-alicia-davon

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

210: Colonization and its Impact on Modern Sexuality – Anne Mauro

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 21:17:34 GMT

Colonization and Its Impact on Modern Sexuality

We tend to think of colonization as something that happened and is over and is done, without realizing that it set up processes and expectations, beliefs, and systems of thought that we are still living with in this current day. This has created historical trauma that remains today.

There is a legacy of shame and of limitations that came with settlers in North America. Anne Mauro has been studying this, and we talk about this whole concept of the sexuality that the settlers brought in and what this has come to mean for all of us. We discuss the ways in which it could be manifesting and limiting us, and how it is certainly impacting how people of color, women of color are treated still in this culture.

What is settler sexuality?

We know that when the settlers arrived in North America, some were coming for a better life and to avoid persecution for their own religious beliefs. And when they arrived, they had their own ideas of what sexuality was, and a lot of that was a belief that it was solely for procreation.

But with indigenous people, they saw two spirit people, or a matrilineal model, instead of a patriarchal model. They saw homosexuality, and they saw indigenous people engaging in sexual play outside of marriage. They were completely appalled by this. Their idea of sexuality was no sex before marriage, you are property of your father until you’re married, and then you are property of your husband.

“We don’t want you masturbating, or talking about menstruation, that is bad. You’re not supposed to be nude. You’re not supposed to have inordinate affection, or too much desire or affection.”

Also, women are supposed to dress a certain way. They’re supposed to be homemakers and don’t work outside of the house. You’re supposed to stay a virgin, not just for the religious reasons, but there was economic value in virginity if you were seen as pure.

The shame came across with the settlers

If you didn’t fall within the settler sexuality model, you could be publicly shamed, whipped, or tortured. People were burned for masturbation and for homosexuality. They were shamed for anything that was falling outside of this model. If you got caught, you could get in trouble. When the settlers came, they brought with them their own historical sexual trauma.

Still impacting today

Anne believes that with the sexual script that’s inherited in American sexuality, there is a maltreatment especially of women of color, but of people of color in general. This legacy of the settler sexuality construct has dramatic impacts today, leaving people feeling like there is something wrong with themselves if they don’t fit into it, and very few people do.

Biography:

Anne Mauro is a Licensed Couples and Family therapist, AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, and AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator. She has earned her M.A from Antioch University Seattle (AUS) and a Doctorate of Human Sexuality from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. Her private practice, Mending Connections, in Tacoma, Washington, specializes in couples counseling and sex therapy. Anne serves as adjunct faculty at AUS, where she created and taught a course titled Colonization and Sex for the Sexuality Certificate Program.

Additionally, Anne works in the Couples and Family Therapy program providing clinical supervision to graduate student interns. In partnership with a colleague, Anne is an American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) continuing education (CEU) provider. Through this venture, Anne co-created the Beyond Settler Sex Sexually Attitude Reassessment (SAR).

Her first Routledge publication, More Than Ebony and Ivory: Complexities of sex therapy with interracial couples, can be found in An Intersectional Approach to Sex Therapy: Centering the lives of indigenous, racialized, and people of color. Anne is working on her second publication, The Colonization of Black Sexuality: A clinician’s guide to relearning and healing.

Anne has served on the AASECT Awards Committee since 2018 and the AASECT Ethics Committee since 2021. Anne is an active WOCSHN member and one of the original members included on the WOCSHN Membership Directory, the first of its kind directory featuring Black, Indigenous, women of color in the sexuality field. In service of the profession, Anne is a member of AASECT Awards Committee and AASECT Ethics Committee.

Resources and links:

Anti-Racist Psychotherapy: https://amzn.to/2YjFKRW

Healing the Soul Wound: https://amzn.to/3A7Va8V

My Grandmother’s Hands: https://amzn.to/2ZNcVxO

Website: https://www.mendingmyconnections.com/

Instagram: @annemauro.cst.cse

More info:

The Desire Spa – https://thedesirespa.com

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/210-colonization-and-its-impact-on-modern-sexuality-anne-mauro

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

209: Right Outside Your Comfort Zone – Court Vox

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 21:30:39 GMT

Court Vox

Somatic sex educator and sex coach Court Vox helps his clients to find the ‘sweet spot’ in their sex lives, and life in general. The sweet spot is a place that can be uncomfortable, but also exciting. This episode is all about pushing yourself to the limit, and calibrating the body in order to allow itself to reach the next level of experience.

What is calibration?

Calibration is developing an awareness of touch from the lowest point of sensation all the way to your threshold. It’s finding that sweet spot, also called a yellow place, that can get you to the next level of pleasure. In life, it’s always about going a little bit further than you otherwise would as our lives change.

Is there value from being slightly outside of your comfort zone?

Court elaborates how one can benefit from being in a yellow place, whether in sensation or actual pursuit of something that’s not in the body. Being in a place that’s a bit uncomfortable offers a lot of growth for people. If one is calibrating with a partner, then communication is key, because at the end of the day it’s a very personal approach and all of us will have our own unique yellow spot.

Is calibration better with a partner or solo?

One can do both. Doing it with a partner can be valuable not just from a sensation perspective but from a communication perspective too.

Beyond the Circuit Workshop

Court Vox will hold a 3-day workshop in March 2022 with the intention to create new and alternative spaces for queer men. It is about finding a deeper sense of community not centered around drugs and alcohol and dark spaces. Aptly called Beyond the Circuit, it is a space where queer men can be vulnerable and be in a more intimate space.

Biography:

Court Vox provides personal guidance and expertise in the unique and often ignored areas of sex. Vox is a trained Sex and Intimacy Consultant, Surrogate Partner Intern and Sacred Intimate. His approach is personal and necessary. As the founder of his own practice, The Body Vox, he brings professional opportunities to his clients and teaches them to embrace their bodies, as well as the bodies of others. Vox is a sex educator who is experienced in working with clients of all sexualities and genders. He continues to collaborate with fellow sex educator Pamela Madsen for workshops around the country.

Resources and links:

Website: thebodyvox.com

Instagram: @courtvox

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/209-right-outside-your-comfort-zone-court-vox

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

208: Endometriosis – Dr. Allyson Shrikhande

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:16:20 GMT

Dr. Allyson Shrikhande, a rehabilitation doctor who specializes in pelvic rehabilitation medicine, gives us an in-depth discussion about endometriosis. What is endometriosis, the disorder affecting one out of ten women? How does it show up and what are the treatment options?

What is endometriosis?

Endometriosis is a disorder wherein cells that are similar to the cells lining the inside of the uterus (endometrium) grow outside of the uterus. These cells can settle basically anywhere in the body but most commonly in the pelvic cavity and can cause pain and infertility.

How common is endometriosis?

Depending on the study, one out of ten, or one out of nine women can have endometriosis. It is as common as breast cancer with a strong genetic predisposition.

What are the symptoms of endometriosis?

The challenge is that it is a silent disease, making it hard to diagnose. The way it presents itself is as a person being infertile and/or having pelvic pain. Pain during intercourse, tampon use and the like as well as GI problems (constipation, abdominal bloating, abdominal pain), and a UTI that will not go away are very common symptoms.

Treatment options for endometriosis

The major challenge in the medical community is that there is no proper diagnostic other than surgery right now. The gold standard for a proper diagnosis is laparoscopic surgery, then some pathology. Because of the complexity and systemic nature of endometriosis, Dr. Shrikhande also takes on a holistic approach to treatment, discussing additional things like nutrition and even medication with patients.

Endometriosis awareness

Dr. Shrikhande underlines the need for more research and studies to help in diagnosing endometriosis in its early stages. Unfortunately, it is a very complex disease with strong genetic disposition making it even harder to prevent. Awareness is key as there is still nothing conclusive as to what is causing endo. It’s important that women are diagnosed in an efficient manner and have access to skilled medical and rehab providers who can help them with proficient treatment.

Biography:

Dr. Allyson Shrikhande, a board-certified Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialist, is the Chief Medical Officer of Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine. She is also the Chair of the Medical Education Committee for the International Pelvic Pain Society. She is working with other experts in the field of chronic pelvic pain to develop training modules for residents and physicians interested in learning about the diagnosis, treatment, and management of chronic pelvic pain. A leading expert on pelvic health and a respected researcher, author and lecturer, Dr. Shrikhande is a recognized authority on male and female pelvic pain diagnosis and treatment.

Resources and links:

Website: pelvicrehabilitation.com

Instagram: @pelvicrehabilitation, @doctor.allyson

Twitter: @PelvicRehab

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Get daily conversation starters texted to your phone: Text “topics” to https://my.community.com/jessaatintimacywithease

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/208-endometriosis-dr-allyson-shrikhande

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

207: Hookup Without Heartbreak – Lia Holmgren

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 23:18:15 GMT

Hookup without Heartbreak

Intimacy and relationship coach Lia Holmgren’s new book, Hookup Without Heartbreak, teaches women to let go of negative feelings after casual hook ups/sex, as well as how to reclaim one’s sexual freedom. Learn the do’s and don’ts of casual sex, the history and science behind hooking up, and learn all you need to know before going on that next date.

Casual sex: How do people deal with it?

The main focus of this book is double standards – how casual sex can be widely accepted for men but seen as inappropriate for women. Hormones and neurobiology play a big part as to why women tend to feel more attached after having casual sex than men do. Lia also looks into the role of religion, education, and upbringing to explain why women feel a certain way and why women have so much shame and fear around casual sex.

The do’s and don’ts in casual sex

Lia’s book has 24 tips for women who have caught feelings and then had their hearts broken after casual hookups. These include ways to get over the person, how to deal with hookups who ghost afterwards, how to be safe on dates and how to not feel shame afterwards. The book also talks about how to appreciate the experience and how to have casual sex without any expectations.

How do you discern whether you have the right reasons to hookup?

It’s important for a person to know their intentions before engaging in a casual hookup. Is it a want for sex or a need for intimacy and closeness? Honesty and clear communication with one’s partner is key, as well as being honest with oneself.

Key takeaways

The book aims to teach women that it’s okay to have casual sex for sex, without the shame and guilt. It’s important for men to be more understanding and honest after casual sex. Honesty and clear communication is important for both sides.

Biography: 

Lia Holmgren has been an intimacy and relationship coach for more than a decade, guiding her clients through modern challenges and exploring the many roles of power and fantasy. Known for her empathetic nature and direct style, Lia empowers her clients to feel safe in celebrating their authentic sexuality.

Lia holds an M.S. in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University and a B.S. in Biopsychology from Touro University. She is a certified wellness coach and life coach as well as a certified hypnotist. Lia has been featured by numerous media outlets, including NBC Universal, NY Post, Huffington Post, Men’s Health, Curtis and Cosy Show, and more.

Website: liaholmgren.com

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.thedesirespa.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar for women: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Get text reminders for every new episode – text “podcast” to https://my.community.com/jessaatintimacywithease

Get daily conversation starters to share with your partner – text “topics” to https://my.community.com/jessaatintimacywithease

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/207-hookup-without-heartbreak-lia-holmgren

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

206: Vaginal Rejuvenation with Dr. Kanwal Bawa

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 21:24:31 GMT

Dr. Kanwal Bawa talks about sexual health and wellness, particularly vaginal rejuvenation, to improve relationships and the sexual experience. Known as ‘Dr. Sex Fairy’ due to her patients’ incredible sexual wellness success stories, Dr. Bawa reveals to us what’s in her fairy dust.

How important is the female orgasm?

Unfortunately, many women assume that they cannot orgasm. Studies show that many women do not even know their own anatomy, and henceforth do not know how to pleasure themselves. Good orgasms can be indicative of better vaginal health, better mental health, a better relationship with one’s partner and more enjoyable sexual activities.

What do women need to know to achieve orgasm?

There is so much more to having an orgasm than just sex itself. Women need to ensure that they are monitoring their hormones and their vaginal health, as an imbalance or lack of these can make achieving orgasm very difficult. Dr. Bawa explains the different rejuvenation procedures and treatments that she offers to her clients that have helped to change their lives.

Prevention is better than a cure

Dr. Bawa advises people to rethink wellness. Vaginal health needs to be approached in a preventative way and not only brought up when a problem arises. Sexual health is a topic that is ignored by a lot of doctors. By filling this void, Dr. Bawa hopes to transform the lives of many people by improving their sexual health.

Biography:

Dr. Kanwal Bawa is a board-certified physician, founder of Bawa Medical, and a member of FemiWave’s Medical Advisory Board. Dr. Bawa is committed to her philosophy of “rejuvenation from the inside out,” an approach that combines state-of-the-art procedures and multi-faceted solutions with her exceptional knowledge and skill.

After battling a breast cancer diagnosis, Dr. Bawa went on to be crowned Ms. Florida U.S. Continental 2021. Dr. Bawa’s motivation in entering the competition was to inspire cancer patients to live their best lives, and to raise awareness for misdiagnosis. Dr. Bawa is an ambassador for the American Cancer Society’s ResearcHERS initiative to raise funds for women-led cancer research for all cancer.

At her rejuvenation medical practice Bawa Medical in Boca Raton, Florida, Dr. Bawa uses her expertise and procedures to help transform her patients – especially those affected by cancer. She specializes in intimate wellness, skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, IV therapy, and hormone replacement.

To learn more about Dr. Bawa’s background, philosophy, and other personal triumphs please follow this link – https://www.bawamedical.com/about/meet-dr-bawa/

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.bawamedical.com/about/meet-dr-bawa/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFsvTQJsdYdmAoz-vk-xiXw

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BawaMedicalBocaRaton/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bawamedical/

To learn more about FemiWave, visit: https://femiwave.com/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/206-vaginal-rejuvenation-with-dr-kanwal-bawa

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

205: Sex as a Widow – Krista St-Germain

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 20:41:19 GMT

Master Certified Life Coach, Krista St-Germain, gives advice on how to deal with grief after losing a life partner. In this episode, we will talk about sex after loss and how it fits into the grieving process. How do you discern your needs and wants after being widowed? How do you decide when you’d like to have sex or when you don’t? How do you make those kinds of decisions in a way that is empowering and not fall prey to the myths that exist?

Dealing with grief and healing.

Grief is the response to any perceived loss. Krista, who works mostly with widows, says that the main issue she sees is the problematic idea that there is a certain way to go through grief.

It is an experience unique to every person who goes through it.

We are not well informed when it comes to grief, so layering sex on top of the strict timeline of healing people subject themselves to makes things go from bad to worse.

The intersection of sex and grief

A typical myth concerning the loss of a spouse is that what the bereaved wants is not really sex, but just the physical connection to another human. In reality, only that individual can know what they want and need at any moment in time. Often, people will try to fill an emotional void with sex. If sex is something one wants, it’s because they want it, not because they’re incomplete without it.

8 myths about sex and grief

As people we will always have a response to grief, and over time we can change our response and adapt to life such that it becomes integrated and no longer an obstacle. Not only are there no stages or timeline, but there is also no end to grief. It just becomes part of our life experience.

Krista reveals the truth about the eight myths that she usually encounters about sex and grief that could help people figure out how to live their lives again and love sex again without feeling judged or guilty.

How do you talk to people so that they know whether they’re ready or not to have sex again?

This is an individual decision. One must decide to believe in themselves and trust that they know when they’re ready. This doesn’t negate feelings of nervousness or worry, but just shows that one is open to the idea. Krista’s vision is to get people to a place where they know they can be kind to themselves on the other side of whatever decision they’ve made, because that’s the most empowering place to be.

Biography:

Krista St-Germain is a Master Certified Life Coach, grief expert, widow, mom and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista’s life was completely and unexpectedly flipped upside down. After therapy helped her unfurl from the fetal position, Krista discovered Life Coaching, Post Traumatic Growth and learned the tools she needed to move forward and create a future she could get excited about. Now she coaches and teaches other widows so they can love life again, too.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachingwithkrista/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifecoachkrista/

More info:

How Healthy is Your Sex Life – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/205-sex-as-a-widow-krista-st-germain

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

204: Healing Your Sex Life Through the Unconscious Mind – Dr. Tonia Winchester

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:48:13 GMT

Healing Your Sex Life Through the Unconscious Mind

Dr. Tonia Winchester has been a naturopathic doctor for 15 years. This episode will explore brain-based coaching, and how people can really achieve breakthroughs and get out of patterns that haven’t been working for them. Dr Winchester talks about accessing the unconscious mind in order to achieve a healthy sex lifestyle.

The power of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)

Through practice, Dr Tonia Winchester found that the best way to help is by tapping into the unconscious mind of her patients. NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) is a tool that allows us to bypass our conscious mind and access the place in our minds where change happens.

What is the unconscious mind and what does it do for us?

The unconscious mind is responsible for our emotions, triggers, responses and reactions. Dr. Winchester believes that if one wants effective change to happen, they need to dig into the unconscious mind to do so.

How does the unconscious mind relate to a healthy sex life?

The unconscious mind controls factors that are essential for a healthy sex life, ie. safety, trust, risk-taking and vulnerability. Our desires, or lack thereof, are based on our past experiences in life. The unconscious mind is always looking to keep us safe, so avoiding sex or doing it because we have to, is fulfilling a purpose.

How does a breakthrough process work and what should people expect from it?

When working with the unconscious mind, one has to deal with negative experiences from their past. With a process called timeline therapy, the charge is gently taken out of these negative emotions and swapped with positive learnings, allowing the patient to have the appropriate and warranted emotions. Reconnecting to positive things can prime people to experience pleasure in their lives and help them draw out things that they are wanting.

Who needs this?

Anyone who has been stuck in the same pattern for years, and knows that they should be taking care of themselves, but aren’t, would be a good candidate for this treatment. Going through unconscious reprogramming is recognizing that one wants more in their life, but that what they’re doing is not and hasn’t been working for a long time.

Biography:

Dr Tonia Winchester has been in practice as a Naturopathic Doctor since 2007. Now, as a brain-based transformation coach, she uses contemporary neurological reprogramming techniques to help women break through burnout, stress, anxiety, and fatigue and find joy and energy again so that they can create exceptional lives for themselves, their families and communities. She guides her clients through a “Breakthrough” process where they easily and gently clear the past and recode their unconscious minds so that they are primed to make and sustain positive changes in how they take care of themselves. The results are a strengthened connection to self – more self-love, worth, and value, ultimately allowing them to build happy, meaningful relationships and compelling futures. Tonia has been featured on CTV, the Costco Connection, The Elephant Journal, Conscious Nutrition, The Autoimmune Simplified Podcast, and the New Generation Entrepreneur Podcast. To learn more about her brain-based coaching breakthroughs, head over to https://www.toniawinchester.com/breakthrough/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/204-healing-your-sex-life-through-the-unconscious-mind-dr-tonia-wincester

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

203: Why Selfish is Good for Sex – Dr. Laura Dabney

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:35:23 GMT

In this episode, Dr Laura Dabney explains the importance of selfishness in a relationship. Despite its negative connotation, being selfish can actually make you a better person and partner. Learn why being in tuned to what you want and how you feel is critical and how you can create a balance of giving and selfishness in a relationship.

What does selfishness mean in a relationship?

Simply put, being selfish is taking care of yourself first before others like your partner. Being selfish has always been frowned upon because of its bad connotation but it just means you take responsibility for getting your personal, emotional, and physical needs met, and that’s an important part of becoming an adult. You can’t build a deep, meaningful, and authentic connection when you have little or no concern for yourself in the first place.

What are the consequences of selfless giving and not putting yourself first?

When you put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own, there’s resentment that’s taken but not talked about because of the assumption that your needs weren’t as important. Constantly meeting others’ needs could also lead you to believe that it’s the way of keeping the relationship alive. You’re giving in to the point where it’s hurting you and so the other person could start pulling away emotionally, sexually, physically.

The best person to know you is you

One reason why people tend to not say or advocate for their wants is this fairy tale idea that we expect that the other person should know what we want and we don’t need to tell them that. In reality, this happens because the person is not in touch with themselves, particularly sexually, so they hope the other person will take over.

Being selfish in a healthy way

Taking care of ourselves is our job as an adult – that’s the definition of being an adult. It is not a negative quality. Take time to reflect, carve out some alone time, name a feeling and practice feeling it. If you have a well-developed sense of who you are and the ability to communicate it to others or your partner, you’ll be a happier person.

The balance of being selfish and giving

In a relationship, you have to set boundaries to know where you end and the other person begins. Know what you need and present it to your partner. Hear what the other person has to say and then figure out a unique formula on how you can make things work for both of you. The best relationship happens when two adults show up and enjoy each other.

Biography:

Dr. Laura Dabney has been a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach, VA for twenty-plus years. She has treated patients in more than a dozen cities across Virginia, including more recently Richmond, VA. Her psychiatric expertise has been featured on radio, podcasts, websites, and in print media. She consults for a number of large institutions, including the Virginia Veterans Administration Medical Center. She received her MD from Eastern Virginia Medical School and has been Board Certified in Psychiatry.

Resources and links:

Website: https://relationship-rx.com/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/203-why-selfish-is-good-for-sex-dr-laura-dabney

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

202: Dates & Mates – Damona Hoffman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 21:09:26 GMT

In this episode, we take a closer look at the exciting world of dating – from using different dating apps to tackling difficult conversations and navigating the dating scene amid a pandemic. Life and dating coach Damona Hoffman shares tips on how to progress relationships and how to deepen them by cultivating curiosity.

For people looking for a relationship, what do they need to know in order to be successful in dating?

Damona said that dating is a pretty and repeatable process. If you are already getting frustrated with dating, learn about these five areas to know what you could have been doing wrong.

How do you handle sexual concerns as well as various loaded topics during dating?

Sex is a part of any relationship, but COVID changed the dating scenario such that there are added health concerns that needed to be addressed first before you even begin to see each other in person. For example, instead of talking about STI testing and the like, you now talk about getting tested for COVID and quarantining. But COVID aside, having a difficult conversation such as sex, politics, or race in the early phases of dating ultimately boils down to listening and understanding. There should be a time when we set aside our beliefs and focus on what really matters like communication, conflict resolution, values, and goals.

Interracial dating and racial bias in dating

Damona talks about the hot topic of race and how it comes into play in dating. Does excluding a particular race from your dating preferences just simply a matter of preference or racial bias? Learn how to ask the five “why’s” to unpack biases and beliefs and how to turn your differences from your partner into a very rich and positive aspect of the relationship.

How important is sexual compatibility during dating? Can this still change over time?

People toss away a perfectly good relationship because in the early phase, the sex isn’t as fulfilling as prior relationships that they compare it to. But Damona believes that sex, along with whatever is in our checklist of what we’re looking for in a partner, should be disregarded in the early phases. During this stage, curiosity should fuel the relationship and not the chemistry or any other arbitrary reason.

Biography:

Damona is the Dating Expert of  The Drew Barrymore Show  and NPR, a dating coach & TV personality who starred in the A+E Networks’ (FYI TV) series #BlackLove and A Question of Love.  She’s a contributor for CNN Headline News (HLN), BET.com, The Washington Post, LA Times, Match dating app and more. Her advice has been featured in hundreds of publications, podcasts, and TV shows and she was the subject of an Oprah O Magazine cover story in 2019. She hosts The Dates & Mates Show as well as the I Make A Living podcast. 

Resources and links:

Website: https://damonahoffman.com/

Instagram: @damonahoffman

Twitter: @DamonaHoffman

Podcast: Dates and Mates and Make a Living – https://damonahoffman.com/dates-and-mates-podcast/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/202-dates-mates-damona-hoffman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

201: Barriers to Female Sexual Pleasure – Kristine D’Angelo

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 20:10:13 GMT

Certified sex coach Kristine D’Angelo talks about pleasure and feeling empowered when it comes to sex, especially for vagina owners. Conversationally, she tackles the most common barriers for vagina owners in achieving sexual pleasure and the kinds of expectations that they’re up against based on societal standards. The differences and similarities between sex coaches and sex therapist are also discussed so people can make the best choice when seeking help.

What’s the difference between sex coaching and sex therapy?

Sex coaching is very much about behavioral changes and practicing those changes in order to feel confident and more connected to your body in order to achieve pleasure. Sex therapy is forming a strong relationship first, and where sex coaching can be built off of.

Why specialize in coaching women?

Kristine wants to watch women step back into their sexuality and become confident and comfortable and advocate for their pleasure. She has been in a position where she has lost her power during a sexual encounter, and she knows how helpless that can make a person feel.

What are the different pressures that make it even more difficult for vagina owners to achieve sexual fulfillment?

One of the biggest obstacles is constant comparison – from comparing themselves to other vagina owners, to comparing their body to the idol standards of what society thinks is beautiful. This behavior tends to work inwards rather than outwards, where women start to think that there is something wrong with them and that they are below societal standards. Also, women are not explicitly given permission to explore their sexuality in our society as opposed to men.

What would people expect working with you or somebody like you?

Through holistic coaching, different questions are asked, like, “Where do you want your sex life to be six months from now without worrying what could get in the way or what could go wrong?” By describing your ideal sex life, a sex coach would then ask you to do home assignments based on a customized action plan.

Biography:

Kristine D’Angelo is a Certified Sex Coach who works with women and couples, coaching her clients towards sexual fulfillment. Kristine has worked hard creating a safe and comfortable space for her clients to explore and embrace their sexuality. She’s always exposing herself to learning in depth about human sexuality, relationships, being an ally to the LGBTQ community and volunteering for organizations that promote a sex-positive society.

Kristine holds a degree in Sociology and Community Health and certification through Sex Coach U. She has always been drawn to human interactions and has focused on human sexuality as her main passion in life and path in education. The hard work her clients experience encourages her to change the world through sexually enlightening and empowering people through her sex coaching.

“Watching my clients become sexually empowered is the highlight of my life’s work, I want the world to experience this level of self-awareness.”

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.doyoursexlifeafavor.com/

YouTube: Kristine D’Angelo, Certified Sex Coach

Podcast: So I Married a Sexologist

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

200: Sex and Veterans – Asya Brodsky

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 18:52:59 GMT

In this episode, Asya Brodsky gives insight into sexual issues and concerns with veterans. From injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or military sexual trauma (MST), Brodsky explains how these experiences can create all kinds of ramifications in the life of a veteran and how these can affect sexual function and intimacy with a partner.

What are the kinds of concerns that are prevalent among veterans?

PTSD is still the most common issue among veterans, as well as PTSD due to MST. According to Brodsky, veterans in combat who come back physically whole carry great psychological and emotional repercussions. However, the recovery and rehabilitation process for them are focused on basic means and sexuality is often neglected.

What are some of the steps around PTSD and MST? Is this something that the military is taking on?

There are multiple campaigns for MST for veterans. These campaigns let them know that there is support out there and that actions are being taken to address their mental health and really look into this seriously.

What kinds of things get in the way of veterans seeking help in sexual issues?

Brodsky said it’s still primarily military culture where soldiers are taught to be tough and disconnected from their emotions to survive. The contradiction is, what helps them in the service, hurts them in civilian life. It’s a big deterrent for vets seeking out services also because of the stigma about seeking help for mental issues.

What are these people facing coming back from war wounded?

If you were injured in combat, likely you have a combination of physical and psychological injury affecting someone’s identity and self-concept. Physical injuries have an effect on sexuality and sexual expression. Brodsky is positive, however, that in no time, authorities will recognize sexual issues to be part of the rehabilitation process.

What should spouses do?

Brodsky gives suggestions on what veteran couples can do, such as therapy. She also underlines the importance of being patient and recognizing that sexuality can change overtime. Military partners should also make themselves aware of PTSD and follow the lead of their partner on whether they feel comfortable talking about their experience.

In the end, Brodsky advises veterans to seek help as soon as possible.

Biography:

Asya Brodsky, LCSW, CADC, CST is a licensed clinical social worker, certified alcohol and drug counselor and certified sex therapist through AASECT. She holds positions as the Women Veterans Program Manager at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and maintains her own private sex therapy practice, Speak Chicago Psychotherapy LLC. Asya is a relational psychodynamically-informed psychotherapist, specializing in the areas of sexual functioning and expression and their impact on individual and relational identities and lives. Asya is affiliated with psychoanalytic communities in Chicago and is the co-founder and co-leader of the Chicago Sex Therapist Network.

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/200-sex-and-veterans-asya-brodsky

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

199: Cross Dressing – Dr. Carol Clark

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 21:56:50 GMT

In this fascinating episode, board certified sex therapist and addictions counselor Dr. Carol Clark helps us demystify the concept of cross dressing and take away the stigma and shame commonly associated with it. If you or someone you know is a cross dresser, the insights from this episode will surely help in getting accurate information out there and prepare people to receive somebody who might reveal that they’re crossdresser and validate that.

Is there an intersection of cross dressing and gender and how do we define it?

In general, cross dressing is defined as wearing the clothes that are normally associated with the other sex or gender. It has gender implications as far as how we present it such as when a person identifies with one gender but presents as another and, in so doing, feeling like another gender. All of that is separate from sexual orientation, which is who you are attracted to.

Is cross dressing the beginning of somebody identifying as transgender?

It may or may not be. Dr. Clark emphasizes that cross dressing is a form of expression for various reasons. It is important to distinguish different reasons, particularly in therapy, to know what brought the person to therapy. We have to ask the cross dressers what’s the allure of that, what’s their motivation, etc.

How much are cross dresser suspected of being gay?

Generally, cross dressers are heterosexual men wearing women clothing for various reasons. It is always important to ask and not jump to any conclusions. We have to fix society to have a better understanding of cross dressing so a person can just dress up however way they want without the judgment.

What should a partner do?

It is important to reassure partners of cross dressers that it is not about them, and it is not their fault. Partners should have a deeper communication and try to get to know each other again. Just like in any marriage or partnership, it will come down to some compromises and making some adjustments in the relationship to make it work.

When should a cross dresser tell their partner and/or their children?

There are no “shoulds” but ideally you want your partner to know before starting the relationship. As in any case, revealing a big secret can be very traumatic to the other person and can be felt as betrayal. Keeping it a secret will not make it stop or go away.

Understanding cross dressing

These days where there are so many different ways of identifying your gender, cross dressers aren’t calling themselves as such and try to avoid calling themselves anything. For them, it is a way of life. For therapists, and for our friends and family, it all boils down to asking questions like, “Why are you showing up in my office? What’s your issue? How is cross dressing a problem for you? What is the meaning of this for you”

Biography:

Dr. Carol Clark is a board certified in sex therapy and addictions and is the president, founder, and senior instructor for the International Institute of Clinical Sexology and the Therapist Certification Association.

From prisoners to celebrities, businessmen to artists, Dr. Clark’s work has helped individuals from a multitude of backgrounds to find a better life. She employs a variety of interventions to effectively assist those seeking personal growth and an improved sense of well-being in their lives. By using the concepts in her book, Addict America: The Lost Connection and My Pocket Therapist: 12 Tools for Living in Connection, she facilitates the healing that allows full intimacy and Connection.

In conjunction with her educational and professional development, her spiritual journey has evolved to an emotional and intellectual awareness of addiction as a condition that permeates all aspects of people’s lives.

Find her on Facebook & Instagram @DrCarolClark.

You can also check out The International Institute of Clinical Sexology on Facebook @sextherapyphd and on Instagram @iics.phd.

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/199-cross-dressing-dr-carol-clark

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

198 – Racism and Sexual Health – Kristian Holmes

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 23:06:16 GMT

In this episode we talk to Kristian Holmes, a therapist who is a person of color. We dive deep into racism and emotional and mental health, especially for people of color and/or disadvantaged people in general. We’ll discuss what these groups of people are up against in terms of seeking care, the kind of experiences they have and what they can do to potentially advocate for themselves and find resources to support them. We will also talk about what therapists can do to make sure that they are providing a safe space for them.

How does racism impact people’s sexual health and wellbeing in general?

Sexual health involves physical, mental, social and emotional wellbeing. With systemic racism, biases are inherent in a lot of medical practices, and trying to seek quality care or resources in terms of sexual health becomes difficult for people of color. The stress brought about by racism on a day-to-day basis impacts people’s relationships and sex life.

How do you advise people of color to seek out help that will be responsive?

Communication is key. Do not hesitate to seek information in a community amongst people who are struggling or dealing with similar issues, regardless of whether it’s medical or therapy. It is important to ask questions and be transparent and open to people about what you’re seeking for in a doctor or a therapist. Kristian Holmes also recommends some groups that she considers to be safe spaces where black people can go to explore their sexuality and discuss issues that they may be having.

How can therapists create a safe space for people of color?

Therapists have to make sure that they are aware of their inherent biases or stereotypes. It is necessary to educate yourselves outside the office and self-reflect to know who you are comfortable dealing with and the different issues that you are comfortable talking about. If you are struggling in dealing with clients who are of color, seek supervision and consultation. Holmes also goes into dismantling specific stereotypes associated with black people in general.

How can therapists make it clear that they are offering a safe space for people of color?

There are a number of factors that can help convey this message. It could be the training that you are attending, what you are posting on social media, and just really showing that black lives and black people’s mental health matters.

Biography:

Kristian A. Holmes is the founder of Stepping Stones Counseling & Wellness Center. She is a licensed mental health counselor, National Certified Counselor, qualified supervisor for registered mental health interns and certified Florida School Guidance Counselor with experience working with adults, children, adolescents and families in various settings such as schools, day treatment programs, the criminal justice system, and as a private psychotherapist. Kristian obtained her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Specialist degrees from the University of Florida.

A holistic, strength-based, and sexological approach that is tailored to meet the unique needs of each individual is utilized in therapy along with other techniques and approaches that are complementary to the client’s presenting concerns. Kristian is fully dedicated to helping her clients realize their potential through support and empowerment.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.thesteppingstonescounseling.com

Instagram: @stepstowardswellness

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/198-racism-and-sexual-health-kristian-holmes

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

197: Guided by Glow – Sayra Player

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 21:08:22 GMT

Actress Sayra Player takes us into a different level of meditation. We discuss tapping into our imagination to inspire creativity with masturbation and getting in touch with our body and sensations. Along with a team of writers, actors, creators, and producers, she founded the app Guided by Glow, a guided meditation app designed to increase women’s sexual wellness through erotic audio experiences.

What is the story behind the business and why did Player start Guided by Glow?

Meditation is a magical and healing space and much needed by everybody. But the idea of bringing someone into this mindful state to have imaginary sexual play hasn’t been explored yet. Pooling her network of actors and producers, Sayra Player tried to fill in that gap. From a big closet that she turned into a makeshift studio, her team created erotic stories that are now helping many to own their sexuality and bring awareness to the senses and imagination.

Why is it powerful to connect to the imagination of the senses?

Masturbation puts one in an imaginative and creative state. Every guide on the app has the intention to create a meaningful, intimate experience with the listener. Imagination and creativity can lead us to a truthful state, and can allow us to enjoy sexuality.

What else can you do to enhance your experience?

Sayra Player would want to empower people to write their own fantasies. She talks about how her team is now encouraging people to play with their imagination and really embrace all the parts of themselves where they hold shame and fear.

How can Guided by Glow improve somebody’s sex life with their partner?

These recordings can help relationships, especially long-term relationships, stay fresh. A lot can happen to our mind and body when we do a 10-20 erotic meditation before sleeping with our partners. Sayra also said that this app was created for her younger, single self, so she could get that glow and energy from being sexually satisfied even without having a partner.

How do these ideas about creativity or imagination show up in an actual sexual encounter with a partner?

Sayra believes that just like meditation, listening to the Guided by Glow sessions will help you tune in more to your body. It also helps to bring in energy, presence and sensuality as well as creating a space to accommodate your partner.

Biography:

Sayra Player is founder of Guided By Glow, the guided audio app designed to help users unlock their sexual power through meditative erotic stories. An artist and actress, Sayra is dedicated to creating playful, inspiring experiences and deeply believes in spiritual transformation through fine art.

Sayra has written, produced, cast, starred in, and directed many films and theatrical productions throughout her career. Sayra previously served as Artistic Director of The Collective NY, where she nurtured over 60 artists, produced benefits, fundraisers, and 10 plays, and developed scripts for television and film.

Sayra believes that sex is emotional, spiritual, and can be key to nurturing a deeper relationship with oneself. Through Guided by Glow, Sayra aims to contribute to a culture that fosters healthy sex lives by combining mindfulness with sensuality to honor the body’s needs without shame.

Resources and links:

Guided by Glow’s website – https://www.guidedbyglow.com

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com 

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com 

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com 

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore:  https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/197-guided-by-glow-sayra-player

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

196: Bodyfullness – Dr. Rachel Allyn

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 19:59:48 GMT

In this episode, Dr. Rachel Allyn, a holistic psychologist, and pleasure expert, walks me through the concept of “bodyfullness.” Sharing some personal experiences, she talks about how embodied mindfulness can help us heal our traumas, reclaim our right to healthy pleasures, and inspire heartfelt human connection.

What is bodyfullness?

Bodyfullness is the ability to use connection and movement and physical awareness, in addition to paying attention to our thoughts and feelings, to really open up to pleasure. It also recognizes the ways that trauma lives in our body but goes to the next step of owning our rights to life’s pleasures and giving ourselves mental permission to enjoy, especially in a world where pleasure has been labelled a dirty word.

How does the practice of bodyfullness tap into our capacity for healing and connection?

Bodyfullness is moving away from the notion that feeling good in our body is bad and should be repressed. In fact, reverence for our body is the portal to opening up to different types of pleasure. When we open up to pleasure just within our own self, we connect more to others, and it helps us to open up to intimacy and relationships, be it sexual or platonic.

How do we overcome some barriers to bodyfullness such as self-acceptance and body image issues?

Dr. Allyn believes that part of the system we’ve been raised in is the epidemic of disembodiment, and that we should start an inner revolution about our bodies. bodyfullness is not just loving our body, but also embracing pain and discomfort especially when we override our body’s messages. We should all take time to listen to the language of the body and put it into balance.

Four essential and overlooked types of pleasure

Dr. Allyn discusses the four types of pleasure, underscoring the need to embrace all of life’s pleasures, because we all deserve to experience every single one. She talks about sensual pleasure, playful and creative pleasure, flow states, and erotic and sexual pleasure. Embracing pleasures does not mean running away from pain. Rather, it helps us tolerate and regulate pain, and keeps us grounded and honest about ourselves in dealing with emotions.

How do people expand their pleasure and how do they share it with others?

Dr. Allyn suggests slowing down and giving the body permission to rest. We need to start with ourselves before moving into engaging with others and bringing in somebody else to share in our pleasures. We need to own our right to pleasures first to effectively share and open up to what others might want for pleasures. Ultimately, it is a process of give and take.

The Pleasure Is All Yours: Reclaim Your Body’s Bliss and Reignite Your Passion for Life

In her book, Dr. Allyn gives light to people feeling stagnant coming out of the pandemic. She hopes that her book can reignite the power of inner connection to our bodies in order to connect to others on a deeper level. The negative feelings that we experience during these trying times are all part of a natural reaction to our collective trauma. Self-compassion, patience and support from others is key.

Biography:

RACHEL ALLYN, PHD is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified yoga instructor, public speaker, and relationship columnist. She is the founder of YogaPsych, PLLC, a psychotherapy practice for adults that blends Western medicine with Eastern philosophy and connects the mind with the body. She has been in private practice for almost fifteen years working with individuals and couples dealing with sexuality, intimacy, and relationship problems as well as trauma, depression, anxiety, and loss. She’s been quoted in books and magazines including Yoga Journal, Women’s Health, Outside, Good Housekeeping, and Cosmopolitan.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.drrachelallyn.com/

Instagram: @drrachelallyn

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/196-bodyfullness-dr-rachel-allyn

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

195: ADD and Sex – Lisa Schwartz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:12:07 GMT

Lisa Schwartz is here with me to talk about the intersection of ADD/ADHD with relationships and sex. We go over how ADD/ADHD can show up in various ways, strategies to build an intimate relationship, and how ADD is not just a disorder.

Definition- Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

Lisa’s personal experience with ADD has helped her work with patients in her practice. She says that people with ADD can hyper-focus on things that grab their interest. While doing that, they may not be able to focus on things that are not of interest to them.

Recognizing the behaviors of ADD/ADHD

From her experience with patients in her practice, Lisa lists several behaviors such as disorganization, not being present, short-term memory issues, lack of energy, and more, that people with ADD exhibit. One can be recognized as having ADD when one or more of these behaviors begins to show themselves.

How does ADD/ADHD show up in sex and relationships?

Lisa uses David Reed’s Erotic Stimulus Pathway model and Dennis Dailey’s model of sexual beings to explain how ADD shows up in sex and relationships. Reed’s model around sexual functioning talks about seduction, sensation, surrender and reflection. Lisa describes how ADD/ADHD interrupts relationships with one’s partner, sexual and otherwise. Dailey’s model of sexual beings categorizes human beings into sensuality, intimacy, identity, reproduction, and sexualization. These categories show up to affect individuals with ADD and their partners in sex and relationships.

Tips for people with ADD/ADHD in terms of sex and relationships

Lisa advises people with ADD/ADHD to take their medication to keep their focus, plan their sexual activities on a leisure day to conserve their energy, build an environment comfortable for both partners and practice mindfulness to stay present.

It’s also important for partners to identify ADD/ADHD and view it as separate from them in a way that doesn’t impact their efforts to work on it collaboratively.

Final thoughts

Lisa leaves us with the message that ADD/ADHD is not necessarily a disorder, but to be viewed as something positive that enhances creativity and passion.

Biography:

Sexuality educator and psychotherapist with more than 20 years of experience, Lisa B. Schwartz has a doctorate in Human Sexuality Education and a master’s degree in Psychological Services from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr Schwartz has a private psychotherapy practice and has specialized in the area of sexuality issues since 1994. Welcoming to a diverse clientele, and varying relational partnering (couples, thrupples and others), she works with clients on a wide range of sexuality issues: for example, issues about the impact of ADD/ADHD, change in sexual desire, infidelity and enhancing sexual experiences.

Licensed by the State of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to practice Marriage and Family Therapy, Lisa B. Schwartz also is licensed to provide telehealth in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. She earned her certificate in Marriage and Family Therapy in an in-depth, three-year program offered by the Family Institute of Philadelphia. In addition, she is a sex therapist certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists.

Dr Schwartz received specialty training in relationship and sex therapy on diagnosing and treating erectile dysfunction. She remains current about sexuality issues by participating in continuing education programs.

Lisa B. Schwartz is a Clinical Member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, the Association for Women in Psychology and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research.

Resources and links:

Website: sexualconcerns.com

Melissa Orlov www.adhdmarriage.com

www.additudemag.com

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/195-add-and-sex-lisa-schwartz

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

194: Navigating Parenting Differences – Rachel Duffy

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 20:58:53 GMT

Rachel Duffy brings in actionable tips to navigate parenting that not only enriches your relationship with your children, but also unlock some of the barriers to your sex life. We discuss parenting issues, how to correct behavior, and navigate the differences in parenting approaches with your partner.

Finding a passion for caring for family and children’s wellbeing in all her professions and personal life, Rachel explored conscious parenting to help people navigate parenting and life with children in general.

When You Disagree with Your Partner’s Parenting in the Moment

Rachel urges people to recognize their children’s ability to grow up with different parenting styles from each parent. To avoid a conflict in front of children, Rachel points out maintaining communication with trust and the assumption that your spouse ultimately wants the best for your children. It sets children up with a realistic image of marriage and empowers them with choices of their approach to parenting when they’re older. Giving children the space to express their feelings about one’s parenting is crucial.

Examining Upbringing and Repeated Patterns

Rachel believes from personal experience that people tend to repeat patterns of parenting like their parents even if it goes unnoticed sometimes. To avoid repeating those patterns, parents must work on understanding how their upbringing is projecting in their parenting, and reevaluate.

Navigating Differences in Parenting Approaches

Rachel stresses the unreliability of “quick fixes” and advises parents to dig deeper into the root cause of their children’s behaviors, and why it bothers them. Creating a rapport with your children to communicate and address what’s going on behind those behaviors or examining what’s going on with their relationship with the parent could help. Sometimes it’s parents’ triggers to children’s behavior that needs addressing.

How to Support Your Partner with Their Triggers?

Moving forward with compassion and an understanding that your partner is doing their best with the tools they have is necessary to implement an actionable plan that addresses the issue at hand.

Actionable Tips to Navigate Conflict in Front of Children

The best way to navigate differences in front of children is to make a plan in advance such as coming up with a signal to let the partner know when it’s time for them to break away. Rachel also suggests parents either work with a therapist for deeper issues or with a parenting coach to speed up the progress while children are still at home.

Why is it Worth Doing?

Rachel says that working on parenting not only deepens one’s connection with the children and themselves, but also deepens the relationship between the parents.

Biography

Rachel Duffy is a Certified Conscious Parenting Coach. She helps high achieving parents get off the “Roller Coaster Track” of parenting by learning how to set boundaries with their kids without yelling, feeling guilty or getting their buttons pushed so that they can foster a deep connection and enjoy the time they have with their families

Through her unique methodology, she helps parents become Parenting Architects: gain patience, understanding, authentic connection with their children, become powerfully grounded and finally, see the success they have in their professional setting also within their home.

Unlike traditional parenting models that rely on quick fixes to put out fires, Rachel helps you create life-lasting change, without using discipline or fear, by facing uncomfortable truths, risk-taking and not settling for mediocrity.

With decades of combined experience as a family lawyer and businesswoman, Rachel brings a unique combination of both strategic and tactical tools alongside growth and self-development, all delivered with compassion. Today, she works with parents and leaders to help them find freedom, joy and direction in their parenting and leadership positions.

Resources and links:

Website: sagacitylab.com

IG: @_rachelduffycoach_

FB: https://www.facebook.com/sagacitylab/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagacitylab/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/194-navigating-parenting-differences-rachel-duffy

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

193: Pleasure as a Means of Healing Trauma – Kathy Slaughter

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 01:02:51 GMT

Kathy Slaughter introduces an interesting way of integrating pleasure, in both sexual and everyday activities, as a way to heal from trauma. She talks about what trauma does to our body and mind, how to regain the connection between the two, navigate healing in intimate relationships, recognize triggers, and how to trust and feel safe.

Slaughter’s Interest in Healing from Trauma

Kathy’s interest in this field of work stems from her decades of experience working with situations like domestic violence, substance abuse, and gender and sexuality struggles. Evolving from her own experience as well, Kathy embraced the idea of pleasure becoming a step in healing trauma.

Integrating Sexual Pleasure in Trauma Healing & Its Relevance

While it’s harder to incorporate pleasure in the initial stages of trauma survival, it can be experienced through soothing activities, like a hot bath. When you’re in the thriving stage, embracing pleasure can unlock a pool of resources of soothing strategies. Trauma disconnects people from themselves and the process to get the connection back varies for every trauma, but it’s also fundamentally the same and comes out of the need to feel safe and trust.

Role of Physical Pleasure

Kathy identifies behaviors her clients enjoy and reinforces those behaviors in everyday life which couples can transition into the bedroom. Once they start integrating pleasure into their daily life, they learn to be mindful of things around them that bring them pleasure, help with anxiety, pressure release, and sleep.

Partner Pleasure in Healing from Trauma

While healthy relationships can restore your connection with yourself, relationships that have trouble with intimacy through sex can experience pleasure in everyday things like holding hands or cuddling. Kathy suggests trauma survivors take individual or couples therapy to recognize triggers and learn how to not let them get in the way of intimacy.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn Response & Sharing Responsibility

A partner who tends to respond by fighting can snap in the bedroom when triggered, a partner with a risk of fleeing might respond by pulling away. Someone with a tendency to fawn might be prone to please, while someone whose response is to freeze might dissociate in the bedroom. Kathy suggests looking out for these responses to check in when it shows up.

She believes that the partner initiating the activity has the primary responsibility to look out for triggers, while the other person as an adult has the responsibility to look out for themselves at all times. It’s about balancing, supporting, and being there for each other.

Biography:

Understanding how abuse happens, how to recover from it, and how communities can prevent abuse and respond to harm in life-affirming ways forms the basis of Kathy’s passion. Grounded in Social Work values and paradigms, Kathy has spent 15 years working on healing trauma and uncovering pleasure, agency, and safety in the consulting room. Currently, she leads a team of five at Soaring Heart Counseling, a sex-positive, queer-affirming, trauma-informed therapy practice in Indianapolis, Indiana.

To connect with pleasure, Kathy enjoys practicing yoga and meditation, dancing, hiking, and planning outdoor adventures with friends at regional Burning Man festivals.

Resources and links:

Website: soaringheartcounseling.com

Twitter & Instagram: @SoaringHeartIndy

Conference about polyamory: ethicalpolyam.com

TEDx talk: https://soaringheartcounseling.com/love-lessons-from-open-relationships/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want sex again so it never feels like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/193-pleasure-as-a-means-of-healing-trauma-kathy-slaughter

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

192: Men Raped by Women – Kelvin Pace

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 19:52:42 GMT

Breaking myths about male victims of sexual assault, Kelvin Pace joins me in talking about changed parameters, frequency, the societal narrative of men raped by women, the path to healing, and resources of support.

What Drew Kelvin Into Working With Victims?

Kelvin observed that 80-90% of the transitional youth that he worked with were sexual assault victims, prompting him to work in the field. After CDC came out with the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which included a new parameter of ‘made to penetrate’, it was found that at any given year, 1 out of 4 men are sexually assaulted.

Change in Parameters – ‘Made to Penetrate’

Before the new parameter came out, the sexual assault of men only included men being raped in prison and men sexually assaulted by other men. However, the new parameter of ‘made to penetrate’ changed it to include men being made to penetrate by other men or women by coercion, influence under substances, or by guilt. He noted that 75% of men reported being made to penetrate by female perpetrators.

Societal Myths

Kelvin explains that we grow up believing that men can’t be raped because men must want sex all the time; that men can’t sleep through sex with an erection, and if men have erections or ejaculate they must have consented to sex, all of which are societal myths that push men away from reporting their sexual assault.

As 71% of victims experience some form of sexual assault before the age of 25, they grow up believing a narrative that pushes them to become hyper-masculine and defensive. Kevin works to provide victims a safe space to be vulnerable, express their feelings, and tell their stories.

Process of Healing – What to Expect?

Kelvin builds trust with his clients He takes his clients through the process of talking about their feelings and thoughts, has them ask questions about the emotions triggered, and gathers information as a result to form decisions on the behavior. The clients then sit with those negative and positive behaviors and decide which one to act upon. This helps them feel empowered and in control.

Connecting Past Thoughts and Present Emotions

Kelvin helps his clients to sit with their emotions in the present and connect them to the thoughts of their past. After contemplating questions like “what if?” and “should I have?”, his clients have an opportunity to come to a place of acceptance. Kelvin then gets his clients to answer what they’ve learned about the experience and themselves. The responses would usually include resilience and empowerment. While it’s important to learn and not ruminate about the experience, it’s also important to recognize what happened.

Biography:

Kelvin Pace, MS, LPC-S, CST. He graduated with a master’s in clinical psychology from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2009.

Kelvin is the owner of Kpace Counseling, LLC where he serves clients in private practice. He does contract work with Full Spectrum Health as a behavioral health clinician where he works with an integrated care team delivering evidenced-based care to persons of the LGBTQ+ community. Kelvin has worked for a local non-profit delivering mental health services to children and young adults that have suffered from complex trauma. With a firm foundation in trauma, he delivers trauma-informed sex-positive therapy to his clients.

Kelvin provides services to couples and individuals dealing with sexual or relationship issues that include low desire, anxiety surrounding sex, and infidelity. His current focus is on mindfulness-based interventions to manage sexual concerns and he works with persons that are either in or looking to explore non-traditional relationship orientations that fall under the umbrella of consensual/ethical non-monogamy.

Resources for male sexual assault survivors:

Malesurvivor.org https://malesurvivor.org/

Rainn.org https://rainn.org/

Menhealing.org https://menhealing.org/

Local stand against rape groups https://www.nsvrc.org/

Resources and links:

Website: kpacecounseling.net

Email: kpacecounseling@gmail.com

Facebook: @kpacecounselingLLC

IG: @kpace37

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/192-men-raped-by-women-kelvin-pace

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

191: Letting In Vs. Letting Go – Benson Fox

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 20:12:51 GMT

Trauma: Letting in vs Letting Go

Benson Fox; a transformational coach, therapist extern, a psych major, and a current doctoral student of Adelphi university, guides people and helps them to embrace all parts of themselves. He talks about the effects of sexual abuse and the impact unprocessed trauma can have. He also talks about how to process trauma.

Listening To Parts of Yourself That Advocate Your Needs

Benson believes people tend to shun parts of themselves like anger, shame, depression, self-doubt, and hatred for reasons such as ‘societal messaging’, when in fact these emotions should be felt and processed.

He says that all parts of yourself are advocating for your needs, like shame advocating the need to enforce boundaries. In those cases, it’s important to correct these behaviors by relying on one’s internal system (that’s been evaluated and chosen for oneself) rather than outside validation. He further dives into identifying some exceptions and how one can deal with them.

How Does It Get In The Way Of Your Sex Life?

According to Benson, all experiences, including trauma, have both negative and positive aspects to them (in the context of an individual to process it and not in any way to justify the experience). When people have a negative experience, they tend to shut out the parts of themselves that feel something positive. It leads to a lack of trust in those parts when they go unprocessed. He further explores this idea by giving examples and discussing some of the dangers and the blurriness of this concept.

What Is The Process?

Benson believes that people should process as much pain as they can while maintaining a balance, so that they can get full access to their potential. In his practice, Benson follows parallel processing of functionality, optimization, and self-actualization for the short term and long term, where he incorporates the NASRI model – Notice, Accept, Sit, Respect, and Integrate. He takes us through each step of the process and emphasizes that NASRI is not an instructional-based model, but something that the client molds for themselves. The goal is to understand ‘how to address and receive the defenses’ while processing what’s behind the defense.

Impact of Benson’s Orthodox Jewish Background on His Work and Perspective

Benson’s Jewish background gives him confidence and trust in his process. His view of the world through the physical dimension of action and spiritual dimension of mindset, and the belief that we live in both at the same time allow him peace and confidence as a professional that people will be taken care of, but at the same time, helping as many people as he can.

Biography:

My name is Benson Fox, and I am an experienced and certified transformation coach and crisis counselor. I’m a major in psychology from Touro College and currently a doctoral student in Psychology at Adelphi University and a therapist extern at Brooklyn College. I help men and teens looking to gain balance, harmony, and joy in their personal and professional lives.

Resources and links:

Website: www.coachbensonfox.com Get a free 30 minute consultation now!

All socials: @coachbensonfox

Email: results@coachbensonfox.com

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/191-letting-in-vs-letting-go-benson-fox

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

190: Hormones are Your Superpower – Dr. Stephanie Estima

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 22:39:11 GMT

Dr. Stephanie Estima, author of the book The Betty Body: A Geeky Goddess’ Guide to Intuitive Eating, Balanced Hormones, and Transformative Sex, joins us to talk all about how women can take control and embrace their bodies. She talks about chronic stress, menstrual cycle, sleep, hormonal imbalance, nutrition, and how we can love ourselves by understanding them.

“Women need to have twice as much sex than men” – Dr. Estima

Women have 52% less serotonin synthesis than men which causes women to require twice as much reinforcement. This reinforcement could be sex or otherwise to fill that gap.

The Betty Body

Dr. Estima’s The Betty Body promises to help women get their own “Betty body”. Its philosophy is rooted in being size agnostic and embracing the body that you already have. The book helps driven people with a vagina embrace their gender agnostic feminine energy as much as their masculine energy by slowing down and getting attuned to their bodies.

What the book teaches people with a vagina

The book talks about the effects of chronic stress on physiology. Chronic stress is of two types: Eustress and Distress. While eustress gives out ‘good stressors’ to motivate you, distress negatively impacts you to de-energize. Dr. Estima talks about these stressors and their effect on your menstrual cycle and your ability to embrace your body in the book. Dr. Estima believes women must understand their menstrual cycle and how to use their hormonal flow to their advantage.

Hormonal imbalance and sleep deprivation

Dr. Estima explains the impact of hormonal imbalance and the various hormonal compositions that occur while moving from perimenopause to menopause. She stresses the importance of mastering the natural bases like generalized movement, stress reduction, and nutrition before considering other options like hormone replacement therapy.

She talks about the impact of sleep, regular sex, and orgasm on the vitals (heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, and menstrual cycle) and the activation of pleasure centers in the brain. To solve sleep deprivation, Dr. Estima suggests avoiding bright lights in the evening and keeping caffeine intake to 12 hours before sleeping.

Advice for women struggling with orgasm

Dr. Estima advises women who’ve never had an orgasm to take it slow and spend an hour every day exploring their bodies to figure out what they like. Self-pleasure could be the first step towards discovering more about your pleasure points. She emphasizes the freedom in play and the lack of pressure. She suggests resistant training and protein intake improves the synthesis of testosterone for people experiencing anorgasmia.

She leaves us with hope for every betty to look inside themselves for their worth rather than external validation.

Biography:

Dr. Stephanie Estima is a doctor of chiropractic with a special interest in metabolism, body composition, functional neurology, and female physiology.

She’s been featured on Thrive Global, of the Huffington Post, has over 3.5 million article reads on Medium.com, and has helped thousands of women lose weight, regulate hormones, and get off medications with her signature program, The Estima Diet. You can hear her every week on her podcast, Better! With Dr. Stephanie.

Resources and links:

Website: bettybodybook.com Get your free gifts and guides!

Book: Find The Betty Body: A Geeky Goddess’ Guide to Intuitive Eating, Balanced Hormones, and Transformative Sex in all online stores

Podcast: Better with Dr. Stephanie – https://hellobetty.club/podcast/

IG: @drstephanieestima

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclas

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/190-hormones-are-your-superpower-dr-stephanie-estima

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

189: A Sexplanation – Alexander Liu

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 20:53:47 GMT

Alexander Liu joins me in a conversation about his documentary “A Sexplanation”, which talks about his journey of coming out as gay in high school and his continued shame and disconnect over sex in his adult life. He talks about his journey into researching sex and sexuality and his changed conception.

Story Behind the Documentary

With society stigmatizing sex between men, in spite of having supportive parents, Alex went through a difficult mental journey coming out as gay in high school. He felt shame around sex, fantasies, his body, and had a hard time communicating his desires with the other person. His research into a healthy sex life began after opening up to his friends and realizing they had the same concerns.

Evolving Conception of Sex and Sexuality with Research

Soon after he began his research, he found normalcy around fantasies, anal sex, pleasure, and more. He had a revelation about his idea of sex and sexuality not centered around pleasure but around risk factors, health concerns, and societal stigmas. He started out by asking questions about orgasm and porn, which then evolved into him understanding sex and sexuality as sacred. Being introduced to gay sex through religion, Alex didn’t realize it could be something meaningful that he could decide how he wanted to express.

He saw the need to normalize sex, masturbation, and pleasure in the right way for kids and started filming a documentary by interviewing experts from all areas, asking them his questions, doubts, and fears around sex and sexuality.

A Sexplanation

The movie dives into Alex’s narrative and investigates many aspects of coming out, navigating relationships, sexual stigmas, sex life, and communication with a partner. It shows his journey into finding his authentic way of expression and its significance. All of which are relatable to many people of all sexualities who are dealing with issues around sex and meaningful connections.

Examining Porn and Sex Education in “A Sexplanation”

Many seek out porn to see the mechanics of different kinds of sex, but it leaves out the realistic aspect of pleasurable sex. The documentary examines whether kids should be taught about how pleasurable sex works in school, taboo fantasies, and more. It covers talking with people from churches, conservative politicians, and planned parenthood about educating people around these issues.

How can people become sexually literate?

While people can get accurate medical information about oral, anal, and vaginal sex through trusted internet sources and planned parenthood, it’s harder to learn to trust the people closest to you with your fears and doubts. It’s also important to check personal bias and make sure it’s not projecting from a bad place.

Biography:

Writer, Director Alex Liu’s work explores taboo topics like sex and drugs in order to broaden our understanding of science, morality, and how to negotiate a meaningful life. He’s developed two YouTube channels focused on sex and drug education, with over five million views. After studying molecular toxicology at UC Berkeley and Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting at New York University, he produced video, radio, and print content for NOVA ScienceNOW, CNN Health, and San Francisco NPR station KQED.

Resources and links:

Website: asexplanation.com See the trailer and get tickets to stream online.

@asexplanation — All social handles (FB, IG, TW)

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/189-a-sexplanation-alexander-liu

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

188: When your partner has Alzheimer’s – Wanda Braveman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 20:15:21 GMT

Wanda Braveman joins me today to share her personal story through her book, “White Knight: Living with Alzheimer’s Moment by Moment.” The book details her difficult journey with a partner who had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She talks about how their relationship changed, issues of consent, and their sex life while sharing her powerful story.

Background of their Relationship

Wanda reminisces about her first encounter with her husband, Joe, and their connection on their first date. After their heartwarming encounter, Wanda says they had no contact with each other for a year until Christmas time when they finally got together and ended up getting married 9 months later. Discussing their relationship before Alzheimer’s, Wanda talks about Joe’s achievements of high diving in high school and his high intelligence. They had an incredibly passionate sex life and a normal married life. Four and half years into the marriage, they realized that Joe couldn’t read the time on his watch, which they mistook for poor eyesight. Later, she realized they needed a doctor after Joe couldn’t remember his social security number or his co-workers’ names.

Sexual Relationship After Being Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s

Wanda’s husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at the age of 57. They continued having a sexual relationship; Wanda says, “It was like saying goodbye.” Seven months into the diagnosis, their sexual relationship took a turn when the act was no longer filled with tenderness and romance, but something that could quickly have turned into sexual assault. Wanda then took action to put a stop to it. While there are many books about the clinical aspect of Alzheimer’s disease, there were none about how Alzheimer’s feels from a personal perspective. It was a book that Wanda needed when she had no one to talk to about her experience as she was going through it.

Wanda describes the advancement of Alzheimer’s as inconsistent. As their lovemaking stopped, Wanda was concerned that, since his inhibitions were lowered, he might attack other women or their daughters due to his sexual frustration. Their relationship took a turn from being intimate to Wanda assuming the role of his mother and taking him to work every morning.

Role of Consent

Wanda combined his dislike of showers with lovemaking, intending to give him pleasure; a ‘loving gesture’ as Wanda says. She grappled with how consent played out in the later years. She realized their relationship dynamic and the context of him reciprocating loving actions, such as rubbing soap and confessing his love to her, made it clear that there was consent. However, she emphasizes that what was right for their relationship in this context isn’t right for everyone.

Wanda learned to take her pleasure into her own hands and recognized how to take care of herself in a healthy way.

Dealing with Grief

While Wanda battled with grief during this time period, noticing Joe’s happiness, she learned to be in the moment and savor it. Although she experienced grief with every change that occurred, and then some more, later on, she stayed present with him. Wanda’s book is used in her husband Steven’s therapy practice called, “Care for Caregivers”, where they focus on how caregivers feel and deal with their loved one’s disease.

Parting Words

Wanda’s book addresses caregiving for everyone including mothers, children, spouses, or those with full-time jobs. It applies to everyone, including people of the LQBTQ+ community who are in a loving partnered relationship with a partner diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. She leaves us with parting words, urging people to stay and live in the moment with their loved ones even when it’s difficult to assume a role.

Biography

Wanda offers a fresh new approach to ISGC with her memoir, “White Knight: Living with Alzheimer’s Moment by Moment”, and her warm counseling style. She makes caregiving a personal experience and enjoys sharing her life-gained wisdom and experience with others. In addition to the day-to-day management of our center as an Office Manager, Wanda is the founder and leader of our cutting-edge group, Care for Caregivers Group, based upon her book. She designed this group to enable people to become their own “White Knight” through learning and practicing self-care methods, as well as a positive, stay-in-the-moment philosophy, and to apply these principles to their work with loved ones who need their care. “You have to take care of yourself first!” This group is also for professional caregivers; it’s our experience that all caregivers need support. Wanda also co-leads our Monterey Transitional Support Group for the Transgender Community and our Sacred Sexuality/Tantra workshops for those seeking a closer connection with themselves and their beloved.

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/188-when-your-partner-has-alzheimers-wanda-braveman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

187: Considering Polyamory – Martha Kauppi

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:58:29 GMT

Martha Kauppi joins me in talking about her book, “Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients)” which acts as an aid for therapists and serves as a self-help manual for people who are considering polyamory or encountering problems around polyamory.

What is polyamory?

Martha defines polyamory as an open relationship where some or all partners have agreed to have more than one romantic and/or sexual partner. Her book caters to all forms of ethical non-monogamous relationships; even the ones that might have started out rocky.

Is polyamory an identity or a choice?

Martha believes polyamory could be an identity for some and a choice for others. While some consider it something that they choose, others identify themselves as polyamorous because they’ve always known that their relationship dynamic would involve more than one intimate partner. For some, their choice could later develop to be an identity.

Martha says that people choose to be polyamorous for several reasons; they could want to explore their sexuality, a kink, a fetish, or a desire discrepancy that they could not explore with their partner. To resolve the problems in their relationship and fulfill their desires at the same time, people find polyamory a logical option.

The benefits of polyamory

While polyamory allows someone to have multiple partners and experience different kinds of sex, it’s also an opportunity to form a supportive and caring family. People develop communication skills and endurance in a polyamorous relationship, and along the way, it opens one up to personal, relational, and emotional growth. Martha’s book addresses these topics and offers strategies to improve and apply these skills in and outside of the relationship.

Pitfalls and how to overcome them

Martha says that coercion is one of the biggest pitfalls. To avoid it, one has to figure out what they want, feel, or value beyond just the terms of polyamory or monogamy, but what they represent to their partner, and how to come to a place where they can advocate for themself. It eliminates the possibility of being pushed into saying yes but also allows one to expand their thinking and consider all options. Unlike monogamy, in polyamory, people are not subjected to choose between who to pursue. People can choose both or many and decide the dynamics of each relationship.

Emotional regulation and jealousy

Emotional self-regulation helps manage difficult emotions that are triggered in polyamory, such as jealousy. While co-regulation is seen often it’s not always reliable. Martha emphasizes that one has to decide to manage these emotions, and then have an honest and open conversation to address things before they’re revealed in a way that can’t be avoided.

How to make strong agreements

Skills in ‘differentiation of self’ aid in making strong and sustainable agreements. A strong agreement is one that all partners agree on and revisit before it’s broken. It’s more important to figure out how to make a strong agreement one at a time than having one at all.

Martha encourages people to find a therapist who is willing to work with them to develop skills that make it possible to have a relationship that they desire.

Biography:

Martha Kauppi is a marriage and family therapist, educator, and AASECT-certified sex therapist and supervisor with a lifelong career in health and sexuality. Martha specializes in working at the intersection of sex and relational issues. She creates and presents educational materials that are based on theory and scientific knowledge while also being practical, effective, and immediately applicable by therapists and their clients.

Resources and links:

Website: https://instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/about/

Book: Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients) – released on 15 May 2021. Available at Rowman & Littlefield, Amazon, and in UK outlets

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

186: Cyber Infidelity with Dr. Peter Kanaris

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 17:47:51 GMT

Infidelity looks a lot more complicated in the cyber world. Dr. Peter Kanaris joins me to unravel what constitutes cyber infidelity, the recovery approaches involved, and ways to rebuild trust.

Relationships in the Digital Age

Dr. Kanaris views the digital age as a “relationship accelerator” wherein the connections are made just as fast as they are broken. The digital age expedites and exposes every part of life that would otherwise be revealed slowly.

What is cyber infidelity?

Dr. Kanaris says that all infidelity in today’s age is cyber infidelity, as contact through technology is inevitable in the relationship in today’s age. Infidelity looks different in the 21st century than it did before. He calls it AAAP – Accessibility, Affordability, Anonymity, Portability. Technology has made it easier to seek infidelity without actively looking for it.

I and i-infidelity

Capital I-infidelity is violating agreements partners have about what they find acceptable to do or watch, such as electronic or face-to-face involvement, porn, sex, involvement of feelings, etc. Lower case i-infidelity is when involvement with technology takes over your priorities and responsibilities towards your partner but not necessarily anything sexual. Dr. Kanaris advises partners to have an honest conversation about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the relationship.

I-Infidelity and sex addiction

Sex addictions are not scientifically accepted in the professional world as they are popular in the media. Instead, Dr. Kanaris works with the model of ‘out of control sexual behaviors’ to help someone be in charge of their sexual wellness. However, for someone who chooses to cheat, he suggests a psychological approach to determine the underlying cause.

What to do once you see the red flags?

When you see red flags like catching your partner watching porn or sexting somebody else, Dr. Kanaris suggests having an open yet non-accusatory conversation about boundaries and what you’re uncomfortable with. If you’re still met with defensive behavior, it’s time to look further.

Recovery and rebuilding trust

The first step is to understand that technology poses challenges. Then address any out-of-control behaviors if there are any. The partners should then ‘collaborate and cooperate’ to manage technology in their relationships. When the conflict arises, Dr. Kanaris suggests employing externalization of the problem rather than looking at the problem from within the person. To rebuild trust, instead of going back to the blind faith model, Dr. Kanaris talks about an evidence-based model. Here, the partner who broke the trust takes initiative to be transparent and reassuring even if it costs them their privacy for the time being.

Tune in to find out what more ways there are on the path to recovery.

Biography

Dr. Peter Kanaris holds a doctorate in Clinical and School Psychology from Hofstra University. He is an N.Y.S. licensed psychologist and the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists certifies him as a Diplomate of Sex Therapy. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the New York State Psychological Association. He is a graduate Post-Doctoral Fellow of the Albert Ellis Institute in NYC where he served as a senior clinician, training supervisor, and faculty member

Dr. Kanaris has served as the Public Education Campaign Coordinator for the American Psychological Association in New York State. He has been the featured guest on many live interviews and call-in television programs where he has discussed a variety of topics on relationships and sexuality. He has appeared on radio programs from San Francisco to New York and has given numerous Internet, newspaper, and magazine interviews discussing topics in sexuality and mental health.

As Clinical Director of Hewlett Consultation Center from 1981 through 1999, Dr. Kanaris’ responsibilities included psychotherapy, sex, and marital counseling, and coordination of clinical services, professional training, and public education. Since 2000, Dr. Kanaris has directed the Sexual Diagnostic Program at his office in Smithtown, New York.

Resources and links

Website: https://cyberinfidelityhelp.com/

Free guide to infidelity in the digital age: https://cyberinfidelityhelp.com/infidelity-in-the-digital-age/

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want sex again without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/186-cyber-infidelity-with-dr-peter-kanaris

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

185: Cultivating Female Desire – Dr. Brandye Manigat

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 19:18:50 GMT

For all of the women who have ever wanted to feel sexy again; Dr. Brandye Manigat joins me in talking about cultivating pleasure and desire and reconnecting with one’s libido. She shares her insights and discoveries throughout her journey of becoming a Women’s Pleasure Coach.

Her personal experience around low libido, as well as a lack of public information surrounding the topic, motivated Dr. Manigat to go from being an OB/GYN to a Women’s Pleasure Coach, helping women to achieve lasting change in the perception of their bodies and desire.

Teaching People About Arousal and Desire

Dr. Manigat’s teaching around arousal and desire involves having a conversation with the client about what their thoughts and ideas about sex and pleasure are, and where they stem from. These ideas are often learned through family and culture and are influenced by movies. Having a conversation about what an orgasm means to them and the steps they can take to consistently have an orgasm can help women to erase insecurities and achieve pleasure.

When to Get Help?

Dr. Manigat urges people to seek help when the lack of desire disrupts daily life. Sex drive is inconsistent through various stages of life; having kids, divorce, pre-menopause, menopause, etcetera. Though women can be technically diagnosed with Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), not all women meet the criteria. This does not mean that they should not get help.

How to get in touch with desire?

Dr. Manigat recommends journaling as a way to untangle one’s thoughts and emotions. She gives prompts to clients, such as what makes them feel sexy outside the bedroom. These prompts reveal things that could be practiced in everyday life, which helps transition pleasure both in and out of the bedroom.

Low Libido at Different Ages

Menopause doesn’t necessarily cause low libido; however, you could experience low libido for the same reasons as before, such as fatigue and interrupted sleep, which causes depression, which in turn affects the libido. Medication taken during menopause could also lower libido. Young women could overcome low libido by reconnecting with their partner through meaningful conversations about dreams, sexual experiences, new fantasies and attempting to rekindle their intimacy.

Approaches to Help Women Struggling With Orgasms

Dr. Manigat advises women to educate themselves about their anatomy and multiple pleasure points and how to stimulate them to orgasm. Furthermore, she also emphasizes people being present and mindful during sex, to focus on any of the five senses to keep you in the present. Women who have never had an orgasm can educate themselves about the different ways orgasms manifest and the sensations one would feel.

Take Away

She leaves us with a valuable affirmation, saying, “You are worthy and deserving of pleasure. You don’t have to work to earn it, it’s not something you’ve to strive for.”

Biography

Dr. Brandye Wilson-Manigat, MD, also known as “Dr. Brandye”, is among the country’s well-known physicians. As a board-certified OB/GYN and Women’s Pleasure Coach, she brings a unique approach to women’s sexual health, achieving a holistic integration of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual elements of you. This creates lasting positive change in how you view yourself, your body, and your pleasure. She is called upon by various local and national media outlets to give a fresh perspective and new information on women’s health trends.

Dr. Brandye is the founder and chief medical advisor for DrBrandyeMD.com, where she has created a safe space to discuss real-world strategies to help women learn the truth about sex and orgasms and embrace their feminine essence, and feel good both inside and outside of the bedroom. Her book, “My O My! A Committed Woman’s Guide to Getting the Great Sex She Deserves”, is an Amazon #1 Bestseller and has helped numerous women to live their Best. Sex. Life. Ever!

Resources and Links:

Website: https://drbrandyemd.com/

Bio hacks pdf- https://biohacksforbettersex.com

Sessions: https://drbrandyemd.com/services/

Book: In My O My: A Committed Woman’s Guide to Getting the Great Sex She Deserves

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/185-cultivating-female-desire-dr-brandye-manigat

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

184: Anorgasmia in Women – Dr. Rachel Needle

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 18:34:22 GMT

Dr. Rachel Needle joins me in a discussion about anorgasmia. We speak about how it manifests, what we can do about it, and if it’s something that can be turned around. We answer questions that most of us have asked at one point or other in our lives.

What is anorgasmia?

Dr. Rachel defines anorgasmia as ‘a sexual dysfunction characterized by a persistent or recurrent delay in the absence of achieving an orgasm. Some women with anorgasmia have never had an orgasm, and others have experienced a delay. She says that 5 – 10% of biological women have life-long anorgasmia, whilst others have orgasms depending on the situation or the person. She addresses anorgasmia by studying the person’s sexual and relationship history.

What does an orgasm feel like?

Dr. Rachel says that one can recognize an orgasm when one has an involuntary muscle contraction. It can be felt throughout the whole body and can sometimes cause you to lose control of your body. However, recognizing it can depend on whether you’re focused enough to experience all of the sensations that are leading up to it.

Struggles with orgasm & treatment options

She talks about the importance of exploring and experimenting with your body. We miss different sensations when distracted and when we’re thinking only about orgasming. Communicating your needs to your partner and practicing mindfulness can help one to be in the moment. She gives some effective tips to keep yourself and your partner engaged throughout.

Women who have trauma related to sex are prone to life-long anorgasmia. This makes it difficult to be vulnerable during sex; obstructing arousal and orgasm. Biological issues, medications, and the kind of language we use are some contributing factors that can prolong arousal and orgasms.

Acquired and situational anorgasmia

People with acquired anorgasmia used to have normal orgasms, but now cannot. Dr. Rachel suggests figuring out and understanding what and how things have changed since the diagnosis. Those with situational anorgasmia might have difficulty reaching orgasm with one partner, but not face the same difficulty with another partner. They could easily reach an orgasm by themselves, but not with a partner. This happens when one is not comfortable letting themselves be vulnerable experiencing things with a certain partner.

Faking an Orgasm

Dr. Rachel urges people to focus on figuring out how they can achieve an actual orgasm. Instead of telling your partner that you’re faking it, communicate with them about trying new things until you are comfortable enough to experience the orgasm.

Biography

Dr. Rachel Needle is a Licensed Psychologist and Certified Sex Therapist in private practice and the founder and executive director of the Whole Health Psychological Center, comprehensive psychological practice with therapists with a broad range of specialty areas. Dr. Needle is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences, in the masters in forensic psychology, and the Doctorate in Criminal Justice programs at Nova Southeastern University. She is the founder and CEO of the Advanced Mental Health Training Institute and Co-Director of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes which provide continuing education to Mental Health and Medical professionals and Sex Therapists around the world.

Dr. Needle has specialized training in the area of substance use disorder. She is a professional consultant to facilities specializing in the treatment of substance use disorders and assists them in expanding and enhancing clinical programming. She also does expert training for staff members at residential and outpatient facilities that specialize in alcohol and substance abuse. Dr. Needle is a business coach and consultant and helps therapists build and thrive in private practice both in-person and online! She is the co-owner of My Private Practice Collective which offers a course on how to start, grow, and thrive in private practice.

Resources and links

Website: drrachel.com

Practice: wholehealthpsych.com

Training & certifications: modernsextherapyinstitutes.com

Email: drrachelneedle@gmail.com

More information

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want sex again without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/184-anorgasmia-in-women-dr-rachel-needle

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

183: [Personal Story] Living with Lichen Sclerosus – Tammy

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 20:53:36 GMT

Tammy brings her journey with Lichen Sclerosus and the experiences of many other women to light in this episode. We hear everything about what it’s like to live with Lichen Sclerosus, its challenges, treatment options, and how to get support.

What is Lichen Sclerosus?

Lichen Sclerosus is an autoimmune condition where the body attacks itself. It is thought to be genetic. It usually occurs in the genitals, but can also affect other areas of the body, where it can cause itching and discoloration on the wrist, inner thighs and stomach. Lichen Sclerosus affects young and old women.

Tammy’s history with Lichen Sclerosus

Tammy started experiencing extreme itching and burning beginning in her 20s. Others may experience visual symptoms like white patches of skin. At the age of 44, she was diagnosed with Lichen Sclerosus after doing a punch biopsy. She believes stress and genetics played a role in her diagnosis. Shame and discomfort made it harder for her to find the right diagnosis and thus she emphasizes the importance of finding the right doctor.

Impact on sex life

Tammy warns people against looking up their condition online. She talks about how many women go through this process with unsupportive partners. Other than sexual and mental issues that make sex difficult, pain is a big factor. It can change the way your vulva looks when the labia of both sides fuse and are sometimes absorbed entirely. The vaginal opening can shrink, causing sex to be incredibly painful. Clitoral phimosis is a condition when your clitoral hood fuses with the clitoris making it less sensitive. Other than affecting your sex life directly, it makes even performing menial tasks extremely painful.

Treatment options for Lichen Sclerosus

Talking about her history, Tammy says she started off using triamcinolone, a moderate steroid. Clobetasol cream and ointment is the most common treatment that’s specifically used for Lichen Sclerosus. Hydrocortisone is used to soothe itching. She talks about the “Mona Lisa touch” used by Dr. Andrew Goldstein who uses a specific machine to improve collagen production. While it may seem like a dermatological issue, many doctors don’t seem to know much about it.

Impact on Mental health

This grueling process in which women receive little support is hard on their mental health and sexual health. Tammy says the process of finding the right diagnosis takes its toll. The shame and embarrassment around Lichen Sclerosus can be helped by having a supportive partner.

Available support

Women with Lichen Sclerosus are at a higher risk of getting vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia and other autoimmune conditions. Tammy found a supportive environment for women who have both Lichen Sclerosus and intimacy issues in Facebook support groups. While finding support and acceptance of Lichen Sclerosus is hard, it’s helpful to be surrounded by people going through the same thing on this journey.

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/183-personal-story-living-with-lichen-sclerosus-tammy

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

182: When You’re the One Who Cheated – Tammy Nelson

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 19:07:33 GMT

Tammy Nelson, the author of the book When You’re The One Who Cheats, joins me to talk about cheating and infidelity from the point of the cheater. She offers her interesting insight on why people cheat, what it’s like to be cheated on, and the recovery process.

Is it Infidelity?

Tammy defines infidelity as forming a relationship outside of your primary partnership; a relationship with a sexual context such as flirting online or paying a sex worker, in which you are dishonest about these relationships with your primary partner. The pandemic has caused an increase in online infidelity. People cheat for various reasons, but Tammy says that defining what infidelity means to you can help to start a conversation with your partner and can establish an agreement of implicit monogamy.

Kinds of Infidelity

While some people cheat to break up, for others, it’s a wake-up call to turn something around in their relationship. In Tammy’s words, “People rarely look for someone to cheat with, they look for someone to be.” Only 7% of affairs end up in marriage with the other person, while most affairs don’t last longer than a year. People who choose to make it work after the affair should acknowledge their changed relationship and incorporate their needs and desires into the new relationship to avoid another affair or any resentment.

Recovering from Infidelity

Before sharing anything with family or friends, it’s best to deal with the trauma in the conflict/crisis phase. The partners should process everything, from how it happened to how they’ve changed, in the insight phase. In the vision phase, the partners make decisions about moving forward. The goal of recovery is not to forgive, but to work on building a new sex life that is fulfilling. She points out red flags that people need to look out for before deciding to move forward.

Should You Tell Your Partner?

A partner who confesses to an affair after it’s over to feel good about themselves, knowing it could devastate their partner, is selfish. Many feel that they would want to know if their partner ever cheats, Tammy suggests, considering the extent of information you would want to know.

How to Avoid Cheating

Tammy believes people also cheat because they have experienced developmental challenges of a second adolescence and seek to evolve their personalities. They rebel against their partners as they did with their parents. To avoid cheating, partners can work through this stage together to reinvent themselves and have fun. She also advises seeking therapy and outside support to grieve the end of the relationship instead of using your partner for it.

Advice

Tammy advises us to differentiate between intuition and fear because intuition allows us to trust and move forward.

Biography

Tammy Nelson Ph.D. is a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Certified Imago relationship therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and Executive Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute as well as Director of the Ph.D. program in Counseling and Sex Therapy at Daybreak University in Southern California. She is the author of several books including Integrative Sex and Couples Therapy, When You’re the One Who Cheats, The New Monogamy, Getting the Sex You Want, and What’s Eating You? Her latest book Open Monogamy will be released in November 2021 with Sounds True Publishing. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times Magazine, CNN, Rolling Stone, and Time Magazine. She is a TEDx speaker and host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. She is in private practice in Los Angeles CA.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://drtammynelson.com

Podcast: https://www.thetroublewithsex.com/podcast

Book – When You’re The One Who Cheats: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999481003/

Email Tammy and get your free E-book! https://drtammynelson.com/contact/

More info

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want sex again without it feeling like a chore: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/182-when-youre-the-one-who-cheated-tammy-nelson

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

181: When Sex Hurts – Dr. Irwin Goldstein

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 20:06:09 GMT

Dr. Irwin Goldstein, the founder of field of sexual medicine, joins me in the conversation about female sexual pain. He drives the talk with tons of fascinating information about sexual pain, including what are the different categories, common causes, and treatment options.

The prevalence of female sexual pain

Within the last month, 1/3rd of women reported experiencing sexual pain or some form of discomfort during sex, while only 2% to 7% of men reported sexual dysfunction or secondary pain. He urges women to ensure they find the correct medical professional and find answers to their questions as he has found many women go untreated due to misdiagnosis.

Dr. Goldstein best categorizes various kinds of sexual pain by the area it originates. The pain in the vulva is diagnosed as vulvodynia. However the vestibule is often overlooked as the source of pain, and more than 90% of the time is misdiagnosed as vulvodynia.

Hormonally Mediated Vestibulodynia

Dr. Goldstein warns against birth control pills as they have harmful side effects that can eventually affect your sex life. He urges women to consider other birth control methods like Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) – IUDs, Nexplanon and Implanon contraceptive implants, and progesterone. He further informs that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and The American Academy of Pediatrics no longer consider birth control pills as the leading method of contraception.

Causes in Older Women and Treatment Options

For older women over 40, the hormonal challenges of menopause are a leading cause of pain. He mentions that women go through two stages of menopause, where the first one causes low testosterone levels and the latter causes low estrogen levels. He shares available treatment options for this.

Other Common Causes and Treatment Options

Among other causes, Dr. Goldstein talks about Neuroproliferative vestibulodynia, a condition where women suffer from life-long pain. Monistat is the number one medicine women use that causes neuroproliferative vestibulodynia. The only treatment option available is surgically removing the vestibule, which has an 80% cure rate and is completely non-disfiguring.

Tune in for valuable advice that can make a huge difference in your life.

Background

Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970s. He has authored more than 350 publications as well as multiple book chapters and edited 6 textbooks in the field. His interests include penile microvascular bypass surgery, surgery for dyspareunia, sexual health management post-cancer treatment, genital dysesthesia/persistent genital arousal disorder, physiologic investigation of sexual function in men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women.

Dr. Goldstein is Director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital, Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Diego, and practices medicine at San Diego Sexual Medicine. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Sexual Medicine Reviews and past Editor of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. He is a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health and of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America. He holds a degree in engineering from Brown University and received his medical degree from McGill University.

The World Association for Sexual Health awarded the Gold Medal to Dr. Goldstein in 2009 in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the field, 2012 he received the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health Award for Distinguished Service in Women’s Sexual Health, in 2013 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, and in 2014 he received the ISSM Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Sexual Medicine. He is happily married to his college sweetheart Sue, and together they have three children and five grandchildren.

Resources and Links:

National Vulvodynia Association: https://www.nva.org/

International society for the study of women’s sexual health: https://www.isswsh.org/

Book: When Sex Hurts: A Woman’s Guide to Banishing Sexual Pain

Schedule a Courtesy Call with San Diego Sexual Medicine :

http://sandiegosexualmedicine.com/courtesy-call

More info:

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to want more sex without it feeling like a chore: https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/181-when-sex-hurts-dr-irwin-goldstein

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

180: Wheel of Consent – Dr. Betty Martin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 17:31:25 GMT

Dr. Betty Martin, the author of the new book, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent, is highlighting the importance of giving and receiving and maintaining that balance in sexual relationships. Today, we get to hear about what it means to set boundaries, follow consent, and how all of that comes into play in terms of taking care of oneself.

Why is it important to be selfish sometimes?

While giving to your partner and thinking about their needs is an important part of the sexual relationship, being stuck in that position and being deprived of your own needs is not sustainable. It’s an opportunity taken away from your partner to give, and an opportunity that you are missing to receive. The relationship becomes strained when your partner has to figure out what to give, and things only become worse when they do it wrong. There has to be a balance of giving and receiving.

Dr. Betty’s Wheel of Consent takes apart the acts of giving and receiving and allows each aspect to be examined individually. In real life, it is not necessary to do these things one at a time, but this practice allows you and your partner to understand each other’s needs.

Why are we so poorly equipped to receive?

The reason that we’re programmed to not receive touch as we are supposed to, is because we assume receiving to be ‘done to’ us. Since touch is given to us, we assume that we’re supposed to like it, and from that, confusion arises about what’s wrong with us for not liking it. According to Dr Betty, this confusion began during our childhood when things happened that we didn’t like. Things such as changing diapers, noses being wiped, being picked up, going to bed early; our bodies were taught that there was nothing that we could do about it.

Since then, this dislike has been reinforced by things ‘being done to us against our will in ways that we didn’t like or didn’t want’. On the other hand, we keep giving ‘touch’ in a way that we think other people like without ever asking how they’d like to be touched, either because it’s an awkward conversation to have, or because the thought to ask has never occurred to us.

How can people get better at giving and receiving?

For one to get better at giving and receiving, Betty suggests going through her book and following the processes stated in the book, beginning with the 3-Minute Game. In this game, one must give to their partner for three minutes, and then their partner must give to them for three minutes. She suggests starting with areas that don’t feel too sexy so that you can give yourself space to notice those areas and ask for what you want. Over time the game becomes more natural, and every time you play, you can discover something new about what you like or what you don’t like. More than touching itself, observing what you want and asking for it is key.

Negotiating Boundaries and Limits

Dr. Betty urges people to say no without adding any polite justification if they don’t feel comfortable doing something. If you’re not entirely against the idea, she suggests negotiating the parts you want to do and the parts you don’t want to with your partner, such as telling your partner to touch an area, but not tickle it. She emphasizes the importance of setting limits. By setting those limits, you can be playful within those limits without the worry that your partner is going to do something you don’t like.

She encourages people to listen for the ‘pull and not the push’ while considering their partner’s request. If they suggest something edgy, you can decide to try it if it feels like it could be fun, even though it’s edgy. However, if you’re telling yourself to do it simply because you don’t want to let your partner down, then it’s better to simply say no.

Biography

Dr. Betty Martin has had her hands on people professionally for over 40 years as a chiropractor, and upon retiring from that practice, became a certified Surrogate Partner, Sacred Intimate and Somatic Sex Educator. Her explorations in somatic-based therapy and practices informed her and allowed for her creation of the framework, The Wheel of Consent®.

As part of her work with the School of Consent, Betty travels around the world, teaching practitioners how to create empowered agreements in their client sessions in her highly sought-after training, “Like A Pro: The Wheel of Consent for Practitioners.” Originally developed as an offering to teach much-needed consent skills to sex workers and touch providers, this training is now attended by somatic therapists, massage therapists, sexuality educators, medical and health care workers, activists, human resources folks, and the spectrum of touch-based professional providers – all of whom complete the training with a clear understanding of how consent starts with our own bodies, and then expands outwards into all forms of human relating, with or without touch.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://bettymartin.org/

Book (Get your free chapter!): https://wheelofconsentbook.com/

Workshops: https://www.schoolofconsent.org/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/180-wheel-of-consent-dr-betty-martin

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

179: The Logic of Our Fantasies with Michael Bader

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 31 May 2021 19:44:20 GMT

Michael Bader, the author of the book Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies joins me in a fascinating conversation about sexual fantasies. We get to hear his ideas about sexual fantasies and what they mean.

Decoding Sexual Fantasies

Michael recognized the need for an applicable approach to sexual fantasies to help patients with their shame and guilt surrounding their sexual fantasies and preferences. His arguments originated from a theory from Joseph Weiss. Michael argues that sexual fantasies are constructed to express our sexual desires and arousals in a way that is acceptable to our guilty conscience.

Michael gives an instance of dominance and submission, and the fantasy of having or giving up control over our sexual stimulation. That control could look like a masochistic fantasy or desiring partners with a rough exterior or self-centered. Curating this fantasy is exciting because ‘they don’t have to feel guilty about hurting the other person.’ A person assuming the role of a dominant knows that they are going to assume control over this person and that person would feel aroused by it and not be hurt and the same goes for the person assuming the submissive role. This fantasy dissolves the guilt of hurting each other. Sexual fantasies are strategies that our mind unconsciously develops to allow us to free our sexual excitement from things like guilt.

The Purpose of Sexual Fantasies and their role

Michael believes a person’s sexual fantasies act as a window into their unconscious psyche. When a person harbors feelings of guilt, shame, or responsibility for another person’s wellbeing, it inhibits the person’s sexual desires and thus resulting in the development of sexual fantasies to avoid such feelings. These inhibited sexual desires can interfere with other aspects of life. In the consulting room, when we analyze these sexual fantasies what we discover is “the revelation of someone’s core beliefs’’, which show up in the other parts of life and not just sexually. Analyzing these sexual fantasies can help the patient’s guilt and shame around their desires and also inspect the roots of their beliefs that caused their sexual fantasies.

Sexual Fantasies Are Not Meant To Be Changed

As long as there’s an innate need for attachment, the feelings of worry, care, responsibility, and guilt towards loved ones will be present. These needs tend to almost always show up in people’s sex lives. There won’t ever be a time where people will stop feeling these that stem from our core needs. And since sexual fantasies arise to overcome those feelings, they will always be needed as a way to express our sexual desires.

Are there Problematic Fantasies?

Every fantasy is enjoyed by somebody. Porn has tons of types of pornography for every population and some of the unpopular categories wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people to consume it. The problems with these fantasies coming true are they produce porn and sex addicts that take people away from being emotionally and sexually present in relationships and marriages. These fantasies could be anything.

Talking about limits to our sexual fantasy, Michael says, unless our sexual fantasies take us away from being psychologically present, being aligned with our values, and doing something meaningful from other people, sexual fantasies are not problematic. Michael also believes sexual fantasies that are illegal in reality are not problematic to think about unless they’re acted even slightly in any way.

Biography

Michael Bader, DMH is a psychologist and psychoanalyst with over 40 years of clinical experience in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has written extensively about the interaction of psychology, culture, and politics and has produced a podcast – Mysteries of the Mind—about these issues. He is the author of Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies, and Male Sexuality: Why Women Don’t Understand It, and Men Don’t Either.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://michaelbader.com/

Books: https://michaelbader.com/books/

Other Publications: https://michaelbader.com/writings/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/179-the-logic-of-our-fantasies-with-michael-bader

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

178: Holistic Approaches to Erectile Dysfunction – Dr. Tracy Gapin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 May 2021 18:48:17 GMT

Dr. Gapin defines ED as an inability to attain an erection that is satisfactory for intercourse; however, he points out the subjectivity of an erection and brings down the definition to “an inability to have satisfactory intercourse”. He distinguished ED from performance anxiety by addressing the psychological component of a person’s psyche that acts up when one worries and develops anxiety over underperforming.

Various causes of ED

He distinguished various causes of Erectile Dysfunction into four categories and briefly talked about the disorders that could cause these dysfunctions.

Disruption of normal nervous function

Disrupted blood flow to the penis

Hypogonadism, thyroid, hyperlysinemia from poorly controlled diabetes, and hypercortisolemia from chronic stress.

Cognitive component plays an important part in erectile function. According to Dr. Gapin, stress can act as a disruptive component in a person’s life driving them away from the thought of sex.

Evaluating ED

Dr. Gapin addresses the systems-based approach that is followed in healthcare practice. He alerts people to recognize the multiple components that could cause ED before trying to fix it with a pill. He promotes the human systems approach with his patients where he understands and addresses the sleep patterns, stress, vascular health, hormones, and all other factors that could affect erectile function. He advocates adjusting to healthy nutrition and change in lifestyle to reverse the effects of ED by improving glycemic control, weight loss all of which have an effect on energy, hormones, and cortisol which ultimately come down to sexual health.

Improving erectile function by improving six areas of health

Dr. Tracy emphasizes improving six areas of health – Nutrition, sleep, mindset and stress, hormones, detox, and fitness to ultimately improve erectile function. While quantity is an important factor of sleep, he focuses on the quality of sleep. Poor sleep is said to raise cortisol levels and blood sugar, make you store fat, and lower testosterone levels ultimately affecting sexual function. He counsels on following a healthy diet by following an individualized plan on what foods to eat and avoid, as genetics play a big role in nutrition. As stress is an important component that men take up about various aspects of their lives, he emphasizes practicing gratitude and mindfulness by the following meditation and breathing through the nose. In the area of fitness, Dr. Tracy recommends strength training, cardio, low-intensity activities, and stretching. For more than 50% of men, improving their health in all the above areas will profoundly improve their sexual function.

Treatment options

Dr. Tracy talks about “band-aid treatment” including oral medications and intracavernosal injectables. Commonly used oral medications are Viagra and Cialis and they last from 24-48 hours depending on the medication. Intracavernosal injectables like trimix, bimix, or quad mix are taught to be directly injected into the penis and it gives an erection for up to two hours. These treatments are short-term fixes and won’t fix the underlying cause.

Fixing the underlying cause will help in improving the blood flow to the penis for the long term. He suggests a Vacuum pump that acts as an actual vacuum by sucking the blood into the penis to create an erection. A penis ring can be used to maintain the erection and to help with penis compression. It’s a non-invasive procedure, and he recommends using it 10-15 minutes every day to have a profound effect.

Two of the regenerative treatments are gain wave and PRP. Gainswave is a low-intensity shock wave therapy used to focus the shock waves at a specific point under the skin to cause neovascularization and angiogenesis to create new blood vessels in the penis. It’s done by stimulating stem cells and growth factors to produce new blood vessels and can be done over 8 to 10 sessions. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is when you draw a patient’s blood to separate the layer of platelets and growth factor and inject it in five different spots on the penis to stimulate stem cells and growth factors to produce new blood vessels. It’s done in a single session.

Dr. Tracy talks about Penile Implant as a last resort. It’s a surgical procedure done by placing an inflatable cylinder-like device into the penis which can be manually pumped to stimulate saline to go from a reservoir placed in the belly into the cylinder to create an erection. He explains several downsides to the procedure like a slight penis shortening, losing sensitivity, losing the feel of a natural erection, and damaging the chances of ever having a natural erection.

Testosterone Pandemic

Dr. Tracy opens us up to some shocking numbers of drop in testosterone levels and fertility levels over the last 30 years. He talks about the chemicals and endocrine disruptors in the environment that are decreasing the hormones, causing immune disease, obesity, infertility, hormone issues, and cancers. He points out the difficulty in avoiding those as they are present everywhere in our food products, plastic water bottles, packaging containers, household cleaning products, personal care products- shampoo, deodorant, cologne, sunscreen, soap, etc. To curb the effects, he says we need to teach and learn how to minimize exposure to these chemicals.

Biography

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS is a board-certified urologist, world-renowned men’s health & performance expert, best-selling author, and professional speaker. He has over 20 years of experience focused on providing Fortune 500 executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes a personalized path to optimizing their health and performance.

Dr. Gapin incorporates precision hormone optimization, peptide therapy, state-of-the-art biometric tracking, epigenetic coaching, and cutting-edge age management protocols to help men not just optimize their testosterone levels but radically upgrade their health and vitality and reverse aging, so they can be the most amazing version of themselves.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://drtracygapin.com/

Free copy of the book – Male 2.0: http://drtracygapin.com/limitless

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/178-holistic-approaches-to-erectile-dysfunction-dr-tracy-gapin

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

177: Urology for Women – Dr. Lamia Gabal

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 May 2021 15:54:09 GMT

Dr. Lamia Gabal is a Urologist with a sub-specialty in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. She talks about all kinds of concerns women bring to a Urologist, information about the treatment options, and how to go about it.

Sexual issues that bring women to urologists

Women come to urologists for various kinds of sexual concerns. While traditionally urologists were thought to be “Male gynecologists”, Dr Lamia says urologists deal with much more than that. Women come with issues of Urinary Incontinence, Urinary Tract Infection, orgasmic dysfunction, female sexual dysfunction, libido issues, and more. Many women who come with these concerns back away from having sex with their partners because of the embarrassment they feel around it. Sometimes fixing their medical problems also helps them with their sex lives. While male concerns around this subject are already well understood and treated, female sexual dysfunction has only received a “trash can diagnosis”, says Dr. Lamia. There are several types of female sexual dysfunctions and each needs to be treated accordingly.

Urologists also deal with hormonal changes and core dysfunction. Thinning of vaginal tissue as women age can also lead to sexual dysfunction. Pelvic organs prolapse after childbirth can also lead to sexual dysfunction and can be painful.

Medical concerns that drive women away from having sex

There’s an overlap of urologists and gynecologists in the sub-specialty of female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, with each performing their roles. However, not all urologists or gynecologists specialize in the field Dr Lamia does. She categorizes the kinds of concerns patients come in by their age. While most of her patients are post-childbirth age, she also treats young women who come in with issues of painful sex which could be pelvic floor dysfunction or dyspareunia and is usually associated with sexual trauma or PTSD. Women who are of child-bearing age often come in with recurring Urinary Tract infections. Women who are getting older and are past having kids struggle with pelvic organ prolapse, urinary incontinence, and fecal incontinence. All the concerns Dr. Lamia mentioned can drive women away from having sex or from having a satisfying sex life.

According to Dr. Lamia’s advice, women who experience Urinary Tract Infections that have constipation, pelvic prolapse, and vaginal atrophy (thinning of vaginal tissues) should consult a urologist.

Where does sex intersect in terms of conversations with patients?

As a doctor, there’s no training you get in medical school that prepares you to have these conversations about sex with your patients. It’s often one’s interest to seek out more information and awareness that leads to these conversations with patients. Dr Lamia says it’s important to talk about sex with their patients to provide better health care, it aids in understanding how it affects their body and to make important decisions. However, most doctors don’t have these conversations for reasons of not having enough time or not being comfortable enough. Sometimes because of the assumption that an older patient might not be sexually active, which should not be done.

Pelvic Organ Prolapse – treatment options

Pelvic Organ Prolapse commonly occurs after childbirth and is more common with vaginal deliveries. All of these factors put pressure on organs making them lean into the vaginal wall. It increases the risk of urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence, and UTIs, and the most severe case can cause kidney dysfunction. It can be treated by “Pessary” which delays or prevents the need for surgery. Surgeries like cystocele repair, rectocele repair, and slings for incontinence are also an option, but patients can expect them to be redone after 15-20 years. It can impede sexual intercourse when the patient is constipated or something else. The surgery fixes vaginal laxity caused by this which can benefit sexual intercourse for both partners.

Treatment options for Urinary Tract Infections

To treat Urinary Tract Infection, all the other causes of the infection has to be ruled out through either a physical exam, an ultrasound of the kidneys, or a cystoscopy. Dr. Gabal explains some treatments that could help such as maintaining good sexual hygiene, treating constipation, emptying bowels regularly, consuming fiber and a lot of water, peeing before and after sex, using plenty of lubrication that isn’t “warmed or flavored” can help to reduce the infection. Using antibiotics after intercourse and using probiotics to normalize vaginal bacteria can also help. She suggests supplements like cranberry and D-mannose prevent certain types of UTIs.

Conditions That Can Cause Sexual Pain

Dr. Lamia talks about pelvic floor dysfunction as the most common cause of dyspareunia or painful sex. It causes mild pelvic floor muscle spasm to vaginismus where the vagina doesn’t open and causes pain. To treat this, she suggests soaking in a tub, putting heat on the area, or taking muscle relaxant drugs prescribed by the doctor. Pelvic floor physical therapy is the most effective of all and is done by specially trained pelvic floor physical therapists. Post-menopausal vaginal atrophy could also be the cause. She talks about birth control as an understated cause that causes thinning of vaginal tissue and a change in PH levels causing painful sex. She recommends putting topical testosterone mixed with estrogen to treat it.

Biography

Dr. Lamia Gabal, MD, FPMRS, is a board-certified physician who specializes in several areas of medicine, including urology and restorative surgeries. Dr Gabal has more than 20 years of experience in the field of general medicine and urology. The doctor and her staff take great pride in offering many of the newest, cutting-edge treatment options and strive to continually provide the latest in technological advancements.

She graduated from the University of California at San Diego Medical School in 1995 and performed two separate residencies at the UCSD Medical Center. She was the recipient of the “Patient’s Choice Award” from 2011 to 2013. Currently, Dr Gabal serves residents of Southern California at Prestige Medical Group in Santa Ana, CA.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://www.drgabal.com/

Services: https://www.drgabal.com/services/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/177-urology-for-women-dr-lamia-gabal

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

176: Trauma Sensitive Sex – Cass Biron

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 May 2021 22:37:06 GMT

Today’s episode covers trauma and how it can obstruct our ability to connect our body and arousal to our emotional and social being, and later obstruct the way of connecting intimately with our partner. Cass Biron talks about the structure and ways people can approach this and overcome the struggle by integrating play and flexibility with their partner.

Cass’s Entry Into This Line of Work

Cass’s interest in this line of work stemmed from a young age of asking questions about how bodies work. She later enrolled in the Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy training in New York City and first heard about the vagus nerve and Polyvagal Theory. She dove deep into understanding the interaction between the different states of the nervous system present during sex and how they play a role in enabling richer sex lives and relationships.

Polyvagal Ladder by Dep Dana

Cass explains the model of Polyvagal Ladder by Dep Dana which consists of a top head region where all the social and emotional connections originate. It involves reading facial cues to detect the inner feelings of a person and is especially present during sex. It functions as non-verbal cues that help strengthen the connection and intimacy between the partners. Lower down is the fight or flight area of the torso where our energy is stored. Cass explains the fight or flight function that causes the increase of blood flow, higher heart rate, and heavy synchronized breathing. The bottom of the ladder is the freeze response resting in our genitals between our hips. Cass says it’s present in bodies with a vulva as it facilitates the freeze response that happens with orgasm. However, men have a “jerky kind of orgasm”.

During any sexual encounter or orgasm, we’re in all three states at the same time. Sometimes sex starts from the bottom up and vice versa. Cass talks about identifying physical health through our ability to orgasm by quoting Laura Geiger. She says it’s because we can identify the part of the nervous system that’s having trouble connecting during sex.

Where Does Trauma Show Up In This Picture?

Trauma is held in our physical form and it shows up differently for everyone during sex. Cass says it takes understanding and recognition of how and where we’re holding that stress and tension and pinpointing the occasions that trauma shows up. It takes awareness to incorporate trauma-sensitive sex. Trauma-sensitive sex is about integrating that knowledge about your body into your sex life. To be trauma-sensitive, according to Cass, is understanding your trauma and your partner’s trauma and using that knowledge to build a foundation of communication, consent, and trust. It’s a habit that needs to be circled back every time. She challenges the norm of the “top-down” process by explaining how bottom-down can be just as powerful. Masturbation and sex with yourself can be used as a tool to move through trauma.

Mindful Masturbation

Cass talks about mindful masturbation as a tool to release trauma from your body. She talks about “Masturbation bingo” to help them challenge the ways they think about sex. She suggests picking the video of something you’ve never watched before and suggests deciding on the setting of the room. She starts by having them write down their intentions before beginning. By changing up the routine they’ve built for themselves, they can shift the trauma that’s settled in the muscles of their body to loosen up.

Mindful masturbation teaches the three states of our nervous system to awaken and welcome pleasure rather than reject it. She talks about the challenging experiences people face during this exercise but also talks about how to train your mind to remind you of the present to keep you grounded. It’s about training your nervous system to integrate and work together.

Play

Cass suggests playing as a medium to build a space filled with curiosity and without judgment. Play is the time when our nervous systems are trying to integrate and sync with each other, as well as with our partners’ nervous systems. It facilitates a social-emotional connection between people. Cass urges people to incorporate seduction and flirting into any sort of play. She says play doesn’t have to be something typical, you can introduce seduction into cooking or playing UNO, or getting ready with your partner. The friendly banter and suggestive flirting can in everyday tasks can be play, it’s about understanding what seduction looks like for you and where you want to incorporate it in your day.

Playing outside the bedroom is crucial to building the rapport between partners to handle stressful situations calmly. When something goes wrong in the play, you don’t escalate the situation because it’s just a game. It can be transferred into the bedroom play, says Cass.

Gay Community Expands The Binary Thinking of Sex and Sexuality

Cass takes Alok Menon, a gay writer, artist, performer, and designer as an inspiration to model the expansion of binary thinking of masculine and feminine that limits how we express sexuality. She talks about the challenges that love between couples outside the bedroom has been taken outside the box and how that can be incorporated into people’s sex lives. The act of “penis-vagina sex” confines sex into a box of social conformity and restricts the freedom to be creative in the way we can have sex. She calls on people to examine the ways we used to relate sex to HIV or used to determine our bodies as “gross” because that’s when we learn how these ideas can originate and take root in society. Having been told that the rights to her body were not hers being a catholic, she fights to break the limitations set on having spiritually free and amazing sex.

Biography

Cass Biron is a clinician and a sex educator offering parenting workshops and trauma-sensitive sex workshops for universities and organizations. She works within a pediatric clinic that serves families and children within the foster care system in Queens, NY where she works in a behavioral health team offering expertise on sexuality development, puberty, and how to support children with a high ACE score.

A former sexual health educator, Cass received her Masters in Social Work from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. While extensively trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Cass incorporates somatic theories, the polyvagal theory, art activities, and movement therapies to provide each client with tools for coping and thriving.

Cass wants to bring trauma-sensitive sex to all of her clients, as the sexual life and development of each person is to be of great value and supported throughout the entire life course.

Resources and Links:

Website: http://www.ihitherapy.org/

Instagram: @cass.talks.intimacy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cassie.c.biron

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUQH_A6pZbwYPxSJTGSCCA/playlists

Email: casstalksintimacy@gmail.com

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: https://www.intimacywithease.com/masterclass

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/176-trauma-sensitive-sex-cass-biron

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

175: Erotic Touch – Christina Antonyan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 May 2021 21:53:24 GMT

Christina Antonyan joins me to offer her perspective on erotic touch and its significance in a relationship. We talk about the primal character of attuned touch and how to access it to enhance your sex life without any pressure of reaching a goal.

What got Christina interested in Erotic Touch?

In a one-week seminar on Tantric and Taoist teachings, Christina connected with the world of erotic touch. The seminar involved the activity of women giving pleasure to men and then switching the next day by receiving. It eliminated the pressure to give back at the moment and lead to open up her sense of pleasure. She points out the importance of touch by hands and fingertips as the most sensitive areas of the body. “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with,” Christina says quoting Carl Jung. Erotic touch enables the energy to flow through the body and reach the genitals while opening up our senses.

This process of Erotic touch emphasizes the concept of receiving and relaxing into pleasure without an obligation to give back immediately. Christina suggests erotic touch as a way to reconnect with your partner during disagreements and when you don’t feel like having sex.

Why is touch so important to us as humans and its significance in a relationship?

Touch is the first form of communication that we experience as babies. It’s how we connect with people, objects, and textures around us. Parents express their love, care, and nurturing through gentle touch, and we lock our memories of that moment in touch because that’s how we received it. And when we lack that touch, we feel disconnected and our energy blocked. Christina gives an instance where she gets a massage to open up her senses and unblock her energy.

What are some common mistakes people make when touching?

Christina points out not being aware as the most common mistakes people make while touching. This constitutes not being present in the moment, making mindless and mechanical movements, and disconnecting with your partner’s body. Christina compares a bad touch with a bad massage that feels unintentional and alien. A partner can sense when you’re occupied by your thoughts during touching or having sex.

How Do You Define What Makes Touch Erotic?

While slow and sensual is one form of erotic touch, many other forms like caressing, stroking, tickling, squeezing, tapping, soft touch, and frim touch come under the erotic touch. Christina says that erotic touch is defined by its intent and awareness rather than the part of the body it’s performed on. Moving further she points out how we as unique individuals experience differently than one another. Most of the time, for instance, during a massage our genitals are skipped. According to Christina, for most women, a lot of sexual energy is held in our thighs and buttocks and when we experience erotic touch in these areas, our energy flows through the body.

Christina talks about “Lingam massage” (penis massage) where men are blindfolded to avoid the person giving the massage becoming their main source of pleasure. The goal is for them to go in their body and experience sensation and pleasure like never before and it applies to women as well. It’s about experiencing non-visual pleasure.

Ways That People Can Practice This Touch With Their Partners

To practice erotic touch with your partners, Christina offers a three-part video series of breast massage, yoni massage, and penis massage. It reaches various hand movements to give different types of touch and experiencing sensations that go along with it ranging from high to low arousal. Christina advises following your intuition and getting creative once you become comfortable with the movements. It can be done by being present and attuned with your partner’s body and observing their reactions to your touch.

Is there any verbal communication that accompanies Erotic Touch?

When it comes to communication during the touch, people have different preferences. While some may like instruction, others might prefer an ongoing dialogue or some may just prefer no talking. She talks about clear communication and saying it right away when something doesn’t feel good. But she also warns us about over-communication and how that would interrupt the flow and make the experience feel “too mechanical”. To make the partner and yourself feel at ease, she suggests several oils that could be used and setting the space with candles and scents and being mindful of the temperature.

Benefits of Erotic Touch and the Difference it Makes in a Couple’s Sex-life.

Erotic touch teaches you how to relax into pleasure and open up to various sensations happening in your body and around you. You connect with your body and your partner’s body on a deeper level where you’re in tune with their desires and your own. People use that sexual arousal to circulate the sexual energy through their bodies. There’s no pressure or an obligation to reach the goal of orgasm and Christina explains it through men’s “in-ejaculation process”. It’s the process to teach men to separate orgasm and ejaculation through erotic touch. It helps you release all the pent-up energy and trauma and sometimes turns into an emotional release, says Christina.

Biography

Curiosity is Christina’s driving force, being born during the Soviet Era in a conservative household gave her an insatiable appetite to be curious about the world. She’s multi-passionate, and one of her favorite passions is sexuality. She has a burning desire to change how we talk about sex since culture, media, religion, environment, and tech shape our sexual beliefs and behaviors

Christina specialized in figuring out how Ancient sexual teachings, Tech and Science applies to the human of today, who has endless stimulation options. She’s traveled to over 60 countries, speaking, giving workshops, and learning from her masters. She’s been studying sexuality for more than 14 years. She’s on a mission to bring sexuality out of the Dark Ages where our sexuality becomes the source of our peace and happiness instead of the source of our shame, guilt, trauma, pain, and anxiety.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://www.confidentlovers.com/

Video Course: https://www.confidentlovers.com/erotic-touch-video-course/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/confident_lovers/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConfidentLovers/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxzVQtPzpoGENUMs_d2REw

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/175-erotic-touch-christina-antonyan

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

174: How Men Can Talk About Their Sexual Desires – Shana James

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:54:09 GMT

In this episode, Shana James shares how men can talk about their desires and their vulnerability toward having a thriving sex life.

Shana’s drive to support and guide people into a healthier relationship stems from her younger self who was confused and wanted to understand what a healthy relationship looked like. Now, Shana’s work on communication extends beyond men and can be applied to all heterosexual relationships.

Communication Breakdowns in a Relationship

According to Shana, the most important part of communication in relationships that people need to improve is respect. Drawing on personal experience, Shana suggests that we reflect on the way we treat our partners. While trust is built on actions, words have the power to shake that foundation. Our emotional responses, like name-calling and blaming, are a part of that communication that needs to be fixed for a healthy relationship.

What Makes a Lower Desire Partner Say No to Sex?

A partner can push their lower-desire partner away from saying yes to sex when their conversation takes a turn into complaining and blaming. Instead, Shana suggests having a conversation filled with passion, excitement, and collaboration. Asking questions about what their desires are and talking about what you want to try is a good way to bring them around the idea of opening up about their wants. Depending on the tone of our conversations, lower desire partners can feel the blame and put off their desires. “Innately, there’s nothing wrong with our desires”, Shana says while urging people to work through their desires and initiate collaboration.

Shame Around Expressing Sexual Desires

Shame is one of the biggest hurdles people feel around their desires that makes them say no to affectionate advances or sex. Their partners can offer them a safe space to express those desires by fulfilling their desires outside the bedroom – to be seen and understood. Shana says it’s a collaborative effort of both partners to connect and form an intimate and emotional bond outside the bedroom. It enforces their trust to be playful and explore each other’s bodies, what they like and need, and what you like and need. It’s an experimentation-style approach of constantly being curious about each other’s desires and your own. It helps face the shame and fears with compassion and love.

How To Make Your Partner Feel Safe to Be Aroused & Sexual

Shana’s advice to make your partner feel safe and comfortable to be sexual is to be vulnerable and honest with your reasons for wanting that experience. Unlike many assume, men do feel the need to have sex to connect and bond on a deeper level or to express the love they feel. It’s a way to leave behind the stresses of the day and focus on being a good partner. Shana also points out that when we assume the best of our partner, we start to understand where they’re coming from and show more compassion towards their needs and our own, that’s how collaboration is possible.

Advice on How to Have Vulnerable Conversations

Having conversations about desires and needs can be difficult for many, and Shana advises people to communicate before having sex. The conversation could be about how we’re treating each other in terms of respect and acknowledging each other’s wants and needs. During the conversation, it’s important to hear what the other person is saying and instead of dismissing an idea, try entertaining the thought. You can brainstorm with your partner about how they can accommodate you in a way you feel safe and comfortable to try this new thing. This is where curiosity comes into play, says Shana. In terms of putting your desires forward, Shana suggests the ABC communication method. When you put an idea forward and get a “B” response from your partner that’s surprising, instead of walking away try asking what caused them to respond in that way and be curious to find out.

Final Thoughts

Shana leaves us with a reminder to have those vulnerable conversations in the moment and avoid the build-up of resentment and irritation. Having conversations about sex during a casual time other than in the bedroom can boost that habit of collaboration and teamwork. She also suggests making your pleasure your responsibility by getting to know your body better. She urges people to be playful with sex and not keep orgasm as a goal and be exploratory with it.

Biography

For 15 years Shana coached more than a thousand leaders, CEOs, authors, speakers, and people with big visions to find love, rekindle the spark, step into more powerful leadership, start and grow businesses, increase their impact, create a legacy, and become more personally inspired and fulfilled.

Referred to as a secret weapon, she cuts through distraction and provides direct access to confidence, power, and clarity. She is also a translator between women and men, providing effective tools to transform conversations and dynamics that have gone awry into connection and collaboration.

With an M.A. in psychology, DISC certification, Coaching training, more than a decade facilitating groups and workshops, starting multiple businesses, and helping hundreds of entrepreneurs start their own, her range of skills is unlike many.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://shanajamescoaching.com/

TEDx talk: https://shanajamescoaching.com/tedx/

Guides: https://shanajamescoaching.com/dating-guide/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/174-how-men-can-talk-about-their-sexual-desires-shana-james

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

173: Self Love Secrets From a Bra Fitter with Kimmay Caldwell

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 21:57:06 GMT

On this episode we hear from Kimmay Caldwell, an Undergarment Educator and Coach, whose 20-year-old self, working as a bra fitter, was struck by how people viewed themselves in the mirror. The harsh narratives people came up with while trying on a bra made her transform her own relationship with her body. Now, Kimmay supports all those people who struggle with self-love, self-acceptance and body image through her coaching work. Kimmay covers everything about loving yourself and owning your body.

Becoming a self-love coach and an undergarment educator

Kimmay was an independent and struggling full-time student in New York City and became a bra fitter at a bra shop in Soho where she met all kinds of people from different backgrounds. In the pre-Instagram period of hiding cellulite and stretch marks, Kimmay (like many others) struggled with body image and self-acceptance. Being a bra fitter gave her a window into the most vulnerable parts of people’s minds- what they see when they look into the mirror. The negative stories that people came up within that intimate space made Kimmay reflect on her own relationship with her body. It not only inspired her to improve her perception of her body and image but also inspired her to support others in their own journey of acceptance and love.

Kimmay says that breasts and genitals are the most intimate and sacred parts of our body. However they appear – full breasts or a flat chest, it centers our energy. When people feel shame and discomfort with those parts of their body, it can throw their energy off.

How did Kimmay help as a bra fitter and now as a coach?

Working as a bra fitter in retail, Kimmay would encourage people to see something positive when they experience intrusive thoughts like what their bra size means to them. Now as a coach, Kimmay started with bra fitting sessions where she addresses three things – confusion, discomfort and shame, to get people to start liking what they see in the mirror. Confusion is the educational part of the process about bra sizing, what fits and the differences. Discomfort people feel can be addressed by fitting them into their right bra size. One of her thoughts is around how wearing your right bra size is much like fitting into the right size shoes, it’s about being comfortable in what you wear. Shame is tackled by addressing stories around body types, what it means to them. Kimmay explains how shame grows from the stories we tell ourselves and how shame blocks confidence, potential and connection with our bodies.

Kimmay created the “Hurray housekeeping method” where you view yourself as a house, from the foundation up. It serves women who aim to be successful and achieve bigger dreams. She rightly believes that the kind of person you are outside to the world and in your relationships, at the end of the day, you come to yourself, to “your head and heart space” as Kimmay says it. It’s important to feel comfortable and at home in who you are. To make that happen you change how you talk to yourself, the stories you tell yourself.

Inside, outside and underneath – meaning

Kimmay gets into explaining what her tagline “inside, outside and underneath” means. In taking a holistic approach Kimmay supports people by working inside out. The inside part of the process includes a relationship and connection with your inner self. Changing the way you perceive yourself and the way you communicate about your appearance could transform your inner self. She then guides them into the process of addressing concerns underneath your clothing, which is done by educating people about undergarments. In the next step, she looks outside a person including their job, how they present to people, relationships and more. Kimmay emphasizes the need to connect with yourself first before connecting with someone else in a relationship.

Wearing lingerie for yourself

Kimmay talks about choosing the right bra that fits as a deep clean that leads to a path to transformation. Comparing it to cleaning an actual house, Kimmay explains how it’s a slow and an ongoing process that doesn’t happen overnight or change everything about yourself. Kimmay works mainly with people in their 50s who have time on their hands to focus on themselves and those going through menopause and dealing with changes to their bodies. It opens up an opportunity for them to not only find a right fitting bra but also feel different about themselves physically and emotionally. Kimmay points out the importance of wearing bras or any undergarments as a treat for yourself, to feel the confidence and comfort and not with an expectation for someone else to see it.

Take away

Kimmay gives a wise takeaway of bra fitting by asking people to stop using numbers as a definition and instead use it as information. She urges people to give those definitions to numbers which could also be their salary, age or weight. Understanding information on bra sizing, how it works and what works for you is important. She addresses misinformation that’s been taught about bra sizing.

It’s also a part of misinformation that we don’t know the right way of taking care of our bras, how to wash them and to put them on. She offers free information around this on her website. Kimmay talks about her campaign “More Than My Numbers” where people of different sizes, colors and body shapes are featured and they measure themselves and share their sizes.

Using lingerie to help with intimacy in relationships

Kimmay talks about how certain parts that are covered by undergarments and lingerie itself are sexualized. She points out that you can have never had sex and still use lingerie, like everyday bras or T-shirts that make you feel sexy which gets along well with the exciting fact of loving yourself by dressing well underneath your clothes. Giving space to feel confident with who you are and your body, and feeling of course a bit frisky. Those things can then be brought into an intimate situation with someone’s intimacy at its core. It’s all about vulnerability. Being vulnerable in front of someone is hard when you don’t feel ok with your body, so it’s easier when you feel loved and accepted. Lingerie is also used in a way of self-love to show up bigger in the world. She shares some tips about how to spice up your relationship with lingerie.

Biography:

Kimmay Caldwell is a self-love coach and Undergarment educator who supports people to say “Hurray” inside, outside, and underneath. She is an expert bra fitter with over a decade of experience of getting intimate with people from cup sizes A to N since 2005. Years in the fitting room illuminated the stories people had about their bodies, their self-worth, and their dreams which helped her become a coach and tune in quickly to what will serve her clients best. Now her newest offering, The Hurray House Method, supports people to do the daily inner housekeeping and self-care necessary to show up big in the world.

Formerly based in NYC, she is now in rural Oklahoma and travels around the world to spread her empowering message of self-love, and how to use the everyday ritual of putting on a bra to uncover your confidence, stand in your power, and learn to love yourself. You may have seen her in one of over 100 press outlets, including more than 5 times on The Rachael Ray Show, plus the Martha Stewart Show, The Today Show, and more. Or perhaps you caught her teaching bra fitting workshops at the largest lingerie expo in the world in Paris.

Links and resources:

Virtual bra coaching and bra related guides: https://hurraykimmay.com/bra-fittings/

Resources, blog posts and coaching packages: https://hurraykimmay.com/resources-inside/

Instagram: @hurraykimmay

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/173-self-love-secrets-from-a-bra-fitter-with-kimmay-caldwell

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

172: Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse – Dr. Stephen Braveman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 21:00:43 GMT

To bring awareness and break the myth around male survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Dr. Stephen Braveman joins me today. He is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an early pioneer in working with the population of male sexual abuse survivors as well as women and transgender people. Stephen shares his knowledge on the history of male sexual abuse, the surrounding cultural myths, the impact on the victim, how to receive help and get started on the healing journey.

History of Male Sexual Abuse Awareness and Stephen’s Role

Dr. Braveman gives us an account of the history of male sexual abuse and the progression of its awareness. It started in the 1950s and 60s when sexual abuse of men was just a myth. It progressed through the years with sexual abuse of women coming into light in the 60s and sexual abuse of children, specifically girls coming into light in the 70s and 80s. The perception of viewing them as survivors brought a huge shift in the field however, the talk of male sexual abuse remained minimal. Stephen started the first-ever group for men sexually abused as children in the 1990s. In the two years of running this rare group, Stephen realized there wasn’t much conversation going on about this subject anywhere in the world.

Dr Braveman decided to educate people on the subject by making a documentary, Boyhood Shadows- I Swore I’d Never Tell. This one film, conceptualized and spearheaded by Stephen and the men in his group, was developed while he was working at the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, has helped thousands of sexual abuse survivors come to grips with the emotionally crippling effects of abuse they suffered at the hands of others.

Myths Around Male Sexual Victimization

Stephen talks about some of the biggest myths surrounding male sexual victimization, including the belief that men/boys cannot be abused because of society’s idea that “men are tough”. In the case of abuse, they are told to “man up” and take it, which is damaging because the impact of abuse lives on. The second myth is that if a boy is molested by a man, the boy must be gay or causes them to become gay. This leads to boys questioning their sexuality for the wrong reasons. The third myth is that if a man molests a boy, the man must be gay. Stephen debunks this idea by giving an example of the Semen Warriors of New Guinea.

Another prominent myth that exists is that men cannot be abused by females. People don’t consider other forms of abuse that cannot be inflicted without an erection, such as fondling, b*****b, or encouraging them to touch inappropriately. Stephen points out that it’s often not believed because of the idea that men overpower women. This is a false idea, as most of the molesters are someone close, and they molest in a loving manner that obstructs a victim from overpowering them. Stephens discusses briefly the myth of abuse by teachers. This is particularly difficult to clarify because it’s often romanticized. This type of abuse leads to expressing symptoms like the belief that these sexual practices that are illegal and morally wrong don’t apply to them, that they’re an exception to the rules.

Stephen talks about Vampire’s syndrome as another myth that people believe – that people who were abused as children grow up to abuse others just like how people who are bitten, in turn, bite others like Dracula.

Pedophile vs Child Molester

While talking about a child molester being gay as a myth, Stephen gives the difference between a child molester and a pedophile. A pedophile views children solely as their sexual orientation and hence most of them have a preference between male and female children. Child molesters are most commonly someone close to the child – their mother, father, a teacher, priest, or a coach. They are sexually attracted to children and the power they could display over them.

Symptoms of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Stephen describes common symptoms of the impact of sexual abuse that men carry with them and techniques that are used in helping them through it. Some of the symptoms of carrying the impact of sexual abuse are similar in men, women, and transgender people.

Dissociation from their body, reality, and relationships

Sexually shutting down with their primary partner but acting out sexually in other ways.

Split behaviors

Difficulty trusting men.

Techniques to heal

To reestablish survivor’s trust in men and to walk through their lost childhood, Stephen teaches them “play”. He safely uses “touch” by having them hold hands facing each other, shaking hands for a prolonged time while doing breathing exercises. The goal is to teach them safer ways of talking and being around men and practicing safer touch like a handshake. Another method is to release their anger by trashing something in a safe and controlled environment. Some men also confront their perpetrator in person in real life, or write a letter and burn it or leave it in the ocean. Some men confront the abuse itself by participating in events for survivors, by teaching a song about self-protection to their kids, by participating in a study or a documentary about sexual abuse, or by sharing their story in a group.

The Victim In a relationship dynamic

In a couple dynamic, Stephen starts with individual therapy for the survivor, and then they join the men’s group when they’re ready. Stephen runs a weekend workshop, Outgrowing the Pain Together. for sexual abuse survivors and their partners. It gives couples a space to meet other couples dealing with similar issues and share their experiences. He also offers another workshop, Sacred Tantra Intimacy, which involves the use of ancient traditions of tantra and working with chakra, breathing and eye contact, and energy. It is safety-focused and involves asking and getting permission before any action of touching. To bring change in their sexual life and relationship, Stephen says it’s crucial to break sexual maps- both a couple’s sexual patterns and men’s masturbation patterns. He emphasizes the need to have a full-body experience by using a few techniques.

Biography

A Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, AASECT Certified Diplomat and Supervisor of Sex Therapy, Gender and Sexual Abuse Specialist, Sacred Sexuality/Tantra Educator, and an LGBT and KINK Specialist, Stephen’s work speaks for itself.

Stephen’s book, “CPR for Your Sex Life, How to Breathe Life into a Dead, Dying or Dull Sex Life,” co-authored by Mildred Brown, PhD, continues to fascinate and enthrall readers everywhere. Stephen has also appeared in numerous national publications, television shows, and documentaries.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.isgcmonterey.net/ Workshops: http://www.isgcmonterey.net/services/#

Webinar on Child Sexual Abuse in Men by ISSM:

https://professionals.issm.info/events/issm-webinar-on-child-sexual-abuse-in-men-trauma-and-sexualit/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/172-male-survivors-of-childhood-sexual-abuse-dr-stephen-braveman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

171: God Wants Us to Have Pleasure – Rachel Alba

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 20:18:00 GMT

Our topic today is about getting closer to God through pleasure. I’m talking to Rachel Alba, who is a sex coach for people raised in Christian traditions that are struggling with shame or negativity around sex, and are at a point in their lives where they’re willing to take that on and try to transform that into something positive.

She shares her personal story of her journey around this, and a lot about the idea of faith development. And opening up to new ideas about sex and then how to explore that and reduce the kind of shame response that people can have.

Rachel works as a sex coach specifically for people who are coming from Christian backgrounds. And she got into that specifically because she was raised Roman Catholic and was led to believe sex is a space for us to really come back to the Garden of Eden and very much experience union with each other, union with the divine, even a fuller union with ourselves at the same time. And that’s a really positive viewpoint that Rachel was exposed to in her particular parish, this sense that sex is really good and pleasure is really good. And we can experience God’s grace through those things.

Sex, Pleasure, Shame, and Christianity

Our discussion dives deep into the history of attitudes surrounding sex, pleasure and shame within Christianity. And how so many people come from a place of spirituality. One of the first things Rachel does, is to remind people is that shame is actually a positive thing, which can sound a bit crazy.

But she points out that our initial shame response is actually meant to protect us. So, it’s positive in the sense where it was meant to protect us. And a lot of times what happens is we just didn’t ever actually like grow out of that shame response that we had around sexuality.

God created your body for pleasure.

Rachel says that God didn’t give us nerve endings simply because we need them to be able to like, feel textures on trees. She believes God gave us pleasure and the ability to experience pleasure, because God wants us to experience pleasure.

About Rachel

Rachel is a certified Clinical Sexologist and holds a Masters of Arts in Theology and Ministry from Boston College. She comes to Clinical Sexology (sex coaching) with a decade of experience as a massage therapist and extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology. Her work combines: developmental spirituality, sexology & anatomy, sex-positive theology, and mindful sensuality to help clients from Christian backgrounds let go of any lingering sexual shame, experience more pleasure, grow in their communication and sexual skills, all while deepening their spirituality. Other things I love are: sangria, playing piano and singing, and the 1970’s film version of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Links and Resources:

Instagram – @rachel.alba.coaching

Website – https://www.sexwithspirit.com

[Where you can find a Free Three Keys to Releasing Sexual Shame mini–class]

Sex-Positive Christian Feminists‬ Podcast with Rachel Alba & Lurie Kimmerle – https://podcasts.apple.com/si/podcast/sex-positive-christian-feminists/id1549622305

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/171-god-wants-us-to-have-pleasure-rachel-alba

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

170: Orgasmic Expansion – Serena Haines

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 19:13:14 GMT

Serena Haines joins me on this episode to talk about orgasmic expansion – a hybrid technique developed by fusing techniques she used working as a Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Body Worker. The goal of orgasmic expansion is to maximize pleasure and experience. It aligns perfectly with the Intimacy With Ease method when couples reach the point of having an enjoyable sex-life but wanting to expand their pleasure.

Definition – Orgasmic Expansion

Orgasmic expansion is a fusion of slow sex techniques, breathing, orgasmic potential, and neo tantric exercises melded into one. Serena states that, unlike what people may assume, it’s a practical and tangible approach to expand one’s potential for pleasure in a safe and connected relationship.

Phase 1

It starts by guiding her clients to practice a few intimacy and neo tantric exercises. These exercises involve eye gazing, touching, sitting back to back, and breathing deeply which allows a deeper connection to form between the couples.

Phase 2 & 3 – Intimate bodywork

Then the couples do guide intimate bodywork on each other which involves erotic massage that isn’t necessarily therapeutic or sexual. The massage is for them to relax and receive pleasure sensations from giving and receiving touch. While the partner receiving the touch focuses on breathwork, the other partner focuses on the sensation of the touch.

Genital Mapping and Genital Massage

Then they move down to genital mapping, genital massage, and end with pleasure. Genital mapping is where the partner who is receiving the touch is focused on their feelings, sensations, and erotic responses of their body, disregarding the expectation to reciprocate afterward. The giver is guided into exploring their partner’s body and focused on the sensation, feeling of the partner’s different parts of the body, even the color and visual of the vulva. While the receiver enjoys pleasure, the giver enjoys the erotic visual which is extremely important.

Physiological Changes and Responses

The next step after making sure they both feel the pleasure is to guide the partner to notice and observe the physiological changes and responses in their partner’s body. Serena gives an example of looking at how the labia swells and changes colors and the time it takes. Serena points out that for most partner’s it’s uncomfortable to let these changes happen with their partner observing. However, this process allows the other partner to explain and talk through

the changes they’re observing. This encourages the receiver to express what feels good and tell the partner to do that. The goal of genital mapping is for the partner to understand the physiological responses happening in their partner’s body and for the other partner to relax and let the time be taken for the energy to flow through their body.

Serena then guides the process to go up to the clitoris and apply slow sex techniques like orgasmic meditation. Orgasmic meditation is working with the clitoris to map out the pleasure points. The partner goes through these points like clockwork while receiving and giving feedback until they find the most sensitive spot. Serena explains the process to be followed to reach an orgasmic point. She guides the partner to let the orgasmic potential move through the breath and expand the heat generated in the genitals through her body instead of quick orgasm. Serena says. It’s about prolonging and expanding the pleasure potential.

Giving and Receiving Feedback

The partners are guided to speak up about their experiences throughout the session. They are encouraged to give and receive feedback and it’s prompted by Serena’s questions such as, “How does it feel, how does it look?”. It allows the conversation to flow that creates a medium where they feel comfortable to tell each other if something feels good, if it feels enjoyable, which is rare when the couple is alone.

Orgasm

In case the partner orgasm soon into the process, the partner can either relax and take it up in another session or they can keep going. Serena emphasizes the whole idea of this process is not to bring them back into orgasm but to guide them to hold onto the potential as long as they can.

For Men

For men, the stroke technique while playing with the shaft and coronal ridge is much slower than a regular handjob. It’s common for penises to lose erection if the buildup isn’t the same after a certain point. Contrary to what many people may think of it as something wrong, it allows finding the pleasure potential in a soft penis. So, Serena guides them to keep going if that’s what they decide.

How is it Different or Similar to Sensate Focus?

The orgasmic expansion focuses on a slow addition of the sexual touch to expand pleasure potential in an already satisfying sex life. Sensate focus is different in the sense, it is focused on getting them to a place of a satisfied sex-life after overcoming the challenges.

Orgasm is Not the Point of Sex

While the term “Orgasmic expansion” might lead you to believe that it’s all about orgasm, it’s really about expanding your pleasure potential and physiological responses of your body. Serena urges to explore the pleasure that lies before the point of an orgasm which isn’t even necessary to reach. With her client, by taking orgasm off the table, they remain stress-free of an expectation or a disappointment to reach an orgasm which isn’t the point. The duration of this course is meant to feel the sensations of your partner’s touch, feel, and pleasure. Orgasm may or may not necessarily happen at the end. In real life, it’ll help you when you don’t feel the pressure of an orgasm when you’re having that moment with your partner and you will enjoy the pleasure potential moving across your entire body.

Challenges in this Process

One of the challenges people face in this process is having to digest the idea of having a third person there. It could be stressful that leads a lot of people to back out which is completely fine to back out and try again next time. Also, it’s hard for the receiver to just breathe and not do anything else. Similar to how the giver is focused on being anxious about their performance. Serena says it’s hard for people to be in the present but practicing it at home without the pressure of having a third person there can help.

Misconceptions and Fears

Some of the fears people have are for the process to be too sexual or that the third person participating in the touch. Serena points it out as not true, she has a conversation prior with the client to set boundaries of how closer or far they want her to stand. Also, before any physical touch, expectation, and consent of what exercises they are going to do are already set and there’s no going backward. It can be revisited in the conversation before the next session.

Biography

Serena Haines, a Somatic Sex Educator Sex Coach in North Atlantic, Canada helps people navigate sexual challenges and expand intimacy as an individual or as partners. She studied Clinical Sexology and became a Certified Sex Coach. She made a fusion of all techniques learned over the time of her being a sex educator to create “Orgasmic Expansion”. She also helps couples who are not challenged sexually but want to learn and experience intimacy and new things.

Resources and links

Website: https://www.serenahaines.com/

Workshops: https://www.serenahaines.com/#offerings

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serena_haines/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/170-orgasmic-expansion-serena-haines

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

169: Out of Control Sexual Behavior in Women – Jessica Levith

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 16:03:43 GMT

Today’s guest Jessica Levith, is a Licensed marriage therapist from California and is here to talk about the “Out of Control Sexual Behavior Model” which is a view of compulsive, out-of-control sexual behavior. A treatment model is developed around this, and Jessica extends it to cisgendered women with challenging and problematic sexual behaviors. She provides treatment for people who think they exhibit out-of-control behavior. The episode also discusses sexual health and its influence on our sexuality.

Define – Out of Control Sexual Behavior (OCSB)

Jessica defines Out Control Sexual Behavior as the client’s perception of their sexual behaviors, feelings, and urges being out of their control. What makes OCSB different from the Sex Addiction Model is that OCSB is a sexual health-focused treatment where people establish their vision of sexual health without giving up a part of their sexuality. Jessica mentions a history of conflation of non-consensual sexual behaviors in the OCSB model. She debunks a theory in the Sex Addiction Model that it is believed that when a person’s sex addiction goes untreated they fall more towards non-consensual behaviors. However, in OCSB when a patient presents a sign of non-consensual sexual behaviors, they have to be ruled out as they’re more suitable for specialized treatment from a therapist whose practice deals with non-consensual behaviors.

In OCSB model treatment, they are on the lookout for patients with a genuine interest in changing how they view their sexuality. This treatment is not for those who may be simply motivated to escape the shame of exposure to their family or partner by labeling their behavior as a disease. This aligns with the perception in the OCSB model where sexual addiction is viewed as a behavioral problem that can be regulated in all parts of life. In contrast to that, the Sex Addiction Model views sexual addiction as a disease that allows the patient to step back from their responsibilities of change.

How to broaden what people see as out-of-control sexual behavior.

To broaden the view of what one would consider being an out-of-control sexual behavior, they have to process the cause behind their belief. To explain where some of these beliefs originate from, Jessica explains how women have been socially imprinted through history on how we should look, feel and act. She gives a historical context of parallels of women’s behavior being dictated in religion, art, and even science and the instance where the change started. Through Doug’s book and his model, Jessica points out the concept being based on Human Behavioral Theory which prompts for change and adaptability especially in women.

Steps in the clinical journey of OCSB model treatment?

Initial screening is the first step in the process of OCSB Model treatment where clients are screened to rule out non-consensual sex, for internal motivation, presence of any acute issue that could disrupt the treatment like being a physical threat to self or others, substance use, and abuse, mental health issues or physical health issues. In the next step, an assessment is done with a series of courses such as Adverse Child Experience (ACE), Sexual Symptom Assessment Scale (SSAS), Sexual Inhibition Scale (SIS), Sexual Excitation Scale (SES), and semi-structured assessment. During the process, the therapist learns a lot about the client as a person. In the end, the therapist helps the client to use sexual health terms instead of pathology terms, which means, they stop viewing it as a disease. Then the therapist and the client together make a sexual health plan by using this information.

Sexual health in OCSB is upheld by six principles – consensual sexual activity, non-exploitative, honesty, shared values, protection from STIs and STDs and unwanted pregnancies, mutual pleasure, and solo pleasure. When you live within these six principles, with the help of your therapist you can come up with a sexual health plan. The sexual health plan has 3 columns. The first column is boundaries which are the behaviors when crossed resemble in breaking your agreements. The middle column is ambivalence and high-risk behaviors. It means being honest and recognizing the competing motivations within yourself. The last column is sexual health is “the ideals, goals, and aspirations for how you want to be sexually and in life”.

What drove you to apply this specifically to women?

After being on the side of the medical models and then reading Doug’s book, Jessica noticed how everything was geared towards cis-gendered white men. However later she realized that most of the work in Doug’s book can be translated for clinical work with women. To gain a deeper understanding, Jessica dived into the historical and current context of the source of “implicit and explicit expectations and messages projected onto women and internalized by them”.

She discovered three ways of how women were impacted by socio-cultural value systems. First, through historic and systemic power over women’s rights and the means to control birth by pregnancy prevention and termination, through the Comstock act, making women’s access to birth control is dependent upon where she lives, her access to health insurance, her socio-economic standing, and financial status. Secondly, controlling women’s view of sexual functioning, appearance, and pleasure, and thirdly, sexual and social value.

Intersectionality is discussed in context with the power of sexual and social values. It’s how we identify in the world in terms of class, race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and more influence our social and sexual standing and values. Jessica adopted it because of its influence on women’s sexual self-concept which influences their attachment.

How does it show up clinically?

Understanding the historical context of the impact on women’s perception of sexuality, pleasure, and appearance helps the process of the treatment in understanding their perception of sexual health and what they perceive as out of control sexual behaviors. Jessica gives an example of a client who comes in with what she thinks is a problem of “porn addiction”. In these situations, to understand if this is a problem for the client or whether it’s stemming from a partner, Jessica asks questions to find out. These ideas of out-of-control sexual behaviors in women are internalized because women are not taught to be sexual in their vision. It is highly influenced by the media especially in children. Jessica also points out a flip side of the internet where feminist and ethical porn is being debated, where people of disability, people of all sizes and cultures are being represented accurately. This is what brings a shift in the internalization in women.

Integration of said historical markers into the assessment

OCSB focuses on three clinical areas of self-regulation, attachment regulation, and sexual neurotic conflict which are impacted by the historical markings researched by Jessica. With this knowledge, Jessica says, you can help bring awareness to slow it down.

Parting message

Jessica leaves us with a parting message to avoid making assumptions of someone’s desires and to be in the moment with your partner or with yourself to connect and understand who you are at the core.

Biography

Jessica Levith, an Oakland CA Certified Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT specializes in treating Problematic Sexual Behavior, Infidelity, Unhealthy Attachments, Sexual Health support, Emotional Dependency, early attachment trauma, and recovery from trauma.

She has a Sex Therapy Certificate from the California Institute of Integral Studies, training in Out of Control Sexual Behaviors from both The Society For The Advancement Of Sexual Health and The Harvey Institute, and specialized training in supporting partners of those with Out of Control Sexual Behaviors.

Resources and links:

Website: https://jessicalevith.com/

Jessica’s research article: Translating the Out of Control Sexual Behavior Treatment Model for Work with Cisgender Women

Doug’s book: https://www.theharveyinstitute.com/publications/books

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/169-out-of-control-sexual-behavior-in-women-jessica-levith

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

168: Moving Past Shame – Tilly Storm

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:08:02 GMT

Today’s conversation surrounds sexual shame and negativity and how that leads to a loss of desire and pleasure in sex. Tilly Storm, a sexual coach, helps such women whose desire has been lost due to the burden of shame and negativity around pleasure. She is here today to share her knowledge on how to reclaim your sexuality, get familiar with your own body, and experience pleasure like never before.

How did you get started?

Tilly grew up in the suburbs of Louisiana in a conservative, religious environment with shame around her body and sexuality was hanging over her. It lasted until she gave birth at the age of 23 when she realized everything she was taught about her body, sex and pleasure was utter nonsense. She then set out to help other women rediscover their sexuality that was lost after giving birth. Some courses she offers are sexual relationship coaching, ancient tantric wisdom, and Taoist practices. Tilly started her journey as a sex coach by first working on reclaiming her sexuality and body and by losing the shame and guilt she was taught.

Where does sex-negativity stem from?

Sex negativity can show up in both men and women. Tilly says a lot of her clients relate to her story of developing shame around sexuality while growing up in a conservative and religious environment. She says being ridden with guilt and shame registers as trauma to which people give out a hypo-response or a hyper-response. While women respond by shutting down and losing the desire to have sex, men respond by developing an addiction to sex and porn.

Tilly says sex-negativity can also stem out of the fear of STDs, STIs, and unwanted pregnancy. Our culture also conditions us to feel shameful and guilty of becoming pregnant young or contracting an STD or even for harboring controversial desires and eroticism. What people find desirable and erotic are so limited normalized that everything that sounds too foreign than usual is associated with shame.

What opened up your beliefs?

Tilly’s time of giving birth brought her closer to understanding her body’s potential and capability. She said it started with realizing that there was nothing inherently wrong with her body. After going through a stage of body image distortion, she found the right mind to look at her herself. Jade egg practice helped lift her shame and guilt around sexuality and pleasure. It’s a practice where you take an egg-shaped stone made out of jade and use it internally to do squeezes, releases, and breath work practices. Tilly says, “It’s yoga for your vagina”. It helps you to connect with your body and what’s down there.

Is there a timeline to be rid of sexual shame?

She points out that it takes time to get rid of all that shame and to “undo the narratives you were taught”. It also takes time to process that and get it out of your body. Sexual problems cannot be fixed just through talking because, as Tilly says, sexual problems don’t just stem from thinking. They’re deeply rooted and if you want to do things differently, along with insight you have to experience things differently by working on your body.

How to get out of your head & away from sex-negative thoughts?

Tilly starts by helping her clients with transformational breath work, where she uses the gentle trauma release method to release tension and trauma from their bodies. She guides them to feel unstuck and to open up. The next step is to “rewrite your sexual narrative”. She makes her clients write down scenarios of what would happen if they grew up in a sex-positive environment. They write it down, record it and listen to it for 10 days straight. While she acknowledges it’s a challenging process, she offers a solution to entangle it piece by piece.

She talks about inner child dynamics where it’s vital to work on trauma encountered by your inner child. She warns that the inner child when left unaddressed surfaces as a triggered response to your partner in your relationship. She also shares about mother-father dynamics and presses the importance of questioning how their beliefs you adopted are affecting your sexuality.

How to expand your pleasure?

The first step to expand your pleasure is to get out of your head and Tilly suggests Jade egg practice to slow down your thoughts and connect with your pleasure points. She says there are more pleasure points in your pelvic floor than what we know, and we can explore them by taking our time every day by touching ourselves, through Jade egg, breath work, and self-guided self-pleasure practices. That’s how you get in the habit of making the transition and being connected with your body.

What’s an indication that you reached your goals?

Tilly’s clients reach their vaginal goals in 6 or under 6 months. They start out having little breakthroughs in week 6 or 7. They reach a place of empowerment by letting go of shame and guilt around weeks 8 to 10. Tilly points out that there’s always a new level of pleasure to be achieved and we truly don’t realize the pleasure capacity of our bodies. She also offers communication and connection practices for couples and partners to rebuild their intimacy.

Biography:

Tilly Storm is a holistic sex, love & relationship coach for women who want to reconnect with their bodies to feel desire and pleasure. She is also the producer of The Multiorgasmic Mama Podcast.

She is a certified coach, Tantra, jade egg, and sexuality teacher, who uses deep transformational tools and techniques based in modern coaching modalities, and ancient tantric wisdom and Taoist practices to help women reconnect with their sensuality after becoming mothers, rebuild their intimacy with their partners and achieve ultimate pleasure!

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.tillystorm.com/

Podcast: https://www.themultiorgasmicmama.com/podcast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laceybroussardrocks

Instagram: https://instagram.com/tilly.storm

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

167: Awakened Intimacy – Maci Daye

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 22:46:52 GMT

Maci Daye joins us today to talk about awakened intimacy and share some of the practices she uses with couples. This episode discusses awakened intimacy in the context of mindfulness, being present and attentive during sex. There’s talk of effective practices on how to use what happens to increase passion and grow in the face of challenges.

What is Awakened Intimacy?

Maci defines awakened intimacy as a willingness to expand your idea of sex to include aspects you haven’t tried before – pleasure, joy and even a little bit of suffering. We’re used to the assumption that sex is pleasurable, and it becomes easy to have that assumption. So when people have confusing and triggering experiences, as Maci says, it gives a window of an opportunity to learn from what happened to heal and grow. This is what awakened intimacy is – a transformational path.

Awakened intimacy for everyone

Awakened intimacy is not just for couples who want to overcome challenges in their relationship, but it’s also for people who want to love themselves better. Maci states awakened intimacy is useful because you want to be more compassionate, loving and wise. And sex is an integral part of it.

Sex & intimacy are a part of your healing process

You don’t have to put off resolving issues of your sex-life on hold while resolving issues of other parts of life. Maci says all of these are interlinked and sex is an integral part of it. You bring yourself into every experience in your life, and sex is an experience through which you connect the most with your partner. So, if you don’t include sex, no matter how much resolve and connect with your partner, it won’t transfer into your sex life and intimacy.

How does awakened intimacy differ from mindful sex?

Maci defines mindfulness as a tool to be used in the process of awakening. She defines it as a practice to modify your sexual process by including a “quality of attention that is present, curious and exploratory”. She also points out that other than opening you up to an awakening journey, mindfulness also improves your sexual functioning and genital health. Mindfulness also brings out the pleasure of passionate and attentive sex in couples who’ve been together for a long time. She suggests couples connect with their conscience to explore and discover new things while they’re making love. We’re wired to repeat patterns in life and in the bedroom which go unnoticed. With mindfulness, we can recognize these patterns in the bedroom and make changes to break the pattern. Maci calls it “updating your sexual operating system”.

Practices for couples facing a challenge in the bedroom

For couples who reach an impasse in the bedroom, should research their experiences during sex to examine and repair the wounds. Maci shares a three-step process she does with couples where they stop and share their experience instead of getting stuck in a repeat loop of avoidance. It allows couples to pause when they identify a trigger signal and research into the experience to recognize patterns and habits. ”The only place to heal a past wound is in the present, we can only heal wounds that are visible”, says Maci. While it’s difficult to describe these patterns to your partner, when met with support, you can move onto the next step of adjustment.

The next step is to make an adjustment by sharing your experience with your partner and together figuring out a solution to make changes. Maci also suggests rapid-fire interrogation attached with receptive curiosity and mindfully check in to make adjustments for a better outcome. Going a bit further Maci also suggests “co-designing” that went wrong in the past, with the added adjustments and mindfulness.

Advice for people unaware of their own experiences

Often people are not in tune with their experiences and power through their sex-life without checking in. For those couples, Maci shares an exercise where couples set a timer to pause and evaluate what’s happening in their experiences – their emotions, sensations and even thoughts. This allows a person to share what’s happening with their experience without directing the blame onto their partner. It allows a couple to really dwell on the moment and explore.

How to invite the unchallenged partner into the process?

In this process, it’s quick to shift all the attention into resolving the issues surrounding the person with the triggered experience. In that case, the other partner without a challenging experience could feel unheard. It’s important to note their experience in reaction to their partner’s experience. The unchallenged partner should also identify and share their needs and limits. It once again comes back to couples studying and adjusting by sharing their experiences. When couples recognize each other’s needs and emotions and start working towards them, that’s when they have a satisfying sex-life.

What is the EROS cycle in erotic attunement?

Couples who want to break out of having a routine or informed sex without any inside-out authentic pleasure can attain erotic attunement by following the EROS cycle. Maci describes Erotic attunement as the idea of being in the moment and in tune with your own body and your partner’s where you feel foreign impulses and you feel free to follow the to have unscripted sex. EROS cycle helps us achieve that. E stands for embody and attune, R stands for relating and relaxing our goals, O stands for opening to impulses and new directions and S stands for savoring pleasure. Maci also brings our attention to the struggles we may face in this challenging cycle such as, not connecting with your body, having a hard time trusting impulses, feeling safe to express those impulses or responding openly and even relating.

EROS cycle in attunement is part of what couples could do as they keep encountering difficulties. Maci urges couples to have an attuned embodied experience as they go through challenges.

Bio:

Maci Daye is the Creator of Passion & Presence, a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified Hakomi Therapist, and Certified Sex Therapist with over 25 years experience in social service, higher education and private practice. She holds graduate degrees from Harvard and Georgia State Universities and has completed the intermediate level Somatic Experiencing trauma training.

She operates LifeWorks Counseling & Seminars, Inc. in Atlanta, GA and co-runs Hakomi of Mallorca (in Spain) with her partner Halko Weiss. In addition to clinical practice, Maci is on the faculty of the Hakomi Institute and teaches in the southeastern United States and Europe. Maci has led sexuality retreats and training courses for helping professionals in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico and has presented at several conferences in Europe and the USA.

Resources and links:

Website: https://www.passionandpresence.com/

Retreat: https://www.passionandpresence.com/mindful-sexuality-retreats-for-couples/

Book: https://www.passionandpresence.com/book-passion-presense/

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/167-awakened-intimacy-maci-daye

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

166: Communicating Sexual Desires and Boundaries – Yael Rosenstock Gonzalez

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 23:42:15 GMT

Communicating desires and boundaries

In this episode, Yael Rosenstock Gonzalez talks all about how to understand and communicate your own desires and boundaries to your partner. Today’s topic of discussion lines up with the four pillars of Intimacy with Ease Method to help you have the best sex of your life! We hear talks of red flags, tips on how to work with your partner around these aspects, and most importantly, real life applications.

Is it One conversation?

Communicating desires and boundaries are put together in a conversation because when people are engaged in making sure everyone is having the best time possible, criminalised behavior is unlikely. While sharing her views, Yael points out the stigma around the conversation of consent and sexual assault.

Why is communication so important?

It’s important to understand our method of communication. Yael tells people to reflect on how they communicate their sexual or non-sexual needs. While communication could mostly be verbal, it’s important to recognize the meaning of the cues you give off and to make sure people in your life are aware of it. It avoids unclear messages and conflict.

Reasons why people struggle communicating about sex

Yael says there are several reason why someone struggles communicating about sex. It could be revealed when you ask yourself questions of who and why. Your anxiousness could be the result of a sex taboo, shame around your own pleasure, or the expectation of knowing what’s wrong in your sexual relationship without any proper communication with your partner. For some people with insecurity, Yael advices to make communication sexy by asking what you want and by validating your partner during sex. And for someone with shame around pleasure, you should question the series of incidents like getting caught that resulted in it. You become confident in communicating about sex by undoing these patterns.

Myths around sexual communication

Yael breaks down some of the myths around sexual communication. People overemphasize penetration during sex. People believe sex is enjoyable only with penetration and they neglect oral sex. For a lot of people arousal happens before the penetration and it’s important to be in tune with your own arousal to effectively communicate it with your partner. Yael also breaks down myths around sexual chemistry. People assume their partner would just know what they want because of the sexual chemistry they both have. While it could be true for some people, Yael says it’s mostly communication and putting in the work that’s important. Communicating your desires doesn’t mean there’s no chemistry. Yael also talks about instances where people mistake their lack of sexual chemistry or interest as being asexual when in reality, it could mean either that they are asexual or that they didn’t find the right partner or gender. It’s important to be aware of your own sexual desires to be able to communicate effectively.

Communication about boundaries before or during sex?

Yael advices people who experienced sexual violence or trauma to be aware of some of the things that act as triggers, keeping in mind that triggers may change. In those instances, it’s advisable to talk about your boundaries with your partner before sex to avoid activating these triggers. She also urges people to communicate their needs and tell them how their partner can help them create a safe space. You can also have a conversation before sex about things you want to try or things you might want to try and things that you don’t want to try.

How does respecting these boundaries look like?

When you have a trigger or feel uncomfortable doing something, your partner should be supportive in accepting you. They should be patient to wait and listen when you’re ready to talk about it and not put blame on you. This is how respecting boundaries looks like Yael’s view.

Reasons why people don’t respond well to boundaries

Yael believes some people don’t respond well in these situations because of either being caught off guard or because of their surfacing insecurity and doubts. There are also instances where people take it as a “challenge to teach you,” thinking it will help you overcome what makes you uncomfortable. While Yael says shifts may occur, it’s likely to occur in a supportive environment rather than to occur by force. Yael also brings up an interesting reason where people are unsupportive because they’re missing out on something they enjoy. Yael gives a solution for this that she says could come as unpopular among people is to seek those things outside the relationship after having a clear conversation and make an ethical and consensual decision.

Sometimes a partner could feel like an abuser when in these situations. And a lot of times people let their partner do things they’re uncomfortable with to avoid making them feel like a violator. In this situation, it’s best to take a break before deciding whether or not to have a conversation.

What to do when someone doesn’t respect your boundaries?

Yael shares some of the red flags to recognize when someone doesn’t respect your boundaries like putting the blame on you, pushing you and shaming you. When your boundaries are not respected, it’s time to walk away. Yael asks people to re-evaluate the value of that person in your life and re-evaluate the reasons you’re keeping them around. She points out the reality of how we’re not taught to make boundaries or talk about how a healthy relationship looks like. It’s one of the reasons why many people don’t recognize a non-physical unhealthy relationship.

Finally, Yael leaves us with a thought provoking fact that boundaries are not always meant to be physical. Boundaries can also be made for time, space and the emotional energy you spend. She says boundaries can be set to things like letting people share their emotions to setting a time and place to send and receive nudes.

Resources and Links:

Website: https://sexpositiveyou.com/

Website: https://www.yaelrosenstock.com/

Book – An Intro-Guide to a Sex Positive You: Lessons, Tales, and Tips

https://sexpositiveyou.com/#book

Courses: https://sexpositiveyou.com/#workwithme

Instagram: @yaelthesexgeek

Facebook: @YaeltheSexGeek

Twitter: @yaelthesexgeek

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/166-communicating-sexual-desires-and-boundaries-yael-rosenstock-gonzalez

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

165: Stepping Into Your Feminine Wild – Natalie Frasca Surmeli

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 19:49:17 GMT

Natalie Frasca Surmeli is here today to talk about stepping into your feminine wild and what it means. This episode talks of awakening feminine desire and pleasure by slowing down and getting familiar with your own body. Natalie shares her insight of pleasure practices, practicing a new way of being and why it matters.

Natalie’s Story – what did she unlock?

Natalie shares the story of her journey that brought her into this path of discovery. Being a mom of 3 at a brink of divorce, overwhelmed and falling into depression, she sought out her therapist’s advice to slow down. The scientist in her rattled between the ideas of the universe guiding her and a lack of proof. When she gave in to the idea she realized that her presence, her actions and what she puts out into the world matters.

She came to a realization that doing more and working harder is not the answer to a fulfilled life. Natalie works with women in teaching pleasure practices to help them slow down and reconnect with their desires, which ultimately leads to a better sex life and intimacy.

Reconnecting with your body – Gender difference

When it comes to exploring self it doesn’t matter where on the gender spectrum you are or who your partner is. Natalie gives yoga, meditation and movement practices as examples to get in touch with your desires. It’s important to be intimate with your body and self before sharing it with your partner.

Advice that drove her away from divorce

Natalie points out advice from her father and later from therapy that drove her away from divorce. To obtain different results you have to start doing things differently. She says it’s a commitment, a process that takes time. It’s intentional work put forth by both partners to grow together. Natalie also talks about introspection. She points out that it’s your partner’s greatest pleasure to please. It’s less of a responsibility and more of a desire and a learning curve to discover what you like.

Pleasure Practices

Natalie gives out a few please practices to implement in getting to know yourself. To explore your body in a sensual way, to discover new areas of your body, she suggests self-oil massage, dance practice with closed eyes and mirror staring in the morning. There’s a number of things we are not taught about our own body and pleasure and it’s time that we explore it. Desire can be accessed in all moments of our life. Awareness practices in which we think about things that make us feel good. Natalie describes these things as the most simple and mundane activities we perform just for the sake of our pleasure. She suggests writing down 3 big to-do things for the day and something else that gives you pleasure. For Natalie, it’s taking a walk in the woods. Make a conscious effort to recognize the simple pleasures of your day and gradually transfer it to sexuality.

What ifs

Women who want to make a change, Natalie says, they’ve to make a choice. A choice to take out time from their busy life, reach out and make a commitment. For all the time spent in taking care of everyone around, it’s time to regain that energy for yourself.

Benefits of non-sexual pleasure

Natalie emphasizes non-sexual pleasure with self and a partner. Natalie calls to embrace the human being’s desire to be seen and to surrender. The greatest intimacy with a partner or with yourself can be built by exploring your bodies.

Feminine and Masculine energy

Natalie describes feminine energy as desire, surrender, flow and creation. Feminine energy calls to slow down while masculine energy strives to move forward and achieve. A balance is needed to be formed between the two for an individual to embrace it to the fullest. It’s the same for all genders.

How to have a conversation about sexuality with kids?

Natalie offers her insight on how to have conversations with kids about sexuality by giving an example of her daughters. She starts by talking about masturbation. She says it’s their duty to get to know their bodies and to explore their own pleasure before exploring it with a partner. She reflects on her own childhood when these conversations didn’t exist in her catholic family. Unlike her upbringing when she was taught bodies to be shameful, she makes it a principle to encourage these hard conversations in her family. It goes beyond sexuality to everyday tasks. Natalie and her family prioritizes activities that excite them and family time over extra math classes. “It’s about making space to explore other interests”, as Natalie says.

Background

Natalie Frasca Surmeli is the founder of “Tribe of Wolves”, a mentor, coach, speaker and a mom of 3. She guides women to explore their feminine wild by making a “Feminine plan”. She teaches the fundamentals of Divine Feminine, Divine Masculine and Universal Energy and how to tap into these energies every day. She helps women reconnect with their self and bodies using pleasure practices.

Resources and Links:

Website: Tribe of Wolves

Facebook Group: Tribe of Wolves: Women Who Want MORE

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz – https://www.sexhealthquiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/165-stepping-into-your-feminine-wild-natalie-frasca-surmeli

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

164: Sexual Awareness – Kristen Lilla

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 20:54:36 GMT

In this episode we see how communication can affect a person’s sexuality and intimacy and how we can work towards that with our partner.

Communication, vulnerability and how to have conversations with our partners

Kristen correlates communication with vulnerability because we often don’t talk about sex, it makes us uncomfortable. Her book starts with communication, vulnerability and normalizing the two. It’s overwhelming to read hundreds of pages of a book to be aware of a single topic. Kristen says she wanted some cut to the chase, something practical to read and to apply it in real life. So, she added exercises at the end of every chapter that includes a lot of conversation starters for couples.

There are several variables that come into play. Our upbringing has a huge impact on how we communicate in our relations. The way families communicate with each other reflects in how they communicate in their relationships. It’s about acknowledging that.

Problems with ineffective communication and what’s the answer?

Kristen describes defensiveness and avoidance as the biggest pitfalls people have with communication. We’re so engrossed in defending ourselves that we forget to listen. We also avoid difficult conversations especially about sex because it makes us uncomfortable but Kristen urges us to be uncomfortable. She emphasizes that it’s better to be uncomfortable than to avoid the conversation.

How does vulnerability play a role in communication?

Vulnerability isn’t necessarily shown in the matters of sex, even sharing our emotions could be vulnerable. Kristen explains it by sharing a heart-warming example from her personal life. When we share our emotions, and they aren’t reciprocated or validated immediately, it makes us feel exposed and thus leaving us vulnerable. But as the conversation goes, Kristen poses a question of whether it’s better to have a conversation rather than keep assuming that someone loves you. She says, “There’s validation in acknowledging it”.

What do you think prevents couples from being vulnerable?

Kristen believes fear of judgement from your partner and presuming a partner’s reaction keeps us from opening up. We rather let the problems pile up than have a conversation that leaves us with shame and guilt. But If you want to do something differently, give them the opportunity to surprise you, to say something differently even though you know what they’re going to say. Kristen talks about how important it is to “just listen” and she emphasizes that you don’t have to get judgmental or commit to something but just express gratitude for sharing and then revisit it later. It makes the partner feel safe to have an open and honest conversation with you.

Exercises for couples around these ideas:

Kristen suggests practicing “Pancake talk”. It involves processing an experience and talking about it at a later time in a neutral territory. It gives you an opportunity to not be reactive and get away from high intensity emotions. She refers to ‘four horsemen of John Gottman’ while talking about being mindful with your responses and listening without getting defensive. She suggests repeating it back just like in ‘Imago therapy’ and mirroring exercises which compels you to slow down and listen to what the other person is saying.

She also talks about risky conversations about a kink or a fetish or wanting to talk about being polyamory doesn’t have to be difficult. Your partner might understand what you’re communicating with them and acknowledge that but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re agreeing with you. Kristen explains that with an example, you can be mad at your partner about something and have consensual sex and still not forgive them. Kristen encourages people to look at their childhood and connect the dots with who they are now. It can be done by questioning how you got your sex education. She talks about unwinding the messages of religious upbringing and false information.

Other sections in the book

Apart from talking about communication and vulnerability in a couple’s sex life, the book has several other sections about fantasy, open relationships, low libido, sexual assault and trauma and how to process this and how to normalize these topics.

Resources and Links:

Kristen Lilla’s website – https://kristenlilla.com

Kristen’s Book – Boxes and How We Fill Them: A Basic Guide to Sexual Awareness

Kristen’s Book – Vaginas and Periods 101: A Pop-Up Book

More info:

Training video – https://jessazimmerman.mykajabi.com/video-choice

Sex Health Quiz –https://www. sexhealthquiz.com

The Course –https:// www.intimacywitheasemethod.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Background:

Kristen Lilla, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is Nebraska and Iowa’s only AASECT Certified Sex Therapist(CST) and AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator(CSE) through the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). She is also one of four dually Certified Sex Educator and Therapy Supervisors in the world.

Kristen is an international speaker and has spoken at conferences including the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), National Sex Education Conference (CSE), Eyes Open Iowa Conference, Bangladesh Sex Therapy Training, and AASECT Annual Conference. Additionally, Kristen published two books in 2019; Boxes and How We Fill Them: A Basic Guide to Sexual Awareness, and Vaginas and Periods 101: A Pop-Up Book.

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/164-sexual-awareness-kristen-lilla

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

163: Joyful Monogamy – Lynne Sheridan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:16:25 GMT

Lynne E Sheridan, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist after being an international transformational trainer for 27 years is here today to talk about Joyful Monogamy from her book, “The Birds and Bees of Joyful Monogamy: Nine Secrets to Hot Partnering”. She dives into the topics of monogamy as a basic nature, what leads us to choose monogamy, advantages of a monogamous relationship, and how to keep it alive over time.

Definition and what monogamy means

Lynne defines a monogamous relationship as ‘a mutual endeverance’ of a couple that stems from an urge for fathering and mothering a child and to have a partnership. A father’s need to know that the child is their own and a mother’s need to have a partner who supports them throughout, historically has driven people to choose monogamy.

Lynne talks about the romanticizing of monogamy in Hollywood. She declares that Hollywood represents a relationship to be easy and it’s merely a fantasy to think that’s how a monogamous relationship is in reality. This representation encourages couples to go unprepared with the expectation of it to be a natural process.

Monogamy as our inherent nature

While answering questions about our inherent nature of being monogamous or open, Lynne says we are intrinsically pulled both ways. Our personality, formed from several factors of our childhood experiences that draw our unconscious beliefs, leads us to make choices. As we repeatedly make the same choices, they form a pattern.

We repeat negative patterns rooted in our unconscious beliefs that we don’t recognize until we see the result. Lynne talks about how these patterns result in whether we choose or not choose monogamy by sharing a personal example. Lynn states that monogamy itself is not the problem but our relation with it is. We have to make an authentic choice that isn’t coming from an old pattern but from a clear conscience.

Gifts and struggles of Monogamy

The goal here is not to solve all the problems in a relationship, it is to communicate them. She says that it’s about sharing your troubles and healing each other’s wounds constantly. When a person is willing to work through what troubles you or them and is still there to listen to it over and over again, that is the gift that monogamy brings-to put in the effort. As Lynn puts it, “it’s about transference and counter transference”.

She talks about intimacy as being totally transparent, to be our authentic selves all the time. More than just sex, intimacy is to constantly catch yourself and acknowledge when you are being someone else. Lynn poses a question on how one can be in an intimate relationship when we don’t let ourselves be seen. It’s a continuous process where we repair and move forward and get better each time.

How to keep a thriving, passionate sex life alive

Talking about keeping your sex life alive in monogamy, Lynn quotes Esther Perel, “We have this conflicting desire with mystery and adventure and security”. She says it’s about balancing between both monogamy and wanting more adventure. It’s also passion that drives sex. To ignite that passion we have to be willing to open up to risks, adventures and keeping the mystery alive. She presses the need for sensuality without orgasm or penetration. While out of habit we look for a quick release, Lynn suggests reinventing sensuality by blindfolds, exploring each other’s bodies without an orgasm or a quick fix. She emphasizes prolonged pleasure that requires time and space and the freedom to pick a tone of the encounter. She gives a number of exciting ideas to keep the fire burning such as role-play, dress up, picking each other up at a bar and titillating.

Dating yourself

As important as it is to keep the fire burning in a monogamous relationship, it’s also of great importance to rekindle the fire within yourself. Lynn talks about “dating herself” by exploring all of her possibilities within, for as long as it takes. It’s easy to fall into a rut just like the habit of sex, but learning happens when we push ourselves to grow constantly. As Lynn states, “The work I do is outside of my comfort zone, that’s where possibility exists”. The excitement lies in areas that you haven’t explored, where growth happens.

Advice

During Covid-19, more than ever, Lynn advises the importance of self-care. She says self-care for her is not just about commonly practiced routine but it’s about surrounding yourself with people who stimulate you, it means not to overburden your partner, rich conversations, pushing to do transformational programs and pushing the boundaries of your beliefs about everything.

Resources for Lynne:

“The Birds and Bees of Joyful Monogamy: Nine Secrets to Hot Partnering”: http://www.lynneesheridan.com/index.php/birds-and-bees-of-joyful-manogamy

Lynne’s website: http://www.lynneesheridan.com/

‘Couples Thriving Practice’ – 12-week program: http://www.lynneesheridan.com/index.php/partnerships/couples-thriving-practice

Couples Intimacy Practice: http://www.lynneesheridan.com/index.php/partnerships/couples-ip

VIP Couples Customized Retreat: http://www.lynneesheridan.com/index.php/partnerships/couples-vip

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Access the Free webinar: How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated: https://intimacywithease.com/free-webinar

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/163-joyful-monogamy-lynne-sheridan

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

162: Perinatal Mental Health & Sex – Emma Shandy Anway

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 22:35:09 GMT

Emma explains what perinatal mental health is and includes thinking about pregnant, becoming pregnant and the intersection of this with your sex life. When sex becomes about having a baby, Emma points out that it can become difficult to connect with your partner. Redefining sex is the focus of her conversations with couples.

You’re Expecting; Now What?

Once pregnant, other issues creep up in terms of body and hormone changes that may affect your sex life. Emma suggests connecting with your partner by answering the question ‘what is sex to you?’ In the case of not falling pregnant, Emma finds that couples may disagree or resent each other on the way forward which can lead to them becoming disconnected and thus affecting their sex lives. In the case of actually having a child, being flexible is key to a successful sex life and keeping communication open, is part of that in a big way.

How to Handle Problems

Emma discusses statistics of traumatic events around pregnancy and divorce but mentions that there is also a big impact on couples sex lives. Sitting down with your partner and redefining sex so that you and your partner can consciously work on your sex life together is crucial to its survival. She also recommends joining a support group. This can normalize the experience for you and highlight that it can be overcome.

Links and Resources

http://www.esacounseling.com

https://www.postpartum.net/

Background

Emma is a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (#119249) in Davis, California under the supervision of Karina Parker Knight LMFT (#48111).

Emma is a sex and perinatal therapist as well as a couples and individual therapist that uses emotion-focused therapy (EFT) with influences from attachment and family system theories.

She was drawn to and became interested in sex therapy in graduate school when she had the opportunity to work under Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, and felt passionate about deepening her expertise in the field of sexual intimacy and sexual identities. After taking courses through the Northwest Institute on Intimacy (NWIOI) she is now a Certified Integrated Intimacy Professional.

She did not enter the world of perinatal mental health until she experienced my own late-term pregnancy loss which opened her up to the lack of help available to women and couples struggling with this type of trauma.

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/162-perinatal-mental-health-sex-emma-shandy-anway

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

161: Menopause – Dr. Michelle Gordon

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:36:18 GMT

After having gone through menopause and being surprised by the event, Michelle discusses her journey to finding out more about it and how to make it easier for other women. She shares her experience after taking the pill, then finding out that she had a mass in her uterus thus leading her to undergo an Endometrial Biopsy. Michelle was unhappy with her body and realized that other women were probably going through the same horrific experience.

Common Problems in Menopause

She discusses how disruptive menopause can be especially since we are not prepared like we are for other age milestones in our lives. From her experience, externally women report weight gain and on internal issues women struggle with their ability to make decisions and encounter an identity crisis.

Michelle notes that doctors don’t know enough to help patients and this can leave women in a worse position. She also discusses loss of libido that comes up as a very common symptom of menopause and bleeding into our relationships. Michelle explains vaginal atrophy and urethral atrophy that can come with menopause.

The Four Pillars of Thriving in Menopause

The key to understanding menopause is to understand hormones. Dr. Gordon discusses 4 pillars which include science, supporting ourselves with diet, movement and the brain.

In terms of dealing with menopause, Michelle says there is no single answer for every woman. She encourages reflection and reinvention during our menopause journeys as each one is unique.

Links and Resources

http://www.menopausemovement.com

https://www.drmichellegordon.com/

Background

Dr Gordon is a Board-Certified General Surgeon and founder of Gordon Surgical Group, a multi-specialty group practice in 2005. GSG serves the lower Hudson Valley of New York.

She is also the author of Managing Menopause which you can find on her website.

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/161-menopause-dr-michelle-gordon

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

160: Sizzling Sex Across the Lifespan – Michael Castleman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 21:11:04 GMT

Michael Castleman is a journalist that has been writing specifically about sexuality since 2005. He is also the author of Sizzling Sex across the Lifespan, covering the good bad and ugly bits about the subject. His book contains 25 actual medical studies and is based on facts.

Common Sexual Issues

Poor ejaculatory control is one of his best-selling subjects and you can find his e-book ‘ The Cure for Premature Ejaculation’ on his website. He discusses how differently men and women think about sex and provides advice for men to help improve the statistic that only 20% of women reach orgasm.

We learn that desire difference is also a main difference with couples which is not often reported. Michael talks about sexual pain and the high number of women that suffer with it even to the extent of not knowing the medical term for it and accepting it as ‘normal.’

If you are experiencing tension or stress around desire discrepancy, check out my free webinar – How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressure or obligation at https://www.intimacywithease.com/training

The Effects of Porn

Michael refers to masturbation and how kids are deterred from this behavior instead of being taught to understand it and enjoy it into adulthood. He mentions statistics that reveal 25% of the porn audience is female and despite popular belief, porn does not increase incidence of rape or disrespect of women, while teens have become more sexually responsible since pornography on the internet.

Michael agrees that porn results in masturbation and sexual miseducation. Debunking myths, he affirms that porn does not affect men’s ability to become aroused. He mentions the refractory period and shares how this should be understood in order to manage our bodies. He discusses arousal and how it changes across one’s lifetime.

Links and Resources

http://www.greatsexguidance.com

Background

Michael Castleman is a journalist and sex counselor. Writing since 1974, he is the world’s most popular sex writer, covering sexuality, sex research, and sex therapy, helping people everywhere enjoy great sex.

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/160-sizzling-sex-across-the-lifespan-michael-castleman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

159: Erotic Blueprints – DD Haeg

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 20:12:58 GMT

On this episode we hear from DD Haeg who tells about the 5 Erotic Blueprints. She explains that this is a map/ language for how to turn each other on. They consist of the following:

Energetics : Like to be teased, enjoy anticipation and prefer lighter touch. A sense of spaciousness appeals to them.

Sensual: These blueprints indulge in all their senses be engaged. Ambience and candles work for them, and they love to be completely engaged.

Sexuals: Respond to very direct sexual gestures, love nudity and quickies!

Kinky: These types respond to things that are taboo and will find a power dynamic often at play.

Shape Shifters: love everything!

DD mentions that sexuals and energetics are the most difficult pairing one could find.

Stacking Erotic Blueprints

People have one main blueprint and can have elements of the others- this is called a stack.

If this is new to you, DD suggests that you take her quiz to help you figure our which blueprint is your main blueprint and then understand your stack.

Learning about your stack helps understand the sequence that works for you and this can really help unlock different things you may enjoy. DD discusses the shadow side of these blueprints and what the purpose of knowing your blueprint is. Ultimately this creates a deeper connection between couples.

What works for each blueprint:

Energetics love eye gazing and anticipation. A text message is an example of this.

Sexuals love nudity so a selfie might help.

Sensuals would love an essential oil bath.

Kinky is very dependent on the partner you have!

Shapeshifter would love all these things.

Links and Resources

Find out more about her Pleasure code program on her website: https://ddhaeg.com/

For my free webinar, How to Help Your Partner Want More Sex WITHOUT making them feel pressure or obligation, go here: https://www.intimacywithease.com/training

Background

DD Haeg is an international retreat leader, embodiment educator and certified erotic blueprint coach. She’s the founder of The Pleasure Code,™ empowering retreats and online programs that tap into the principles of permission, pleasure and play to help women shift out of overwhelm and into more juiciness and joy.

Over the last two decades, DD has travelled to 35 countries, taught hundreds of yoga and meditation classes, and taken more than 1000 hours of pleasure-focused training including Orgasmic Meditation, tantra, massage therapy, and more. She holds a master’s degree in intercultural studies and currently lives in Denver with her two kiddos.

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/159-erotic-blueprints-dd-haeg

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

158: Disability, Sex, and Creativity – Kate Wolovsky

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 22:47:03 GMT

On this episode, we learn how to maximize connection and pleasure if you are affected by physical barriers. Kate Wolovsky shares her story being affected with MS and still having a happy sex life despite this condition.

Disability Affects More Than Your Physical Body

Kate shares that having a disabled body early on in life led to a lot of shame. She also shares her husband’s story as a completely disabled person, expanding on how disability extends from physical to emotional as well.

She refers to Dr Kinsey’s approach to research and how people react from physical trauma. We don’t need to ask about a traumatic event to know what the impact of it is. Indicators can be found in other areas of peoples lives through their emotions, sex lives, and interactions – according to her.

She sheds light on the difficulties disabled people have with even their medical professionals not being equipped to talk to them or understand them as normal people, which is something she is working on through her surveys.

Learning to Talk to Your Providers

Kate mentions that people struggling with disabilities are unsure of what they can ask and that’s where she plays a key role in helping people. Kate lightheartedly advocates that disabled people are sexy and uses the word “adumbptions” to describe dumb assumptions made about disabled people.

Kate strongly encourages more meaningful conversations with disabled people pointing out that conversations with disabled people can be broached the same way as able-bodied people. She discusses where the blocks are and how she and her husband try to alleviate these issues. Their surveys are an example of this. She suggests that you participate in their survey which is used to gather information to help you educate your providers.

What’s the same for everyone

Consent is important for everyone. Innovation in all aspects of your life. She mentions furniture that works for you or using zoom to keep your relationship alive. In addition to this, she mentions not allowing social media to dictate what YOUR body should look like. “Whatever your body does, its OK”

Free Webinar

If you’re interested in our on-going free webinar – How to help your partner want more sex without making them feel pressured or obligated – you can sign up here.

Background

Kate is a psychotherapist, sex therapist, clinical researcher, speaker, writer, and advocate, specializing in disability, sexuality, and traumatic stress. Kate sheds light into these marginalized realities, and exposes the gaps in knowledge, training, and professional care that “other” or exclude people from accessing full enjoyment of their life.

Kate is a Clinical Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute Trauma Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University, where Kate is the co-author of a new, international, inclusive survey study, Body Mind, & COVID-19 that offers people of all backgrounds an opportunity to share how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of their life (including sexual pleasure and sexual health) and what is important to them as we all search for answers about how to stay connected while physically isolated.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Kate is increasingly in demand as a subject-matter expert on disability, chronic illness, sexuality, and traumatic stress with an embodied experience of navigating all sides of the healthcare system, academia, and both in person and online. Kate offers professional consultation, customized training, and advocates for nurturing connection and evolving opportunities for healthcare providers and the communities they serve.

Links and Resources

https://www.disabledduo.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/158-disability-sex-and-creativity-kate-wolovsky

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

157: Body Image Liberation – KaRonna Lynn

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 21:14:08 GMT

Liberation guide KaRonna Lynn, deals with body image obstacles. Liberation to KaRonna is about following what is liberating to you and not necessarily what society has defined as liberating. Most of her work is around body image but it is not confined to this.

Three Pronged Approach to Body Image Liberation

KaRonna discusses her three-pronged approach which includes, the physical body, our mental space and the culture we grew up in. Her work entails helping people unpack these things to understand her clients better. She emphasizes that this is a personal journey for each person and therefore each client needs to answer the question “How do you want this to change?”

Fat?

KaRonna Lynn shares her thoughts around people with body image concerns related to fat. She feels that people can be healthy at every size and that fat is purely a descriptor, especially since she has been through many diets and her own personal journey with weight. She rejects the idea that being healthy means being in a small, thin body.

When approached by clients that struggle with weight loss and have a goal to lose weight in order to enjoy their sex lives, KaRonna reveals the underlying message within her clients being “I need to change myself to be accepted. ” According to her, this bleeds into other areas of your life, and she finds that people are constantly trying to make others happy with the results not lasting forever. The secret to success is accepting yourself and allowing others to accept you as you are too.

Body Issues In Existing Relationships

Struggling with body image in an existing relationship can steer a relationship into difficulty as this can be a sensitive subject. KaRonna advises us to tackle this openly with our partners and work on how to move our sex lives into a new place and work with what our new bodies look like as opposed to changing our bodies. Physical attraction is only a piece of attraction and there are other areas we can focus our attraction to.

What it feels like to be Liberated

KaRonna explains how this may feel and what to expect when you experience liberation. If you have been conscious of your dress size, your eating habits, other peoples thoughts about your weight and looks, KaRonna explains that liberation would be when those thoughts no longer exist. Your automatic reactions to other people stop revolving around YOUR appearance or your body.

Background

KaRonna is a Liberation Guide. With intuitive gifts, years of untangling herself from toxic beliefs, and a clinically focused Masters of Social Work, KaRonna connects the dots between the physical (our bodies), the mental (our thoughts), and the social (our systems & cultures) at the core of body image struggles, in order to help people find deep personal liberation & body confidence.

Links and Resources

https://karonnalynn.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/157-body-image-liberation-karonna-lynn

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

156: The 5 Seasons of Connection – Leanne Kabat

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 22:44:08 GMT

On this episode, we hear about Leanne Kabat’s personal journey. Faced with an illness and a young family, she found clarity and direction on how to choose to get out of chaos or conflict. She discusses what she calls the five seasons, what they mean and how to get to the “Summer” that we all love and need.

Dealing with Issues

She shares Spring cleaning methods that different people prefer in order to resolve difficult situations. Glossing things over is not an option, as the reference of Spring cleaning implies. She emphasizes getting dirty, uncovering painful or hidden issues in your relationship and dealing with it.

Her Book

Leanne talks about her book and how she initially thought it was going to be about the other person in her relationships but finding that its actually about yourself. She also shares her discovery about multiple layers to intimacy as opposed to a blanket idea. It also covers levels of awareness in your relationship. Her book delves into unpacking all your issues and difficult moments to connect and instead of holding hurt, growing your relationship from it.

Categories of Intimacy

Leanne discusses these 7 categories in more detail in her book. The point of these categories is for people to try and connect on as many levels as possible.

– Emotional

– Spiritual- which can be anything you connect with on a deeper level eg religion, nature, etc.

– Physical- is separated from sexual as Leanne highlights that it can be used outside of foreplay and not requiring a sexual act back. It can be used to communicate love and affection apart from sex

– Intellectual

– Financial

– Experiential- She explains the experiential category as the many areas you and your partner have common threads that enhance connection.

– Sexual

Background

Leanne Kabat is an international speaker and author of The 5 Seasons of Connection collection. Her books take us right into those crucial minute-by-minute interactions where we either draw closer together or push further apart. When we understand our seasons, we can transform our relationships from conflicted to connected by confidently moving out of the cold, dark, stormy

Winters towards love, happiness, and sunny Summer days. Her first book customizes this system for parents, her second book helps entrepreneurs who battle with doubt, anxiety, mental blocks and imposter syndrome, and her third book is for couples. The 5 Seasons of Connection to Your Love Partner goes into the most profound adult relationship we have, guiding couples out of Winter and towards their deepest love and truest connection.

Leanne developed the 5 Seasons framework as a result of a medical diagnosis in 2006 that gave her five years to live, challenging her to truly live a life she loved. Fourteen years later, she’s happily raising three teens and excited to visit her 50th country when it’s safe to do so.

Links and Resources

http://www.5SeasonsLife.com

http://www.5SeasonsLife.com/books

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannekabat/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/156-the-5-seasons-of-connection-leanne-kabat

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

155: Sex and the Developmentally Disabled – Richelle Fribotta

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 23:22:14 GMT

On this episode, you will hear from Richelle Fribotta. Richelle discusses her work teaching people with developmental and intellectual disabilities about sex. While there are many misconceptions around whether people with DD are even able to understand or participate in sex, Richelle clears up these myths.

Compared to years ago, we learn that there is more activity around sexual education for DD people. Richelle works anywhere that has a need but her main visits currently are institutions.

Advice for Parents

For any parent trying to educate their kids about sex whether they suffer with DD or not, it can be a difficult journey. She approaches DD kids in a similar way to non DD kids, advising parents or caregivers to firstly open up and be approachable before trying to find a curriculum to share with their kids.

Misconceptions

With many misconceptions out there, Richelle mentions just a few she comes across. Her work has led her to people who think sex ed cannot be taught to DD people and that people with an IQ under 70 are not sexual. Some she says, fear that broaching the topic would lead to people with DD looking to explore it in inappropriate ways.

Outcomes

Richelle points out her firm message around consent, age difference and sex with non humans, re-iterating that these are her hard lines and that she communicates this very clearly to her students. She also focuses on Increasing communication skills and how to say no, as well as prevention. For people that want to deliver sexual information to people with DD, she equips them with teaching methods.

What to leave out

According to Richelle, reading her students developmental age versus chronological age determines a lot of her content. Teaching where students are and reading them is a major part of her method. Richelle does not use lecture format and infuses pleasure into her lessons. There is no set prioritization in the order or learning as she deals with her students wherever they are.

Background

Richelle has been a professional community-based Sexuality Educator since 1992 when she was employed at Planned Parenthood (Dayton, Ohio). First certified as a Sexuality Educator by the American Association of Sexuality Educator Counselors and Therapists in 1996, she is also a CSE Supervisor since its inception in 2014. She teaches a multitude of subjects that are human sexuality to many populations and in various venues: 4th – 12th graders, higher education institutions, public, private and non-profit organizations, faith communities, alcohol and drug rehabilitation facilities, jails…anywhere she is invited. When training colleagues and those working in human services, she emphasizes that sexuality education should be taught from a medically accurately and research-informed, compassionate, person-centered lens with methods that are developmentally relevant, culturally inclusive while grounded in social justice praxis and a code of ethics. She never forgets that teaching also means learning.

Richelle is most proud of her focus on individuals with divergent learning styles. She has authored curricula, trained staff, provided group education to parents, caregivers and self-advocates, and consultation services for folks in the Intellectual -Developmental Disabilities, Learning Disabilities, Autism Spectrum, and Traumatic Brain Injury communities. Most notably in 1997, she established a full-service sexuality education program for an Ohio County Board of DD. Richelle works with State of Ohio DODD, Council of Governments (COGs), Superintendents, and other invested professionals to offer multiple on-going education services throughout Ohio. Her most current work is with self-advocates in Oklahoma and training developmental center staff in Ohio. Both projects endeavor to establish local “sexperts” who co-author and train about quality of life and equity-based topics that are human sexuality.

Currently, Richelle occupies Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) where she is Coordinating the Dennis L. Carlson Sexuality Education Studies Center; Instructing in the Family Science and Social Work Department; and wrapping up her doctoral program, Leadership, Culture and Curriculum. Her 28+ years of experiences in providing education services informs her research. Richelle’s scholarship challenges contemporary sexuality education curriculum standards and teaching preparation practices. She prioritizes supporting those who want to be credentialed and trained in best practices pedagogy and praxis.

Richelle is an active volunteer member for AASECT having served on the Ethics Committee, the Board of Directors, Professional Education Steering Committee, and presented at numerous annual conferences over the last 25 years. She has been a board member for several prevention and diversity inclusion groups. She sings in classic rock bands for creative outlet, pleasure, and to blow off steam.

Raised in a traditional Catholic home and strongly influenced by education professionals who value the power of progressive teaching pedagogy, Richelle has a profound respect for diversity of all kinds, believes in prevention education and endeavors to empower people to make healthy choices for sexual pleasure, health, and wellness. Teaching about Human Sexuality is Richelle’s passion…she loves her work and can think of nothing else she’d rather do than talk about sexuality!

sex/ual/ity: a visual representation to remind that this word encompasses behaviors (sex), feelings and energy (sexual), and identities (sexuality)

Richelle’s Website:

https://sosecs.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/155-sex-and-the-developmentally-disabled-richelle-fribotta

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

154: Masculine Sexual Leadership – GS Youngblood

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 15:23:33 GMT

GS found his path after his own painful journey in his personal life and used this to create his book and help others. He references strong women and clarifies that these are women that have a clear understanding of their own worth.

Reflecting on the evolution of men and women, GS highlights historically, the role of men as dominators and leaders until women became more capable and assertive. His book helps men understand how to adapt to this without losing themselves or diminishing their partners strength.

Masculine Leadership

We learn what masculine and feminine energy are and lean into what masculine leadership is. It includes taking responsibility and steering a relationship into a more structured state so that resolution can be reached.

Sexual Leadership

GS believes that while many men wait for their female partners to be in the mood for sex, it is the man’s responsibility to lead her to it. He talks about creating the container that allows her to open up her sexuality. He names the elements that men need to work on. These are timing, environment (temperature, lighting, aesthetic factors), heart connection, being present, praise, edginess, and attunement.

Blueprint

A man in his masculine energy is grounded, providing direction and structure and creating safety. He gives men tips on how to transition their partners to a body/heart space. GS explains that women love light and dark energy and shares what each of these mean.

Leading

GS believes that almost all men can tap into their masculine energy. He recommends becoming grounded and experimenting with your partner in a conscious and respectful manner.

Toxic Masculinity

As opposed to the blueprint of healthy masculine energy, GS explains that alpha males usually don’t encompass the three elements mentioned in his earlier blueprint. The opposite of this is ‘the nice guy’ which compensates in other ways and again does not model the blueprint he mentions earlier therefore not being able to find their healthy masculine energy.

Background

GS Youngblood coaches men in relationships on how to live, love, and lead from their Masculine core. He specializes in “nice guys” who are with strong women. His teachings combine deep embodiment work with the framework of the Masculine blueprint from his book “The Masculine in Relationship”.In his past life, GS was a high tech executive in Sales and Marketing for 16 years, including founding and selling a company. The leadership practices of Silicon Valley, based on clarity and inspiration rather than control, are a major influence on the model of Masculine leadership he shares with his clients.

Resources and Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gsyoungblood1/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gsyoungbloodmir/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/154-masculine-sexual-leadership-gs-youngblood

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

153: Love More, Fight Less – Dr. Gina Senarighi

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 22:04:49 GMT

From early on in her career, Dr. Gina knew she wanted to help people with sex and relationships. Her work delved into the more uncommon areas such as discernment counseling, conscious uncoupling, and consensual non-monogamy.

Her work today revolves around a diverse group of clients, which she calls expansive relationships. Dr. Gina explains expansive relationships as relationships between partners that want to explore and encompass more of themselves, people who want to “color outside of the lines.”

Looking Deeper into Our Stories

Gina deals with many stories and talks about how we all have stories. She notes that we need to look at our own actions and history in a healthier way and finds that this can bring us to realizations in our lives that help us better understand ourselves. Exploring our norms does not mean we need to scrap them but rather encourages us to better tailor them to our current relationship needs.

Intimacy

Dr. Senarighi highlights that vulnerability and intimacy are not the same but that handling vulnerability with care can deepen intimacy in a relationship. She explains intimacy as a deep connection with people and explores the different kinds of intimacy around us.

Communication

She explains that trust and openness go hand in hand and shares how we can cultivate that openness for ourselves. Dr Gina discusses her book and how important communication is in relationships. It is filled with tools and actionable steps for couples to use to strengthen their communication and deal with obstacles. She uncovers a few examples to give us some insight into what she means.

A few key elements she unpacks that help communication are clarity of boundaries, having a clear and compassionate accountability process and trust and stability in relationships

Background

Dr. Gina Senarighi, PhD, CPC is an author, teacher, sexuality counselor and certified relationship coach based in the U.S. She’s been supporting clean fights and dirty sex in happy healthy relationships since 2009. Gina has written several books and currently leads couples retreats and coaches clients all over the world to have deeper intimacy and more meaningful connection.

Call for a free consultation to rethink the way you do relationships.

About Gina

Dr. Gina Senarighi, PhD, CPC is a couples’ therapist turned relationship coach, retreat leader, and author specializing in intimacy, authenticity, shame-resilience, and connected communication for diverse relationships.

For over twelve years she has supported hundreds of clients creating fulfilling integrity-based relationships according to their own rules. In that time she’s developed a solid framework based in neuroscience, nonviolent communication, and positive psychology research that has transformed diverse relationships around the world.

In 2020, she published her first book, Love More Fight Less, A Communication Workbook for Every Couple with Penguin Random House. She earned her Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2010 from Saybrook University, her Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Wisconsin in 2002, and a Masters in Education with a minor in Human Sexuality from Indiana University in 2004. In 2019 she completed her PhD in Spiritual Studies and Pastoral Counseling.

Gina was named Portland’s Best Life Coach in 2019 and has taught psychology courses, communication workshops, couples intimacy retreats, and guest lectured on alternative relationships and sex-positive therapy at universities across the US. Students love her no-nonsense “real talk” presentation style.

Her podcast, Swoon has helped over 10,000 listeners build a more compassionate, creative, confident, and fulfilled society. Gina offers practical, proven skills to transform relationships in deeply meaningful ways.

As a retreat coach, her background in psychology, mediation and communication training has enabled her to offer uniquely powerful tools to help clients overcome stuck patterns. Her uniquely non-judgmental, inclusive approach to couples work puts even the most concerned participants at ease. She is not your average sit-and-nod supporter- she’ll call you out, and always help you grow. Gina has created thousands of tools, worksheets, guides and authored a few books to support relationships. Get on her email list if you’d like access to her tool library.

When she’s not working you can find her in her gorgeous urban garden, cooking dinners for friends, playing with her two adorable kids, or traveling the world with her partner, Rae.

Links and Resources:

Website – http://heygina.com

Book – Love More Fight Less, A Communication Workbook for Every Couple – https://www.amazon.com/Love-More-Fight-Less-Communication/dp/0593196651/

Website – http://Nonmonogomous.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/153-love-more-fight-less-dr-gina-senarighi

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

152: Learning From LGBTQ Elders – Dr. Jane Fleishman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 20:51:17 GMT

At age 56, Jane went back to finish her PhD and completed this at 62. She tells us this brought her into her own intellectually. She chose to focus on sexuality, as she found it to be the root of humanity’s problems. Her specialty is sexuality and aging. Her book, the Stonewall Generation, focuses on LGBTQ elders and the process required her to find people to interview.

Her writing journey took her to the story of Stonewall “the birth of the modern day rights movement“ which stands today as a historical event for the gay community.

Inclusivity

Her goals include trying to combat ageism and the myth that LGBTQ is a young persons’ identity. With all this in mind, Dr Jane targeted people who are marginalized so that their stories could be told through her book.

Dr. Fleishman’s aim is to experience pride events with more exciting sexual politics. With current upheaval in terms of racial injustice and other injustices, Jane believes that things will change to include more LGBTQ elders.

Aging and Sex

One of Dr. Jane’s concerns revolves around older adults’ cognitive decline and sexuality. The question she asks is “Do people have the ability and the right to have a sex positive future?“ This brings up ethical issues but Jane is passionate about helping the elderly and ensuring that even in old age, they can enjoy consensual sex.

Background

Jane Fleishman, PhD, MEd, MS, AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator, is an award-winning educator, writer, program developer and researcher with a keen perspective on the intersections of race, class, and sexuality, particularly for marginalized populations.

She holds a PhD and MEd in Human Sexuality from the Widener University Center for Human Sexuality Studies. Jane is the Principal in her own consulting practice, Speaking of, LLC, specializing in program development, training, curriculum design, writing, and policy review related to human sexuality for older adults, parents, teenagers, young children, and members of the LGBTQ population.

She hosts a regular podcast on topics related to sex in the second half of life at www.ourbetterhalf.net and recently completed a TEDx Talk entitled, “Is It OK for Grandma to Have Sex?” Her latest accomplishment is her book entitled, The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging.

Her curious nature has led her to research many topics related to sexuality, such as the associations between internalized homophobia, resilience, sexual communication, satisfaction in relationships, and sexual satisfaction in older adults’ same-sex relationships. Her work has helped organizations of different sizes develop tools to understand their organizational plights and dilemmas and implement changes into their work environment that align with their values, principles, and vision.

Links and Resources

http://www.janefleishman.com

http://www.ourbetterhalf.net

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/152-learning-from-lgbtq-elders-dr-jane-fleishman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

151: Blocks to Orgasm – Kim Akrigg

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 23:41:18 GMT

Kim joins me on this episode to discuss blocks to orgasm. Her aim is to work with the subconscious mind to transform women.

What Blocks Orgasm?

She delves into the root of the problem being control over women even at an intimate level and shares what these blocks actually look like. She touches on society’s reaction to kids unknowingly exploring their bodies and being shamed for their behavior as opposed to them being guided to understand when it’s appropriate.

Other blocks include sexual trauma and religion which frowns upon individuals seeking physical pleasure.

Our Minds Can Create Blocks

Kim talks about the role our minds play when reacting to sex or orgasm. She mentions how our subconscious feeds our responses by recalling its very first sexual experience and the feelings it brought with it. This of course manifests in our daily lives and sexual encounters.

Being aware of our personal stories around sex is key to understanding our blocks and how to fix them. This helps to distinguish between those who have blocks and those who just haven’t discovered how to reach orgasm yet.

Rapid Transformational Therapy

Kim tells us about a method called Rapid Transformational Therapy. The technique uses hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy and NLP, and it uncovers memories from the subconscious to help her clients. Dealing with the mind is crucial to helping clients as Kim emphasizes.

What to do on your own

Kim suggests once you are open to reaching and enjoying intimacy, that you spend time on your own figuring out what you like and what works for you sexually. If you are unsure of what an orgasm feels like, Kim suggests going with whatever makes you feel good.

If you want to work on your obstacles on your own, Kim suggests that you confront your thoughts around sex and tuning into your mind in order to figure out what is attached to your obstacle. She shares affirmations we can use and techniques that work. She reveals that repetition is the key to unlocking your pleasure.

Background

Kim Akrigg is the host of Kim Akrigg The Podcast and an RTT practitioner who studied under Marissa Peer. Her work focuses around using your subconscious mind to unlock your orgasm!

Resources and Links

Website: http://kimakrigg.com

IG : @kim.akrigg

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/151-blocks-to-orgasm-kim-akrigg

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

150: Talking To Your Kids About Porn – Braxton Dutson

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 23:28:32 GMT

How to Talk to Your Kids About Porn

With children being exposed to porn as early as 10 today, Braxton, teaches us how to deal with pornography and kids. He defines porn as content that is intentionally created for a sexual purpose like arousal.

For many parents, the task may seem daunting and confusing to broach. In this episode, Braxton takes us by the hand and explains exactly what we need to do to raise healthy, aware and responsible children.

His advice is to start by knowing your own parameters and values. The journey starts as early as the infant stage where we are encouraged to use the correct terms for body parts. With many kids having access to electronic devices, Braxton expresses how important it is to create a system for your child to respond correctly to unexpected, inappropriate material. He suggests explaining to your kids as young as 6, that if they do come across any naked people on their screens, to call you instead of getting curious and clicking on it.

The C’s

Talking to your child openly and ensuring that your child knows that they will not get into trouble, helps them approach you therefore Braxton encourages communication. Curiosity comes up as a common thread with children, and we are encouraged to teach them how to respond to that. Braxton explains the three C’s about why your child may look at pornography:

– Clicking (accidental)

– Curiosity

– Coping

As parents, he suggests we respond with these three C’s and explains these in more detail:

– Stay Curious

– Stay Connected

– Stay Calm

Teens

Dealing with teens requires a specific approach, as many parents may already have discovered. We learn that approaching teens openly and explaining your rationale to them in line with your values as opposed to dictating to them, works best. While teens are in an exploratory phase, parents may encounter teens using porn for masturbation. Braxton gives us a helpful way to gently correct this while ensuring your teen can still explore their sexual impulses.

Being responsible and not shaming your kids when they enter this phase of their lives is key to keeping an open line of communication and being there to help them into adulthood.

Background

Braxton Duston , LCSW, CST is the Clinical Director at The Healing Group in Salt Lake City Utah. He is also host of the Birds and Bees Podcast. In addition to this Braxton is an adjunct professor of human sexuality at the University of Utah.

With a broad spectrum of experience, Braxton helps couples, dads and parents in unique ways.

Links and Resources

Find him on IG :Birds and bees

Find him on FB: Braxton Dutson

http://birdsandbeespodcast.com

Birdsandbeespodcast@gmail.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/150-talking-to-your-kids-about-porn-braxton-dutson

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

149: The State of Our Union – Dr. Corey Allan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 21:41:44 GMT

State of Our Union Program

Bringing personal life experience to the fore, Corey explains how the idea of ‘The State Of Our Union’ came about. On a weekly basis Corey and his wife used a text message reminder with 5 questions. This helped them escape work and family distractions and sit down with each other religiously to talk about their personal lives, sex and their emotions.

They now have a program you can join that allows you to practice the same commitment with your partner in order to share meaningful conversations. Once a week you will get a text message with 5 questions to discuss with your partner. Once every quarter you receive a different set of questions in addition to the 5 weekly questions, which are broader and more long term.

Corey encourages using a journal to write your answers down so that you can track your progress and keep in touch with each other on a more personal level. Approaching what you are both grateful for is an example of what the quarterly questions include. Corey emphasizes that it is not sex-focused and can be about anything we are grateful for. The program is built to bring people together and keep people in tune with each other.

In the case of couples not having the time to fit these candid heart to hearts with each other, Corey expresses that it is absolutely possible to find a few minutes to connect and not making the time is already a reflection of where your relationship is and what you need to work on.

Background

Corey Allan (if you want to be formal it’s Dr. Corey Allan, but he’s usually pretty casual) is a husband, father, author, speaker, as well as a Marriage and Family Therapist and a Licensed Professional Counselor with a Ph.D. in Family Therapy. He and his wife Pam host a weekly podcast, Sexy Marriage Radio, where they help frame the conversation for couples to experience the best sex possible in their marriage.

Corey has a private practice in McKinney, TX and is the founder of sexymarriage.net, an online resource aimed at helping marriages not just survive, but thrive. Pam is a CPA at a small firm in Frisco TX as well as a co-pilot with Corey’s work.

To sum it up …

Love is a process, not just a feeling. It produces action. Added to this, life is a choice (so is marriage). Therefore, we work to help people:

Grow deeper Spiritually

Keep it simple

Be passionate

Live in community with others

Enjoy the ride

Marriage is more about becoming a better human than it is about the two people being happy. So when you keep things simple, you are in a better position to experience more in marriage and life.

“I don’t want people surviving their relationships, I want them thriving.” ~ Dr. Corey Allan

Links and Resources:

http://sexymarriage.net

http://sexymarriageradio.com

http://smrnation.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/149-the-state-of-our-union-dr-corey-allan

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

148: [Personal Story] A Triggered Life – Alba

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 21:07:25 GMT

Alba Soto is my guest on this episode. She shares her ‘triggered life’ experience, which still haunts her today. Her trauma began at the age of 3 at the hand of family members. Alba shares her addiction to masturbation as a coping mechanism which fueled her sense of guilt.

She shares how she managed to escape this life and the twist of events that led her abusers back to her. People pleasing was Alba’s symptom of her trauma, always aiming to be a ‘good girl.’

In an eye opening observation, Alba explains that trauma is the gateway drug to addiction and that any form of addiction is a coping tool. Her journey progresses into adolescence and adulthood, where she found herself in similar situations even in her personal relationships, being raped and involved with toxic partners.

Not knowing who she really was, was a huge obstacle in finding her confidence and with the help of her now husband, Alba reveals how he played a role in helping her find herself and express her emotions and thoughts openly in a safe place. When she experiences a ‘ triggering’ moment, Alba is now comfortable enough to talk about it and this, she shares is a liberating tool.

Alba currently still experiences trauma triggers and reveals how powerful having a voice is when she experiences these triggers.

Background

Alba Soto is the founder of Alba Soto TLC. She is a positive and resilient trauma survivor, dedicated to helping single mothers who have suffered from sexual trauma.

As a certified trauma life coach, Alba helps single mothers get unstuck by applying her unique principles of active healing. Through personal experience she has learned that ” Without tools, Trauma Rules.” This is what led her to share the tools that turned her from accepting people who took advantage of her to now only accepting healthy and reciprocal relationships.

These tools facilitate active healing and help women find their voice and reclaim their power.

Albas vision is to create a community of resilient women through my sisters circle community, ” Better TogetHER,” a sacred space to connect with other like spirited resilient women who are ready to move towards a life that is free of shame, guilt and anger.

Links and Resources

https://www.facebook.com/Albasototlc/

https://www.instagram.com/albasototlc/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/148-personal-story-a-triggered-life-alba

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

147: Becoming Sex Positive with Heather Shannon

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 19:33:23 GMT

Heather Shannon joins us on this episode to delve deeper into what being sex positive or sex negative actually means. In explaining what it actually means, Shannon relates it to a sense of freedom that you would find between two consenting parties to express whoever they are with each other.

We discover how sex negativity is integrated into our society and how liberating it can be to know other variations and options regarding sexuality.

What Does it Mean to Be Sex Negative

Shannon shares examples of this which include discomfort around sexual orientation, performance anxiety and unusual fetishes. Being unable or uncomfortable to say NO also hinges on sex negativity as Shannon explains in more detail. Interestingly, she notes that people with sexual trauma can be sex positive.

With many cultural and social factors working against sex positivity, Shannon highlights the sex education at schools as a key area that can be improved to move children toward a healthier perception of sex.

What Does it Mean to Be Sex Positive

A broad definition of this is being able to express your sexual self and feeling comfortable with it. Shannon points out that providing a space for this kind of expression fuels sex positivity. She suggests being selective about the social media you subscribe to and to intentionally surround yourself with sex positive content.

Another tip she shares is having a sex therapist that can provide you with a safe space to be yourself to improve your sex positivity.

Background

Heather Shannon, LCPC is a Sex & Relationship Therapist who works with individuals and relationship partners through online video sessions. She is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Illinois, Certified Holistic Health Coach, Meditation Guide and completed a Certificate in Sexual Health from University of Michigan with a focus on both Sex Therapy and Sexuality Education. Heather’s focus is on working with the Alt Sex community, helping people heal attachment wounds and integrating sexuality and spirituality.

Links and Resources

https://heathershannon.co

https://heathershannon.co/bettersex

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/147-becoming-sex-positive-with-heather-shannon

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

146: What We Can Learn From People With Spinal Cord Injury – Dr. Mitchell Tepper

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 19:40:02 GMT

Sex After Spinal Cord Injury

On this episode, Mitchell joins us to discuss the impact of a spinal injury on sexual function. Having experienced this type of injury personally, he shares his journey to teaching people about sexual health being one of the first people to have a sexual health domain registered in 1996. The website was intended to help people with disabilities with their sexual health but soon became a central source of sexual health information for all kinds of people.

The Importance of Trust

Setting myths aside, Mitchell explains that people with disabilities can experience sexual pleasure, erections, etc but some have difficulty expressing themselves. After research into this, he found that people need a partner they can trust to reach the point of sexual pleasure and comfort.

A critical part of this is relearning the truth about sex, departing from the limiting physical definition to experiencing trust, safety, and connectedness. Mitchell is a testament to breaking physical boundaries with this combination. He has found that even those with disabilities below their injury region have experienced an orgasm with the proper context and approach.

Sexual Self Esteem

In other areas of his research, Mitchell tells us about the effect of how much time has passed post-injury and sexual self-esteem on sexual health. His findings also point to people having higher sexual self-esteem if they were born with their disability as opposed to people who acquired their injury. This is based on the latter group constantly comparing their past sexual performance with their current ability.

These Ideas Apply to Everyone

In his process of helping people, Mitchell explains that he helps his clients understand how their new bodies work, as this is usually overlooked or taken for granted. In addition to this, he encourages people to make use of touch, sound, and sensation to help people reach sexual pleasure.

For people that aren’t struggling with a disability but want to explore a deeper and meaningful sexual experience, Mitchell advocates sensate focus. He further explains that this builds sexual communication and advocates touching for your own sexual satisfaction, allowing your partner to provide feedback. Mitchell also finds that Tantra a meaningful technique to deeper sexual experiences. The technique has three main factors: Stop, focus, and connect, which he digs deeper into.

Achieving Orgasm

Mitchell’s techniques are beneficial to able-bodied and disabled people, revealing that penetration is not at all the only means to orgasm. With dozens of examples of non-penetrative orgasms amongst his findings, he shares real cases with us that shed light on this experience.

Undoing learned habits is just as huge a part of the difficult journey to experiencing sexual liberation. Incorporating play into sex is also a great way to make it less serious.

Background

Dr. Mitchell Tepper, author of Regain That Feeling: Secrets to Sexual Self-Discovery, brings a lifetime of first-hand experience with chronic conditions and disability to his work as a Sexuality Researcher, AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator and Counselor, Coach, and self-proclaimed Prophet of Pleasure. He has a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality Education from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master’s in Public Health from Yale. Dr. Tepper worked on ground-breaking research on orgasm in women with spinal cord injuries with world-renowned orgasm researchers Drs. Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk. Over the last 14 years, Dr. Tepper has turned his attention to helping wounded veterans and their partners navigate intimate relationships. His forthcoming documentary, Love After War, tells the stories of intimate partners who have won the battle for love.

Links and Resources

Website: http://drmitchelltepper.com

Documentary: http://Loveafterwar.org

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Regain-That-Feeling-Self-Discovery-Relationships/dp/1505444993/

Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/doctortepper

https://www.facebook.com/LoveAfterWar

https://twitter.com/DoctorT

https://www.instagram.com/drmtepper/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/146-what-we-can-learn-from-people-with-spinal-cord-injury-dr-mitchell-tepper

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

145: Sensate Focus – Linda Weiner

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 06 Oct 2020 02:36:28 GMT

Sensate Focus Exercises

Sensate focus is a touching technique for couples or individuals that stimulates the primal part of the brain to enjoy a fully immersive experience with your partner. The technique starts with focusing on temperature, texture and pressure and uses a tactile sensation to move away from distraction.

Linda uses the technique for almost everything ranging from low/ no desire, sexual dysfunction, trauma, body image issues to rekindling connection between couples.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

With each individual experiencing sensation differently, Linda highlights building up sexual tension with touch. From Linda’s experience, there is often a need to manage each level as it is approached. She removes conflict and pressure from couples relationships, by taking on the instruction/ control role. Her sessions help couples identify the difference between vulnerability and rejection.

How Do You Start With Sensate Focus?

With no hard and fast rule, couples can choose certain factors in their environment to ensure that they are at ease eg clothing (or no clothing). Linda’s rules include no kissing and no talking. She points out that talking uses the front of the brain and therefore brings individuals back to logic. Linda mentions that the toucher is supposed to touch for their pleasure while the person being touched, needs to experience the touch and provide feedback if something is not comfortable.

Obstacles

Linda shares that avoidance is one of the main issues that couples encounter. She reveals how she handles this delay tactic fairly. For clients that don’t like the technique, she reminds them about the basic three areas of focus temperature, texture and pressure. Partner pressure is an obvious obstacle that Linda notices with her clients. She uses a great analogy to help us accept our differences and move couples through the basic steps at their own pace.

Background

Linda Weiner, MSW, LCSW, Owner of Sex Therapist St Louis, LLC is a Certified Diplomate in Sex Therapy, a Supervisor for Certification in Sex Therapy & Sexuality Counseling and a CE provider for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).

She earned a B.A. in Psychology from American University and an MSW from the University of Missouri. Linda trained at Masters & Johnson Institute and was employed there for five years as the director of Training & Workshops and as a Research and Clinical Associate. Evolving into private clinical practice as a therapist specializing in sexual and relationship concerns, Linda later began publishing on Sensate Focus mindful and somatic touch techniques with co-author, Dr. Constance Avery-Clark. Following the publication of a number of journal articles and a book chapter, Sensate Focus in Sex Therapy: The Illustrated Manual was published in 2017.

For 15 years, Linda served as an adjunct professor at the Brown School, Washington University. Linda has presented nationally and internationally and has been interviewed by a number of media outlets including CNN. Her current interest is in transmitting information about the use of Sensate Focus techniques to physicians and Allied health professionals who represent the first contact with sexually distressed individuals.

Links and Resources

Phone: 314-588-8924

Email: sextherapiststlouis@gmail.com

Website: http://www.sextherapiststlouis.com

Twitter: @couplesguru

Instagram: @lindajweiner

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/145-sensate-focus-linda-weiner

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

144: What is Sex Therapy Like – Paula Leech

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 19:34:47 GMT

Paula shares that mindfulness plays a key role in sex therapy which ties in mind and body by focusing on sensate focus and behavior. The therapy is purely verbal and while it implies a physical element, that only happens in a clients home away from their therapy so that progress can be made. Paula emphasizes that a major part of her clients have underlying anxiety struggles. She points out that sex therapy is used to treat this before ever focusing on sex.

Who needs sex therapy?

With a degree in Family therapy, Paula thinks about the ‘who’ differently. Her approach includes her client’s partner/s to get better insight into her patients’ struggle.

Paula also helps single clients. She points out erectile dysfunction as an example of a problem she tackles with her single clients. Her work with these clients includes understanding their bodies and giving them tools to help themselves.

Working with Paula

Paula’s first sessions are honest consultations used to get to know each other as taking the first step into therapy can be daunting for clients. She moves on to providing the way forward and answering any questions around this. Obviously this varies with each clients unique situation since her clients experience a range of difficulties from sexual trauma to pelvic floor issues.

Paula’s direct communication and transparency is a different approach to this kind of therapy but welcomed by her clients as they find her more relatable.

Fears

In this type of therapy, clients are exposed to an extent and Paula reveals that fear is part of the process. One of the most common fears she finds with her clients is the fear of being judged. Another one is fear of loss of a relationship if a struggle is not overcome during the therapy.

Frequency of sex often comes up with Paula finding that couples need permission to not engage in sex. Her candid and simple reaction to this is based on whether the parties are happy.

Paula shares an interesting angle to look at things from when experiencing sexual struggles, highlighting that being too involved in your partners problem takes away from you focusing on you and helping from that point of view.

Finding a Sex Therapist

Legitimate sex therapists have an AASECT certification. Therapists do around 160 hours of courses and 300 hours with patients before being certified. Training ensures that therapists themselves are aware of their biases and comfort zones to better aid their patients.

Background

Paula received her bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development at Arizona State University and then went on to receive her master’s Degree in Family Therapy at the University of Massachusetts, in Boston. Post family therapy licensure, Paula became AASECT (American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and therapists) certified as a Sex Therapist and worked with individuals, relationships, and families in private practice in Boston, Massachusetts for ten years.

In that time, she received AASECT certification as a Supervisor of Sex Therapy and co-founded a sex therapy agency and training institute where we saw clients in addition to training therapists to become competent, confident sex therapists themselves. Paula continues to regularly present at various training institutes as well as Universities and therapy agencies across New England.

Links and Resources:

https://www.paulaleech.com/

email: pleechtherapy@gmail.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Webinar:

How to Make Sex Easy Without Making It Feel Like an Obligation – http://intimacywithease.com/training

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/144-what-is-sex-therapy-like-paula-leech

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

143: Surrogate Partner Therapy – Brian Gibney

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 20:43:02 GMT

What is Surrogate Partner Therapy

Surrogate Partner Therapy offers a unique, tailored space in which to safely explore trust, communication, emotional intimacy, sensuality, and sexuality. Each of these pieces is important in their own right and essential in how they interconnect to influence healthy relationships.

It facilitates the therapeutic process and focuses on physical limitations, personal history, poor self-image, communication and other broad areas in relationships. Unlike a therapist, a surrogate partner is in the relationship with you and shows you what something would feel like, lending itself to people not currently in relationships.

Surrogate Partner Therapy is a Process

Just like any type of work required on a relationship, the process may take some time. Early on in the process, Brian ensures that his clients are aware of what can be expected during the sessions. The session involves the client, the therapist and the surrogate partner working parallel with each other.

Initially, Brian assesses his clients to see if they are a good fit for the sessions. He discusses mental disorders and active abuse as an example of clients that would not be a good fit for the therapy.

Consent is Crucial

Brian opens up the consent conversation and how critical it is to measure if his clients understand consent. He takes us through the exercise he uses throughout his sessions, to ensure that his clients understand consent and know how to identify it.

Specialized Training is Important

While this type of therapy is not offered by therapists, Brian discusses the process of involving his clients’ therapists and ensuring that they too are not overstepping personal or professional comfort boundaries.

To ensure you are getting a certified surrogate partner, Brian suggests getting recommendations and getting a feel for how your therapist works. The typical way a surrogate partner works is within a triad. Communication is usually a main area of discussion while sexual focus comes in as a client requires it.

Brian mentions the certifying organizations available that you can use to check if your surrogate partner is certified.

Background

Over the course of his adult life, Brian has worn many hats: research scientist (BA, Molecular biology; Masters, Microbiology), teacher, professional artist, performer, and parent. The common thread that has run through all of those vocations has been the joy of learning, discovery, and improvement.In parallel with his professional life, he has also been keenly interested in interpersonal interactions, intimacy, and authenticity. These two facets have merged in his practice as a Surrogate Partner.

Brian received his training in Surrogate Partner Therapy from IPSA (the International Professional Surrogates Association) in 2016. In addition to being a member of IPSA, he is also a surrogate partner member of IMBT (Institute for Mind-Body Therapy), AIHG (Ananda Integrative Health Group), and AASECT(American Association of Sex Educators Counsellors and Therapists).

Brian is a founding member of the surrogate Partner Collective and Chair of AASECT’s Somatic Sexuality Professionals Special InterestGroup.In his practice, Brian seeks to help clients create foundational self-knowledge that enables them to effectively navigate healthy and fulfilling intimate relationships. Motivating this is the core belief that sharing intimacy with others is an essential part of the human experience. While it is important for everyone to have the option to feel connected with others, many find it difficult (or impossible) to make this connection.

In helping clients achieve their goals, Brian strives to maintain high professional and ethical standards and promote accessibility of Surrogate Partner Therapy to ensure those in need may receive the most successful treatment. In addition to his work with clients, Brian has been advocating for his profession by education therapeutic professionals and the broader public.

Drawing from his experience as an educator, he has presented at a range of professional conferences, workshops, therapeutic practices, and professional groups. In discussing his work, he hopes to encourage dialogue about a variety of topics–intimacy, sensual awareness and embodiment, and communication–that is so desperately needed in our society.

Resources and Links

https://www.bgsurrogatetherapy.com/

https://www.surrogatepartnercollective.org/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/143-surrogate-partner-therapy-brian-gibney

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

142: Birth Control – Emily Aytes

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 18:35:40 GMT

On this episode, we hear from birth control expert, Emily Aytes. She uncovers some of the most common questions she receives. Interestingly, Emily shares that both young and older people ask her about birth control as it isn’t widely discussed from her experience. Her personal opinion is that having a birth control conversation with your partner early on allows you to enjoy sex and delve into other parts of your relationship.

Long acting reversible contraception

If you have ever wondered what a LARC is, Emily explains the acronym to us : LONG ACTING REVERSIBLE CONTRACEPTIVE. This includes IUDs which can last between 3-12 years. Emily shares the side effects of the IUD and unpacks NEXPLANON, the copper and plastic iud. Benefits of this include not having to remember anything as these methods provide protection without any further human intervention once they are implanted. If you change your mind and decide to remove the device, rest assured that it’s relatively easy to continue where you left off.

The shot is another commonly taken contraceptive in this category and contains Progesterone. Again, Emily discusses the side effects and notes that this method too is pretty effective.

Other Birth Control Methods

The pill has proven to be a highly effective method from Emily’s findings, however she notes the side effects and the fact that human intervention is required everyday, opening up a window for error and loss of effectiveness.

Touching on condom use, Emily explains how human error can result in a lack of effectiveness while doubling up on methods eg IUD plus a condom, can increase effectiveness. On the positive side, condoms are accessible without prescription and offer a wide range to suit your personal preference.

Planned Parenthood website is recommended if you are interested in a more natural method that does not require any external intervention.

Common Questions

One of the most common questions Emily gets asked is around how pregnancy occurs. For this reason, she explains the biological process for us in an easy to understand way.

We learn more about emergency contraceptive including the morning after pill : Plan B ( no script required) and Ella ( which requires a script) and the Copper T which is extremely effective.

Another common question Emily gets is whether you can get pregnant during your period. While it is possible, she explains it is not likely. For a more behavioural method of contraceptive, Emily discusses withdrawal which is only 78% effective.

Background

Emily Aytes (she/they pronouns) is a community outreach educator with Planned Parenthood in Indiana state. As an educator, her role includes offering comprehensive, inclusive, and medically accurate sexual health information to her local community and beyond.

The majority of her work in the community is with young people in middle and high school classrooms teaching about relationships, consent, birth control methods, STIs, gender, and communication skills.

Emily is passionate about all folks having access to sexual health information so that they can make their own informed decisions. She also enjoys teaching about racial and social justice, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual pleasure

Resources and Links

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control

https://www.bedsider.org/methods

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/142-birth-control-emily-aytes

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

141: Doing Non-Monogamy Well – Tristan Taormino

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 02:20:26 GMT

On this episode we dig into non-monogamy with Tristan Taormino. She discusses how the processing of both parties feelings is a crucial element to open relationships. Interestingly, she shares how working on yourself is a big part of the open-minded approach required to make this type of thing work.

The Importance of Boundaries in Consensual Non-monogamy

Tristan recommends a slow start and provides clear guidelines and examples on how to do this. Knowing what you want and need makes setting boundaries easier. These boundaries include whether or not you and your partner wish to keep your non-monogamy close to home or not. This ultimately bleeds into how much time you will be investing in non-monogamy and the depth of the relationships you will be seeking. Tristan shares the types of boundaries that could come up.

Decisions to make regarding non-monogamy

Tristan’s advice for couples with different feelings about non-monogamy is to go at the pace of the slower partner. Ultimatums are not encouraged especially if your partner agrees to give it a try.

Tristan adds valuable advice about making decisions during the heat of a moment, advocating a more thought-through approach when put in these situations. People trying non-monogamy also struggle with certain behaviours including jealousy. We learn more about this and how to constructively handle this.

The Common Pitfalls of Consensual Non-monogamy

Time management is considered one of the pitfalls of non-monogamy. With many tools available at our disposal, Tristan unpacks the subtle and obvious scenarios that eventually lead to your time being consumed and the negative impact it can have if not managed.

We hear about emotional privacy and how it involves considering the preferences of all the parties included in your non-monogamous arrangement. Tristan’s suggests the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell ‘ method if all parties can agree to it. Vito power comes into play here and we hear about how it can be used fairly.

Considering the Past

Trauma and negative childhood experiences eventually manifest in our relationships. Tristan urges us to investigate these issues so that we are informed when entering a relationship and acutely aware of our partner’s triggers and understand why they exist.

Background

Tristan Taormino is an award-winning writer, sex educator, speaker, filmmaker, and radio host. She is the editor of 25 anthologies and author of eight books, including Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. She lectures at top colleges and universities and teaches sex and relationship workshops around the world for nearly 20 years.

Tristan hosts Sex Out Loud, a weekly radio show on the VoiceAmerica Network and is the creator of Sex Educator Boot Camp, a professional training program while still running a coaching and consulting business for sexuality and creative professionals.

Links and Resources

Tristan’s Book –

https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X

Website

http://tristantaormino.com/

https://openingup.net/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Host Recent Episodes

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/141-doing-non-monogamy-well-tristan-taormino

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

140: Bawdy Bookworms – Thien-Kim Lam

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:05:01 GMT

On this episode, we visit the topic of erotic fantasy in a box! Thien-Kim came up with the idea after selling sex toys at parties and one day finding herself aroused while reading a novel.

She compares books today versus those written decades ago, explaining how writing has evolved for today’s audience. While older books come across as forceful, today’s books around heterosexual characters, usually lean toward romantic beginnings that consider the pleasure of the female partner first.

Gender Diversity

With many obstacles around sexually diverse characters, Thien-Kim notes that many authors self publish in order to get their work out there. Her monthly box is called the bawdy quickie and only features diverse romances and more gender-diverse toys.

Thien-Kim handpicks toys specifically to the books she selects and gives her clients the opportunity to give her feedback on her virtual platforms open to anyone.

Her Experience and Findings

With thousands of books to choose from, Thien-Kim mentions a few great resources for you to find good reads and authors for yourself. She looks for good quality toys that are female-friendly. Her journey has led her to discover that many people want to try sex toys in the bedroom so she provides advice and direction regarding toys wherever she can.

Background

As the Chief Erotica Officer of Bawdy Bookworms, Thien-Kim Lam curates kits to help women explore their sexuality through romance books and sex toys. Her subscription box-meets-virtual book club pairs steamy romance novels with sex toys, lubes, and lickables.

She selects from hundreds of best in class sex-positive products and smart, sexy fiction to create a curated experience every time. Their virtual book club chats create a safe, open-minded community for women to connect with others who wish desire to embrace their pleasure. Through Bawdy Bookworms, she celebrates diversity in romance because everyone deserves a happy ending.

Resources and Links

Bawdy Bookworms: https://bawdybookworms.com

Bawdy Quickie, featuring diverse romances: https://bawdybookworms.com/bawdy-quickie-monthly-box/

Bawdy Bookworms Insiders Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BBInsiders/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/bawdybookworms

Sources

https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/

https://smexybooks.com/

http://www.wocinromance.com/

https://dirtygirlromance.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/140-bawdy-bookworms-thien-kim-lam

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

139: Safer Sex & STIs – Kayla Potts

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 23:28:22 GMT

On this episode, Kayla Potts educates us about STIs. She highlights that people often do not display symptoms when they have an STI and recommends testing as the only way to be certain of your status. From Kayla’s experience, she has found that it’s better to specify each individual test you require to your healthcare provider.

When Should You Test for STIs

If you are wondering how often to get tested, Kayla encourages us to test once a year if you have one partner. Multiple partners moves you up to 3 to 6 months. In a perfect scenario, she advocates testing before every partner as well. Bringing up testing can be uncomfortable but Kayla shares easy ways to broach the subject.

The Best Timing for STI Testing

In terms of timelines, some STIs may only reflect positive result weeks or months after infection. Kayla urges us to speak to our health providers to get help around the correct timing for best results. While all STIs are worth knowing about, Kayla mentions that there are very comprehensive tests for the serious types and explains the kinds of infections we can encounter.

Common STIs

HPV, Chlamydia and Ghonoreaha come up as common STIs. Kayla urges us to be aware of these if you are sexually active and ensure that you are responsible. She discusses the two ways we can contract an STI, namely body fluids or skin to skin contact. She digs deeper into Herpes and how one can contract, identify and prevent it.

Using Condoms

Kayla shares in-depth guidance on the use of condoms, dental dams and gloves clearing up a few grey areas including how these should fit. Because of sugars in condoms, she proposes not using flavoured condoms for genital to genital contact and advocates other types instead.

Prevention and Myths

In the conversation around STIs prevention, we learn about vaccines and that the best prevention is abstinence.

With many myths around HIV, Kayla informs that it is not specific to a gender, sexual orientation or a specific sexual act. In addition to this, she flattens any belief that STIs can be passed on via toilet surfaces or air among other common misconceptions.

Background

Kayla Potts is a community outreach educator with Planned Parenthood in Washington state. As an educator, her role includes offering comprehensive, inclusive, and medically-accurate sexual health information to her local community and beyond. Most of her days are spent in the middle. and high school classrooms educating young folks about consent, relationships, birth control methods, STIs, gender, and more.

Kayla has been involved in sexual health education work since volunteering for Planned Parenthood as a high school student. She is particularly passionate about sexual health information that is free of shame and centres pleasure.

Resources and Links

https://plannedparenthood.org

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/139-safer-sex-stis-kayla-potts

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

138: [Personal Story] Pelvic Organ Prolapse – Erin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 19:29:45 GMT

Once a casualty of prolapse, Erin is completely asymptomatic today. Having encountered this long before support groups and information was easily available, Erin was forced to learn how to help herself. After the birth of her fourth child, her body had surrendered.

Symptoms

In addition to incontinence, Erin explains the symptoms of prolapse as the feeling of a tampon falling out or sitting on a tennis ball. After being advised to live with her condition, Erin did some searching of her own.

Working Solutions

Her search led her to a biomechanist, marking the beginning of her recovery. One of the methods she discovered was the belly release. She notes the role of the ribcage and how important it is to select non-underwire bras to allow movement in the ribcage. Erin credits a book by Katy Bowman (available on Amazon).

Erin advocates walking and tackles the superficial elements of kegels, explaining how critical control is for this exercise. With unnecessary shame around pelvic floor prolapse, Erin encourages women to take look at recovery as very achievable.

Background

Erin Underwood is a functional movement therapist from Oregon that specializes in prenatal and postnatal health. She is passionate about education around pelvic floor and core strength and function.

She has studied biomechanics extensively and in addition to her in-depth yoga training has continued her education by certifying and training with the top minds in the country connected to pelvic floor and core wellness.

She currently is focusing on her local community by serving through workshops to the prenatal and postnatal community as well as local health care providers, providing them with the most up to date science broken down into practical and helpful tools.

Erin has four beautiful boys and, post deliveries has personally healed from a grade 2 uterine and grade 2 rectocele prolapses and a four-finger Diastasis Recti using all the tools she teaches in her movement therapy, which further fuels her passion for seeing women fully functional and getting all the information necessary to heal.

Resources and Links

Website: https://www.erinunderwoodmovement.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erinunderwoodmovement/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erinunderwoodmovement/

Book by Katy Bowman: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A00CZIE/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/138-personal-story-pelvic-organ-prolapse-erin

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

137: Dance, Flow State, and Sex – Ode Dixon

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 20:30:20 GMT

Flow State and Dance

3 years ago Ode discovered Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Performance and picked up dancing again after so many years of not dancing regularly. This reversed her stressed-induced high blood pressure diagnosis within eleven months. Now, she uses dance as a mechanism to help her clients alleviate stress-related anxiety that hinders performance, and to spark creative insight to problem-solving in various work, learning and life environments.

Flow State

Ode joins me on this episode and discusses using dance to access a flow-state. Her first experience with flow state was through dance. According to Ode, research shows that flow improves anything you apply it to.

While flow may seem a spiritual experience, Ode explains that flow is exhibited by highly successful people. For many of us, we would have heard it referred to as “peak performance.”

DOSE

As a testament to the success of flow state, Ode shares that it transformed her sex life with her partner. She explains that this is caused when neurochemicals are triggered when we move our bodies. The common chemicals released in the flow state are commonly called DOSE: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins.

Ode explains that the process involves the body going into a calmer state and then releasing “happy chemicals” so the activity you are doing is enjoyable. She reveals that the flow state can happen during specific activities. These are usually activities that require actively using your brain and using your senses to focus on the present. Dance is one such example.

“ Flow is intrinsically motivating” We learn that when we perform a certain action, it should be enjoyable and come naturally without being calculated.

Background

Specialist in deep embodiment, Afrojuju Dancer, peak performance researcher, and former bedside nurse, Ode has been using the tight link between beliefs and mind/body connection since she toured as a praise dancer with a prolific evangelical group partaking in missions across rural regions of West Africa for 10+ years.

She has been dancing since the age of 5, showcasing performances along the streets of her village with her dance groups. She’s vastly knowledgeable in various African dance styles, rhythms, movements and beats. She understands the neuroscience that underpins body movements and enhanced performance.

Ode holds 2 bachelor’s degrees – Management and Registered Nursing, an Associate degree in Social Works and a long-term mentorship under some of the world’s top Flow Scientists and researchers.

She lives in Naples Florida with her husband and 3 boys, avid anglers and boaters who love discovering the 1,000 islands that surround the SouthWest Florida Keys one island at a time.

Resources and Links

https://www.instagram.com/Odedixon1

https://www.facebook.com/odedixon

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/137-dance-flow-state-and-sex-ode-dixon

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

136: Back into Dating – Marni Battista

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 20:16:01 GMT

Dating Again

Marni shares a great tip for figuring out what entering the dating world would be like. After gathering the stories we have about it in our minds, she suggests that we challenge the stories that could turn into fears or excuses. Her method is light-hearted and creative but really eye-opening!

Entering the dating arena after a while can require a bit of preparation. Marni recommends practising dating by targeting the areas you are less comfortable with like dressing or confidence. For those surviving divorces or reaching their golden years, Marni encourages you not to run away from dating but lean in and take a step in a direction that could lead you to happiness.

Marni shares advice on communicating openly as a vital element when dating to ensure both parties are clear on where each stand and if there are any concerns or issues upfront.

Dating While Parenting

She shares advice for parents in the dating world – advocating that time is separately allocated for dates and that your expectations regarding your partner’s role in your kids’ life are clearly voiced early on.

Where to Find a Date

If you are wondering where you can meet your perfect partner, Marni recommends Match.com. From her findings, dedicating at least 30 min a day to one chosen app should return decent results.

Beware of free apps like Plenty of Fish. Marni warns that these sites can be cumbersome. She mentions a few niche sites that you can find in the links below.

“Be the person you want to attract” Marni has experienced people unexpectedly finding partners within their current circles eg: work, clubs they belong to etc. She suggests dressing well and being aware of the habits and interests of people around you when you are looking for that someone special. A connection can happen in the most unexpected place.

You will also hear her view on matchmakers. She reveals the right age for trying matchmaking services and what people generally look for.

How Does Dating Work Today?

With men having to adjust to the times, Marni explains that their biggest fears include rejection and being perceived as predators. For this reason, women need to be much more direct about what they want.

Paying can be a grey area for many. Marni’s advice is fair and allows men to express their chivalry and for women to reciprocate in return when the time is right.

Safety

An absolute must is safety during dating. Marni shares some great tips in terms of defining available time upfront and not using your personal environment as a venue for your first meeting. Red flags include your potential date refusing a video meeting!

Dealing with Quarantine

Funny, thoughtful ideas given by Marni reveal how easy and special dating can still be if you are in quarantine. For those that just need to abide by social distancing, Marni suggests hiking or picnics within the rules.

Background

Marni Battista is a certified professional Dating and Relationship Coach and expert writer. Her work can also be found in Cosmopolitan Magazine, Yahoo! Shine, Huffington Post, YourTango.com, CupidsPulse.com, Men’s Fitness, Glamour and more.

She has also had appearances on major television networks, including CBS and ABC where she has been a guest on Loveline (filling in for Dr Drew!) and Dr Phil, on nationally broadcast radio shows, such as On Air with Ryan Seacrest, and on Youtube Channels, like Off Air with Sisanie.

Marni’s weekly dating and relationship podcast, “The Dating Den,” has more than 25k downloads per month and she was named one of the 10 Best Women’s Dating Experts by @DatingAdviceCom.

Resources and Links

https://datingwithdignity.com/

https://www.yourchristiandate.com/

https://www.fitness-singles.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/136-back-into-dating-marni-battista

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

135: Optimal Sexual Experiences – Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 21:48:09 GMT

In this episode, Dr. Kleinplatz introduces her findings around “optimal sexual experiences” based on actual interviews she performed. After much research, she shares these eight components couples need to have to eventually reach an optimal sexual experience:

1. Being totally absorbed in the moment

2. Sharing a connection with your partner

3. Deep sexual and erotic intimacy

4. High levels of empathic communication

5. Fun, laughter, exploration and good risk-taking

6. Authenticity

7. Vulnerability

8. Transcendence

Her findings show that people begin to seek these experiences around their mid 50’s. Part of the process of discovery is unlearning much of what we know about sex growing up. Spontaneity arises as one of the behaviors to “unlearn “ as Peggy candidly shares her views on this.

Anyone can get there!

Peggy has found that people with chronic illnesses are enjoying magnificent sex! In an unexpected twist of events, Peggy’s co-workers proved that presumed stereotypes are false. She shares that consent is a major piece of the puzzle and contributes to empathic communication.

Peggy educates us about moving from good to magnificent sex explaining that getting to know each other on an ongoing basis builds trust to explore deeper levels of your relationship.

We learn about differentiation and how it impacts reaching optimal sexual experiences while identifying that therapy has to be customized to each individual.

To reach for the optimal sexual experience goal, Peggy highlights that respect for each other is crucial.

Resources and Links

Website: http://www.optimalsexualexperiences.com

Book: Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers (http://routledge.com/9780367181376)

Background

Peggy J. Kleinplatz, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Director of Sex and Couples Therapy Training at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She was awarded the Prix d?Excellence in 2000 for her teaching of Human Sexuality. She is a Certified Sex Therapist and Educator.

She is the Director of the Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team of the University of Ottawa and has a particular interest in sexual health in the elderly, disabled, and marginalized populations.

Kleinplatz has edited four books, notably New Directions in Sex Therapy:

Innovations and Alternatives (2012), winner of the AASECT 2013 Book Award,

Sadomasochism: Powerful Pleasures with Charles Moser, Ph.D., M.D. (2006)

Sexuality and Ageing with Walter Bouman, M.D. (2015).

She is the author with A. Dana Menard, Ph.D. of Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers

In 2015, Kleinplatz received the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists Professional Standard of Excellence Award.

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/135-optimal-sexual-experiences-dr-peggy-kleinplatz

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

134: Senior Sex – Joan Price

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 22:05:10 GMT

Senior Sex

Joan tells us that being a senior sex advocate is her third career. She lived as a high school English teacher until a car accident made her acutely aware of the privilege of being able to be and stay mobile. She tells us that insight inspired her to become a fitness trainer, group exercise instructor, and health and fitness writer. After falling into what she calls a “planet-shattering” romance at the age of 57, she understood that great sex was a crucial element of romance at any age. Her research into overcoming the challenges of senior sex and increasing the passion and intensity of senior sex revealed an empty market niche, encouraging her to jump into the market by sharing her own experiences and adding her own research to the topic of senior sex.

She explores the misconception that sex is no longer experienced in old. She says that many believe that when people are older, they give up their sex lives and take up crocheting instead. “I have nothing against crocheting,” she says, “but it’s not sex.”

Challenges of Senior Sex

Joan admits that senior sex is not the same as the sex people have in their twenties. Bodies age and change, and she suggests that our sexual history can impact our sex lives.

She tells us that many people presume their sex lives are irrevocably declining when their knee arthritis prevents their favorite position, they take too long to orgasm, their erections are unreliable, penetration can become uncomfortable or intercourse may not feel as good as it used to. Joan believes that hurdles like these can be overcome when they’re acknowledged out loud and discussed with our partners. She admits that sometimes these are medical issues, while others are best solved with creativity, research, and an enthusiastic partner’s work.

Responsive Desire

Joan mentions that many elderly men and women insist that their desire to have sex is gone. To combat this belief, Joan describes writing a blog post on hotoctopuss.com about the difference between spontaneous desire and responsive desire. Many people believe that if spontaneous desire goes away, they no longer want to have sex, but that’s inaccurate. Responsive desire, she explains, exists when your body begins to engage in sexual activities, and you slowly develop a real desire and passion for sex while you’re engaging in the act.

Spontaneous desire, where a person knows they’re aroused and wants to have sex actively, often fades with age due to the hormones encouraging sexual reproduction declining. People who only experience responsive desire claim that they never really care about sex until they’re actually doing it—at which point they care very much! Joan argues that this responsive desire is just as intense and valuable as spontaneous desire, it just appears during instead of prior to sex.

Joan’s webinars talk about communicating needs, knowing your needs, as well as scheduling sex, and creating responsive desire. She says that her books, blogs, and webinars help people respond to and understand their current needs and abilities, and guides people through the conversation.

Benefits of Senior Sex

Joan assures us that senior sex can be better than the sex young people have because the elderly know what they like sexually and in other areas, they’ve learned to communicate very well, and they’ve gained the perspective to understand many problems as easy to overcome or as entirely unproblematic. She implies that elderly men and women have outgrown the shame and reticence most young people feel about sex. In her work, she notices older people are better at truly focusing on the pleasure their bodies are capable of creating, while young people are often fretting about minor bodily imperfections or other insecurities instead of being fully in the present moment.

That isn’t to say no seniors have hang-ups about sex. Jane describes the prejudices her generation internalized about the topic. She informs us that her generation was told not to talk about or have sex until you’re married and that women who don’t have orgasms during intercourse—as most women can’t—were called frigid. She says she is currently working on a webinar to work through this process and help seniors find the words to talk about attaining great sex.

Scheduling Sex

Joan believes that especially for couples without spontaneous sexual desire, it can be sexually rejuvenating to set a date for sex. She explains that seniors can see that date on the calendar and that will cause them to think about sex more often. Scheduling sex also allows for planning the event with special underwear or a romantic setting or any number of other, enjoyable ways to improve sex and foreplay.

Joan suggests scheduling time to talk about sex and the physical and emotional changes that occur as people age. She insists that this can’t be accusatory. It’s meant to inform your partner about your changing body and needs and to invite your partner to do the same.

Sex Surveys and Seniors

Joan has been disappointed by surveys surrounding sex, because they often don’t poll the elderly about their sex practices at all. When they do include the elderly, she mentions that they don’t ask the right questions. Usually, she says, they ask whether you’re sexually active, which is a nebulous term.

She believes it would be illuminating if people writing surveys would ask what kinds of sexual activities people are utilizing at different ages. On air, she considers that she could do some of this research herself.

Another worthwhile survey question Joan suggests is, “What is interfering with your sexual pleasure?” Joan suggests that trouble reaching orgasm, not having a partner, and not having a vibrator could all be included in such an open-ended question.

Losing a Partner

She says her book, Sex After Grief was written after she lost her great love. Joan found herself trying many, many things to try to come back to her sexuality after losing her husband. She recounts her journey and shares the methods others used to overcome grief. She explains that there are many ways to regain your sexuality after the death of a partner, and though no single path exists, this book will help you navigate the loss of your partner and the return to your sexual self with insight and compassion.

Sex in Nursing Homes

Joan has written some about sex inside nursing homes, where you’re kept apart from others, cannot lock the door, and are given no privacy. She says there are a few nursing homes where sexual rights are a priority, based upon the belief that assisted living home residents should not be treated as prisoners. She says that it’s important to research nursing and assisted living facilities to determine whether they have policies in place to enable sexual activity in their facilities.

Sexual Rights

She explains that it’s important for the elderly to discuss what sexual rights their partners have before their mental state deteriorates or their body becomes too infirm to allow sexual activity. She says that if their partner can’t provide sexual or romantic love, or they themselves are too senile to remember their spouse, it’s important to make decisions about whether their partners finding love elsewhere is blessed or discouraged.

Background

Joan Price is an advocate of ageless sexuality encouraging seniors to reclaim and rejuvenate their sex lives. A public advocate of senior sex since 2005, Joan has written five books to help and sexually engage seniors: Sex After Grief: Navigating Your Sexuality After Losing Your Beloved, The Ultimate Guide to Sex After Fifty: How to Maintain—or Regain!—a Spicy, Satisfying Sex Life, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, Better than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty, and Ageless Erotica.

Joan narrated and collaborated with Jessica Drake on her award-winning, explicit educational film “Jessica Drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex: Senior Sex.” Joan maintains a newsletter and a blog on senior sex, and she created an entertaining, free webinar to encourage safer sex among the elderly.

Resources for Joan Price:

https://joanprice.com/

https://joanprice.com/blog

https://youtu.be/efGXHzf19Bs

http://eepurl.com/cx2Nab

https://seniorplanet.org/author/joan-price/

https://www.hotoctopuss.com/senior-sex/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/134-senior-sex-joan-price

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

133: Sexual Personality Types – Vanessa Marin

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 22:43:39 GMT

Vanessa shares that she’s always working to make people’s sex lives better, but the idea of forming a personality test for sex began from hearing her clients talk about sex in very different ways, inspiring her to take notes and investigate what people truly desire and require in their sex lives. These notes developed into a system that identifies 11 different personality types based upon what people need, want, and hope to get out of sex.

The Decompressor

Vanessa’s survey describes decompressors as people for whom sex is about stress relief, blowing off steam, and getting to that sense of relaxation that ensues once sex is over. She clarifies that people who use sex for this reason often talk about the joyful, restful afterglow than about sex or anything that precedes sex because reaching that state is their real goal.

The Explorer

Explorers are all about novelty in sex. They like trying new things and experimenting. She explains that this type doesn’t always enjoy everything they try sexually, but they still appreciate the novelty and variety of their experiments.

Fair Trader

For the fair trader, sex is all about reciprocity. They want a balance between giving and receiving in bed.

The Giver

She explains that the giver views sex as a gift that they give to their partner, and they enjoy giving much more than they enjoy receiving. They like focusing on their partner and their pleasure instead of their own.

The Guardian

Vanessa identifies guardians by their need to have safety and security around sex. She says they care very much about boundaries and enthusiastic consent in sex. She reveals that for some people, this emphasis on safety and consent is the result of previously enduring sexual abuse, but she admits that others simply like for sex to be safe and enthusiastically enjoyed.

The Passion Pursuer

This type loves pursuing all-encompassing, intense, passionate, and even animalistic sex. She says this type of lover is very in tune with the energy between them and their partners during sex, and she tells us they want to feel like time stands still, leaving only themselves and their partner in the world.

The Pleasure Seeker

For pleasure seekers, Vanessa describes sex as being all about feeling good. They care about the simple pleasure of enjoying their bodies interacting with someone else’s.

The Prioritizer

For this type, Vanessa explains sex must feel like a priority in the relationship. She explains that they need to feel desired by their partners, and to believe that their partners are not making excuses about being tired or too busy for sex. She notes that they value consistent, frequent sex and require partners who will work to keep sex a regular activity.

The Romantic

For romantics, it’s all about the connection they feel to their partner during sex. She continues to say it isn’t really about the physical act or the hedonistic pleasure for them, but the emotional bonding and intimacy that sex engenders.

The Spiritualist

Sex is about spirituality and connecting to a higher energy or purpose for spiritualists, Vanessa explains that for them sex is a transcendent experience.

The Thrill-Seeker

Thrill-seekers most enjoy sex that’s forbidden or taboo. They enjoy kink, power plays, dominance and submission. She says that if there’s a twinge of this is naughty or we shouldn’t be doing this, that thought only intensifies the sexual thrill-seeker’s enjoyment

Sexual Personalities in Action

Vanessa has heard all of these motivations for sexual activity in her practice, but she emphasizes that people will typically combine two to three personality types in their love lives. She describes the purpose of the quiz as a conversation starter that helps people understand their sexuality and learn how to discuss sexuality with their partners more clearly.

The decompressor, explorer, giver, and passion pursuer are what Vanessa sees most often, but she emphasizes that all of the personality types are very common.

An Online Quiz Can Help You Discern Your Type

Vanessa informs us that there is no need to read and reread descriptions to find out the sexual personality types of you and your partner. Her team is finishing up a quiz that can be found at vmtherapy.com to take out the guesswork.

She insists that her personality type quiz is meant to be lighthearted, but it can lead to genuine discussions and discoveries that can hopefully improve people’s sex lives.

Tricky Pairings

Vanessa affirms that it’s common for people in a loving relationship to have different sexual personality types, but she believes that all of them can work together, even if some pairings require more communication before sex to ensure mutual satisfaction.

She discusses that guardian types and the thrill-seeker can be a tricky combination to navigate because one wants regimented and well-guarded environments while the thrill-seeker aims to bring in more, new, different, and potentially dangerous activities. However, Vanessa mentions that people who are into BDSM are usually proponents of safety and enthusiastic consent. Under those or similar circumstances, she assures us that the guardian and the thrill-seeker can be a fantastic combination.

She also mentions that the pleasure seeker can be at odds with the spiritualist. She explains that the spiritualist wants to create a transcendent experience and basically leave their body behind, while pleasure-seekers are focused on enjoying their bodily pleasures of orgasm and sensual, very physical, touch. However, she insists that this pairing can work out by having conversations focused on finding ways for both of them to have their needs met.

Talking About Sex Types

One way that Vanessa suggests people can compromise about their sexual desire is to take turns while emphasizing their partner’s type during sex one day, and their own type another day. She also suggests that it could be fun to run through all the personality types and play with every manner of sex.

She mentions that taking the sex quiz and talking about it to your partner can be a fun and playful method of entering into a discussion that reveals each partner’s true desires and allows those desires to manifest in bed.

Background

Vanessa Marin earned bachelor’s degrees in Human Sexuality and Sociology from Brown University before attaining a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Her writing has been featured over 1,000 times in periodicals as prestigious as The New York Times; Allure; Lifehacker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Refinery29; and Real Simple.

With her sister Jennifer and her husband Xander, she specializes in online courses like The Passion Project: A Couples’ Blueprint to Rediscovering Desire and Reigniting the Spark and Finishing School: Learn How to Orgasm.

Resources for Vanessa Marin:

https://vmtherapy.com/

https://vmtherapy.com/sex-drive-passion-project/

https://vmtherapy.com/how-to-orgasm

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/133-sexual-personality-types-vanessa-marin

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

132: The Pleasure Gap – Katherine Rowland

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 16:44:21 GMT

Katherine explains her initial interest in sexual pleasure gaps began with her journalistic coverage of the search for a female version of Viagra. She describes being intrigued by the prevalence of the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with women’s level of sexual desire.

She argues that feminine sexual desire is an ephemeral state that stems from myriad sources and appears as a final state that is or isn’t reached. She says it’s not a single trait that can be manipulated directly. Upon seeing this attempt to manipulate female sexual desire, Katherine began to interview women about their own sexual desires and what brings them sexual satisfaction.

Men and Woman Experience Sex Differently

In broad strokes, Katherine explains the Pleasure Gap is a measure of social inequality. She explains three intersecting ideas, the first being the differences men and women give in the accounts of sexual experiences. She says men report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than women, they achieve orgasm more readily, and are happier with their sex lives overall. She also informs us that men feel less stress, pain, and anxiety related to sex.

By contrast, she tells us women commonly report low desire, absent pleasure, muted or unfulfilling orgasms, sexual aversion, and disinterest. She points out that women beat themselves up for feeling that way about sex. Katherine reiterates that these are common female experiences of sex, but women are prone to blaming themselves for their problems.

She suggests that even women who report some satisfaction during sex may not be experiencing the event completely. Katherine mentions one study in which 50% of female participants reported having an orgasm when the scientific monitors for orgasms indicated no orgasm had occurred. She says this suggests that women’s education about their bodies and their possibilities is distressingly subpar.

Female Sexual Dysfunction

Curious about this disparity in human feeling, Katherine shares that many women express sexual dysfunction, asserting that their genitals feel numb or dead, all while lab tests report ordinary, healthy function of those organs. In other words, she noticed that women were responding physically to sex without any pleasure or intimacy being experienced in their brains. She suggests that because the mental and emotional aspects of sex are so important to women’s pleasure, that medications that aim to help women enjoy sex by affecting their genital performance miss the mark.

Sex in Media vs. Sex in Life

The third gap Katherine mentions is the gap between the sex we’re sold in the media and the sex we actually want and find fulfilling in life. She suggests that our modern notions of a liberated identity suggest that women should want and exude sex constantly, but real women often experience the opposite reality. She suspects that the problem is rooted in the lack of education women receive about sex and pleasure.

Ms. Rowland also cites the stereotypes that men, the socially dominant sex, are supposed to desire lots of sex, while women are limited to being a gatekeeper restricting sexual access. Katherine believes that women need to be taught that pleasure is worthwhile and healthy so that they can feel comfortable exploring what gives them pleasure and allows them to enjoy sex.

What genuinely leads to satisfying good sex is intimacy, freedom of expression, creativity, safety, and being empowered to explore what genuinely turns you on.

The Effects of Sexual Trauma

Sexual trauma and abuse can also hinder women’s experience of their bodies according to research. She explains that women with this history may feel numb and distance themselves from the experience of sex or be hyperactive and hypervigilant during sexual encounters, leading to them feeling too stressed to enjoy sex. Women Katherine talked to also noted that women are inevitably objectified in pornography, which can lead to women objectifying themselves, instead of seeing sex as an avenue to express their own desire.

What Woman Want

She tells us that the scant research available on what makes good sex suggests that sexual satisfaction has nothing to do with the physical aspect of genitals coming together.

Feeling fully present and in the moment—often achieved through mindfulness and the like—and feeling overwhelmed and encompassed by their experience to the extent of forgetting about daily obligations are markers Katherine found in women’s reports about good sex.

Katherine also found women asserting a need for safety, and the need to feel confident exposing the full extent of their sexuality with their partner. She mentions that many women who discuss transcendent sex often describe it in spiritual terms – as if sex is a way to break into people’s spiritual interiors as a homecoming in the other person.

What Women Can Do to Improve Their Sex Lives

Katherine asserts that her book is not proscriptive, though she does provide resources for self-inquiry and erotic amplification. Katherine does suggest that women can try to shut off the external noise distracting them from sex as much as possible to increase sexual immersion. She also suggests that they can explore their bodies and fantasies to enhance their knowledge of their bodies and their sexual experiences.

Background:

Katherine Rowland holds a masters in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. At the same university, she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research fellow in medical anthropology. In the past, she published and served as the executive director of Guernica. She’s contributed to Nature, the Financial Times, Green Futures, the Guardian, the Independent, Aeon, Psychology Today, and more. She is the author of the Pleasure Gap.

Resources for Katherine Rowland:

https://www.katherinerowland.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Gap-American-Unfinished-Revolution-ebook/dp/B07RKW3FZ7

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/132-the-pleasure-gap-katherine-rowland

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

131: MS and Sex – Kimberly Castelo

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 20:16:39 GMT

Living with MS

Six months after her daughter was born, Kimberly stopped nursing, and soon went completely numb on the left side of her body. An MRI uncovered that she had 8 lesions on her brain, which she says led to a quick diagnosis of MS. While her MS has been in remission for 12 years, her prognosis could change at any time.

Despite her remission, Kimberly tells us that situations exist that can still trigger MS symptoms. She informs us that many people with MS have trouble with heat which affects her sight. Difficulty swallowing and walking and feeling a tingling along her body are also common, she explains, especially in the heat. At a psychological level, Kimberly reports that people with MS have to live with a great deal of the unknown, as they can’t guarantee their level of functioning from day to day.

Support for the Newly Diagnosed

Kimberly tells us that many support groups exist for people newly diagnosed with MS, some of which can be found in the Resources section of these show notes. She recalls when she was first diagnosed, she thought MS was a death sentence, which she now knows is incorrect. However, she counters that while MS doesn’t kill, it does hinder functionality, which she found devastating enough to trigger all the classic stages of grief. She attributes her acceptance of MS and her emotional recovery to the love and support of her partner.

Difficulties with Sex in MS

Ms. Castelo points out that many people with MS are depressed, which leads to wide usage of libido-lowering SSRIs. Even without SSRIs to reduce sex drive, Kimberly informs us that 85% of women and 90% of men with MS suffer from sexual dysfunction.

For both genders, Kimberly tells us about spasticity issues, generalized pain, and difficulty moving legs that can impede sexual function. Kimberly says that another common problem is that MS affects the bowels, causing some people to lose bowel control during sex.

She warns that people with MS can fall into having obligatory sex to please their partners, which she describes as incredibly damaging. She believes that sex should prioritize both you and your partner’s satisfaction, never just one person’s.

Kimberly explains that the partners of MS patients can suffer too. Many partners become caregivers, and amongst partners who become caregivers, switching hats to make sex possible can be difficult, especially when their partner needs a lot of care. Kimberly encourages caregiving partners to compartmentalize moments and force themselves to have fun and playful events as well as their required caretaking.

Another problem amongst caregivers that Kimberly sees in her practice is that people operating as caregivers often don’t share their own struggles. In those cases, she reminds caregiver partners that humans enjoy helping each other, and by not sharing their struggles, they are depriving their partners of that joy and intimacy. Helping partners with problems, she asserts, is also empowering to the partner with MS, because they are given the opportunity to be a caregiver as well.

Improving Sex with MS

Kimberly says that for people partnered with someone who has MS, it’s important to allow space for grief before they can begin problem-solving. After the grieving gives way to acceptance, she states that couples may be surprised to discover that sex with MS can create phenomenal sexual connections due to the incentive MS creates to explore new avenues of sexuality. It can even raise the quantity of playful erotic moments in people’s lives.

She describes her concept of daily erotic moments as simmering with her clients. Just like making a soup, she suggests that first, you get things started, then it starts to smell good, then better, and in the end, it’s so amazing that you have to eat the stew. She mentions that having multiple sexually intimate moments throughout the day can produce an identical effect.

Expanding the Meaning of Sex

Kimberly suggests expanding the definition of sex is important. She says it’s not just about genitals touching genitals. She says it’s about flirting, touch, cuddling, holding hands, passionate kisses, and learning to bring those acts to a level that facilitates deep pleasure and connection in both people. She teaches that slowing down sex to accentuate and be more mindful about each action increases the eroticism of life. She insists that sex can’t just be about genital-to-genital contact and orgasms.

Sex Therapists and MS

When you’re figuring out how to plan sex and keep it romantic, when is a good time to have sex to avoid fatigue, and how to get involved in sex in the first place, Kimberly says a sex therapist can help. She also suggests that sex therapists can help MS patients and their partners figure out how to really connect emotionally and share their sexual challenges with each other. She says sex therapists can help couples plan sex around the best times of day to avoid the crushing fatigue of MS. Despite popular conceptions that sex should be spontaneous, Kimberly says people with MS in particular need to schedule sex sessions.

She also warns that it can be difficult to cope with partners about the changing, day-to-day pains that people can feel with MS, but therapists can encourage communication, creativity, and being mindful and appreciative of sexual actions that don’t involve intercourse.

Background:

Kimberly Castelo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Certificated AASECT Sex Therapist, and a Certified ETF Couples Therapist. As a Certified Integrated Intimacy Professional, she believes in treating mental health in a holistic way, exploring individuals, couples, family systems, sexual health, medical issues, and spirituality to create a full picture of her clients’ lives and resources. As a woman who’s lived with MS for 13 years, Kimberly intimately understands how medical maladies can influence the mental health of families and individuals. This experience combines with her training to provide invaluable insight into relationships and sex.

Resources for Kimberly Castelo:

https://www.healingmomentscounseling.net/

https://www.nationalmssociety.org/

https://mymsaa.org/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/131-ms-and-sex-kimberly-castelo

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

130: Sex and Orthodox Judaism – Dr. Shy Krug

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 20:27:50 GMT

Diversity in Jewish Beliefs and Practices

Dr. Shy describes Jewish law as a corpus of Jewish religious requirements. He explains that every aspect of life has regulations to help Jews proceed through life. He discloses that there are disputes within the Jewish community about who can interpret Jewish law, leading to different sects of Judaism being formed, each with their own practices. Dr. Krug reminds us that he can only share his own interpretation and some alternate views he’s encountered personally and professionally.

The Spirituality of Sex in Judaism

The doctor describes Judaism as a sex-positive religion that appreciates the human body and human experiences. He emphasizes that Judaism encourages its adherents to elevate the mundane and the physical to the holy through thoughtfulness, intentionality, and restriction. He says Judaism contains many laws and restrictions on sex that are meant to transform a potentially carnal act into a holy union that increases both people’s connection to each other and to God. He tells us that in the Jewish view, conceiving a child is an act involving three people: the man, the woman, and God.

He counters this interpretation of Jewish law by describing smaller, rarer sects that see sex as a necessary evil that should be experienced infrequently. He states that many people with this belief see sex as a necessary transaction that occurs within marriage.

The Sexual Power of Jewish Women

Dr. Krug mentions there is a Jewish law that requires men to satisfy their wives sexually. He explains that a man cannot demand sex from his wife, but a wife can demand sex from her husband. He clarifies that a man can tell his wife that he’d like to have sex, but compelling her to have sex isn’t licit. This imbalance of power can create tension when the man wants to have more sex than his wife, but he tells us Orthodox couples often mitigate this disparity by refocusing on sex as a holy and intentional act, rather than a purely physical drive. He implies that the absence of desired sex allows men to reinforce the intimacy and holiness of sex through the delayed gratification abstinence ensures.

Family Purity Laws

Dr. Krug describes family purity laws that require men and women to separate when the woman is menstruating. During menstruation and for seven days following her period, he says that Jewish men and women cannot interact sexually. Dr. Shy describes several protective barriers many employ to fulfill this law, like sleeping in separate beds, not sharing food from the same plate, not passing things to each other, and not feeling each other’s weight. When two people sit on the same couch cushion, he explains that they feel each other’s weight when they move; he informs us that Orthodox Jews avoid doing this during this part of a woman’s cycle to avoid the desire to touch each other that such closeness might incite. While the Bible does not give the reason behind these restrictions, he informs us that Talmudic sources extrapolate that physical distance encourages couples to focus on the verbal and emotional elements of their marriage and maintain the excitement of sex.

Premarital Sex

Dr. Shy asserts that premarital sex is prohibited in Judaism. He informs us that some Jews will avoid all physical contact with potential mates and many Jews avoid being alone with each other altogether. He informs us that in the most right-wing forms of Judaism, girls and boys are kept apart and schooled separately, allowing them to reserve all sexual education until their children are old enough to marry. Some Jews, he tells us, do have premarital sex and cohabitate with partners before marriage, but those practices are not widely accepted in Orthodox communities.

About Masturbation

While he admits that some Jews do masturbate or utilize pornography, he points out the clear Biblical prohibition of masturbation, which he defines as the spilling of seed to avoid pregnancy. By contrast, he explains that because women do not spill their seed, they are permitted to masturbate, but they are advised to restrict the frequency of their masturbation and focus on maintaining their marriage’s intimacy first and foremost.

Sex Ed in Jewish Orthodoxy

Sects vary in their approaches, but he describes the modern Orthodox sect teaches about sexual health, puberty, relationships, and communication in middle school. By high school, he informs us that students are educated about masturbation, pornography, and healthy sex practices. He says that modern Judaism acknowledges that people are sexual beings and that it’s important to acknowledge and understand human sexuality. He explains that marriage classes also inform the youths of the laws surrounding marital relations, family purity, and the ritual baths women must take monthly. He says that developing intimacy, foreplay, and discussing the origins of sex outside of the bedroom are also covered in these classes, though he tells us more right-wing sects will clothe the education in more modest language.

Condoned and Prohibited Sex Acts

While Dr. Shy clarifies that some rabbis condone sex acts like oral sex and manual stimulation as long as ejaculation always occurs inside the spouse’s vagina. He reveals that teachings vary with regard to women receiving oral sex, with some saying men can perform oral sex on their wives if it’s dark or he doesn’t look at her vagina. Dr. Krug admits that Orthodox Jews are often allowed to utilize sex toys and engage in manual stimulation. He emphasizes that the law that women need to be fulfilled during sex is so important that many rabbis will bend rules if it helps women achieve orgasms.

Laws about Homosexuality

Dr. Krug conveys general agreement that homosexual sex between men is prohibited, but even with that blanket prohibition, some homosexual sex acts are seen as more illicit than others. He explains that some rabbis will guide homosexual men towards performing sex acts that are less harmful because continuing practicing Judaism is considered more important than practicing every law successfully. Dr. Krug remarks that Judaism understands that people do not choose their sexuality, and rabbis do not turn people away for being gay.

What About Sexual Dysfunction?

Dr. Shy tells us that some Jews might go to their rabbi first when they struggle with some form of sexual dysfunction, while members of more liberal sects may consult their medical team first. When rabbis are faced with a man experiencing problems like premature ejaculation, he says they will understand it as a physical problem that can prevent procreation and as an issue that can forestall marital intimacy and spiritual health. As such, Dr. Krug remarks that many rabbis will relax the normal laws against things like masturbation for as long as the prohibited act is part of the man’s medical treatment.

Gentle Advice for Gentiles

Dr. Krug suggests that the intentionality and mindfulness surrounding sex can help gentiles improve their relationships. He gives the example of sensual massage, saying that being fully present while touching and being touched improves the act. In general, he believes that being motivated by the higher goals of emotional intimacy and the sensual act of truly being present for your partner can enhance sexual and emotional intimacy.

Background

Dr. Shy Krug holds a PhD in clinical psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a B.A. in psychology with a minor in biology from Yeshiva University. At the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, NY, Dr. Krug parlayed his pre-doctoral internship into a two-year post-doctoral fellowship assessing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder and Gulf War Multisymptom Illness. Subsequently gaining a certificate in Sex Therapy from The Buehler Institute, certified training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, he is now a staff psychologist in the general outpatient department and sexual health clinic at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center, where he supervises and teaches the internship program. Dr. Krug also has a private practice in the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he treats sexual dysfunction, relationship difficulties, anxiety, and trauma.

Resources for Dr. Shy Krug:

http://www.drshykrug.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/130-sex-and-orthodox-judaism-dr-shy-krug

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

129: Sex During Quarantine – Dr. Diana Wiley

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 20:54:47 GMT

Jessa and Diana feel compelled to note that this episode of the Better Sex Podcast was recorded on June 1, 2020. Diana suggests that quarantine’s stress of forced togetherness is hard for many couples. But in addition to that, she talks about how the recent murder of a black man by police has provoked riots in cities across the country, a political firestorm that only adds to the stress people are feeling during the quarantine.

The Rebirth of Ourselves and our Lovers

Referring to the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dr. Diana saw the free time with our families as an opportunity to grant our relationships a second birth. She tells us that many couples haven’t had sex in a long time, and many have never been especially intimate with their partners. She recognizes both states as challenges that must be overcome to rekindle love and sex in relationships. That’s the reason she gives for publishing her book and the relationship-building tools that fill its pages.

Health Benefits of Sex

Dr. Diana educates us about the many benefits of sex and intimacy, telling us that having sex or touching your partner is scientifically shown to reduce stress. In her practice, she tells us she often recommends massage to her clients as a method to reconnect because massage lowers cortisol and adrenaline levels when certain pressure points are stimulated on the body. She also teaches that touch, especially sex and orgasms, relieves stress by releasing oxytocin, a neurochemical which increases bonding, is a natural sedative, and increases empathy.

Even masturbation reduces stress and has positive effects on health, Dr. Diana assures us. More surprisingly, Diana discusses that there are nonsexual self-touch exercises that also reduce stress and improve health. Unfortunately, she admits that unlike sex with someone else, the body does not release oxytocin during masturbation.

When it comes to how sex impacts the rest of people’s lives, Diana and her husband like to say, “It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s the fountain of youth,” about sex because having sex dramatically increases the feeling of vitality regardless of biological age.

Salvaging and Reigniting Broken Relationships

Dr. Diana claims to have written her book primarily to enrich people whose relationships are already doing well but want to take their intimacy to the next level. However, she acknowledges that some people are quarantined with unsuitable or violent partners, while others are cohabiting with a partner that they intended to break up with before the quarantine put the brakes on that process. For couples who were planning to break up, Dr Wiley suggests they come together and have a conversation about whether their relationship is worth salvaging.

For people who want to salvage or restore their relationship, she says the process of reigniting relationships begins with a conversation about what each person wants from the relationship. To help couples reconnect physically, she describes writing about lots of nonsexual touch exercises. After they become comfortable touching, Diana explains that they can set achievable goals like becoming great at kissing or having a make-out session. She says these actions and discussions can help reveal hidden desires and build the confidence needed to enter the marital bed and take time with sex. Dr Diana claims that the change in pace should increase the quality of their sex life. She reminds us that women tend to need twenty minutes of foreplay, oral sex, and penetration to reach orgasm and receive all the benefits of sex. She offers tools to accomplish this in her book.

Touching with Your Clothes On

In her book, Diana encourages couples to assess the intimacy of their relationship when they’re not having sex. She argues that couples probably don’t feel closer when they’re just watching TV together, which is why she supports intentionality about touch and connecting. She knows that not all families physically demonstrate affection, but believes that touching and hugs are irreplaceable glue for relationships. In her book, she writes that a seven-second kiss or a fifteen-second hug is enough to release oxytocin and create meaningful bonding on a daily basis.

The Sex Menu

One of the tools in Dr. Diana’s book is what she calls a sex menu. She describes the menu as a chart listing sexual activities and allowing each person to select a yes, no, or maybe reaction to indicate their desire for those acts. She says that many people get to anal sex and say no or maybe, but Dr. Diana reminds us that anal play doesn’t have to involve a penis in an anus. She describes rimming, which can be accomplished by moving a clean, wet finger around the anus, which stimulates nerve endings to create a very pleasurable experience.

Date Nights

In the second chapter of her book, Diana instructs couples to plan their date night at home. Under normal circumstances, she told people to have a date night one time every week, but with the forced closeness of the coronavirus quarantine, she believes having a date night twice per week is helpful. She says some of her patients believe that scheduling date nights would kill spontaneity, but Dr. Wiley argues that spontaneous sex is a Hollywood myth, and people need to put sex on the calendar. By scheduling sex, Diana claims that the partner with a lower sex drive can feel relieved because they know they won’t have to have sex until the marked day, which allows her to prepare herself for sex by reading romance novels, taking long baths, masturbating, or doing anything else that can increase her sexual enthusiasm. When that time comes, Dr. Diana believes that giving massages is a great way to start any sex session, because it allows both parties to be relaxed.

Dr. Wiley recommends that both partners discuss what they want from the evening. She claims that being sensual, considering all of our senses, is particularly helpful. She does admit there are limits to her book and her methods when she explains that resolving mental health issues and relationship tensions are necessary before increasing touch, as sex and romance are only truly effective for people who like each other.

Seven Secrets for Sensational Sex

1. Take care of yourself first. If you’re uncomfortable during sex, she advises telling your partner and making the sex better by avoiding discomfort.

2. Maintain and respect boundaries. She asserts the value of boundaries, saying it’s important to discuss what you do and don’t like, and to avoid pressuring each other into performing undesired sex acts.

3. Communicate openly and directly. Dr. Diana reminds us that no communication is clearer than spoken words.

4. Don’t take anything personally. The doctor informs us that sometimes people aren’t in the mood for sex or specific sex acts. She reminds us that there are any number of reasons this could happen, and it’s unwise to presume it has anything to do with you.

5. Focus on your partner’s pleasure. Diana’s husband expresses this as, “Worship your woman, and the goddess will reward you.” Though the phrase is gendered, Diana assures us the sentiment applies to men and women alike.

6. Don’t take each other for granted. Dr. Wiley says that expressing praise for your partner and growing in gratitude every day is a great method to cultivate life satisfaction and marital bliss.

7. Let go. Diana mentions that many women are very inhibited, which limits their ability to explore new things and enjoy sex. In her practice, as marijuana is legal in her state, she often recommends the substance as a method of pushing through inhibitions and having fun. She says that alcohol can serve a similar purpose, but it’s more harmful and not as useful.

Background

Diana Wiley, Ph.D., is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a board-certified sex therapist, and a gerontologist. With over thirty years of experience helping clients navigate problems in their sex and love lives, she currently works with clients in her office in Seattle, WA, and via online telehealth sessions. With her radio show on Progressive Radio Network, “Love, Lust, and Laughter” she’s been reaching additional listeners and helping more people for a decade. She’s published two studies in medical journals on aging and sexuality and was appointed as a Clinton Presidential Delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging. Dr. Wiley is a skilled speaker and has given lectures and presentations on Aging and Sexuality in Amsterdam, Paris, Spain, Japan, India, and at many US conferences. Recently she became the author of a book to help people stuck in quarantine called Love in the Time of Corona: Advice from a Sex Therapist for Couples in Quarantine.

Resources for Diana Wiley, PhD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088TSNSPM/

https://www.deardrdiana.com/

https://drdianawiley.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/129-sex-during-quarantine-dr-diana-wiley

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

128: ADHD and Sex – Dr. Ari Tuckman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 22:35:07 GMT

To reach an ADHD diagnosis, Dr. Tuckman reports that a 45-minute interview is required. With the media coverage of young boys with ADHD, Dr. Tuckman says that most clinicians can diagnose childhood ADHD accurately, though he notes that girls aren’t diagnosed as often as boys. He suggests that clinicians might expect ADHD more often in boys than girls, leading to them not noticing the symptoms.

Ari says that adults with ADHD also have a harder time being diagnosed, partially because their symptoms vary a little. Grown men and women almost never display the hyperactivity of ADHD youths, he admits, but forgetfulness, poor time management, losing things, and high distractibility continue to impact people’s personal and professional lives throughout adulthood.

He shares that adults with ADHD frequently realize they have ADHD themselves in what he calls a two-for-one: Parents bring in their child for an assessment and realize they also display ADHD symptoms, leading to simultaneous diagnoses.

Adult women with ADHD can be particularly difficult to diagnose, according to Ari. He tells us that they often present with anxiety and depression, but he reports that most clinicians stop their analysis there, when the root cause of their mental anguish stems from poor executive function, poor time management, and other, similar symptoms of ADHD.

ADHD Symptoms

Dr. Tuckman explains that it’s easier for people with ADHD to maintain focus on more interesting activities and on tasks that have a strict, close deadline. Being consistent and reliable are difficult tasks for people with ADHD, admits Dr. Tuckman. In these scenarios, partners with ADHD often lament their lack of reliability, while partners without the condition hate seeing themselves turn into a nagging spouse.

Dr. Tuckman describes another scenario where one person who likes everything organized in a rational manner, marries someone who isn’t as attentive or consistent about item placement at home. He says this often becomes a power struggle when what is needed is a method of reconciling their differences by coming to a compromise. He informs us that partners with ADHD will genuinely commit to the compromise and will often fulfill it for a few days, but before long they get derailed by things like getting home late, work difficulties, or not sleeping well the night before. He adds that this also leads to nagging and relationship struggles.

ADHD or Simple Laziness?

Ari asserts that ADHD is characterized by a failure to actualize good intentions. He describes people with ADHD as genuinely intending to fulfill their responsibilities, and he tells us that they are aware of the positive and negative repercussions that will occur if they do or don’t—for example—take out the trash. They’re often angry at themselves for neglecting their duties and breaking their promises. Dr. Tuckman assures us that adult ADHD isn’t purely about forgetting to perform menial tasks. He says they often forget things that outright hurt themselves, like leaving their lunch at home. He contends that their good intentions and their tendency to harm themselves with their disease distinguish them from people who simply want to avoid housework.

Sex and ADHD

Ari relates that when he was researching his most recent book, he had 3,000 people fill out a form that covered their marital relationships and their sex lives. He found that most people with ADHD enjoy their sex life when they are having regular sex. Unfortunately, Dr. Tuckman discovered several barriers to intercourse including partners not having enough good feelings about each other and the couple not having enough time to have sex. The former problem comes from the power struggles described earlier, but Dr. Hickman describes the lack of time as resulting from getting distracted and consequently taking more time to do things.

The ADHD Sex Drive

Within the aforementioned survey, he placed several questions designed to measure the sexual eagerness of people with ADHD. By asking how often they masturbate, how long it takes them to get revved up, how frequently they would like to have sex, and similar questions he found that people with ADHD are significantly more sexually eager than people without ADHD. He theorizes that just as people with ADHD tend to be more influenced by what’s going on around them, they may also be more easily influenced by the regular thoughts about sex that float through their minds. He further theorized that having one member of a relationship respond to sexual impulses more strongly can help to maintain the couple’s sex life by incentivizing the intentional pursuit of sex in the relationship. Alternately, he admits that differences in sex drive can create a wedge between the couple.

Sexual Satisfaction with ADHD

Dr. Tuckman sees a lot of couples in his office who are struggling because the ADHD partner is male, and the increased sexual eagerness of his condition magnifies the already high male sex drive. He says this difference in desire combined with the way women frequently assume chores and tasks often leaves women in relationships with male ADHD patients exhausted and unhappy.

By contrast, he found that when women have ADHD, the couple has sex 25% more often than couples where the male has ADHD. He points out that men with ADHD tend to have the highest sex drive, while women without ADHD have the lowest sex drive—a situation that naturally causes conflict. However, Ari explains that women with ADHD and men without ADHD both sit in the middle of the spectrum, with sex drives that are more similar. He speculates that having a similar sex drive between partners may lead to happier relationships in general because the good feelings from sex spill into and enhance other parts of the relationship.

Treating ADHD with Medication

Ari says that prescribing stimulants to ADHD patients is an excellent idea. He informs us that the stimulants prescribed for ADHD are some of the most effective medications in psychiatry and they’re non-addictive if taken as prescribed. This is particularly important to Dr. Tuckman because untreated ADHD doesn’t just result in poor school performance, but also lowers lifetime earnings, leads to increased car accidents, and even lowers lifespan because of ADHD’s tendency to reduce a person’s self-maintenance abilities and its ability to reduce a person’s ability to seek and comply with medical advice.

Non-Medical ADHD Treatments

Ari tells us that a lot of great resources are published to help people and their partners cope with ADHD. Seeking out better methods to get things done, get organized, and get on top of things. He suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy can also help some symptoms.

Navigating Sex and Romance

When it comes to romantic relationships, he maintains that both partners must come to an agreement that they both can accept. He emphasizes that this does not mean either partner should completely change and do things their partner’s way, as that is unsustainable and avoids the fact that healthy relationships involve a give-and-take that satisfies both partners. He points out that if your sex life is important to you, working on your relationship will help that out. Similarly, he asserts that working to have a better sex life will improve the nonsexual elements of your relationship too. He explains that it’s hard to have a truly intimate sexual experience with someone you’re mad at, but reaching a level of a deep, vulnerable union during sex absolutely colors the hours and days that follow.

Background

Dr. Ari Tuckman has a private practice in West Chester, PA where he specializes in diagnosing and treating adult ADHD. As a certified sex therapist, he also focuses on couples counseling and sex therapy. He frequently presents and co-chairs at CHADD, the national ADHD advocacy organization, and has been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and several other media outlets. The author of four books, his most recent is “ADHD After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship,” a title that explores the impact of ADHD on romance and sex.

Resources for Dr. Ari Tuckman

http://adultADHDbook.com

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/128-adhd-and-sex-dr-ari-tuckman

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

127: Talking to Kids About Sex – Amy Lang

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 19:49:10 GMT

Amy noticed that even she was having trouble talking to her own child about sex, and she imagined it would be even more difficult for people without her work background. She discusses the difficulty of discerning the right amount of information to share with kids, especially with the poor cultural examples in the US but reiterates that it’s crucial for parents to push through their discomfort.

Amy advises us to look at our own lives, our own sexual decisions and early relationships, and our current relationships to get a good idea of what can happen without quality education about sexuality and relationships. She emphasizes that sex and relationships constitute a lifelong social-psychological health issue and that parents can’t rely on schools to teach these things to their kids.

Sexual Health Requires Healthy Relationships

A lot of sexual health is about relationships, Amy asserts. She explains that many things can go wrong in relationships that will negatively affect the lives and health of people if they don’t know enough about what healthy relationships look like and what isn’t okay. Amy suggests that parents should want their children to grow up with a lot of information so that they can feel good about their decision-making skills and so that they can build safe, healthy relationships and quickly, correctly notice when relationships become unhealthy.

What Kids are Learning Now

Amy points out that most people are only getting educated about sex in the 5th and 9th grades, and neither of those sessions is comprehensive in any way. She explains that most young people learn the most about sex through pornography, sexualized entertainment media, and their friends. She points out that this gives kids a lot of very adult information about sexuality without providing them any context for that information.

Amy advises that parents contextualize pornography for children. She believes it’s important for kids to know that the models are acting, and they aren’t having real, normal sex.

The Limits of Sex Ed in Schools

Ms. Lang supports kids getting sex ed, even abstinence-only sex ed because that gives parents an opening to discuss the fact that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. She adds that it even lets parents talk about waiting to have sex until they’re prepared and able to make a mature decision with their partner. But she explains that schools can’t provide a values-based sexual education that aligns with the values of all their students’ families, schools can’t provide enough details about sex, and schools really can’t talk about how sex is pleasurable and not just about making babies.

How to Answer Questions

Amy tells us that a lot of questions kids ask can be answered simply and directly, but sometimes they’ll ask questions that are more sensitive. In those cases, she suggests admitting to your child that you’re not sure how to answer, and you need time to think about what to say. She explains that hot topics and questions about your own history can be dicey; she advises parents not to air their traumas to their children because she believes it’s important to talk about sex in a way that encourages them to have consensual, safe sex in a safe place.

Talking About Rape

She says that it’s easier to answer questions about difficult issues like rape and abortion if you already have created an early, strong base with your child about the fact that sex is healthy and fun when it’s consensual. When you have that background and talk about rape with your child, you can emphasize that sex is usually a happy thing adults do, but that sometimes people are bad and force others to have sex. She demonstrates that you can reassure children by saying that even though it’s a sad and scary part of life, it’s something they need to know about, and you’re glad they asked you.

Age Appropriate Conversations

She says that sex talk starts from birth in the form of discussing anatomy and sex differences directly and with correct terminology. Amy believes children should know how babies are made, how consent works, how families are structured, and what safe touch is by kindergarten, because when they’re that small, they are very curious and absorb the information naturally, and they haven’t yet learned enough of the negative aspects of sex to darken or pervert the facts of life. She highlights that early education about sex does a lot to protect kids from sexual abuse, which should motivate most parents to discuss the topic with their kids.

She mentions using the opportunities available to talk about sex in everyday life, from family members becoming pregnant or being gay to people displaying the signs of puberty. Amy discusses that it’s important to address puberty before they’ve completed the process, with 8 and 9 being her specific age suggestion. Parents can look for breast buds in girls to spot puberty, and she says in boys, parents with notice them becoming stinky.

By middle school, she believes kids should know the basics of everything about sex, the good and the bad. She suggests teaching them about oral and anal sex, about birth control, STIs, slang, and all about consent and healthy relationships. At this age, she explains that you want your child to be the smartest kid on the school bus so that they don’t internalize false information from their peers.

How to Start Sex Talks

Amy advises parents to talk about sex on car rides, where the kids can’t run away, but she also says that telling your kids you need to talk with them about a sex thing, and asking them if they want to do it now or later is a good tactic to ensure you have the conversation. She says that it’s often easy to observe the mood of adolescents to see when they’re most receptive and chatty, and those times are good opportunities to talk about sex. As eye contact is concerned, she admits that kids often don’t like it (especially boys), and it’s usually better to discuss sex with kids when you’re side to side. She tells us talking about song lyrics or news items with your kids can create good segues into sex conversations. However you do it, she reinforces the idea that you want them to be well-educated before their peers start talking to them about sex, love, and relationships.

Gender and Sexual Orientation Talks

Being careful with the language you use about LGBTQ+ issues is important to make certain your child feels welcomed no matter what their sexual orientation or gender identity turns out to be. She recalls that with her own child, she and her husband always said things like, “when you have a girlfriend or boyfriend…” until the boy revealed his orientation and settled the matter. It’s important not to transmit prejudice for gay or trans people to your child, because doing so will make them feel alienated, and can even cause suicide attempts if they are LGBTQ+.

Young Girls Coming Out

In her professional life, Amy encounters a lot of stories about middle school-aged girls coming out as asexual or bisexual, and many parents ask her what that means. Amy suggests that it may be a result of our culture being more open. Sexual experimentation can be a normal, healthy developmental stage in kids that age, she explains, and some children will feel that doing those things makes them gay or bisexual, while others may be experimenting and exploring their sexuality. She suggests just waiting, always demonstrate your acceptance of whatever they may wind up being, and making sure your kid feels safe being themselves around you.

How Can Parents Learn to Support Their Kids?

Amy refers to her first book, Birds and Bees and Your Kids was written to help parents figure out their values surrounding sex and gender identity and how they want to talk about the issues. She also has a Solution Center on her website that provides lots of resources. It’s important to think about and prepare your responses in advance, she suggests, to communicate your values more clearly and concisely. She also says that the more parents practice by talking about sex with their kids, the easier it will become.

Background:

Amy Lang, MA has been a sexual health educator for more than 20 years. With a master’s degree in Adult Education and years of experience as a sexual educator, Amy decided to combine those two fields to help herself and other parents have those conversations.

As the host of Just Say This Amy helps parents learn to talk to their children about sex and values. She also authored two books to help parents and their kids navigate romantic and sexual relationships titled Birds + Bees + YOUR Kids – A Guide to Sharing Your Beliefs About Sexuality, Love, Relationships and Dating Smarts: What Every Teen Needs to Date, Relate or Wait. Amy lives with her husband and teenage son in Seattle, WA, and can be found online at BirdsAndBeesAndKids.com

Resources for Amy Lang:

https://birdsandbeesandkids.com/category/podcast/

https://birdsandbeesandkids.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.intimacywithease.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/127-talking-to-kids-about-sex-amy-lang

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

126: [Personal Story] – Playing with Fire – Camille

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 May 2020 16:55:31 GMT

In this episode, guest Camille describes herself as a late bloomer that was always concerned about being romantically involved.

She attributes some of her reticence to being raised in a family that didn’t hug, cuddle, or verbally express love often. Later experiences encouraged her to openly express affection with her parents, but as a young person, Camille remembers thinking neither of her parents was suited to intimate talks about sex, love, and romance.

When Camille Meets David

Even when Camille knew boys found her attractive, she felt crippled by extreme shyness. She explains that things changed when she met her future husband, David. Because he was as awkward as she was, she felt they were perfectly matched. Though they were only 14, she claims they saw no reason to avoid sexual activity. She shares the journey of their relationship and experiences with other partners. She tells us about the regrets she gathered through those experiences including being objectified for her looks. After experiencing the world, Camille decided to honor David and their relationship by continually seeking a deeper intimacy with him.

Abortion

As a Christian who doesn’t support abortion, Camille is ashamed to admit that as a teen she planned to abort any pregnancies that might occur. While young, Camille believes she was too cavalier about the magnitude of what happens during an abortion, and she expects many people are the same today. She warns that abortion is a traumatic experience for a woman’s body that can even cause post-traumatic stress.

Intimacy Issues

Their relationship hit a hiccup early on as David desired sex more than she did, and she would often reject him. After realizing that she could make herself physically available to her husband with the aim of pleasing him, she found that this form of self-giving allowed true intimacy to flourish because it removes sex from the raw pursuit of physical pleasure and transforms it into a means of communicating and developing love and caring.

Teaching Kids About Sex

Camille explains that her views about intimacy were influenced by a course she took called Moms of Men. She wanted to raise her children to respect and avoid objectifying women. She also learned to teach her sons to avoid relationships that can’t lead to marriage, because when you date or have sex with people, part of you always stays with that person, making it impossible to give your whole self to your future spouse.

Camille also learned from Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which taught her that sex is something that God intended men and women to experience, and that it’s good to talk about it openly. She believes that talking about sex is helpful in rearing children because it encourages kids to communicate with their parents about sex and love and it helps parents guide their children towards wise sexual decisions.

Resources for Camille:

https://www.messengercourses.com/moms-of-men

http://www.theologyofthebody.net/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/126-personal-story-playing-with-fire-camille

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

125: Testosterone – Dr. Serena McKenzie

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 May 2020 21:14:42 GMT

Dr. McKenzie explains both sexes produce testosterone however it’s much more prevalent and important in men. Serena informs us that puberty is driven primarily by testosterone. She notes that testosterone production increases exponentially in men during puberty, peaks around age 30, and subsequently declines. From driving growth and facilitating sexual function to retaining bone density and cognitive function, Dr. McKenzie describes testosterone as a hormone with lifelong importance in men’s health.

Causes of Low Testosterone

Serena tells us the most direct cause of low testosterone, clinically diagnosed as testicular hypogonadism, occurs when the pituitary gland produces insufficient hormones to trigger adequate testosterone production. But she explains that many cases of low testosterone are caused by obesity, diabetes, insomnia, sleep apnoea, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and other varieties of poor self-care. She also mentions that many clinicians understand lower testosterone levels as a natural result of aging, and not as a condition requiring treatment.

Symptoms of Low Testosterone

Dr. McKenzie admits that most of her patients present with sexual dysfunction. She often finds problems such as low libido, trouble gaining or sustaining an erection, fatigue, or depression. One symptom she describes that points directly to hypogonadism are a measurable decrease in testicular size. She mentions the loss of non-sexual erections as indicative of low testosterone. She points out that these symptoms can also be caused by vascular disease or pituitary dysfunction, but she reassures us that true cases of testosterone dysfunction can be diagnosed fairly easily by physicians.

How Low is Low?

To diagnose hypogonadism, Serena explains that labs look for reproducible testosterone levels below 300 or 350. The doctor explains that testosterone levels vary from day to day and hour to hour, which is why testing a man’s testosterone more than once is necessary for a correct diagnosis. She admits that some practitioners will skip this second test, which can lead to inappropriate diagnoses. She explains that most men should have testosterone levels between 200 and 900 for full sexual health, but the exact levels vary for different individuals.

Treating Low Testosterone

Dr. McKenzie believes that it’s important to assess lifestyle variables and consider alternative treatments like testosterone stimulation before rushing into testosterone replacement. For many men, correcting poor self-care, addressing relationship problems, and learning to foster romance in their relationships can solve their sexual and energy complaints. She remarks that these treatments are especially useful for younger men because hormone replacement shuts off the body’s natural ability to produce testosterone, which can prevent men from fathering children or require lifelong testosterone supplementation after treatment.

But for men with primary testicular failure or pituitary dysfunction, Dr. McKenzie acknowledges that testosterone treatments will be a necessity for the rest of their lives. Men whose testicular tissue has been damaged by chemotherapy or alcohol abuse may also need continual testosterone treatments to maintain sexual function.

Treatment Types

Serena describes a market that has produces 15 to 20 different methods of administering testosterone for patients, including injected doses of testosterone, injectable pellets, transdermal gels, sprays, and pills, but she says insurance usually decides the form of treatment.

Risks of Different Treatment Types

Dr. McKenzie prescribes transdermal gels and lotions most often. For those, she warns that it’s important for men to wash their hands after application and for them to allow the gel or cream to dry after application, otherwise accidental transmission of testosterone to partners or pets may occur.

She implies that most other methods are even safer, though high-dose injectable varieties of testosterone have been shown in some studies to increase the risk of blood clots, making heart disease important for prescribers to consider.

Testosterone Abuse and Misuse

Serena believes that testosterone is a wonderful substance, but she recommends it only be used with a clinician’s oversight. Because of testosterone’s ready availability online, she meets many men who buy themselves testosterone and are puzzled by the substance’s tendency to reduce, rather than increase, libido in healthy men.

Producing Testosterone Again

For men who don’t need lifetime testosterone treatment, Dr. McKenzie explains that results vary when treatment is discontinued. She says that some men—usually those who did not require treatment—produce adequate levels of testosterone immediately after treatment stops. Other men must wait for three to six months for their testicles to resume testosterone production, a time period that she warns can cause men to feel the depression, fatigue, and other symptoms associated with low levels of testosterone. She says that people who recover more slowly may require testosterone stimulating therapies to regain sexual function or fertility treatments if they intend to conceive a child. She also warns that a few men never regain their fertility or sexual function after undergoing testosterone treatments.

Finding Treatment for Sexual Dysfunction

Dr. McKenzie admits that medical treatment for sexual problems can be difficult to find. She describes some doctors as being disinterested in hearing about their patients’ low libido and sexual problems.

To meet the needs of this under-treated population, Serena tells us that pop-up sexual health clinics began to appear. Because pop-up clinics often provide inadequate or inappropriate treatment, she explains that more clinicians began to understand the need to provide sexual health services to their patients. Thanks to these changes, Serena shares the encouraging news that getting medical help for sexual problems is becoming easier every day.

Background:

A healthcare worker since 1992, Dr. Serena McKenzie is an evidence-based, holistic primary care physician with expertise in sexual medicine, healthy aging, and the pelvic floor. She is certified as a sexual medicine fellow (IF) through the International Society for Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH), as a nationally certified Menopause Practitioner (NCMP) through the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), and as a sex counselor through the American Association of Sex Educators and Therapists (AASECT). Using a multi-disciplinary approach that assesses her patients holistically, Dr. McKenzie helps her patients treat sexual dysfunction at every stage in life.

Links for Dr. Serena McKenzie:

https://www.drserena.com/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-much-testosterone-mak_b_8833162

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/125-testosterone-dr-serena-mckenzie

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

124: Bridging Sex Therapy and Sexual Medicine – Dr. Pebble Kranz and Dan Rosen

Jessa Zimmerman — Tue, 12 May 2020 00:15:57 GMT

Today’s show is going to delve into talking about sex with both your therapist and your physician, potentially, and how that collaboration can benefit your struggles can make a difference.

I interview Dr. Pebble Kranz and Dan Rosen. He is a sex therapist, and she is a family practice physician. Both of them have had extensive training in sexual health and sexual treatment, and they started a clinic together.

What we talk about applies to you if you have some sexual struggles, because it is essential that your providers be communicating and collaborating and that you are getting the best of both worlds.

Dan Rosen became licensed as a Clinical Social Worker after attending NYU’s school of social work. He became a Certified Sex Therapist in 2014 and chaired the AASECT Ethics Advisory Committee from 2016-2018.

He has been providing local training for psychotherapists and medical residents since 2008 as well as teaching sex therapy as an instructor at the University of Buffalo 2016-2017.

While the European Society of Sexual Medicine does not credential social workers, Mr. Rosen participated in the same training program as Dr. Kranz benefiting from the truly global perspective on sexuality and sexual health. Integrating sex therapy with psychodynamic psychotherapy, treatment of sexual abusers, EMDR, CBT, IFS, and couples counseling has been uniquely rewarding.

Now, as a member of the Rochester Center for Sexual Wellness team, Dr. Kranz and Dan are bringing this global perspective on sexual health to Western New York.

Dr. Kranz is Board-certified as a family physician and trained at the University of Rochester Family Medicine Residency Program with an area of focus in the psychosocial aspects of primary care.

Family medicine appealed to her as a specialty because of its whole-person, whole-family, and whole-community approach to medical care. Family medicine residents at the University of Rochester train alongside marriage and family therapy trainees and are explicitly taught to work systemically and to collaborate with mental health providers.

Dr. Kranz’s prior medical training included almost no information on sexual function and dysfunction, nor did it expose me to a range of interventions for treatment. All along, her patients made it clear that this was an important part of their lives.

She completed a fellowship through the European Society of Sexual Medicine. Dr. Kranz now participates in both the medical school and residency curricula to improve exposure to sexual medicine. She and Mr. Rosen opened the Rochester Center for Sexual Wellness in 2017, providing comprehensive assessment and treatment for sexual concerns in individuals and couples of all genders.

Rochester Center for Sexual Wellness: https://rochestercenterforsexualwellness.com/

The organizations mentioned:

ISSWSH: https://www1.statusplus.net/sp/isswsh/find-a-provider/

ISSM: https://www1.statusplus.net/sp/issm/find-a-provider/

SMSNA: https://www1.statusplus.net/sp/smsna/healthcare-provider-search//index.php

KinkAware Professionals: https://www.ncsfreedom.org/resources/kink-aware-professionals-directory/search-kap

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/124-bridging-sex-therapy-and-sexual-medicine-dr-pebble-kranz-and-dan-rosen

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

123: 5 Core Conversations – Julie and David Bulitt

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 May 2020 19:08:46 GMT

The Genesis of Five Core Conversations for Couples

Julie explains that she met David as an 18-year-old at the University of Maryland, which led to a 33-year marriage. She and David celebrate the fact that their differing work (David is a divorce lawyer, while Julie works as a couple’s therapist) affords them very different perspectives on dating and relationships. They tell us that their experience of marriage in their personal and professional conversations encouraged them to share their insight in a book they named Five Core Conversations for Couples.

Julie Bulitt is a licensed clinical social worker with a focus on family, couples and individual therapy, ADHD, and executive functioning coaching. She’s been a Clinical Supervisor and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant for the Montgomery County (Maryland) Mental Health Association, and an Adoption Therapist for the Center for Support and Education in suburban Washington, D.C. Currently, she is the in-house therapist for The Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland.

David Bulitt is a partner at Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, PA in Washington, D.C. He’s consistently chosen as a top divorce lawyer, was named one of the “Best Lawyers in America” and a “Super Lawyer” in the Washington, D.C. Metro. Due to his personal experiences, David has a strong interest in families with special needs children. He’s written two novels and multiple articles for legal publications.

The Five Cores

David informs us that their book divides the conversations couples need to have in order to build successful relationships into five cores or ‘buckets’. He describes getting to know the other person as the first bucket. The second, third, and fourth are money, kids, and sex, which he says often bring conflict into relationships. Finally, he describes the last bucket as figuring out how to keep the relationship full and growing.

‘Listen to Julie so that You Don’t Need David.’

Julie explains the reason couples seek therapy differs wildly. She says that some people would never go to couple’s therapy, while others go as a last resort to try to avoid divorce, and others seek out couple’s therapy to proactively improve their relationships. She says that people who would never seek out counseling or who try and can’t get it to work for them often wind up in her husband’s office.

In his work, David found four broad reasons that couples get divorced: money, sex, kids, and ‘general malaise not otherwise specified’. He suspects that less than half of the couples who get divorced have tried to improve their relationship with therapy. Despite this, he tells us he encourages couples with history, kids, and other ties between them to try therapy before going through with a divorce.

He also discusses that some couples who have been married for twenty or thirty years have had kids dominate their lives for decades. He describes them spending years rushing around and getting the kids to the places they need to be, without ever taking the time to ‘water the garden’ of their relationship. He explains that many people in this situation look at the other person, and fail to find anything they have in common after their kids leave home. He and Julie emphasize that relationships have to be maintained consistently in order to survive.

Building and Filling Your Relationship

Julie explains that new partners need to evaluate whether they’re suited for each other. She encourages couples to evaluate whether they have the same values, whether they both want kids, whether they think one or both partners working is ideal, and the like. She also tells us that maintaining that initial connection and those conversations with date nights and time spent together is essential.

David interrupts to clarify that their book differs from self-help titles in its personal and detailed nature. For example, he lists chapters about Costco, dirty garages, and roofs that need to be replaced. Julie expounds upon this by informing us that each chapter contains questions that couples can answer together to kick-start conversations.

David illustrates that this section of the book makes you think about the need to make time for each other every day and consider how you argue with each other. The book also discusses the silent treatment.

Core Two: Money

David describes a few different ways money comes up in his practice. One is that some partners were lied to or deceived about the amount of money or assets they have or owe. Another money-related problem that causes anger and resentment is when couples differ about how they believe money should be earned, saved, or spent.

He discusses one couple who were living a nice life with cars, a big house, gym memberships, and the like. He says that everything seemed great for a while until one morning the wife was woken by the sound of scraping metal as her car was being repossessed—he tells us that that’s the first time she learned of their financial situation.

Julie shares that she and David have made some bad financial decisions in their relationship, but they talked about their issues and faced them directly. She says that their marriage was ultimately strengthened by working together, looking at their situation, and making the tough decisions needed to improve their finances.

Money-related Kickstarter Questions

David shares multiple questions that couples are encouraged to discuss with each other: Is it my money or your money? Do we have separate accounts? Do we pay for separate bills, and is that something we’re both comfortable with? Have your spending habits caused any problems between you? Is it okay to continue saving this much when one of you feels like their work isn’t being rewarded?

Core Three: Children

Julie opens up about their experience with secondary infertility. She says they had their first child easily, but couldn’t conceive when they tried for a second child. She describes struggling with that and their decision to adopt two children, only for Julie to conceive again nine years later.

She also tells us that parenting put a lot of strain on their relationship by changing the way they interacted as a unit. She shares that they also struggled with one of their children having severe mental health issues and discusses the strain that put on their union.

David admits that many anecdotes and sections in the parenting section come from their own experience, and may not specifically apply to many of their readers, but he explains that learning from the points of conflict they’ve experienced and encountered can serve as a model to help couples consider how events that happen to a child can impact other children and the relationship between parents.

He also shares a story about his daughter embracing the Christian faith despite their family being Jewish, and describes the degree to which religious differences can pull families apart. He characterizes himself as being shocked by the revelation, while Julie helped them actually look at the situation and find ways to work together to create a happy, coherent family.

David explains further points of conflict he’s seen with his clients, like having different philosophies surrounding setting rules, boundary issues, what their kids should or shouldn’t be exposed to in the media, what health treatments are or aren’t appropriate, and how involved parents should be in their children’s lives.

Julie points out that parenting is always stressful, and there’s no manual to make it easy or ensure great results. She says it’s possible to try everything, do everything right, and still have insurmountable problems.

Core Four: Sex

David tells us that sex can create conflict when people desire sex at different frequencies, when sex is too short or unsatisfying, when pornography negatively impacts a relationship, when one partner wants more excitement or experiments in the bedroom, when couples fail to feel a connection during sex, or when one couple only has sex from a sense of obligation.

He says that infidelity does show up in his office, but he and Julie suggest that it’s often symptomatic of a relationship that’s gone bad, rather than the actual problem that causes divorce.

Julie tells us that there are some people who can happily have a sexless marriage, but she states that for most couples, long periods without sexual activity creates negativity and tension.

On the other hand, Julie discusses the fact that when sexual issues are resolved and couples have a mutually satisfying sex life, the positive energy from that can ripple out and help the rest of the relationship. She says that compromise is inevitable, but ultimately both couples should be satisfied and strengthened by their sex life, whether it’s because of the physical release or the emotional component of sex. She also mentions that one partner doing little things to seduce and entice the other can spice up life for a couple.

Resources for Julie and David Bulitt:

http://www.thebulitts.com/

http://livesane.com

https://www.davidbulitt.com

https://www.facebook.com/DBtheAuthor/

https://www.instagram.com/davidbulitt.author/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/123-5-core-conversations-julie-and-david-bulitt

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

122: Feel Amazing Naked – Amanda Walker

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 19:26:35 GMT

Amanda Walker is a health lifestyle coach whose focus is on helping women feel better naked. She created the Feel Amazing Naked Program and the Feel Amazing Naked Podcast. She is the creator and blogger at awalkmyway.com. Amanda overcame a life of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating, allowing her to live a life where she controls her food, rather than her food controlling her. Now she uses her experience to help thousands of clients unearth the root causes of their food struggles to transform their bodies and their lives. She encourages her clients to lead fuller, healthier lives in which they can embrace their bodies and lose the self-consciousness and guilt that holds them back.

Why ‘Feel Amazing Naked’?

Amanda explains that many of her clients will lose a lot of weight, see the transformation, but continue to feel inadequate and lack confidence in daily life and their romantic relationships. She says that’s why it’s so important to feel amazing, in addition to looking amazing. When you feel amazing, she reminds us, confidence, and attractiveness can radiate outward and improve your sex life in ways that just looking amazing never will.

She believes that looking and being healthy are important, though she doesn’t deny that some individuals can be very attractive even while carrying extra weight. But Amanda tells us that she’s about holistic self-growth that includes mindset elements along with health and body transformation.

In order to set a course for individual clients, Ms. Walker informs us that she likes to ask clients what their goals are before they begin. She says that some clients want to lose weight, some want to work on weight-loss goals, and many want to work on mindset and body transformation goals.

The Feminine Ideal and Modern Women

Amanda suspects that women struggle with body image issues more than men do because social media and traditional media alike put increasingly perfect, and increasingly impossible feminine body ideals into the world. She explains that women are susceptible to these images of perfection from early adolescence onwards and that she feels her personal background with these influences makes her especially passionate about helping women get past the detrimental thoughts and poor mindset these cultural ideas impart.

Ms. Walker also mentions that women are encouraged to serve many roles. She lists female roles like being parents, spouses, employees, and entrepreneurs as a small selection of the roles women are expected to fulfill, and she goes on to mention that the more women serve others or fulfill externalized ideals, the less in touch they are with their own needs and desires. She suggests that when people disconnect from their own, personal ideals, they also disconnect from the confidence that’s derived from having a clear view of one’s own desires, needs, and independent identity. She suggests that it’s necessary to serve yourself first sometimes, and it’s imperative that women stop feeling guilty about prioritizing themselves if they want to effectively interact with their friends and families.

Confidence’s Link to Health and Happiness

Amanda says that if we’re not clear on who we are and are not confident in who we are, then we can’t fully show up in our other relationships and roles in life. Lacking confidence, she explains, dims our light, and tries to hide who we are, while confidence allows for full investment in and involvement with the world. Especially in our sex lives, she says, lacking confidence can lead to us trying to literally hide the body that makes us insecure, and that inhibits connection.

Ms. Walker explains that prioritizing health and making healthier choices also allows women’s confidence to improve because it encourages women to make more intentional actions. She suggests that this link between intentional living and growing confidence can encourage women to adopt more healthy changes, like becoming more active, which leads to more confidence and creates a healthy cycle of confidence-boosting.

How to Change Your Habits

Amanda points out that overeating is usually a coping mechanism being used to cover up something else. She says that people can undereat or overeat, but in either case, she encourages women to discover the root cause that’s preventing them from making the changes they desire. After observing the thoughts that accompany eating or other actions that need to change, she suggests that people can start to chip away at what’s really behind their unhealthy behaviors.

By embracing the journey towards wellness and enjoying the systems that lead to our ultimate goals, Ms. Walker suggests that we can enjoy and appreciate where we are on our path to health. She uses the example of a person who wants to be a runner, saying that it’s essential to stop saying you can’t accomplish your goal. She explains that you must say you’re becoming a runner before you’ll let yourself become a person who runs. She reminds us that our thoughts change our beliefs, and changing our thoughts about who we are and what we can do can change our feelings and actions.

She also explains that habits are easiest to change by taking small, consistent steps in the right direction. Initially, the tasks should be so easy that you make it hard for yourself to avoid the activity you want to add to your life. She tells us that aligning the actions of her clients with their goals is another important part of her work. To do that, she encourages her clients to look at what they’re actually doing, and accept that those are their priorities right now. Only by changing their actions, she explains, can her clients truly change their lives.

Morning Celebrations

Amanda encourages her clients to look in the mirror with a dry erase marker and write down one thing they love about themselves each day in the mirror. She says that the constantly lengthening reminder of awesome things about you helps to remind you of how awesome you are.

Root Causes of Unhealthy Choices

Amanda tells us that time management, not understanding how habits are formed, negative self-talk, and limiting beliefs are a few of the root causes that prevent her clients from making the changes they desire.

Being Intentional About Sex

Amanda knows that poor body image often limits people’s sex lives, but she also finds that simply talking about sex and bedroom confidence with her clients makes them feel more comfortable approaching and talking about sex in their own lives.

Ms. Walker admits that even in her own life, she often fails to manage her time intentionally enough to have time with her husband before the end of the day. To combat this tendency and retain intimacy in romantic relationships, she says we must stop, pause, and make a commitment to approach sex earlier in the day and give our best selves to our partners.

She tells us that pausing to think about and realign our actions helps us remember to connect with our spouses and often rejuvenates our lives romantically and sexually. She also insists that taking care of yourself and building your self-love makes it much easier to give yourself freely in intimate contexts.

Amanda’s Favorite Weight-Loss Tip

Amanda advocates time management and meal planning as great first steps. She suggests planning your food intake a day in advance because having a plan and being fully intentional about food intake solves a lot of problems. She says that just being mindful of what you’re eating, which this type of planning requires, starts to create a spiral of success.

Resources for Amanda Walker:

https://feelamazingnaked.com/podcast/

https://feelamazingnaked.com/challenge/

https://www.awalkmyway.com

https://amzn.to/2SU2tMN

https://amzn.to/2DamkSA

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/122-feel-amazing-naked-amanda-walker

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

121: [Personal Story] Trauma as Tribal Initiation – Harriet

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 19:45:15 GMT

Harriet joins us in this episode and shares her how her childhood molestation led to compulsive eating, a fear of men, painful sex, and other hallmarks of traumatic experiences before she was taught to conceptualize her trauma as an unfinished tribal initiation. She shares her story in this episode.

Accepting Trauma as Real and Valid

Harriet tells us she was molested by a neighbor at the age of nine, but her mind quickly blocked the memory. When she remembered the event at the age of fifteen, her first thought was, ‘This happens to loads of people.’ She mentions that this happened thirty years ago, in a time that didn’t discuss topics like child abuse openly, but she knew enough to be aware that others had similar experiences.

She talks about minimizing her trauma by comparing her own experiences to those of others, and deciding that her pain wasn’t too bad, because her experience was not especially violent or awful. By reading Peter Levine’s book Healing Trauma, Harriet learned that comparing trauma is misguided because trauma is marked by feeling overwhelmed and unable to escape. She recalls this insight as liberating.

Remembering the Trauma

Harriet says the memory of the abuse resurfaced when her father, a social worker, was making videos for his job. Harriet describes turning away from the camera while playing the role of an abused teenage girl when the memories came flooding back.

She explains that her memories resurfaced in later years too when she was 22 years old and volunteering at a homeless hostel. One day a man who’d been staying at the hostel was arrested for molesting a child, and Harriet says she felt like ‘the curtain was drawn back’ and she saw her difficulties clearly. Harriet reports that this experience made returning to the job intolerable, as it stirred up awful emotions, but it also made her understand that her trauma was a major problem, and not something to be ignored. She explains that this incident led her to seek help, but counseling and medication proved unhelpful.

Harriet’s Younger Years

As a teenager, Harriet describes intense self-hatred and a desperate longing for a boyfriend despite an instinctual, intense fear of men. She explains that she coped with these emotions by overeating. For her, food was a rare source of pleasure. She explains that her self-image of being an awful person and a desire to be bigger and safer fuelled her overeating. Despite these difficulties, Harriet excelled at school and went to college.

After working as a teacher for a few years, Harriet tells us she met her husband, who was the only man she’d ever felt safe around. Her desire to have children encouraged her to push past her struggles, which allowed her to have two children. Harriet explains that she always felt pain with sex, and never found it to be a pleasurable experience.

Making Peace with Her Emotions

Upon reaching 40, Harriet tells us that she was determined to conquer her food issues. After hypnotherapy, self-hypnosis, journaling, and a lot of reading Harriet discovered a book that she says changed her life, The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren. By discovering the useful and harmful instances of emotional expression, Harriet says she was able to shed her shame about her emotional dysregulation and better manage her feelings.

Understanding Trauma as Tribal Initiation

Harriet tells us about a full chapter of McLaren’s book around trauma. In that chapter, she describes tribal initiation as a three-part process. She says the young boy is removed from the support of a tribe, then experiences an ordeal by struggling while away from his support system. The final part is the victorious return to his support system; it is this third step that Harriet and McLaren tells us is missing for trauma victims.

Harriet also mentions that people who don’t pass the initiation return to the tribe, and must go out again until they find their ordeal and they can be acknowledged as an adult member of the tribe. They assert that this parallels the habit victims of abuse have of seeking out more abuse. Harriet explains that this made it easier for her to forgive herself for choosing abusive situations in her youth, as she was able to recontextualize it as a subconscious attempt to be welcomed back to her tribe as a full member.

Reaching Stage Three

She explains that in the modern world, we still need the community experience of tribal life, but she admits we often have to welcome ourselves back to the tribe while applauding ourselves for what we’ve survived. Harriet also mentions that we often form our own tribes in private or professional life to give us the acceptance and community we need.

Harriet states that she spent many years as a self-professed victim, but she was able to reach stage three instead, and use her history to provide help to people with similar backgrounds to overcome their struggles.

Rewards of Resolving Trauma

Sometime after reaching stage three, Harriet explains that her marriage ended and she was able to date again. Unlike in her previous life, she found men exciting and attractive instead of frightening. She says it felt like being a teenager again, but this time without the trauma damaging her life. Now, Harriet reports that sex is pain-free and extremely enjoyable.

Harriet’s Advice

Harriet reminds us that horrible experiences happen to many of us, but there’s no undoing the past, so it’s best to find the gift in the experience. She advises people to find the lesson in our experiences and employ those benefits to reframe the experience as a component of our backgrounds, rather than as a defining characteristic.

She explains that being vulnerable without being a victim is an incredibly powerful position that allows us to reassure others—and reassure ourselves—that there are others with similar experiences who you can help by processing your past and reaching stage three.

Resources for Harriet:

https://amzn.to/2ANMZn2

http://www.theshiftinside.com/podcast-me-too-release-your-trauma-and-put-food-out-of-a-job-it-was-never-meant-to-do/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

120: Pressures on Men – Dr. Corey Allan

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:48:52 GMT

The Pressures on Men in the Bedroom

Dr. Corey Allan is a Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Counselor with a Ph.D. in Family Therapy. He has a private practice in McKinney, TX. With his wife, Pam, he hosts a weekly podcast, Sexy Marriage Radio, to help married couples engage with each other and have the best possible sex. He also established sexymarriage.net, a website that strengthens and deepens married relationships. In all his work, he helps people embrace their choice to live life and be married deliberately while growing spiritually, enhancing passion, and embracing the people and events we encounter with joy and simplicity.

The Sex Men Desire

Corey points out that men are expected to want sex at all times. He stresses that society generally expects men to initiate sex and pursue sex to the exclusion of other romantic and familial goals. Dr. Allan says that many men balk at the expectation because they also experience relationship goals that are more stereotypically feminine, like the desire for emotional intimacy, romance, affection, and lasting interpersonal bonds. When men deny their desire for the quintessentially feminine aspects of sex, they aren’t bolstering their masculinity but missing out on something ineluctably human.

Dr. Allan discusses that men and women do have different biological strengths and weaknesses, and they have desires and abilities that statistically differ. He laments the generation of men raised almost exclusively by women and the specter of ‘toxic masculinity’ that produced. He agrees that acknowledging feminine needs in men is important, but it’s equally important for men to live up to their own forthright and healthy forms of masculinity with integrity and honesty.

Ten Women, One Man

Corey describes a hypothetical scenario posed by Dr. Glover. In it, he posits that a man can have an orgasm with ten of the hottest women of his choice. In that scenario, Dr. Glover asks how long each man would take to accomplish that goal. Dr. Allan says that a young man might be able to do it in a weekend, but given male refractory periods, age-related fluctuations in desire, and the increased time and effort required to please women, he thinks it might take men in their 30s or 40s two or three weeks. He mentions that a woman in a comparable scenario could have sex many more times in a smaller period of time due to the capacity for multiple orgasms and not needing to maintain erections.

Corey believes that because of women’s biological capacity to “go and go” and men’s need to fulfill and satisfy that potentially endless desire, many men are, on some level, afraid of female sexuality—it’s intimidating. Dr. Allan discusses that while male attraction is believed to be fairly straightforward, women’s desire and arousal are more mysterious. He says that reaching beyond the mechanical, physical acts is necessary to facilitate female fulfillment. Instead of following the formula of what worked last time, Corey encourages men to open up a real dialogue with their partners to find out what’s arousing that day without feeling like failures for not intuiting everything.

The Role and Meaning of Erections

Corey brings up the fact that men often have erectile issues and says that the heavy expectations placed upon men can lead to a cycle of harmful thoughts that perpetuate the situation. He mentions that even women see erections as signs of their own attractiveness; they worry that if a man doesn’t gain an erection, it means he doesn’t desire her.

Corey reminds us that sexual encounters are intimate sessions between two people—they may or may not involve disrobing, and don’t need to involve intercourse or erections. He says that focusing on erections or the superficial characteristics that women assume decrease male desire misses the point. In Dr. Allan’s opinion, attraction to the whole, nuanced being within the skin we wear is what produces sexual desire, not any external feature men or women may have. He believes that getting the chance to ‘taste the essence of the person’ is what makes sex incredible, not mere genital stimulation.

Sexual Expectations of Men

Corey claims that a great many expectations rest upon the behavior of a body part that’s only three, six, or nine inches long, and that creates performance anxiety and harms men’s sexual desire. Men are expected to always be ready and willing to have sex, to sexually satisfy their partners, and to initiate sexual activity. He claims that always being expected to initiate sex can create leadership fatigue, and many men would be grateful if women took up some of that responsibility. With full responsibility to initiate, men can fall into an uncertain headspace that worries about the implications of them pursuing more or less sex than usual, such as making their partner feel less desired or being accused of only caring about sex. He believes that acknowledging sex in a slow burn element of daily life can ease some of that tension by decreasing the tendency to pathologize differing sex drives.

The Role of Masturbation

Dr. Allan believes that sex and masturbation too often go hand in hand. He acknowledges that arousal will occur from myriad sources, but he believes it’s healthier to turn to utilize one’s own memories and fantasies for masturbatory content rather than pursuing porn, because those mental scenes make it easier to transform that randomly produced arousal towards one’s spouse, which he believes is the healthiest use of sexual arousal. Corey admits that other masturbatory habits are valid, but reiterates that it’s essential to prevent the formation of secrets and deceit within relationships, which excessive porn usage can create. He suggests that if porn usage is driven by consistent sexual rejections from your spouse, it’s healthier to approach her and try to solve the problem than it is to masturbate the problem away.

Resources for Corey Allan:

http://sexymarriage.net

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

119: Guide to Wicked Sex – Jessica Drake

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 19:11:56 GMT

Jessica Drake is an adult film performer, writer, and director. She’s also a sexual health advocate and sex educator. Her onscreen work earned her numerous awards, including three AVN Best Actress Awards. Jessica is a graduate of San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI) and a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT). To encourage sexual health and wellness, Ms. Drake conceived and produced the award-winning “Guide to Wicked Sex” videos exploring and demonstrating different aspects of human sexuality with knowledge, experience, and good humor. Her advocacy for improved sexual education, broader awareness of sexual health, and her positive portrayal of the adult industry has led to multiple international speaking engagements and being featured in Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, CNBC, Playboy, Forbes, the Huffington Post, and more. She is a powerful advocate for sexual health and sexual education, improving the wellbeing and lives of her audiences.

From Performing to Educating

While Jessica was paying her way through school as an exotic dancer, she recalls meeting a group of people who worked in pornography and invited her to get involved. She says she initially took them up on their offer by doing softcore, solo magazine shoots and working as an extra in edgier, sexier shows on HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. When her friends offered to show her a porn shoot and let her help out behind the scenes, Jessica was shocked by how much the reality of shooting pornography varied from her preconceptions. At this shoot, she “fell in love” with the controlled and safe eroticism, self-expression, and creativity afforded by filming pornography. She discusses performing in porn films soon thereafter, and signing a contract with Wicked a full decade after filming her first movie.

Jessica describes the beginning of her work for Wicked as an actress dedicated to her craft, whether she was delivering scripted lines or performing intimate scenes. She explains that her interest in educating the public started when people would approach her with questions about sex during her promotional appearances at adult stores. From their questions, Jessica deduced a real need for education about fundamental elements of human sexuality, so she created her video series, “Jessica Drake’s Guide to Wicked Sex,” to augment her educational talks and workshops, and meet that need for sexual education.

Ethics in the Sex Industry

Jessica shares her perspective on mainstream media, labeling it as condescending towards the porn industry, often using buzzwords like ‘trafficking’ and ‘coercion’ to sensationalize their stories. Despite these stories, she asserts that she’s never seen or heard of anyone being coerced or pressured into doing porn; pointing out that trafficking is not welcomed in the industry at all. She lists the legal documents, contracts, codes of conduct, and proofs of identity that people must complete in order to film for any studio and explains that many groups, from anti-porn feminists to religious fundamentalists have reasons to oppose the porn industry, but is aware their opposition largely stems from misinformation. While she admits that some abuse has happened in the past, she argues that modern performers are more vocal about this although coercive and unethical practices are very rare in the industry and are rooted in hearsay.

Civil Rights of Sex Workers

The rights sex workers should be afforded are basic human rights, according to Jessica. Currently, she explains that lawmakers pass legislation that can endanger the lives and livelihoods of sex workers under the guise of preventing trafficking. She recounts a story in which she was asked to sign a petition to “help poor women in porn” who were being abused. She explains that the porn industry is so marginalized and stigmatized that starting these campaigns is common and often leads to legislation that infringes upon the civil rights of sex workers.

Porn as Sexual Education

Jessica reminds us that the porn industry isn’t responsible for providing sexual education, but she admits that many parents’ reticence to discuss sexuality with their children, and legal restrictions leading to practices such as abstinence-only sex ed, has created a knowledge gap that porn is inadvertently filling. In watching porn, many viewers erroneously expect to be able to emulate what they see and receive the same results shown in porn movies. To combat this misinformation, Jessica explains that she pursued educational credentials to create her series of guides. Her videos have her narration throughout, interviews with the performers, and two or three hardcore demonstrative scenes to highlight the practical applications of the information conveyed. With this she has started building credibility as an educator, with increasing appearances at prestigious educational venues. Due to these appearances, she says that she’s worked to fight the stigma against sex and sex education.

Porn movies, Jessica discusses, usually present a streamlined, polished, finished product. She describes her educational videos as differing by showing the nonlinear and more technical aspects of having sex, like applying lube, putting on condoms, and locating specific places on human bodies. She explains that she’s also educated people about communication during sex, massage, body worship, and navigating sex with plus sized partners.

Creating Senior Sex

Jessica describes meeting and bonding with Joan Price at a conference. Several years later, Jessica invited Joan Price to collaborate with her on Senior Sex, a video that helps senior citizens navigate talking about sex, approach kink, and even find new partners. She discussed her difficulties casting senior sex; she wanted to cast people of color in the film to help the content be relatable to more audiences, but was unable to book any by filming time. Jessica is particularly effusive about senior sex, due to society training people to be repulsed by the idea of wrinkles, old age, and sexuality in old age. She reminds us that we’re all ‘seniors in training’ to help us overcome our cultural prejudices.

Resources for Jessica Drake:

https://www.guidetowickedsex.com

https://twitter.com/thejessicadrake

https://www.instagram.com/jessicadrake/

http://www.wicked.com

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

118: Coming Out – Dr. Christopher Belous

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 20:52:59 GMT

Dr. Belous is an Associate Professor, the Director of the Couple and Family Therapy Center at Purdue University Northwest, and a practicing therapist. He is a certified sex therapist and educator, a certified family life educator, and a certified gay-affirmative psychotherapist. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy and the American Journal of Family Therapy. He is the founding chairperson of the Couples and Intimate Relationships Topical Interest Network and is the treasurer of the Queer and Trans Affirmative Network for the AAMFT. He is a sex and sexuality researcher focusing on social justice and couple and family therapy education and supervision. He has over 20 published works, has given more than 40 presentations at national and international conferences, and has completed 7 different research grants.

The Cass Identity Formation Model

Dr. Belous has done research on the process of coming out and helped people integrate their sexual identity into their holistic concept of themselves. He explains that science has worked to understand the coming out process for years. He gives The Cass Identity Formation Model as an example from the 1970s. Dr. Belous tells us her model begins with ‘confusion,’ the stage where people discover they aren’t heterosexual. ‘Comparison,’ the stage where people decide to act straight or gay, is second. ‘Tolerance’ is the third step; which Chris describes as the stage when people acknowledge their sexuality without fully accepting it. He says that leads to ‘acceptance,’ when a person’s sexual identity is fully accepted, and people start coming out. He tells us the fifth step is called ‘identity pride,’ which is when people become activists, march in parades, and broadcast their sexuality. Her final stage, he explains, is ‘identity synthesis,’ when a person’s sexual identity is integrated with their everyday personality. Chris mentions that this model has many drawbacks, including its presumptions that straight people don’t have to go through sexual identity integration, and its presumption that gay people must believe they’re heterosexual before they realize they’re gay.

A Multidimensional Model of Sexual Identity Formation

Dr. Belous more often works with a multidimensional model of sexual identity formation rooted in social constructionism and developed by Horowitz and Newcomb. He explains that in their model sexual identity is more fluid, and their system is less linear. With the Cass model, people look at their behavior to see where they are on a very linear scale. However, Chris describes Horowitz and Newcomb’s model as referencing behaviors, desires, and experiences to form a coherent but temporary understanding of one’s sexual identity.

The Minority Stress Theory

Chris explains that the minority stress theory was initially developed by Ilan Meyer to describe LGBTQ+ identities, but has expanded to include other minorities like race, ethnicity, and culture. When used in the context of sexual identity it codifies the fact that being LGBTQ+ is more stressful than being cisgender and heterosexual. Dr. Belous relates that the crux of the matter is that gay people have to come out repeatedly and coming out always involves theoretical or actual threats to their emotional, physical, and social safety. Stress is also compounded, Chris tells us, by the need to constantly fight against assumptions due to their sexuality. Mental health concerns like anxiety and depression are much higher in the LGBTQ+ community, and Dr. Belous believes that this theory accounts for that disparity.

Coming Out is More Stressful than Staying Closeted

Chris tells us that research has proven coming out is more stressful than staying closeted. In many parts of the world, he reminds us, coming out means you’re risking your life, while it’s a minor issue elsewhere. He tells us deciding to come out is influenced by their family of origin, personal values, and beliefs, and the environment one lives in. In Dr. Belous’ research men often claimed they had to come out because of the depression, anxiety, irritability, and aggression that resulted from being closeted. Nearly half of the men he interviewed exhibited stereotypically gay traits that made people assume they were gay before they came out.

How to Come Out

Dr. Belous acknowledges that there is a lot of information online about coming out but reminds us that their information is usually based upon one person’s very good or very bad experience with coming out. He encourages people to watch the videos and consider the advice out there, but he reminds us that your own experience of coming out may be very different. His advice is to think about the people in your life to find the person it’s safest to come out to. He says you should look for someone who’s very supportive and an ally of the community. Chris warns that coming out is hardest the first time, and he encourages practicing first, but he emphasizes that you deserve to feel authentic and to be relieved of the weight of this secret.

Coming Out Safely

When helping people come out, Dr. Belous emphasizes safety. Coming out to the wrong parents can lead to being kicked out and starting a downward spiral that leads to drug use and sex work. Those risks mean Chris advises some minors to remain closeted while living with their parents. Waiting until you are taking care of yourself or you have another place to live and sleep if things go wrong is essential.

Impact of Stereotypes on Sexual Identity

Dr. Belous explains that people like to put others into simple, stereotyped categories. He says that when gay men come out, people expect them to fit feminine stereotypes. Similarly, lesbians are expected to be masculine, and women with masculine traits are assumed to be lesbians. He says stereotypes can hinder people’s desire to come out because they can make people feel like they don’t fit in as a gay person when they don’t fulfill those stereotypes.

Chris points out that people who are bisexual, pansexual, demisexual, or any other sexual identity that doesn’t fit in the heterosexual or homosexual box often run into similar problems. They can be rejected by both communities for not choosing one or the other. Bisexuals also suffer from bi-erasure, which Dr. Belous illustrated by describing a bi man in a relationship with a woman. He also explains bi privilege, when happens when bi people are out with their different-sex significant other and have most people recognize their relationship and treat them appropriately, while homosexual men and women are often presumed to be friends or brothers.

Advice for Parents

He advises all parents to think about what values they want to communicate to their child, and what kind of person they want their child to become. Parents also need to identify things that are 100% unacceptable to them. When this happens, Chris says visiting a therapist to make a plan for when those things happen is a good idea, because if you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to react well. He suggests not under or overreacting if your child comes out as a homosexual.

If you suspect your child is gay, be as supportive of the LGBTQ+ community as possible and talk about homosexuality and how it’s okay when it comes up. Those small changes can be enough to make children feel safe coming out. Chris also reminds us that there are completely heterosexual people who interact with the world in ways that mimic gay stereotypes. Those children will frequently be mistaken for homosexuals, and it’s important not to presume your child is homosexual because of stereotypes they personify.

Resources for Christopher Belous:

https://academics.pnw.edu/marriage-family-therapy/member/christopher-k-belous-phd-lmft/

http://www.thebsi.org

https://www.instagram.com/chrisbelous/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

117: Medical Approaches to Women’s Sexual Concerns with Dr. Ashley Fuller

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 17:46:35 GMT

After accumulating nine years of experience working as an obstetrician and gynecologist at Swedish OB/GYN Specialists First Hill, Ashley Fuller transformed her practice into gynecology and sexual health. She claims that she was better able to pursue her passion for women’s sexual health by removing the obstetrics branch of her practice. In her practice she offers checkups, gynecological surgery, and regular exams including pap smears and STD screenings. She aims to help women with sexual and gynecological problems evaluate treatment options and make the best choices for their needs and lifestyles.

Gynecologists are often Ill-prepared for Sexual Health Problems

In her previous practice as an OB/GYN, Dr. Fuller would have women present with sexual health problems such as low libido. While managing women’s sexual health is an important part of gynecological practice, the treatment of sexual health issues related to the vulva are not covered with any depth in residencies or medical training programs. Because of this oversight, Ashley says that when women asked her about sexual health problems, she frequently didn’t know how to help them. In an effort to fulfill this need of her patients, Ashley shifted her focus from obstetrics and gynecology to gynecology and sexual health.

Evaluating Low Libido in Premenopausal Women

While menopause does affect libido, when a premenopausal woman presents with low libido, Dr Fuller begins by having her patient fill out the Decreased Sexual Desire Screener (DSDS), a worksheet that asks about SSRI use, possible relationship problems, painful sex, stress and fatigue, and several other common causes of sexual dysfunction in women. Ashley points out that not all of the possible causes are physical, and in those cases, she often refers patients to a therapist or sex therapist. Some causes of sexual dysfunction are physical, and in those cases, medication, hormone treatments, or other tangible interventions may be needed. The great news is Ashley tells us about libido treatment for pre- and post-menopausal women! Tune in for the details!

How Giving Birth Impacts Libido

Dr. Fuller lists several bodily and environmental changes involved with giving birth that negatively influence libido. As physical causes go, Ashley explains that breastfeeding women often have a very dry vagina, which can cause unpleasant or painful sex, and being postpartum entails hormonal changes that can lower libido. Psychosocial factors change the relationship between partners, as newborns often require nighttime care and fail to sleep through the night, leading to parental fatigue and increased stress.

Mental Health Influences Libido

Ashley mentions that depression and the SSRIs that treat it can both reduce libido. She looks for chronic opioid use and addiction issues, obesity, poor body image, and even poor heart health, all of which can contribute to low libido and need to be treated before hormone therapy should be attempted.

Painful Sex

We learn that tight muscles in the pelvic floor can cause pain upon deeper penetration. When the muscular source of pain is found, physical therapy is often helpful. Ashley also suggests the Ohnut to allow for shallower penetration, and she says that women with this problem can improve with physical therapy.

Psychological Treatment

Dr. Fuller finds that many of her patients have psychological issues that influence their pain levels. Ashley emphasizes that she isn’t saying their pain is imaginary, but she believes pain influences our psychology. “When you know something is going to hurt, she says it’s natural to tense up, but tensing up also activates the pelvic muscles, causing pain during intercourse.” The secret is to relax!

Vulvar Pain Causes and Treatment

Ashley treats a lot of patients with vulvodynia. She says it often stems from hormone changes, especially hormone changes that appear around menopause. Birth control pills can also lead to very low testosterone levels and cause vulvar pain while some vulvar pain stems from an immune cascade where an overactive immune system attacks the vulva, causing inflammation. She warns that it can be a long path to significant relief, but she enjoys the process of treatment and is grateful for the opportunity to change her patients’ lives for the better.

Resources for Ashley Fuller:

https://www.swedish.org/swedish-physicians/profile.aspx?name=ashley+e+fuller&id=157760

https://www.swedish.org/locations/swedish-ob-gyn-specialists-first-hill

https://www.sexhealthmatters.org/resources/decreased-sexual-desire-screener

https://addyi.com/addyi/

https://ohnut.co

https://www.orilissa.com/

https://www.lupronped.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

116: Sexual Authenticity – Domina Franco

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 18:14:29 GMT

Domina Franco is a New York City based sex educator, coach, and writer. Franco completed her Masters in Human Sexuality at Widener University and helps clients of all genders and orientations clarify, explore and enhance their sex lives. She guest lectures at universities around the country and provides one-on-one coaching as well as trainings and workshops that cover pleasure exploration, empowerment, kink and alternative relationship models.

Defining Sexual Authenticity

Domina defines sexual authenticity as approaching your sexuality in a way that’s true to your desires while honoring what you need, what you want, and your boundaries. She warns that it requires a lot of honesty with yourself and others, both of which can be difficult.

Unpacking Hang-ups

“People don’t give themselves enough credit for acting against social norms.” Domina says accepting ourselves and our sexual selves despite cultural resistance requires courage and involves the hard work of cultural unpacking. She admits that overcoming stigma and shame takes a lot of courage.

Many people, Domina reminds us, were raised in conservative social or religious groups, and beliefs about sex, gender, and sexuality inherited from those groups can create lifelong hang-ups. Even people who don’t come from conservative backgrounds can have hang-ups, she admits, but regardless of your hang-ups or their origin, she insists that it’s imperative to get in touch with your genuine needs and align yourself with your authentic sexuality.

Not Accepting Your Sexuality Divorces You from Your Partners

Even if it’s condemned by social norms, Domina believes it’s important to accept or, better, rejoice in our sexuality. If we can’t do that, she warns that sex will be unfulfilling. She further warns us that if our genuine sexuality is too different from what we act out in reality, we may be traumatized by the sex we force ourselves to endure.

She believes sex is about connection, but we pull away and compartmentalize our true emotions when we engage in sex acts that we don’t find fulfilling. When we aren’t present and attentive during sex, we aren’t just pulling away, we’re also growing more distant from our partners, which she says defeats the relationship-building purpose of sex.

Sex is Something We Learn to Do Safely

Domina warns that your first few times authentically expressing your sexuality may not grant you the full connectivity found in sex either, because it can be difficult to relax into activities that society condemns or stigmatizes, but embracing and acting upon your true sexual desires allows for the vulnerability and joy that create emotional connections between people. In short, she assures us that the connection and enjoyment will improve with time and practice.

Human Sexuality is Relative

We hear what Domina things about this when she asserts that everything is relative, “Somebody’s flogging and needle play is somebody else’s doggy style.” But despite these differences, she makes it clear that ‘vanilla shaming’ people is not okay while reinforcing the fact that there’s no hierarchy of sexual desires, and it doesn’t make sense to compare human sexuality in that way. Knowing that everyone—including you—deserves to be sexually fulfilled is what’s most important.

Embracing Truth Can Change Your Relationship

You need to roll the dice and share your sexual truth if you want to be fulfilled. The alternative is being perpetually unsatisfied, according to Domina. She acknowledges that this can be scary but reminds that courage is acting while feeling fear. Domina always hopes that people find the mustard seed of courage they need to pursue their true desires.

Talking about Sexual Goals with Your Partner

Once you know your authentic self, she says, you can speak your truth. She tells us we can start speaking our truth in a place as safe and impersonal as an online community, but she believes that sharing your truth with someone who’s important to you in person is more helpful.

Many of her clients don’t feel comfortable talking about their fantasies face-to-face, even with their partners. Sometimes her clients write letters or emails to their partners to get around this limitation but face-to-face discussions, Domina explains, should take place in a neutral, nonjudgmental, accepting environment. She says both parties should be sober, fully clothed, and in a receptive mood. The conversation should provide a safe space for both of you to air your desires, and both parties must aim to accept what the other says, even if they can’t meet all the needs voiced.

Sometimes Partners Can’t Meet Our Needs

Heartwarming stories of acceptance are great, but Domina admits that not everyone is accepted when they decide to be authentic. She reminds us that some partners do not want to participate in our kinks. Just like not everyone shares the same taste in food, not all partners are going to be okay with everything we want to try sexually.

Being Single While Exploring Your Sexuality

Domina wants to point out that doing this can be harder when you’re single because you’ll be having a lot of conversations with a lot of different people who will have a lot of different reactions. However, the only way to meet people who can fulfill your sexual needs is to keep sharing and being open about your sexuality. On a good note, she points out the experience gained by being open with new people will quickly raise your confidence, making it much easier to discuss sexual matters with potential partners.

Resources for Domina Franco:

http://www.dominafranco.com

https://www.instagram.com/domina_franco for Q&As on Mondays

https://www.twitter.com/Domina_Franco

https://www.facebook.com/DominaFrancoCoach

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

115: Creating Relationship Satisfaction – Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 21:25:41 GMT

Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh is a global thought leader in psychosexual therapy, couple counseling, and social psychology. A former member of the International Federation of Journalists, Dr. Sara combined her journalism experience with her expertise in sexuality and relationships, to host a program called Whispers for the BBC World Service. The show received the BBC’s Innovation of the Year Award in 2007 and continues to gather Farsi-speaking viewers around the world. In 2007, she earned the World Association for Sexual Health runner-up award for Excellence and Innovation for her human development work. Harper’s Bazaar named her as one of the Best Love Doctors, and DatingAdvice.com named her one of the 10 Best Sex and Dating Experts in 2015.

She is the author of three books in English: Orgasm Answer Guide, Sexual Health Needs and Preferences of Young People, and Wheel of Context for Sexuality Education. Recently, she developed the Emergent Love model as an antidote to Love Confusion and the design of a validated inventory called the Relationship Panoramic Inventory to help couples assess and develop their relationships. Her personal and professional life is defined by her goal of creating world peace one relationship at a time.

Types of Love

Dr. Sara explains that there are several types of love. Eros is the passionate, romantic love we usually think about. Philia is the affectionate love we feel for family members. Storge is friendship love, Ludus is game-playing love, Mania is possessive love, Pragma is practical love, Philautia is self-love, and Agape is selfless love. She suggests listeners take the Love Attitudes Scale test to find out what types of love show up in their relationships. In her practice, she found that a lot of couples who scored highly in the Philia aspect of their relationship came to her with the statement, “I love my partner, but I’m not in love with my partner.” Dr. Sara believes that it’s useful to be aware of these different types of love, as it can clarify the fact that people truly do love their partners, even if their current love feels different than it did initially.

Dr. Sara’s contribution to the realm of love and sex is making the distinction between submergent and emergent love in relationships. Submergent love happens when two people need to spend a lot of time together and are over the moon when they’re with each other, she tells us, and emergent love is the developed, calmer love that comes after partners know each other better.

What if You Don’t Feel Butterflies when They Walk in the Room?

Dr. Sara explains that Helen Fisher researched this infatuated, honeymoon period of love and found out that it lasts, on average, two years. According to Dr. Sara, this early, submergent stage is something to build up the relationship from, not an experience meant to be sustained indefinitely. She also mentions that submergent love isn’t necessary to create a fulfilling romantic relationship, and people shouldn’t feel bad for not feeling that way about their partner. Many people she consults worry because they don’t feel butterflies or intense passion, and it makes them wonder if they’re supposed to feel their love in their heart and ‘just know’ if a person is right for them. Dr. Sara shares her distinction between submergent and emergent love helps people better understand these foundations of love “it is something you do, not something that happens to you that you have no control over.”

Five Ingredients of Emergent Love

Dr. Sara spent time studying 312 relationships to discern what qualities were important to couples who were not only happy but thriving in their current relationships. The five ingredients that they shared are a shared vision, compassion/empathy, physical attraction, respect, and shared values. This research is where she says she learned that romantic, passionate, submergent love was not necessary, and that even couples who began with that kind of love moved beyond it and developed a different kind of love that John Gottman calls compassionate love.

Individual Traits Conducive to Emergent Love

In an attempt to generalize and solidify her findings, she created a study that surveyed 306 US individuals and 159 US couples who rated their relationships from satisfied to thriving. She reports that they had people of many orientations and relationship types, and they controlled for educational level, economic background, and some other variables. She found four levels of identifiers of satisfying relationships, the first of which was individual fundamentals. She teaches us about this first identifier by comparing love to dancing; we dance with partners, but before we can dance, we have to do things like stretching to avoid getting hurt and make it easier to dance. Individual fundamentals are the ‘stretching’ portion of finding love, which she describes as the ability to connect moral values, have positive thoughts and emotions, be present and mindful, have a healthy financial attitude, and be capable of abstract thinking. While some of her clients insisted that if these were the requirements, they could never develop those healthy traits well enough to sustain a healthy relationship, Dr. Sara considers these findings to be a source of hope, because each trait can be improved and developed with the help of a therapist.

Non-negotiable Traits of Sustainable Relationships

The next level of requirements she found are dyadic fundamentals, Dr. Sara calls them non-negotiable objects that must exist between the two partners. It’s important to note that these fundamentals can be improved. She lists mutual physical attraction, shared vision, shared moral values, and shared financial attitudes as the necessary elements asserting that financial attitude factor was something she investigated more deeply to discover if it was not having money or merely people’s attitudes towards money that had to be compatible, and the research showed that it was the attitudes that actually mattered.

Interpersonal Dynamics

Respect, compassion, love, commitment, and trust are the five aspects of the third dyadic fundamental which she calls interpersonal dynamics. According to Dr. Sara, these are all choices we make on a daily basis. She says we choose to be loving towards others, to be worthy of respect, to be trustworthy, etc., and these choices and actions produce the love, respect, and trust we desire from our partners. She notes that while these are all verbs, and they’re all things we can do, they’re also things that we don’t only do in our relationships, but in the world at large. In other words, they’re also states of being. She clarifies that this is also a hopeful reality because therapists can help people attain those traits as well.

Relationship Outcomes

Dr. Sara describes this aspect of emergent love as indicating good results on the individual level. The results she includes are overall satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, better self-care, better sleep, less anxiety, and less preoccupation with their partners and the relationship in general. When people find these traits growing during a relationship, she says people can be certain they’re on the right path.

Physical Attraction

Dr. Sara believes that physical attraction is largely socially constructed and thinks it’s important to deconstruct where our attraction comes from, who told us to be attracted to certain things, and how you’re approaching attraction. After you do this, she believes that we can be freed from these preconceptions and be attracted to more traits and types of people. She also emphasizes that it’s important to find yourself attractive so that you don’t project the feeling of being unattractive onto your partner. Once you deconstruct and move past your barriers to physical attraction, she says that once you have physical attraction, you also need sexual chemistry and the ability to move that towards sexual harmony, where you actually work well together physically.

How Can People Integrate Dr. Sara’s Knowledge into Their Lives?

Dr. Sara suggests starting with the survey she created called the Relationship Panoramic Questionnaire or the love attitudes scale and taking the results of the surveys to a therapist who will know how to interpret it and help them implement the necessary changes. She also recommends watching The Anatomy of Trust by Brené Brown with your partner, so that you can better understand and build trust in your relationship.

Resources for Dr. Sarah Nasserzadeh:

https://bettersexpodcast.com/dr-sara-nasserzadeh-new-perspective-passion

https://www.sara-nasserzadeh.com

https://www.bbc.com/persian/tv-and-radio-40532793

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/orgasm-answer-guide

https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/6278/1/Nasserzadeh-Understanding_the_sexual_health_information_needs…..pdf

https://www.wheelofcontext.com

https://relationship-panoramic.com

https://fetzer.org/sites/default/files/images/stories/pdf/selfmeasures/Different_Types_of_Love_LOVE_ATTITUDES.pdf

https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/the-anatomy-of-trust-by-brene-brown

https://twitter.com/dr_sara_

https://www.facebook.com/Dr.SaraNasserzadeh/

https://www.instagram.com/dr.saranasserzadeh/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

114: Permission; Finding Your Libido – Lauren White

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 23:31:52 GMT

Lauren is a qualified sexologist and permission-granter who helps her clients reduce stress and reinvigorate their sex lives. Through her writing, online classes, and one-on-one sessions, she helps high-achieving, introverted women release their physical and psychological blocks to liberate their libidos for sex and life. She is the author of Permission: Personal Liberation for Switched-on Women.

Defining Libido

Lauren takes her definition of libido from Alisa Vitti, the author of Woman Code, who defined libido as “the ability to give and receive pleasure, enjoyment, and acknowledgement.” Using this definition, she’s free to acknowledge nonsexual actions as integral stimulators of her libido. She shares examples of planting her feet in nature, brushing her children’s hair, and working towards and achieving goals as libidinous activities that help her drop into softness and feel powerful in a giving way. Her definition of libido is “a sort of energy that we gain familiarity with and exercise whenever we take part in sensual giving or receiving that becomes easier to channel the more we access it.”

She mentions that her broader definition of libido takes the focus away from exclusively desiring the really passionate, intense, sexual forms of libido, and encourages us to focus on smaller, softer, more day-to-day manifestations of libido. She tells us that focusing exclusively on our desire for intense desire, especially in circumstances that aren’t favorable to it, leads to a loop of dissatisfaction that can make us frustrated while focusing on tinier pleasures can help us escape that frustration loop and clears the way for us to experience the bigger, more passionate emotions.

Women are Held Back by Doing Too Much

Lauren argues that the need women feel to spread themselves thin doesn’t leave a lot of room for the erotic and sexual. While she admits women are good at juggling obligations and multitasking, she thinks a disservice is done when women mistakenly internalize “I can do anything” as “I can do everything” or, worse, “I should do everything.”

Lauren advises women to sit down and make conscious choices about where their energy—their libido—is going. She encourages people to keep doing what they’re doing if it’s fruitful and fulfilling. However, she claims that if there’s a cost to the activity, it’s better to focus on things like personal relationships that you genuinely need to invest in. She says it’s also important not to fall so deeply into work or hobbies that you forget to keep dating.

How to Identify a Withered Libido

In Lauren’s experience, withered libidos usually come to light when women’s partners turn to them and ask why their sex life diminished. For a lot of the women she sees, their loss of libido began with a valid cause, like grief or the loss of a pregnancy, but then refraining from sex became a habit until their partner brought it to their attention. Other times, she sees women who notice their own loss of libido when something in a movie or their friends’ lives brings their loss of vitality to their attention. Gentle wake up calls that remind them of the confident women they used to be do happen, but usually when people have a partner, their partner is the one who brings up the topic.

“I don’t care if I never have sex again.”

Many women who come to see Lauren do not care about sex anymore. She recalls that for many women who have lost their drive for sex, their drive for other activities and their basic sensuality has evaporated simultaneously. She says it’s rare for the sex drive to diminish all by itself, usually lots of other joyous, playful, and pleasantly purposeless activity is also absent. Fun is usually missing too, which she claims is important, because all of those nonsexual indicators of a lack of libido also need to be worked on to reignite women’s sexual libidos. She asserts that it’s never just about sex.

Balancing Masculine and Feminine Energy

In the workplace, Lauren explains, a lot of women learn to act more masculine as a result of working hard and disconnecting from their emotions. Many women wind up with what she calls a very ‘masculine’ energy that is opposed to the physical and metaphorical opening of oneself that’s necessary during sex. She says that even our personal goals like gym routines and strict regimens in our hobbies can encourage the same masculine energy, and women need to balance that with the soft, supple, flowing and accepting nature of femininity. She emphasizes that women don’t have to just be feminine. Masculine energy is great, she explains, but a balance is necessary.

How to Nurture Your Libido

Every human, Lauren asserts, even people who are petrified of change, wants to know that they’re growing and changing in some way. People want to look back and see progress, not a stagnant, repetitive blur or a confirmation that they were too scared to try for something new. She’s certain people want more than that.

Lauren learned from Emily Nagoski that when we move our bodies, we’re letting our bodies know that they’re safe. She explains that we often try to tell ourselves we’re safe or sexual or erotic mentally first, and that’s part of the puzzle, but our bodies won’t respond that way until we act. She doesn’t suggest people jump right into sex, but dance lets you engage in a lot of different movements, including sensual, almost sexual hip movements. She says that can connect you to your sensual, erotic side without throwing yourself into a situation as vulnerable as actually having sex. She reminds us that we usually wait for a feeling and then act on that, but she says that what we need to do is move our bodies first, and then the feelings will come.

Another method she suggests to help your libido flourish is paying attention to the small things in life, and focusing on everyday experiences. She admits that most of the time, most of us are running on autopilot, but says that being mindful of our surroundings, our everyday experiences, and even little details like how we breathe can show us the many, little enjoyable things we were missing. She emphasizes that it doesn’t take big things like luxury purchases and foreign vacations to have a great experience; she reminds us that we can and should accomplish that on a daily basis. The ultimate goal is to get better at caring for ourselves, which she claims we can accomplish by trying new things and continuing to do the ones we enjoy. This lets us enter a flow state, which she describes as the state where you’re losing track of time, completely absorbed in what you’re doing, with your nervous system balanced and happy; this is a state normally attained in good sex, but Lauren suggests that it’s just as important to pursue and enjoy that feeling during daylight hours.

Objections to Overcome

While women often insist they do not have time, Lauren discovered that women were afraid of failing at seeking pleasure, or that they were going to fail when doing things without a predictable outcome. Some of her clients even worried what will happen if it did work! She reminds us that when we were children, we had a natural curiosity about the ‘what if’s in life, while as an adult they hold us back. Also, as children, she knows that we played for the act of playing, instead of to reach an outcome. We learn that as adults we expect to feel satisfied when we finish projects, but she points out that we never really reach that state of happiness.

When time really is the obstacle, Lauren wants people to know that in most situations, time can be made. Making time might involve learning to say no and refusing to take care of everyone except yourself. “We are entitled to take care of ourselves, our needs are important, and we are allowed to relax and make ourselves happy.”

The Role of Permission

Ms. White tells us that permission is wound through everything she’s saying here and in her book, because it’s important for everyone to give themselves permission to show up in life and sex in a way that works for them, without worrying about what other people are doing or expect. She emphasizes that it’s about figuring out what to subtract from and add to our lives. She explains that it’s about acknowledging who you are and what you like to enjoy in your life inside and outside of the bedroom.

How to Find Out More

Her book, Permission, is available worldwide at every online book merchant. Lauren is based in Brisbane, Australia, but she works with people online. She can be contacted on social media using the handle LaurenWhiteAU.

Resources for Lauren White

https://www.laurenwhite.com.au

https://www.instagram.com/laurenwhiteau

https://www.facebook.com/laurenwhiteau

https://www.amazon.com/Permission-Personal-liberation-switched-women-ebook/dp/B07H512SBS

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

113: Premature Ejaculation and Treatment – Jeff Abraham

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 20:28:33 GMT

Jeff Abraham is a man dedicated to doing the right thing. After winning a court case against Hyundai who asked him to actively discriminate against female and African American candidates in 1999, he moved to Promescent as CEO, a company founded by his late friend, Dr. Ronald Gilbert. Jeff has continued his legacy by fulfilling his companies dreams in his honor. In addition to this Jeff has spent the last decade advocating sexual health and wellness by educating the public on the importance of intimacy and how to resolve common sexual dysfunctions.

Premature Ejaculation Can Cause Erectile Dysfunction

Jeff learned that 10% to 15% of erectile dysfunction cases are misdiagnosed cases of premature ejaculation. He clarifies that premature ejaculation is diagnosed when a man suffers from a complete inability to have sex, masturbate, or engage in oral or anal sex for more than 90 seconds without ejaculating. He explains that having clinical PE often causes erectile dysfunction, as when men are aware that PE is going to be the result of sexual play, anxiety can prevent an erection from forming. He says clinicians often diagnose this as ED, but as treating the PE would also cure the ED, a PE diagnosis and treatment is more correct.

Healthy Male and Female Climaxes, “The Orgasm Gap.”

According to Jeff, a healthy male climaxes after an average of five minutes of sexual stimulation. Meanwhile, he reports that women who are capable of orgasms from penetration take an average of 18 minutes of thrusting to reach orgasm. This gap in climaxes is called the “arousal gap” or “orgasm gap” among sex therapists and neurologists. He points out that even healthy males have good reason to want to last longer, even if they don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for PE. He hopes that treatment for longer-lasting sex becomes more respected and acknowledged by the medical community.

Causes of Premature Ejaculation

Jeff reminds us that premature ejaculation has been needlessly stigmatized. People claim that men ejaculate early due to not caring enough about their partners or not having the mental fortitude to wait longer to orgasm. Jeff admits that some cases of premature ejaculation are psychological in nature, but he lists hypersensitive penile nerves, prostatitis, and low testosterone as some of the physical causes of the condition. Due to the number of physical causes of PE, he hopes that we can reject the notion that men with PE don’t care about their partners or that they’re mentally weak. PE is a problem with physical roots and as real and treatable as diabetes or cancer. He advocates a combination of behavioral therapy and products like Promescent or SSRIs to help men build confidence and overcome their physical and psychological difficulties.

Consequences of Premature Ejaculation

Jeff points out that PE destroys men’s confidence and limits their ability to satisfy their partners. This lack of confidence, he suggests, isn’t confined to the bedroom, but extends to all aspects of life. He calls it the layering effect, which he describes as a sort of chain reaction. In the layering effect he describes, PE can lead to lowered sexual confidence, which leads to being less amorous, which leads to the PE sufferer’s partner feeling unattractive due to the lack of sexual attention, and finally leads to a disconnect between the members of the couple. He says he’s seen this happen over and over again, all without people realizing that the root of their problems is a single, treatable issue. Jeff advises men not to avoid sex due to PE, pointing out that this leads to men having less control over his own ejaculation, and creates a less pleasant sexual experience than the couple had before.

How to Approach Your Partner About PE

When approached by women on how to tackle PE with their partners, Jeff suggests setting up a special date night with any sexual accessories you and your partner find enjoyable. He goes on to suggest offering Promescent to your partner as one way to enhance the evening, noting this works better than discussing the problem directly. Jeff shares that this method allows the use of Promescent to be physically and figuratively within your partner’s control, a circumstance that he asserts is important for men. When couples use his method, he claims it’s often the case that men will try the product, see that it works and improves the experience, and will usually decide to use it more often to enjoy their sex lives consistently.

How Promescent Works

Unlike its competitor products, which numb the area, this new treatment uses a specific formulation of lidocaine, to create a eutectic formula that can penetrate the outer layer of the skin and be deposited in the fatty tissue underneath the skin, where it can help to better control ejaculation. While the product may have a medicinal aftertaste, he says they’re working on neutral, coconut, and citrus flavors to remedy that problem right now.

Who Should Use Promescent

Jeff emphasizes that the product is for couples, not just men. Sex, he implies, affords a level of intimacy that’s important in relationships, and Promescent is just one product that can help that emotional and physical intimacy last longer. He observes that sex is a huge part of life and reiterates that if you’re not confident and don’t feel good about it, you need to do something or see someone. “Just like we have personal trainers for fitness and coaches for businessmen”, he remarks, “sex therapists are an important part of human health and wellness.”

Jeff talks about how men feel the need to hold off climaxing, and he discusses the fact that their desire to last longer provokes a lot of anxiety. He doesn’t believe that intimacy should be about anxiety, it should be an enjoyable experience, and making it easier for men to last longer facilitates that for both parties.

How Credible Are Promescent’s Claims?

Jeff is proud to share that Promescent is the most recommended treatment by Urologists today. He’s equally proud of the fact that Promescent was found to have statistically significant results in an Institutional Review Board certified study. These elements differentiate their product from the competition by building credibility that can be relayed through physicians or by patients self-diagnosing PE online.

Where Can I Get The Product?

www.promescent.com

eBay.com

amazon.com

Target (in-store)

walmart.com

Some independent pharmacies, urologists, and therapists also carry it.

Claim your free code for a 15% discount: bettersex15

Resources for Jeff Abraham:

https://www.promescent.com/

https://www.promescent.com/expert-reviews-perspectives

Discount code: bettersex15

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

112: Hip Injuries Can Cause Sexual Pain – Dr. Ben Domb

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 22:32:31 GMT

Benjamin Domb, M.D. is the Founder, Medical Director, and Orthopedic Surgeon at American Hip Institute & Orthopedic Specialists. His group pioneers advanced, comprehensive, and non-invasive treatments in a mission to cure hip pain. AHI uses Hip Arthroscopy, Robotics, Resurfacing, and Regenerative Medicine to treat hip pain in their Chicago office. Now Benjamin is reaching out to discuss the ways that hip pain can create and contribute to pain during sex.

Painful Intercourse Can Be Caused By Hip Problems

Benjamin notes that when women feel pain during intercourse, their first impulse is to head to the gynecologist. He admits this is sensible, because there are a lot of ways that gynecological problems can lead to pain during intercourse. While a gynecologist is the first step, Dr. Domb hopes women will learn that hip injuries are another, nongynecological cause of pain during sex. He explains that the pain during sex happens when the hip is brought to its endpoint of motion, where the hip bone meets the hip joint, stating that pain occurs when bones grind against bones, or when impingement occurs. Dr. Domb emphasizes that hip pain felt during sex is nothing to be embarrassed about as many women feel pain during intercourse. He reminds us that it’s both common and treatable.

How Localized is Hip Pain?

Dr. Domb shares that, unfortunately, the body isn’t very good at keeping hip pain localized, which contributes to the wrong diagnoses people tend to get before their hip pain is identified correctly. According to Benjamin, hip pain can be referred to several locations, including the groin, vulva, penis, or even the abdomen.

Doctors Often Don’t Realize Hip Injuries are Causing Groin Pain

Gynecologists often don’t consider the possibility of hip injuries causing groin pain, according to Dr. Domb. He tells us that isn’t a bad thing; each specialty in medicine is very focused, and rarely understands things outside of their particular discipline’s scope, but he encourages physicians to learn about causes of discomfort that interact with their discipline more often. Currently, 60% of people he treats for hip injuries were initially misdiagnosed and took an average of seven months to receive a correct diagnosis.

Men Can Also Feel Hip Pain in the Groin

Benjamin clarifies that this isn’t exclusively a female problem. Men also present with pain in the penis or testicles when they really have hip problems. Often, he observes, men in those conditions see a urologist as their first step.

How are Incorrectly Diagnosed Patients Treated?

Some patients he’s seen have gone through treatments or even have surgery for conditions like endometriosis or hernias they don’t have thanks to their referred pain. He conveys that one in five of his patients were recommended surgery for conditions they did not have due to their undiagnosed hip trouble. The patients themselves are often the ones who figure out their problem is rooted in the hips, he reports, as they’re best able to notice what movements and situations exacerbate the pain.

How Labrums are Torn

One of the more common hip injuries that cause painful intercourse are torn labrums (the cartilage rings around the hip socket). Dr. Domb has found that slight abnormalities in the shape of the hip bone or socket wear away or injure the cartilage and cause pain. Most of us have hips that fit imperfectly in the socket, making these injuries a common sight for Dr. Domb. Sometimes these injuries are caused by discrete events like sports, but usually he sees people whose joints are damaged slowly over time.

How to Prevent Hip Injuries

Benjamin reminds us that not everyone is built the same way, and different people will be able to tolerate different degrees of hip extension. According to him, everyone should accommodate how they are built and not push hip extension past a reasonably comfortable point. Stretching for flexibility can be bad advice, even when range is only limited on one side. Dr Domb advises us to stay within our limits to prevent hip injuries.

Treatments for Hip Injuries

Dr. Domb tries to avoid surgery with his patients. Physical therapy and injections (including biologic injections) are where Dr. Domb begins treatment, though he will perform arthroscopic surgery when milder interventions don’t provide sufficient relief. He describes arthroscopic surgery as inserting a camera into a keyhole sized incision to relieve impingement, repair a torn labrum, and even improve his patients’ range of motion. He assures us this is a quick procedure that allows his patients to return home and live an active life that same day. He explains that even in the case of a torn labrum, physical therapy won’t heal the tear, but he hopes that strengthening hip muscles, learning to avoid painful positions, and stabilizing the area may allow people to live their lives with a torn labrum without pain.

How Common is Recurrence of the Problem After Surgery?

Benjamin informs us that 95% of people who receive arthroscopic surgery don’t have a recurrence within the first two years. But, he adds, people who need surgery in one hip are more likely to need surgery in the other hip eventually. He always counsels his clients on this possibility in the hope of catching it early if the other hip develops problems.

Resources and Links for Dr. Benjamin Domb

http://www.americanhipinstitute.com: lists resources and screening centers all over the country to help prevent and treat hip injuries. They also do remote consultations.

https://www.benjamindombmd.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

111: Advocating for LGBTQ Youth in School – Michelle Belke

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 19:41:05 GMT

Michelle Belke currently works as a Mental Health School Counsellor at an independent school in Metro Detroit, Michigan. She has a part-time private practice in psychotherapy and sex therapy in Birmingham, Michigan. In her school setting, Michelle does a lot to make students feel comfortable coming to her and discussing sexuality and sexual identity, such as decorating her office with pride symbols and doing outreach through the school, and even setting up the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) and that a surprisingly large amount of her work for the school deals with LGBTQ+ issues and concerns.

Forming Gay-Straight Alliances

She shares that the GSA she and some students created at her school, is not an official Gay-Straight Alliance, but it serves the same purpose. Belke mentions that Gay-Straight Alliances are a key element in helping sexual minorities feel safe while on school grounds especially for transgender students but to all LGBTQ+ students in a broader sense, the risk of violence and suicide is much higher than in the general population. Michelle believes a GSA creates a safe space to discuss and find support amongst other LGBTQ+ students and allies, increasing the feeling of safety marginalized students can feel on school property. According to Belke, independent schools can be more conservative than public schools. In her case, establishing a GSA necessitated a group of students directly approaching the administration in person and making a case for the group’s establishment. Belke is careful to make clear that a GSA isn’t for talking about sex all the time but is meant to establish a safe place for sexual minorities.

The Student Counseling Interview Process

Michelle openly tells us that she’s often the first person LGBTQ+ students at her school speak to about their sexual identity. When speaking with people in these groups, she suggests listening without judgement, moving at the student’s pace, and reinforcing the confidential status of the counselling relationship. When young people are discussing their identities, Michelle is always sure to ask them what those identities mean to them, and often begins by asking how living as that identity feels to them. She also covers what to do about parental involvement with the student, whether it’s informing the parents of their child’s identity (with permission!), finding ways to resolve sexuality-based problems children are having with their parents or educating the parents about ways to be more supportive or involved.

Gender Pronouns and Their Use

Michelle discusses multiple points of interest when talking with students about their pronouns. Her first step is to introduce her identity and mention her pronouns before asking for the student’s pronouns. Then she asks which pronouns the students use—not which pronouns they prefer, but which pronouns they use—because their identity is not a preference. We learn that acknowledging pronouns is a profound way to establish respect and demonstrate acceptance. Our dominant culture can be very binary, Michelle highlights the importance of not pigeonholing your children into these identities, clothing items, occupations and manners of play that may not be appropriate for them. She reminds us that people may not only be transgender, but they might also be gender nonconforming or not identify with the concept of gender at all. She mentions gender-neutral pronouns as a solution to these issues. Despite advocating for the importance of showing respect by considering others’ pronouns, she admits that pronouns can be hard for parents and teachers to remember all the time. Her advice if you forget, is to own the mistake, apologize, correct yourself, and try to do better next time.

Is it a Phase?

Michelle says that regardless of whether a sexual or gender identity sticks for life, the important thing is validating and accepting where the students are when they speak to you. Michelle reminds us that though the mainstream culture remains very binary, up to 50% of young people don’t identify as strictly heterosexual and cisgender. Modern life, especially for the young, has a broad spectrum—Michelle calls it a swirly spiral—of different identities, allowing for much more nuanced self-expression than has previously existed.

The Four Areas of Human Sexuality

She categorizes sexuality and gender identity into four main categories that, together, allow for a nuanced view of individual experiences. One that she mentions is biological sex at birth, one is sexual orientation, one is gender identity, and the last is gender expression. She says biological sex is assigned, but gender identity is what a person privately feels their identity is, and gender expression is their public presentation of gender. Lastly, there is sexual orientation, which she describes as being determined by who we’re attracted to emotionally and physically. Michelle emphasizes that these are discrete categories, and we can’t assume anything about a person’s sexuality or gender identity from their gender expression or any other discrete aspect of their expression or identity.

Finding a Therapist for LGBTQ+ Youth

Michelle says that employing a therapist can be a good way to reduce friction and increase support from families. Michelle will help her students find counselors for themselves by discussing their parents’ insurance, looking through listings together, and trying to match students to providers based upon the needs they have. She says the most important thing is keeping the young person in the driver’s seat to facilitate their connection with their new therapist.

LGBTQ+ Students are at Increased Risk

Referencing a survey done by the CDC called the Youth Risk Behaviour Survey in 2017, Michelle notes that LGBTQ+ children are 30% more likely to be bullied. She says they are more likely to be involved in violent situations at school and they’re at higher risk for suicide, drug abuse, and other mental health concerns that can cause them to miss school. According to the CDC, 27% of LGBTQ+ youth feel unsafe at school. Michelle is excited that these surveys are increasingly including transgender youth in their statistics-gathering. According to the survey, 35% of transgender youth are being bullied and 35% attempt suicide.

How do we make LGBTQ+ students feel safe?

While Michelle advocates mental health providers in schools as the frontline of support; and finds that sometimes those are the teachers. Counselors and others must be culturally aware, mindful, and trained to handle LGBTQ+ concerns. Michelle has found success by building an affirming, inclusive office with pride symbols and an open atmosphere. She says counselors also need to create evidence-based policies and procedures and different activities to create a healthy environment for diverse populations.

Teachers need to be mindful of the language they use and to avoid making assumptions about their students. For example, one girl felt invalidated in her French class when the teacher assumed she’d want to have a boyfriend for the practice exercises; it’s a good idea not to assume sexuality and gender-based upon presented gender. Michelle urges teachers to manage bullying in the classroom environment.

Setting up a GSA is one move she recommends making school feel safer for LGBTQ+ youth. Michelle says the group not only helps people feel safe, but it also brings students together to create change and peer-education materials themselves. The key, in her opinion, is nurturing a universally accepting and respectful environment, even when it comes to the curriculum, dress code, and uniform assignment. Different states have different resources to employ, but she says even students working alone in their GSA can create the necessary ripple effect with their actions.

Resources for Michelle Belke:

Michelle is a clinical social worker with a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, School of Social Work. She completed a 2-year post-graduate social work fellowship at the University of Michigan, Department of Psychiatry in Adult and Child Psychiatry. She attended the University of Michigan, Sexual Health Certificate Program and is a certified sex therapist through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counsellors, and Therapists (AASECT).

Teaching Tolerance Site & Newsletter: https://www.tolerance.org

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

110: Your Conscious Sexual Self – Melissa Fritchle

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 19:42:20 GMT

My guest is Melissa Fritchle. She has developed The Conscious Sexual Self Workbook, she is a mindfulness meditation teacher, a Holistic Sex Therapist, is an educator and workshop leader, and that’s just a few of her qualifications.

Within this episode, she shares a lot of wisdom about communication between partners, mindfulness, and exploring sexuality. Really important work that Melissa is doing, and she has a lot of great things to say on the subject. Listen in!

The “Conscious Sexual Self Workbook”

Melissa said she wrote the workbook during a time that she realized the people she interacted with in her practice were self-identifying their sexual being solely through a lens of sexual behavior. For example, she would introduce questions and journaling exercises to participants who never really considered looking at their sexuality apart from a normative model of sexual behavior.

So, Melissa likes to remind those who want to become more conscious of their sexuality should factor the complete picture of sexuality: this ranges from the events and discussions that you had as a child and teenager, to the less malleable reinforcements of adult sexuality.

Within the workbook, there are plenty of exercises and prompts that help participants explore their sexuality and perhaps learn for the first time some of the true facets of sexuality that many assumed they learned in high school. As we explore within the episode, many adults feel like a window closed for learning about sexuality. Most are embarrassed to be in their 40s and ask questions about sexuality, so Melissa’s work offers a great platform for reopening those doors and discovering the sexual self.

Does it Specifically Resonate with You?

Melissa wants to remind you that there are a lot of great resources out there on sexuality but to remind yourself that there is also a lot of junk information as well. One of the most important considerations is that you take and apply the information that resonates with you personally.

Often what happens is a particular person hears that something is working for someone and then they feel it necessary to incorporate it, even if it has hardly anything to do with their unique sexual self.

How to Talk About Your Wants and Desires

One of the added benefits of exploring your conscious sexual self is that you can work through the shame and uncertainties of your sexuality and get much more comfortable communicating with your partner or other people in general.

This can still be a difficult thing though that requires consistent practice. Melissa suggests just talking about things at first. There should be no pressure to act on something immediately. Broaching the subject on a particular area can be powerful in itself. But there should be no immediate pressure to act right away.

Another thing Melissa talks about is having the “what turns you on?” conversation can be a really productive and powerful conversation to have with partners. This sort of conversation can act as a bridge for other conversations as well, just because of how easy it is to have.

Mindfulness and Sex

Melissa says that instead of “performing” sex, being mindful and practicing mindfulness techniques can lead to better sex hands down. With it, you are much more present with your partner and conscious about the sexual act itself.

She says that a lot of her clients end up losing focus and diverting their attention elsewhere during sex, which makes for less engaging sex.

Resources for Melissa:

Affiliate Link for Melissa’s book The Conscious Sexual Self Workbook: https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Sexual-Self-Workbook/dp/150081086X

Her website: https://mf-therapy.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

109: Sleep, Snoring and Sex – Lindsay Tucker

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 17:01:12 GMT

My guest today is Lindsay Tucker. She is the founder of artfulsleep.com and is on a mission for better sleep for all. When managing a snoring partner, she has a fresh perspective on the challenges that can arise. To her, instead of getting rid of the disruptions, she teaches the powerful concept of accepting the disruptions and becoming a better, stronger sleeper regardless. Within this episode, she shares anecdotes and expands upon the idea of becoming a more resilient sleeper.

The Link Between Sleep and Sex

Lindsay says that most people can see the link between sleep and sex because it can create a really special bond. It’s also an intimate setting – hello, it’s the bedroom after all – and any disruptions in sleep can have considerable carryover into a couple’s sex life.

Lindsay actually shares a story about the first night she stayed the night with her husband. And right when he fell asleep, the whole house shook with his snores. She said it was so loud that she had to leave the bedroom and head to the couch. Upset and unsure if she would ever be able to cope with his seismic snores in the future, she didn’t know what to do.

She says she doesn’t share the story to make her husband feel bad, of course, but only to accentuate the close connection between sound sleep and a harmonious relationship.

Snoring is not Insurmountable

Lindsay says that you’re never going to change the person who snores, but you yourself can change and learn how to sleep better.

She says that you can work on getting rid of the disruptive blue light that messes with your circadian rhythms. This can lead to more peaceful sleep, even if your partner is a loud snorer. Additionally, instead of this subtractive approach, there’s also an additive method.

Adding blackout curtains or a cool room to the equation can really help you embrace the snoring and become a better sleeper. Lindsay said she tried all of the “gimmicky” things like a noise-canceling app on her phone, earplugs, and more, but they didn’t work for her.

Health Costs for the Snorer, and the Importance of Sleep

Lindsay says that in her experience and expertise with snoring, really the only time that there are health risks for the snorer is if they have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea prevents the sleeper from getting adequate oxygen throughout the night, which often means the person is waking up multiple times a night, gasping for air, even if they are not aware. They can then awake and feel groggy, even if the clock shows that they did in fact “sleep” deeply for 8 hours.

A big reason why Lindsay is so keen on talking about this topic is not only her own experiences with a snoring partner but also her interest in the importance of sleep. She calls sleep the one “constant” for all of us. Sacrificing your quality of sleep is a recipe for disaster. And being sleep deprived not only saps your energy but also reduces your sexual drive.

If you are sleep deprived, you are most likely not wanting to have sex. This is just the simple reality of only having a finite amount of energy. As experience dictates for my clients and in Lindsay’s estimation, if you are tired, the last thing you want to do is have sex. Add sleep deprivation to an already rampant snoring problem and things can get complicated.

For much more on this subject and details on Lindsay’s program, check out the rest of the episode!

Key Links for Lindsay:

Her website for her sleeping program: https://www.artfulsleep.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

108: Out of Control Sexual Behavior – Doug Braun-Harvey

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 21:40:05 GMT

My guest, the sexuality educator, author, trainer, and psychotherapist Doug Braun Harvey is here to share his knowledge on an important distinction in the sexual health realm: Out of Control Sexual Behavior (OCSB). Within this interview, there are discussions about classifications of sexual health, advice for psychotherapists on how to let patients present their own vision of sexual health, and an overall fruitful discussion on the nuances of the field.

Spoken eloquently and drawing from his wide experience in the field, Doug Braun-Harvey makes this a must-listen.

A Specific Definition of Sexual Health

Doug says that sexual health is the “balance between sexual health and sexual pleasure.” What he means by this is that you are not only being careful about your sexual activity but also equally focusing on pleasure. He also states that sexual health must factor in the sexual rights of all involved.

When talking about the generally agreed-upon definition of sexual health currently taught in schools, the definition has not changed for many years – where the didactic preoccupation has centered on wrapping “sexual health” in a limited, encompassing curriculum of just pregnancies, STDs, or STIs.

Classifying Sexual Disorders

With classifications and conceptualizations of sexual dysfunction always being defined, assigned, and redefined, it’s difficult to find the point where an out-of-control sexual behavior becomes a disorder. Classifications are made that relate sexual compulsion to impulse control; this presents challenges from a psychiatric standpoint, and even more so because most of those definitions are not made definitively – so to speak – but are only established to get a dialogue going and the research flowing. In other words, there is a lot of gray area and malleability for sexual disorders that take professionals in the field to work out and categorize.

It’s a fascinating and complex subject that Doug does a good job at explaining within this episode.

Out of Control Sexual Behavior

The core concept of this talk is Out of Control Sexual Behavior. Doug defines OCSB as “when a person’s urges, thoughts, or behaviors feel out of control to them.” He says this only applies to consensual sexual behavior. And the most important distinction he makes is that OCSB is recognized as a sexual health problem and not a disease or disorder.

He says that someone who has OCSB is not aligned with six key principles of sexual health:

- Sexual health is consensual

- Non-exploitive

- Protected from STDs, STIs, and unwanted pregnancies

- Honesty

- Shared values

- Pleasure and mutual pleasure

He says that for those patients who fall out of the realm of consensual sexual behavior, into the non-consensual categorization, there is a whole different specialist they should be referred to. That training is much different and the methodology changes for patients who are not participating in consensual sex. Doug says that getting in touch with a specialist who is equipped to help the patient with non-consensual behaviors is important.

Allowing the Patient to Determine Their Own Sexual Health Vision

Doug says that during his assessment process with patients, he doesn’t present a certain narrative to the patients. In other words, he doesn’t tell them they have a disorder or disease but lets them present their own vision of sexual health. A lot of his patients come to him because they align with particular writings or teachings that Doug has presented, so he lets them come to him and present their sexual health identity in that sense.

He has his patients fill out forms that delineate boundaries that they shouldn’t cross, some they are ambivalent about, and then a sexual health column that presents where they want to be from a sexual health standpoint.

Resources for Doug:

His company and website: https://www.theharveyinstitute.com/

WHO sexual health information: https://www.who.int/topics/sexual_health/en/

Amnesty International Sexual Rights – https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/SexualReproductiveRightsFactSheet.pdf

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

107: Sexological Bodywork – Charlie Glickman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 17:23:42 GMT

My guest, Charlie Glickman, has been a sex educator for over 25 years. But it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that he realized the power of bodywork for managing and working through sexual shame. After solely teaching and writing as a sex educator, Charlie experienced firsthand just how powerful somatic therapy can be in a sexual shame context. So, he then developed his own course and practice around that discovery. This episode traces the advent of his important work in the field and moves beyond that to deliver practical insights and knowledge on the topic. A really, really important topic that I hope you get a lot from. Thanks for listening!

What is Sexological Bodywork?

When asked to define the term, Charlie says that sexological bodywork is “somatic education in erotic embodiment.” To further break this down, he sums it up as follows: the central focus is on the somatic aspects – the body.

Education, in the context of sexological bodywork, is achieved when his clients leave a session with more knowledge and experience than they had coming in. This is a huge goal of the practice.

Erotic embodiment encompasses erotic activity, but also, it adds staying present and truly “embodying” the eroticism in the moment, in all moments, that it happens.

The Power of Flirting

Charlie shares interesting insights on a couple who struggled to discern each other’s sexual signals. When speaking to the wife, Charlie asked her to practice flirting with him, in a professional capacity, during one of their one-on-one sessions. After doing so, Charlie said that it was hard to tell she was even doing so because her body signals were not doing the communicating for her. Instead of feeling rejected by her husband, she realized her husband probably had no idea when she was flirting. This also turned out to be the case on the opposite end of the spectrum: the husband was wary about flirting because he didn’t feel like his wife was all that into him.

Consent Considerations

Charlie says that his practice factors in consent as one of the most important facets of bodywork. To that extent, Charlie will not do any bodywork unless the client lays out exactly what they are ready to do that day. There should be no guesswork when it comes to consent, and he says it’s always a good thing when boundaries are established and there’s enough trust and accountability so that the client can immediately say “no” and be respected in that wish.

The Many Areas of Sexological Bodywork

Charlie gives an overview of all of the areas he focuses on as a sexological bodyworker. These focal points range from asking for consent, telling your partner what you want, maintaining boundaries, managing shame and rejection triggers if your partner says no to sex, and pleasure mapping.

Charlie also works with clients who have experienced or are experiencing trauma, with the goal of getting back to a healthy state of equilibrium despite those traumas. Additionally, he works with those who have gone through considerable transitions in their lives: hysterectomies, gender transitions, postpartum mothers, and a wide range of circumstances that contribute to a diverse sampling of sexological bodywork needs.

How do Prospective Patients Know When They’re Ready for Bodywork?

Charlie says that if the idea of bodywork sounds a little too intimidating or scary, sexological bodywork might not be right for you. He says it could be that you just need to talk to a sex therapist or a practitioner and ask some questions to test the waters out. And because there are so many specialists in the profession, it really does help to do a little bit of research on various practitioners to see if what they offer and the testimonials they provide speak to your personal experience

Charlie says it’s completely normal to feel nervous about going to a sexological bodyworker. If you aren’t a little bit nervous, you probably don’t need what he or she has to offer, as he says in the episode. But overall, it can be an immensely powerful practice that you should definitely look into!

Resources for Charlie:

Charlie’s Website: http://www.makesexeasy.com/

https://sexologicalbodyworkers.org/

Betty Martin’s Wheel of consent video: https://bettymartin.org/videos/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

106: Pelvic Floor Function after Childbirth – Kathe Wallace

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 18:40:40 GMT

My guest is the author of Reviving Your Sex Life After Childbirth, a pioneer for diagnosing and treating pelvic floor dysfunction, and also a practicing physical therapist who specializes in the pelvic floor, specifically. Overall, she is one of the leading authorities on the PF and has a wealth of knowledge to share in this episode.

She talks about treatment, what to expect during the “4th trimester”, and common ways of regaining sex drive after birth through pelvic floor physical intervention. Listen along!

Postpartum Considerations

Kathe says that what sparked her interest and important work with post-childbirth mothers was that no one was really helping mothers regain their sex drive. Additionally, she drew from her own experience as a mother to drive the work she would do with other mothers. More specifically, Kathe specializes in the all-important pelvic floor muscles.

She says that obstetricians often don’t address the pelvic floor muscles and the importance of strengthening them after childbirth.

The Most Common Impacts of Childbirth on the Pelvic Floor

Kathe says that pain is the biggest reason why mothers come to her for physical therapy. She says that providing information and treatment for the pain not only alleviates the symptoms but provides a huge relief to mothers who might have uncertainties and stresses about regaining their sex drive.

Other common reasons are simply a lack of sexual desire and incontinence due to weakened pelvic floors. Laxity and looseness is another common byproduct of childbirth on the pelvic floor, which can certainly contribute to mothers feeling uncomfortable about sex, making them more likely to avoid it.

Kathe spends some time talking about the connecting fascia and tissue that comprise the pelvic floor and how childbirth can stretch out the tissue. It can take a lot of attention to strengthen the muscles back to form, so Kathe says it’s an important step to seek physical therapy.

The Benefits of Kegels for Arousal and Lubrication

Kathe says that a lot of mother struggle with getting adequately lubricated for sex after childbirth. This is a completely normal phenomenon, so she dispels the myth that only menopausal women struggle with it. Kegels and other physical interventions can really help with lubrication.

Arousal is another closely related facet of sexuality that kegels can improve. During the “4th trimester” it’s hard for mothers to get aroused. Strengthening the pelvic floor can help immensely.

For strengthening the first layer of muscles, she suggests the technique called the “wink and nod”. She says that if you squeeze and think about moving the clitoris, closing the vaginal lips, and winking the anus you can strengthen the first layer of muscles. For the deeper layer of muscles, you would seek to bring your anus to your pubic bone, so to speak.

For much more on that, listen along!

How to Release a Tight Pelvic Floor

Kathe says that there are cases where the pelvic floor actually is too tight and could benefit from a regular release of tension. For those who perhaps are too tight, she has a wide variety of diaphragmatic breathing exercises that can help. She goes into much more detail on how to know if you can benefit from tightening or loosening exercises. Definitely, don’t miss that!

Resources for Kathe:

Her website: https://kathewallace.com/

Her book: Reviving Your Sex Life After Childbirth

Free Pelvic Floor Handout: https://kathewallace.com/resources/free-handout/

Questionnaire for Females About PFD: https://kathewallace.com/physical-therapy/patient-forms/

Find a PT Sites: https://ptl.womenshealthapta.org/#s=1 || https://pelvicrehab.com/ || https://pelvicguru.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

105: Trans Sexualities – Lucie Fielding

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Dec 2019 18:49:49 GMT

My guest Lucie Fielding identifies as a nonbinary femme. She is a Resident in Counseling, where she practices under supervision as a counselor in Charlottesville, Virginia. In addition to her professional education and experience in Counseling, Lucie has a Ph.D. in Literature, which has been invaluable for analyzing the narratives and power dynamics at play within our society. Those same cultural scripts have very real socio-political circumstances for LGBTQ and nonbinary communities, especially.

Within this episode, she talks about the importance of finding the Embodied Sexual Self, of Intimate Justice, and a wide range of concepts that can only improve the quality of understanding for all who want to improve their sexual knowledge. This interview was a treat, and I know you’ll enjoy it.

Changing the Patient-Caregiver Conversation

Lucie says that things are not going to get better for nonbinary individuals if the dialogue between patient and primary caregiver does not come from a place of knowledge and nonbinary thinking. She says that there is a false dichotomy at play that doesn’t take into account the complex spectrum of trans–sexuality. Informing yourself and preparing for those conversations opens the door for progress and much broader conversations about sexuality and pleasure when it comes to hormone therapy sessions and the possible outcomes for each trans experience. She says it’s important to not foreclose conversations with “loss” or “function” based language. Instead, a much more open and optimistic outlook that factors in the wide range of potential experiences of trans–sexuality can truly become a great methodology for patient-caregiver conversations.

Intimate Justice and Oppression

Lucie states that a really key concept is one that was developed by Sara McClelland called “intimate justice.” This term defines sexual satisfaction through factors that vary from person to person and depends largely on the different strata of socio-political experience. In other words, a lot of the time, sexual satisfaction is output-heavy and hardly takes into account the existential burdens or oppressions that some people can experience in their day-to-day life. Because someone who is oppressed often has a narrower window for sexual satisfaction, intimate justice is key because it sets out to provide the full picture on sexual satisfaction, and not provide a binary framework that often pits “normal versus not normal” instead of more accurate designations.

Lucie says much more within the episode. It’s really worth a listen!

The Embodied Sexual Self

Lucie defines the Embodied Sexual Self as coming into your own body: to experience the corporeal senses of your body and to come to your own understanding of your sexual being. This goes hand and hand with cultivating a passionate relationship with a partner or multiple partners where you experience the full embodiment of your sexual self. And there can be a wide range of relational energies that connect intimacy with passion from an interpersonal perspective.

Providing a Safe Space for Sometimes Scary Conversations

Lucie says that her practice provides a safe space for initiating difficult conversations and explorations of the uncertainties of trans–sexuality. In this sense, she encourages her patients to take the plunge and explore areas of their psyche and sexual identity they might have not had the courage to explore on their own. Creating these opportunities for transsexual and nonbinary individuals is absolutely essential for the overall psychological health of the community. She says it’s often a leap of faith, but one that’s so worth it because the benefits outweigh the costs.

Mystifying Sex

Within the interview, Lucie introduces the concept of mystifying sex – which, to frequent listeners of this podcast or advocates of continued sexual education, might seem like a verbal typo. Lucie does demystify sex within every one of her sessions with clients, but she likes to remind people that mystifying sex is just as important. With mystification comes the denormalization of sex. All common narratives, all knowledge, gets challenged and called into question on a continual basis in order to prevent a rigid definition of sex. Instead, mystification replaces it with an always evolving definition, not quite set in stone or normalized. It also helps equalize power dynamics.

Lucie offers an amazing parting message, so listen in for that! For more on this and much more that was covered here in the notes, listen to the rest of this enlightening conversation with Lucie Fielding.

Resources for Lucie:

Her website: https://luciefielding.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

104: Recovering Your Sexuality After Cancer – Tara Galeano

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 16:19:41 GMT

My guest is a certified sex therapist and sexologist with a lot of important information to share on sex therapy for women with cancer. She is the creator of the class Rediscovering My Body After Cancer and has a book and online class in the works based around the class.

When I asked her how she got started in the field, she says that she had always enjoyed teaching in a group setting, and providing cancer support really became a great opportunity to do impactful work in the field.

Soon she would develop a class that women could come to for answers, and things have taken off from there, resulting in a large number of women who are better equipped to navigate the often disorienting world of cancer. This is such an important topic, so please listen along.

Body Image Through Body Maps & Trauma Treatment

The class, Rediscovering My Body After Cancer, started as a 6-week class, but soon Tara realized that 6 weeks was too long to commit to – especially for women with cancer who might not have the motivation or energy to attend every class or commit to such an intensive process. They cut it down to 4 weeks, and within those weeks they cover a few key areas.

The first area they cover is body image. Many cancer survivors have scars or various bodily alterations that make it hard to maintain a positive body image. And for those who have, or are dealing with, negative body image: it can be next to impossible to care about having sex if you don’t feel good about yourself. They manage body image through a body map. This is such a great exercise for sharing with others and for each woman to get connected to their own sexuality and share aspects of it in a group setting. Tara says it’s a simple exercise, but one that is a crucial starting point for moving forward and building a positive foundation for each woman.

The group then moves onto more treating trauma. A big part of the course is to treat trauma through shaking procedures, which are a common practice in a lot of trauma treatment efforts. Tara doesn’t specifically share the shaking exercises involved, but there are a lot of resources you can check out online, including Traumaprevention.com.

The Power of Being in a Group

There is so much uncertainty and complexity in everyone’s experience with cancer and the resultant effects it has on feeling sexy. Living in the group, as Tara describes it, is an incredibly enriching experience because everyone shares their experiences and perspectives for finding their own sexuality. And often all it takes is to express and vocalize one’s struggles or hope for rediscovering sexuality for the act to become fruitful. The group can bring out so many positive things that can lead to transformation and growth.

She calls it a very normalizing process. It can get the ball rolling on discussions between partners about desire and sexuality, which can be a tough conversation to initiate for a woman who has a negative body image because of cancer.

A Place of Healing for Women with all Types of Cancer

Tara says that she works with a lot of breast cancer survivors, as well as other survivors, who all benefit from the group setting and the educational opportunity. There are many occupations – massage therapists deserve a lot of kudos – who function as educators on various facets of bodily pain. But there are still limitations in the amount of information that women cancer survivors are getting regarding sexuality. Many assume that someone else will delve deeper into the subject, often resulting in women who experience a lot of unnecessary pain during sex.

Resources for Tara

Her website: https://bouldersextherapy.com/

Boulder Sex Therapy Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/BoulderSexTherapy/?ref=page_internal

Traumaprevention.com

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

103: Finding Your Yes – Pamela Madsen

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 20:20:18 GMT

Pamela Madsen joins me on this episode about the importance of finding your YES. Pamela explains the conditioning women undergo, which rewards them for saying no and ignoring their desires. By 50, Pamela had tried over 300 diets and is therefore very familiar with this topic, having had first-hand experience.

Pamela is the founder and CEO of Back to the Body: Sensuous Retreats for Women, providing women with permission to find pleasure. Retreats are held in exotic locations all over the world, allowing participants to immerse with a powerful sisterhood and a safe and supportive staff. Pamela has been an activist for women for over 30 years and was the Founder and first Executive Director of The American Fertility Association where she worked for reproductive freedom for all women. She has appeared in over 3000 media outlets including Oprah, CNN, NY Times, The Huffington Post and countless others. Tune in for an eye-opening episode!

What about No?

Pamela evaluates this with a few key questions. While consent can be a bit of a gray area, it’s important to address. Understanding the root of your No’s are crucial to know what you want and therefore shape what we ultimately say yes or no to. Pamela asks us to dig a little deeper and understand if our No’s are established in fear. That will ultimately guide us.

She points out that women are regularly expected to put themselves last and this spills into the bedroom.

Say Yes

Feeling safe in your own body plays a big part in saying yes. Pamela shares that this can be a direct impact of your physical environment, which then manifests in your decision making and your inner feelings. Once we are in a safe and supportive environment, she believes we are able to take what we truly want and “claim all of ourselves.”

Know Yourself

We hear more about how vital it is to actually know ourselves in order to unlock our true yes’s and no’s. Pamela tells us about her retreats and the amazing results it has produced for women and men. Becoming unshackled from the expectations and conformity of society brings a sense of enlightenment that allows women to finally lose their fear of shame and put themselves and their desires first!

This bleeds into our sex lives, our relationships with other women and our relationships with ourselves. Pamela’s retreats attract cross-generational women. She has found that women leave knowing their boundaries and taking strides in their relationships, as well as in their careers.

Healing through touch

Pamela explores a different aspect of touch that she uses at her retreats. We learn how healing touch can actually be and that it can be transferred into our lives. With a special focus on somatic touch, Pamela highlights how significant external touch can be in our relationships and in our healing process.

Key Links

Website: http://www.backtothebody.org/

Instagram: @thepamelamadsen

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pamelalmadsen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pamelamadsen

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

102: Medical Treatment for Menopause – Dr. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 19:34:04 GMT

Medical Treatments for Menopause

Dr. Rebecca Dunsmoor works in Seattle, Washington as an OBGYN specializing in diagnosing and treating unwelcome symptoms of menopause. The North American Menopause Society acknowledges her as a certified menopause practitioner and educator. On her website, renuvagyn.com, Dr. Dunsmoor maintains a growing collection of menopause-related information and runs an online women’s clinic to assist patients remotely. Dr. Dunsmoor also contributes to genneve.com, improving their impressive collection of knowledge and resources on menopause and midlife.

What is Menopause, and What Happens During Menopause?

If you’ve ever wondered about the true definition of menopause, Dr. Dunsmoor explains its clinical definition and its biological cause on air. Rebecca then explains the three phases of menopause she sees in her practice, allowing us to understand the changes that occur during menopause, and when troublesome symptoms are likely to occur. Rebecca also shares the surprising reason why a healthy sex life isn’t just good for your romantic relationship.

How Menopause Impacts Health

Menopause is a natural part of life, but that doesn’t mean we have to let it disrupt our lives. Dr. Dunsmoor explains when you should see an OBGYN for your menopausal symptoms, and the two symptom clusters that often plague women in midlife. You might recognize the systemic problems women encounter when their ovaries stop producing estrogen, but you could be surprised by some of the vaginal symptoms. Dr. Dunsmoor explains those symptoms and the reasons women start to experience them during menopause.

Frequency of Menopause Symptoms

Does every woman experience the hot flashes, night sweats, or vaginal symptoms associated with menopause? Dr. Dunsmoor says yes, and no. Learn from her how likely you or women you know are to experience the systemic or vaginal effects of menopause.

Dr. Dunsmoor says, “Lube is for Everyone.”

Rebecca Dunsmoor recommends different lubes for different situations. Women whose partners use condoms and those who have sex without a need for condoms can benefit from different products. Dr. Dunsmoor points out the best products on the market and tells you where to find them.

Treatment Options for Systemic Menopause Symptoms

Systemic symptoms of menopause can be alleviated with medicines, medical treatments, herbal supplements, alternative medicine, retail products, and lifestyle changes. Want to know what can be done about your symptoms? Dr. Dunsmoor is here to explain what you can do to improve your life, and what over-the-counter treatments might be making your symptoms worse.

Worried about the cancer risk of hormone therapy? Dr. Dunsmoor discusses the study that popularized the fear of hormone therapy, brings us up to date on current research, and tells us what treatments really cause cancer.

Treatment Options for Vaginal Menopause Symptoms

Dr. Dunsmoor describes topical treatments for vaginal and vulvar symptoms of menopause and hormonal treatments that can be applied locally or taken orally to relieve symptoms.

Dr. Dunsmoor also offers a revolutionary carbon dioxide laser treatment that rejuvenates vaginal tissues to relieve symptoms. Rebecca explains why and how this treatment works, and what you can expect during the process. According to studies she cites, this new treatment relieves symptoms in a whopping 92% of patients.

The Role of Testosterone in Menopause

Dr. Dunsmoor explains the changes in testosterone production and management that occur in menopausal women and looks to the future of testosterone management in menopause.

Resources and Links

Dr. Dunmoor’s Website: https://www.renuvagyn.com/

Dr. Dunmoor’s Page: https://www.swedish.org/swedish-physicians/profile.aspx?name=rebecca+f+dunsmoor-su&id=157577

Menopause Resources: https://gennev.com/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

101: [Personal Story] – Healing from Abuse – Toni

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 19:12:03 GMT

My guest, whom I call Toni in this episode, is here to share a personal story of abuse and eventual transformation. Within the interview, she shares a lot of difficult episodes and traumas in her life in a brave and transparent way. You will get a lot out of this episode will learn that despite the hardest upbringing, there can be transformation, growth, and healing along the way. Please listen along and support Toni as she shares her story here.

Connecting the Past to the Present

As Toni states, her “introduction to sex” began in third grade because she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend at the time, but later the man who would become her stepdad. As she got married in her early twenties, she was subjected to a manipulative marriage with a partner who didn’t treat her in a healthy, respectful manner.

It wasn’t until Toni went to see a psychotherapist, and was talking about her current relationship, that her eyes were opened up to how her past traumas with her stepdad had been playing into her adult difficulties with sex.

She very understandably had intimacy problems and was in a bad place emotionally, as she describes it. Sex, to her, was this intimidating, challenging presence that manifested itself negatively in her life.

Losing the Glue of the Family

Toni describes growing up in her family and the dynamics at play within: she says that when her Grandma died at a young age, she left a very large absence. Her grandma was only in her 40s and was the glue of the family. At this point as well, Toni was largely ignored. She also didn’t have siblings either, so it became hard for her to connect with people.

Once the abuse started, things were extremely challenging for Toni. She says that her abuser, her stepdad, was a master manipulator and treated her mother with romantic bait-and-switch types of behavior. And she was angry with her mother all from the time the abuse started until she turned 16. She thought her mother was complicit with his behavior but didn’t stop it.

As she reconnected with friends later in life, well after the fact, they all expressed how they knew something was wrong with the way her stepdad treated her and abused her, but they just didn’t know how to handle it. He was an important man after all. And the small-town politics did not make it easy to handle.

Trust Issues, Boyfriends, and a Serious Altercation

When asked about her past boyfriends, she said she felt like she was supposed to date and have relationships because that was “normal”. But she definitely had trust issues. She said that it took a special person to actually even consider dating when she was a teenager.

Toni shares that she was a tough girl. Not only mentally calloused because of her abuse, but also because she developed early as a girl, so she was subjected to boys groping her at a young age. She learned to defend herself with her fists.

And once she turned 16, she decided she had had enough. He had abused her, physically beat his mother right in front of her, and she eventually pushed him down the stairs and pulled a knife off him, holding it to his throat. Toni says that after doing that, he left her alone.

Her Road to Transformation to the Present

After getting married to her manipulative husband and having a kid with him, she left him and met another man. This would become the moment that Toni started to transform and heal after having suffered so much abuse for so long.

She reconnected with her biological father, and that healed some abandonment trauma she had been carrying her whole life. Additionally, the new man met was a nice man who treated her kid with care. Unfortunately, though, she found out he had a history of drug addiction and would soon resort back to drugs. The relationship soon ended.

Toni would have another relationship with a kind, caring man. She says that sex was not an issue with him. They ended their relationship a couple of years ago after a 13-year run. She says that currently, she doesn’t foresee herself being in another relationship. And when she says that, it comes from a place of power and not resignation. Not at all! Toni has grit and strength and has built up her independence. She is also sexually independent and only open to those who deserve her for the amazing woman she is.

Lastly, she shares her journey and struggles to tap into her more feminine powers and awaken the woman inside of herself. It was a difficult journey, but she is a transformed woman because of it.

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

100: Body Kindness – Rebecca Scritchfield

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 18:15:44 GMT

My guest Rebecca Scritchfield is an exercise physiologist, nutritionist, author of Body Kindness and host of the Body Kindness podcast. She is a strong advocate for body positivity and healthy standards for eating, living, and self-evaluation.

Rebecca poses the question in this interview: Isn’t your life all that much better when you aren’t worried about the standards of society? Through love, connection, and care, she shares how to be fully committed to yourself and how to have better sex through body kindness. Really valuable advice within. Enjoy!

Being Thin is Not the Best and Healthiest

Rebecca says that through her professional experience, she has formed the opinion that there’s way more to health than being thin. The lynchpin for health hinges on mental wellbeing and positive body images and the standards of society often glamorize unhealthy expectations. Once caught in the cycle of negative body image, it’s hard to become the best version of yourself.

She shares an alarming statistic that most children will try their first diet by the age of 10. Even Weightwatchers has an app for young children! Rebecca herself knows what it’s like to struggle with dieting and a compulsive need to “earn” her food through exercise because she was being constantly evaluated by an unhealthy standard.

This has considerable carryover into sexuality as well because unhealthy standards can translate into a negative body image. And as is common, sex can be the furthest thing from your mind if you don’t feel attractive or good about yourself.

How to Make Peace With Your Body Now

Rebecca says that to unhook from unhealthy body image is to practice the acceptance of self. It’s not easy to do at all, but accepting your body for what it is, even on the days when you feel the worst, is one of the most valuable tools for body positivity.

And remember, acceptance is not apathy or giving up. It is an active decision to accept what is and to invite self-compassion into your mind. It also means that you unplug yourself from conforming to society’s standards. You will feel calmer, less overwhelmed by “what you should look like”, and happier in your own skin. That’s the goal overall!

Trusting Your Inner Caregiver

You don’t need rigid food rules or to follow the strict standards that others may impose on you. Yes, you get constant feedback from the other people in your life (indirectly or directly), but Rebecca says that instead of listening to the voice that preaches rigidity, you should listen to your inner caregiver.

She says that we all have inner caregivers. The voice will tell you to eat food that tastes good and to do things that give you pleasure. You can listen to the voice, you can get the takeout food that you love so much, but you can also balance out the components of the meal with something nutritious as well. This means you don’t have to diet to be healthy; you can treat yourself and not have to be so rigid and restrictive in your choices.

You can listen to the inner caregiver inside of you who tells you that you’re doing good. You can hydrate more or go on a 10-minute walk after lunch. Instead of listening to the voice that says “that’s not good enough,” listen to the voice that says: “good job!”

Tips for Better Sex with a Partner

Rebecca suggests you first establish what feels good for you personally and can readily communicate what works for you before applying the techniques she teaches to a partner. The meaningful work first starts with you!

She says it will take time, but once you sit with your desires and pleasures and know more about yourself, you will be more comfortable with your partner in the bedroom.

For more on her book, why she thinks fun is so important, and more on this subject, be sure to listen to this great interview! Check out her website as well.

Key Links for Rebecca:

Her website: https://www.bodykindnessbook.com/

Rebecca’s book: Body Kindness – https://www.amazon.com/Body-Kindness-Transform-Health-Out/dp/0761187294

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

99: From Sexual Madness to Mindfulness – Jennifer Gunsaullis

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 18:21:50 GMT

My guest is fresh off a book tour for her new book From Madness to Mindfulness: Reinventing Sex for Women. Her name is Dr. Jennifer Gunsaullus and she is a sociologist and sex coach with a wealth of knowledge on sexuality and mindfulness. Within this talk she deftly connects her term ‘sexual madness’ with mindfulness, which is an extension of her book and professional work with her clients.

If you wondering how mindfulness can help you with sexual desire, body image, and to achieve better, well-rounded sex, then listen along and learn. You won’t regret stopping by!

What is “Sexual Madness”?

Dr. Jenn says that women are not given a right to own their sexuality. Additionally, many are not taught at all growing up in school about sexual expression or even basic anatomy. And when women get married and have sexual partners they are expected to just flip a switch and have this working knowledge of sexual expression. That, in a nutshell, is madness. More specifically, it’s sexual madness.

She then introduces sexual mindfulness as a solution for breaking through this sexual madness. Jenn encourages heading towards the pain and discomfort in sex first. She says that it’s important to explore the pain points through mindfulness because you can get to the root of sexual avoidance and unpack whatever is there.

Jenn also states that it’s such an empowering practice. The ability to not compartmentalize feelings and instead connect thoughts to bodily feelings and be in tune with yourself like that is such a valuable skill. She sees it countless times in her clients.

Expanded Definitions of Mindfulness

Jenn says that because mindfulness has become such a buzzword nowadays, there should be distinctions made between some of the more important factors of the concept. Paying attention and really focusing is a part of mindfulness. But more important to the definition is self-compassion and non-judgment. This means being truly present with whatever arises, and if there is shame that bubbles to the surface, not beating yourself up about that shame. That’s true mindfulness.

Another important concept that arises during the interview is just being with the raw sensations you feel, no matter what. Just staying with them, without any meaning, interpretation, or story attached to it, often means you can get through the feelings. Jenn says most of the time, all it takes is 90 seconds of being present, of being mindful.

How Mindfulness is Helpful for Desire

For women, Jenn says that mindfulness can be a real help for cultivating and understanding desire. She says there is a dearth of understanding on the topic, so any help is beneficial. She says body image issues and shame can definitely arise and mindfulness can always help. Even for those in perfectly healthy relationships where partners are attracted to each other can lead to a lack of desire. Mindfulness helps unearth traumas, shame, or overall feelings that may be inhibiting desire from really flourishing.

She says that journaling and sitting with the awkward, uncomfortable feelings is absolutely essential.

Applied Mindfulness

Jennifer not only teaches mindfulness practices and their merits to couples, but she also encourages their active participation with the principles. Without what she calls “applied mindfulness” there’s hardly any room for growth or the complete cultivation of sexual expression.

She also says that we’re responsible for teaching the younger generation about the importance of not passing on limiting ideas of sexuality to young women. Instead of just compliments about physical appearance, parents should stress the importance of celebrating the whole person: intelligence, personality, and so forth. This cultivates a deeper sense of self-worth in women.

Key Links for Jennifer:

Her book: From Madness to Mindfulness

Website: https://www.drjennsden.com/home

Link to video resources: https://www.drjennsden.com/videos-1

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

98: BDSM and Kink – Tamara Pincus

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 17:07:54 GMT

My guest today is Tamara Pincus, who is an AASECT certified sex therapist, an advocate for BDSM and polyamory, and an overall celebrator of the diverse BDSM community. In this episode, she breaks down the fundamentals of BDSM, gives advice on how to start and practice safely, as well as talks about trauma and dissociation and other important topics. As she reminds us, BDSM is really common, so if you’re just getting started, curious, indifferent, or have been practicing for many years, this episode is for you. Enjoy!

What is BDSM?

Tamara says that the four letters stand for bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism. This essentially means tying your partner up, having power over another, sometimes utilizing pain, and things of that nature.

She says that a lot of typical intercourse can be seen as versions of BDSM, given that there is usually a power dynamic at play. This can be considered an offshoot of BDSM – meaning that intercourse can be seen as a continuum of sorts on the BDSM spectrum.

She says that role-play can also fall within the same category. For more on her BDSM ideas, listen in!

BDSM for Healing from Trauma

Tamara says that BDSM can actually lead to breakthroughs in sexual trauma. Someone who has experienced a specific kind of sexual trauma can claim and have mastery over their trauma through a BDSM act. Tamara says that healing can occur if the trauma victim feels better emotionally or experiences positive feelings afterward.

When asked how sexual partners can engage in BDSM in a safe, non-intimidating way, she says that it’s important to have a safe word or safe signal, as well as make sure there is agreed-upon consent between all participants. She also makes the good point that couples should get kink training and be cognizant about health conditions before doing rope play or breath play, and various other activities of the same category.

To find a local dungeon or similar setting where you can learn these techniques, Tamara says to make sure you check out https://fetlife.com/.

The “Top” and “Bottom” Dynamic

Tamara says there’s generally two distinct dynamics at play during any BDSM proceeding: the bottom and the top. The top is the dominant player, while the bottom is the receiver. There can be a flexible interplay of differing power dynamics as the top can also function as the bottom at the same time.

Tamara makes it a point to remind listeners that the top needs to be completely aware of the wellbeing of the bottom given that dissociation can happen. After all, a lot of the draw of BDSM comes from the fantastical aspects of the act, so altered mental states are common.

Legitimate BDSM Versus The “Fifty Shades” Version

Tamara says that one of the biggest mistakes of Fifty Shades of Gray is that it doesn’t understand the concept of non-concordance. This basically means that just because something turns you on physically doesn’t mean you’re emotionally turned on as well. Basically, your body is not lining up with your mind in this instance.

How to Start & What to do if a Partner Isn’t Into BDSM

She suggests a few books that you can find below in the “key links” section, as well as the aforementioned FetLife community. She suggests being careful, using the right equipment, make sure you have ways of getting out of any equipment, and having open conversations about boundaries and consent with your partner.

For those who have partners who are not into BDSM, she says that you need to have frank conversations about likes and desires. She says that you can try and fight your sexuality, but it might be a losing battle. It’s best to explore options with your partner and see if there are compromises that can be made. Communicating about expectations is important!

Key Links for Tamara:

Her website: https://www.tamarapincus.com/

The social network for BDSM and Kink communities: https://fetlife.com/

Affiliate links for her book: It’s Called Polyamory

The New Bottoming & The New Topping

Yes-N0-Maybe Kinky List: http://www.thatotherpaper.com/files/Yes_No_Maybe.pdf

Worksheet For Talking to Partners About Sex: https://www.autostraddle.com/you-need-help-here-is-a-worksheet-to-help-you-talk-to-partners-about-sex-237385/

RoughBSAndKinky: http://sunnymegatron.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ROUGH-BS-1.pdf

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

97: Sex and Chronic Illness – Dr. Lee Phillips

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:44:24 GMT

Chronic Illness and Sex

My guest is here to talk about chronic illness and how it relates to sex. Originally, there wasn’t a lot of information or resources on the subject, so to fulfill this pressing need, Dr. Lee Phillips made it a point to devote his time towards researching and alleviating some of the sexuality stressors of chronic illness.

Lee has worked for more than 12 years as a psychotherapist; he is a licensed social worker, an educator, a sex therapist, and a prolific researcher in the sexuality realm. He brings a lot of experience and wisdom to this episode. Check it out!

The Inspiration for his Book on Chronic Pain

Lee says that he started a chronic pain management group through his work as a geriatric psychotherapist in Williamsburg, Virginia. This would lead to the inspiration for his subsequent work in understanding and mitigating the detrimental sexual effects of chronic illness.

Shortly after, he was approached by a colleague and persuaded to get into sex therapy because of the impacts of chronic pain on sex and relationships. He knew he could do some good work in that facet of therapy. He also says that he was inspired to take his own research further because there wasn’t a lot of information out there on the topic of chronic illness and pain, and how it relates to sexuality.

The Various Emotions That Can Accompany Chronic Illness in a Relationship

Lee says that some couples go through ‘crisis mode’ whenever a partner is diagnosed, but overall the emotions and dynamics vary from person to person.

He says that it’s typically a dynamic consisting of one ‘ill’ partner and the other healthy. Occasionally relationships can “open up” as the ill partner doesn’t feel adequate enough to pleasure their partner. But even more frequently, the healthy partner teams up and doesn’t act adversarial towards the illness, but instead looks for a way to manage it together.

And sometimes there’s actually relief after diagnosis because it brings context to an otherwise mysterious ailment that hadn’t been understood.

The Mental Aspects of Chronic Illness

Lee says that the physical symptoms can be extreme for chronic illness, but they can also lead to severe mental health difficulties that should not be overlooked.

A big part of his job is to try and alleviate the mental turmoil that can arise in dealing with an illness. When considering getting back into as healthy of a sex life as possible, he likes to take into account their sexual history and see what can be done about getting back to the same level of frequency and intimacy. This can be a good boost for overall mental health in a patient.

Imago Dialogue for More Reconnection Between Partners

He says he uses Imago dialogue therapy for his couples. One of the core principles of Imago is that we unconsciously pick partners based on the qualities of our caretakers through life. So, if there’s a lot of isolation, anger, fighting, or depression within a chronic illness relationship dynamic, he will use the Imago model as exercises to break through some of those issues.

He says there is a sender and there is a receiver within this model. The basis of the practice is to have couples actively listen and repeat what is sent from the sender back to them. This builds the necessary rapport and reassures both partners that what they’re saying is being internalized and understood.

The Importance of Seeing a Sex Therapist

Lee encourages couples to see a sex therapist and make active strides for sexual reconnection. In addition, a sex therapist can help a couple figure out alternatives to the traditional way they’ve had sex. Because, after all, sex is so much more than just penetrative sex. There’s a whole spectrum, and a sex therapist can help illuminate this crucial aspect of sexuality to those suffering from chronic pain.

Key Links for Dr. Lee

Dr. Lee’s Website: https://www.drleephillips.com/

His blog: https://www.drleephillips.com/drleephillips

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drleephillips/

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/drleephillips

Affiliate link for The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

96: [Personal Story] Orthodox Judaism and Sexuality – Matty

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 15:41:54 GMT

My guest, whom I will call Matty, grew up in an orthodox Jewish family. In this personal story, she shares her unique perspective on her upbringing and how it has affected her life from sexuality to marriage and more.

Within this episode, she shares a lot of the challenges of her religion, but also the beautiful aspects of her marriage that speak so profoundly to her sexuality and womanhood. This is a great educational opportunity for non-orthodox listeners and will only serve to widen the dialogue on sexuality as a whole. An important perspective from a great guest; listen along!

The General Rules of Marriage for Orthodox Jews

She prefaces this section by saying that she doesn’t want to offend anyone by her experience; there is variety in the way people practice Judaism. Matty says that growing up as an orthodox Jew meant there was no practice in intimacy with the opposite sex: no co-ed schools, no romantic affection in relationships, and no close contact until marriage.

Matty says that while married (as is a rule for orthodox Jews) she was not allowed to touch her husband if she was menstruating. If she wanted to pass her car keys to her husband, she would have to put it down completely; she couldn’t do a hand-to-hand transfer. And once her period had ended, and she had waited 7 days, only then was she “pure” and could reunite with her husband in close physical contact again. This was a tough transition for her when she was first married as a young woman, but it also made the times they could be together that much more special and appreciated.

This dynamic doesn’t mean that orthodox partners are not regularly communicating. Matty says that they offer counseling and really encourage married couples to communicate despite not embracing or having sex for (usually) 10-14 days a month. With that regular communication, the waiting periods are not as difficult.

Support for Orthodox Couples

Matty says that she absolutely dreaded the time that she was away from her husband and couldn’t touch him. In those periods of time, they had to have separate beds. It was extremely hard, and they learned to really communicate and express the challenges to one another. Matty said it wasn’t that she missed the sex so much; she just missed the opportunity to be cuddled and touched, which is something we can often take for granted in any relationship.

Restrictions in the Bedroom for Orthodox Jews

Matty says that the general rule was ‘whatever pleases the woman’ in the bedroom. She says that the male has to ask permission, as well, before sex. She says that not all husbands follow the rule, but from a spiritual standpoint, the woman must be pleasured in the marriage.

The Jewish belief system centers around celebrating the woman. For example, during the Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat), they start it off every week by singing songs that celebrate the matriarch of the family.

Sex Therapy as a Last Resort in the Orthodox World?

Matty says that not a lot of orthodox couples talk about their sex lives because it’s such a private thing. This doesn’t necessarily differ all that much from the non-orthodox world, either. But as Matty says, no one is openly discussing these things. She also says that a couple who seeks sex therapy or counseling would most likely do it as a last resort. This shares similarities with the non-orthodox world, too.

The Sex Talk with her Children

Matty stresses the importance of communicating to her children early and being open to questions that arise about sex. She says it’s extremely important to bring context to menstrual cycles and intercourse, and also emphasize the beautiful aspects of sexuality in general. She says the orthodox community differs in the amount of information it shares with children, but there has been a lot of books recently that points towards a shift in communication on these important topics.

For much more on orthodoxy and sexuality, listen along to this great episode!

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

95: Sherrie Palm – Pelvic Organ Prolapse

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 16:00:41 GMT

My guest is Sherrie Palm, who is the founder and CEO of the Association for Pelvic Organ Prolapse Support. In addition, Sherrie wrote a great book called Pelvic Organ Prolapse: The Silent Epidemic that delves deeper into the subject of this episode: Pelvic Organ Prolapse or POP for short.

Driven by Sherrie’s expertise and research on the subject, this talk demystifies the condition and shines a light on treatment options, causes, challenges, and ultimately the ways to manage the condition and live freely with it. Such an important episode that I am glad I have the opportunity to share with you. Enjoy!

Pelvic Organ Prolapse and its Causes

For those who are not aware of the condition, Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) is a condition where the pelvic floor muscles are weakened over time and cannot provide adequate support for the sexual organs atop the pelvic floor. There are 5 different types of P.O.P. as Sherrie states: it can affect your bladder, rectum, uterus, intestine, and colon.

Sherrie also says that the most common cause of POP is childbirth. But it can also be caused by menopause because as estrogen is depleted within the body, muscles grow weaker and lose their supportive function throughout the body. In relation to this, heavy lifting can also cause POP.

She says that women typically have more than one cause for developing POP. She goes into a lot of shocking facts and stats on the causes for POP within. Be sure to listen to that.

The Most Common Symptoms of POP

Sherrie says that feeling a bulge or tumor-like presence coming out of the vagina is a common symptom of POP. Additionally, urinary incontinence is a big indicator of developing the condition. Frequent constipation, pain during intercourse and lack of sexual sensation are also common indicators as well.

“A Push for Patient Empowerment”

Sherrie shares how many gynecologists are not looking for POP symptoms, and it can actually be hard for them to diagnose if they don’t know what they’re looking for the physical manifestations of the condition.

Sherrie states that there are a lot of pushes for correct screening protocols, including a standing screening procedure because it’s easier to notice any prolapsed tissue from that position. She suggests taking a handheld mirror, standing, and then to examine yourself to see if there are any protruding tissue from your vagina. There are varying degrees of tissue bulge, and she says that any at all is a red flag.

She goes into detail on surgical and non-surgical treatments for POP as well, which you should really take into consideration.

What Will POP Mean for Sexual Function?

Sherrie says that this condition significantly affects women, as they are usually sexually stigmatized by any vaginal tissue bulge. This can translate to a lack of desire and intimacy as body image issues arise. A whole cycle of sexual avoidance can occur if POP happens, even if it’s not a severe case.

Again, responses are unique and can vary from partner to partner, but POP definitely increases the likelihood of sexual self-consciousness, as it can be an emotionally devastating medical condition.

She also states that the incontinence and physical symptoms of the condition can lead to intimacy difficulties as they can be embarrassing for some. But Sherrie states that the biggest way of overcoming some of these struggles of the condition is to educate yourself about the condition itself.

Once the fear of the unknown diminishes, you can become more comfortable with the condition and experiment with whatever positions and dynamics work best. You can also opt for surgical treatment as well, which can drastically improve symptoms.

Key Links for Sherrie:

For the homepage of the Association for Pelvic Organ Prolapse Support (explore for a lot of great resources): https://www.pelvicorganprolapsesupport.org/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

94: Dr. Jennifer Valli – Fetishes

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 17:26:45 GMT

My guest today is Jennifer Valli. She has been on the show before to share her expertise and we’re very fortunate to have her back!

Jenifer has a PhD, has 26 years of clinical experience in psychiatry, and she is an experienced therapist an AASECT-certified sex therapist and educator. She is professional involved with many different publications including Men’s Fitness Magazine, and she did Post-Grad work in Sexual Health at the University of Michigan. This is just a few of her notable accomplishments and qualifications.

Most applicable to this particular episode is her training in fetishes/paraphilias through Johns Hopkins University. Within this talk, she explores the complex world of fetishes, and how we should approach them, some theories on their starting points, as well as ways to normalize atypical arousal.

What is Paraphilia?

Jennifer says that “a paraphilia is when someone has an intense sexual arousal pattern to an atypical object or situation.” These are known as fetishes. While we used to consider these “abnormal,” we now see these arousal patterns as part of the spectrum of human experience. A couple common fetishes that Jennifer talks about are the cuckold fetish and the infantilism fetish.

The cuckold fetish means that one partner derives pleasure from another person pleasuring their partner. It usually involves a male, and there is often a humiliation component to the act. This is different than a threesome, though. With cuckoldry, there is a voyeuristic component that is different than three individuals collaborating together in a threesome.

The infantilism fetish consists of being treated as an infant during sexual encounters. This often involves wearing a diaper or drinking from bottles. Jennifer walks through a lot of different non-consenting paraphilias which are listed as a disorder in the DSM-5.

The Importance of Sex Positivity for Those With Paraphilia

As is discussed within the talk, the DSM has been shifting in a positive direction when it comes to paraphilia. This is important because it normalizes these desires and removes shame from the consensual fetishes – that are actually pretty common across the board.

Where do Fetishes Start?

As far as the origins of some fetishes, there are the rare cases that can be traced back to a particular moment. But she states that there is not a lot of consensus on why people develop fetishes.

One of the theories is that because men have a higher incidence of paraphilia, that there are distinct moments, say around the age of 10, when they witness a taboo moment that is linked to an erotic arousal. And then as they masturbate, this serves as a biological reinforcement that is sort of mapped into the mind.

Females are more likely to have sexual fluidity around arousal, and males are more linked to a kind of sexual imprinting.

Listen along for a detailed 5-step breakdown of how assessments are made for fetishes.

Legal Vs Non-Legal Assessment

When talking about the assessment of fetishes, legality is a key thing that professionals like Jennifer are required to assess. If the fetish is legal, there will be efforts to normalize the behavior by minimizing any residual shame surrounding the paraphilia. If it is not legal, like pedophilia, she then looks to see if there is any distress around the urges. If there is no distress, that’s when the red flags are raised, and there’s a problem.

Mistakes in Accommodating Paraphilia in a Relationship

Jennifer says that a common mistake is in too much time and attention being spent on the partner with the fetish and not enough on the balance of the entire relationship.

Another mistake is in trying to meet both partner’s needs in one night. Jennifer states that it’s probably a better idea to separate out days and accommodate the fetish separately.

One strategy to accommodate fetishes, if a particular partner is having a hard time participating, is in strengthening other activities that speak to that paraphilia but which aren’t quite as involved. This is for the benefit of the partner without the particular fetish.

You can also make a hierarchy of interests and compromise according to a determined range you decide with your partner. This relates to strengthening related interests that speak to the original fetish. She goes through a lot of other different strategies and practices for accommodation within the talk. Make sure to check it out!

Key Links for Jennifer:

National Coalition for Sexual Freedom: https://www.ncsfreedom.org/

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in all of us: Book Link https://www.amazon.com/Perv-Sexual-Deviant-All-Us/dp/0374534837

Her website: http://www.jennifervalli.com/

AASECT website: https://www.aasect.org/

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

93: Taylor Pierce – Navigating Jealousy

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 15:19:17 GMT

My guest, Taylor Pierce, is a therapist at the Center for Couples & Sex Therapy in Portland, Oregon. She works closely with couples to explore issues in relationships and sexuality and really loves connecting and working with the LGBQT community and ethically non-monogamous dynamics.

In this episode, in particular, she explains the ins and outs of jealousy and how we can avoid it by diving deeper into the root causes of our insecurities and fears. Really important, powerful stuff that Taylor does a great job demystifying!

Her Interest in Jealousy

Taylor says that she first gained an interest in jealousy because she likes working with people who are in ethically non-monogamous relationships, and jealousy can come up a lot within that relationship dynamic.

But Taylor soon began peeling back the layers of the jealousy onion and realized that jealousy is a basic, universal trait of many types of relationships. This led her even farther into a specialized interest in the trait and she has a lot to share about the subject!

Control Issues Because of Jealousy

Often, if a partner becomes jealous, they can forbid the other from seeing another person out of insecurity or fear. For example, let’s say that a couple in a monogamous relationship develop some trust issues. It can be common for one of the people in that relationship to assert too much control over the other because of underlying insecurities.

Taylor says it’s never a good thing to let the jealousy morph into controlling situations because it’s often a sign of avoiding communication about the deeper issues at play: insecurity and a lack of trust.

Primary and Secondary Emotions

To understand jealousy on a deeper level, Taylor says that you can frame it through primary and secondary emotions.

Primary emotions are your gut reactions. They are the most vulnerable and tend to act as defense mechanisms. They are also full of fear and display any insecurities that may have been circulating inside of you.

Secondary emotions are reactions to those primary emotions, which in turn add to the complexity of the overall emotional reaction. Jealousy is a secondary emotion; it may arise after feeling angry, sad or hurt when your partner is flirting with someone else.

Steps for De-escalating Jealousy

Taylor reminds you to first be self-understanding because jealousy is a pretty common emotion to have. Almost everyone has felt jealous in a relationship before–if not now, then probably in the future.

She says self-awareness of emotions or deeper core issues at play– like a fear of abandonment–can help mitigate the overall intensity and longevity of your jealousy.

Taylor also encourages you to ask yourself questions to investigate the surrounding thoughts around your feelings of jealousy. And if you start having that regular dialogue with yourself, you’ll find that you come to the root cause of your jealousy and can often move past it.

Identify What You Need to Feel Safe

After you have identified what emotions or deeper insecurities are at play in your jealousy, Taylor encourages you to make a list for achieving a safe solution to your jealousy. She states that the list should be a balance between the work you do yourself and your partner could provide for you–for example, reassurance that you are not going to be abandoned.

Create Self-Care Rituals

Taylor says that creating a self-care ritual can really help if you’re struggling with jealousy. So often the main cause of jealousy is a feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, so reminding yourself just how strong you are, as well as empowering yourself with positivity, is never a waste of time!

Negative Reactions to Jealousy

Taylor says that shaming yourself for feeling jealous will only make you stuck in jealousy even more.

She also states that trying to react to jealousy by controlling your partner is a bad idea as well because it will only keep you in that cycle of jealousy.

More Sexual Connection Rather Than Avoidance

Taylor says that avoiding jealousy is also a gateway for better, more connected sex with your partner. There are a lot of jealousy issues around porn use or your partner’s sexual history, but if you can dive deeper into the layers of your jealousy and not react automatically, you can come out the other side much more connected.

Compersion

The term compersion is often associated with the non-monogamous community. It is a direct antonym to sexual or romantic jealousy. Taylor describes it as the positive feeling you may have when someone you love is experiencing something positive and fulfilling in a romantic or sexual way.

And although by definition this is the complete opposite of what you’d feel while you are jealous, just trying to imagine yourself full of compersion instead of jealousy is a powerful technique for overcoming your overwhelming feelings. You can approach it from less vulnerable places in order to build up to dealing with jealousy as well.

Key Links for Taylor:

Her Center for Couples & Sex Therapy profile: https://ccstpdx.com/meet-the-team/meet-taylor/

Taylor’s email: taylor@ccstpdx.com

More info:

Link to the free guide – Talking About Sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

92: Matthias Rose – Ejaculatory Choice

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:59:52 GMT

My guest is a repeat guest, which is a first for the Better Sex Podcast! His name is Matthias Rose and he is a Tantric teacher and healer. Matthias operates his practice out of Seattle and loves to connect couples through the power of Tantra.

In this episode though, he explores the power of “ejaculatory choice”. This is the concept that men can be in control of their ejaculation and learn to orgasm without ejaculation. By riding what he calls orgasmic waves, men can slow down their experiences, ramp up their connection and intimacy with their partner, and overall just let go and experience sex in a healthy, care-free, powerful way.

Listen in for much more on this powerful practice.

The Benefits of ‘Ejaculatory Choice’

Matthias says that rewording the phrase “ejaculatory control” to “ejaculatory choice” is a much more accurate and healthy representation for men. The benefits are many, and can extend to covering premature and retarded ejaculation. Ejaculatory choice is also beneficial for those with erectile dysfunction.

The Difference Between Ejaculation and Orgasm

Matthias says that when he is paying attention to internal experiences, arousal, and physical stimuli, the act of ejaculation doesn’t necessarily coincide with orgasm. Usually, orgasm and ejaculation happen close together, but they are not the same thing.

And so, as he states, you can have the orgasmic experiences without ejaculation. Because they are separate, you can practice ejaculatory choice and forego ejaculation to experience the waves and sensations of orgasm.

Multiple Orgasms and Greater Intimacy

Apart from being able to separate ejaculation and orgasm and thus achieve multiple orgasms with practice, ejaculatory choice also means greater intimacy with your partner.

It can lead to an exploration and a ‘playing’ in orgasmic waves that naturally stokes the embers of passion. And overall, being present and thoughtful and fully engaged with your ejaculation choice leads to more thoughtful, intimate sex.

He says that once sex is approached from a more open-ended way, there is greater potential for felt connection and overall better sex.

Ejaculation Obstacles and Techniques for Resolution

Matthias says that rapid ejaculation is more common than delayed ejaculation. He says that his approach is to let go of the ‘why’ when talking about ejacluation. His approach is less analytical and more practical in the sense that he introduces techniques for resolving the ejaculatory issue.

He says that getting rid of the usual anxious thoughts and distractions is key. He also tries to bring conscious attention to the physical sensations. And within that consciousness comes a shifting of the body’s automatic path to climaxing.

The Power of Breathing

Mathias says that deep, calming breaths are important for curbing the urge to ejaculate. You can self-regulate in this way if you are feeling the intensity ramp up.

He also says that you look at breathing as a way of moving energy away from the penis and upwards into the body, this can give you a lot more control over your ejaculation. This practice de-escalates the need to ejaculate and makes for more pleasurable sex. It is also directly applicable to females as well.

This breathing technique opens the door for more relaxation, which by extension leads to better sex. This is diametrically opposed to the tensing and clenching techniques often used to delay ejaculation, which leads to loss of energy and doesn’t give the benefits of ejaculation control.

As he says, most men who practice slowing down and doing the deep breathing find that after the initial climax builds and the male successfully slows down and avoids ejaculation, the brain understands that you are not wanting to ejaculate. Most men report having a few more minutes of free play until it builds back up again.

In short, you build up the potential to ride orgasmic waves as you continually build up the delayed climaxes.

Listen in for much more that wasn’t shared here!

Key Links for Matthias:

His LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthias-rose-053b35a3/

Websites: http://matthias-rose.com/ || http://moksha-tantra.org/

Articles: “How to Find a Tantric Healer” – https://medium.com/@matthiasrose/how-to-find-a-tantric-healer-8b2dd2b29c1a

“Tantric Bill of Rights” – https://medium.com/@matthiasrose/a-tantric-bill-of-rights-f0af021b1c1e

“The Heart of Tantra” – https://medium.com/@matthiasrose/the-heart-of-tantra-2fbfca187e45

“The Origins of Tantra” – https://medium.com/@matthiasrose/the-origins-of-tantra-acc4334638e9

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

91: Kara Haug – Fairy Tale Expectations

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 13:34:10 GMT

Happily Ever After is a Fairy Tale

My guest today is Kara Haug. She is the creator of Grace Unbound and is a practicing sex educator with a B.A. in Psychology and a Masters in Theological Studies, as well as a certificate in Sexual Health Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her role mainly centers on teaching youth about shameless sexuality. She does a lot of workshops and is doing important work shifting the narrative on sexuality.

And in this episode, she talks about the fairytale misconceptions that all women often face in their daily lives. Because there are cultural reinforcements that peg a certain brand of story for women, many are going into marriages and motherhood with inflated expectations, only to find that things are much more challenging than they originally thought they would be. This episode explores this topic and offers some solutions for women who are struggling. Listen along.

The Biggest Misconception that Women Have About Sex and Sexuality

Kara says that women have been given the misconception from a young age of this giant fairy tale image that bundles romance and partnership. And she says that as reach adulthood we are hit with the reality that “the chemicals in our brain have expiration dates”.

In short, women are often fed the story that romance is going to be the easiest thing in the world. It’s just a matter of finding the right partner and living happily ever after, but the reality of it is much different. Romantic partnerships are a lot of work.

The ‘Goal’ of Motherhood and Long-Term Partnerships

Kara also talks about the goals that women are meant to aspire to–the script they are given about motherhood and long-term partnerships–never really factor in the tough moments after the wedding or birth.

No one really prepares women for how difficult the whole dynamic is going to be – especially if you are juggling a career, kids, and a complicated relationship. Your marriage and children won’t unlock an infinite wellspring of energy and motivation from within you. Most of the time it’s going to be hard, and it will be far from the fairy tale expectations that we see perpetuated in society.

Struggles With Sexuality as a Women

There are still considerable struggles for women to claim their desire and exist comfortably in the open while at the same time claiming their sexual yearnings. Younger women are still being labeled as ‘sluts’ in schools if they explore their sexuality, so there’s still an uphill climb that doesn’t usually end until adulthood…and sometimes never at all.

The Biggest Threat to Marriages?

Kara thinks that because of how involved marriage (and motherhood) can be, the biggest threat to marriages is when two partners shift their dynamic from romantic lovers to a business partner type of relationship. And identities get lost amidst all of the chaos.

Kara says that prioritizing our identities as romantic partners is the most important thing. She also suggests regular conversations as a way to switch off the autopilot and reclaim your identity – despite the busy, daily happenings of adulthood.

She says that even if it’s just a date night every week, or sitting down and having a conversation about sexual or other relationship needs every month. That practice can save marriages from turning into business partnerships.

The Hardest Part for Kara

Kara said that she had past traumas resurface while she was breastfeeding her child. She states that many women also experience these traumas around their bodies when they become mothers.

She says more on the subject. Listen along!

There’s Nothing Wrong With You!

Being in a relationship is extremely challenging. Add motherhood and the constant stress of raising a family and you’ll hardly have any free time to spare. Just because you are struggling and finding the whole experience challenging does not mean there is something wrong with you. It’s completely normal to feel like there is. Don’t worry about it, you’re doing completely fine.

What Are Women Saying the Most as Time Goes on

As mothers, Kara says that the most frequent exploration is pleasure, and being comfortable with exploring that as a regular goal in their relationship.

In addition, a lot of women are struggling with body image and wanting to feel desirable, so that is a continual anxiety-inducing reality of being a woman in the 21st century.

Shifting the Narrative

Kara shares that the narrative should be shifted into the direction of more independence and identity for women. She communicates that to her young daughter that it’s nice to have a partner, but she doesn’t have to rely on a male partner to give her an identity.

She talks a lot to the youth and she found that even doing simple eye contact exercises made them uncomfortable. So a part of her job as a sex educator means that Kara is continually trying to teach the benefits of eye contact, communication, vulnerability, and consent to these younger individuals to keep shifting the narrative.

Key Links for Kara:

Her website: http://www.graceunbound.com/bio

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

Host Recent Episodes

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

90: Susan Bratton – Sexual Vitality

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 19:48:16 GMT

My guest Susan Bratton has been called a ‘trusted hot sex advisor for millions’. She is a sex technique publisher, a celebrated speaker, educator, CEO and Co-Founder of Personal Life Media, and the list goes on and on about her qualifications and amazing qualities.

In this episode, in particular, she shares her experience with sexual vitality and the summit she is spearheading in September (September 23-29, 2019). Within this talk, she also shares some insights into intimacy issues and basic remedies for those disconnects between couples of all dynamics.

Really useful, informative stuff. And I’d recommend that you check out the many resources that Susan has put out there!

How She Got So Passionate About Her Career

Susan got her start as a publisher for sex techniques. She was inspired to continue pursuing this avenue because she started to see much more pornography than actual positive tips for more satisfying, engaging sex.

In addition, she and her husband were taking workshops and tantric classes trying to ensure that their sex life was healthy and fully engaging. In that process, she reinforced her passion for sex and helping others find great sex. She and her husband actually started their company once they had learned enough to reinvigorate their sex life.

Roadblocks for Intimacy and Their Solutions

Susan says that after asking and having people fill out surveys, there were hundreds of different answers towards intimacy problems. About 15% of them were related to trauma; others were the products of physical hurdles: from diabetes and heart disease to painful sex for women and erectile dysfunction for men.

When approaching how she would address this wide array of intimacy issues, she came to the logical conclusion that a Sexual Vitality Summit with a diverse panel of experts was the way to cover all bases.

And then she also came up with the Magic Pill Method to spark a dialogue between people and get them to open up about their intimacy troubles.

The Life Stages of Sexuality

During the talk, the subject of age-specific intimacy issues came up. And usually the younger couples struggle with a lack of information and experience, and they aren’t communicating as openly as they should be on the subject.

Middle age is usually more varied when it comes to intimacy problems: with children, careers, neglect, complacency, and physical issues being responsible.

And as Susan reminds us, sex can just keep getting better and better. In fact, most 60-year olds are probably having the best sex they’ve ever had because of the experience levels and the acceptance of old age. There comes a point where sexual self-consciousness and intimacy issues are replaced with more grounded sex.

Couples Heal Each Other

Susan states that most healing work is done together with your partner. It’s a very involved process that incorporates not just yourself but your partner(s) as well.

She also says that it can be challenging to connect with a partner who has been programmed (so to speak) through cultural means that sex has a linear function. Susan states that younger couples are less prone to these fixed behaviors and mindsets derived from environmental and familial factors.

This is very common and applicable to LGTBTQ dynamics as well.

How Your Gut Microbiome Affects Your Intimacy

Susan states that the foods we ingest, the water we drink, the cleaning products we use, lotions we rub on our skin, and much more, all affect our gut microbiome.

And after all, our gut is closely correlated with our libido. Physical vitality is inextricably linked with gut health, which really is an overall precursor to a healthy body. So probiotics and an emphasis on better nutrition really is essential for better sex.

If you feel bad, you definitely won’t want to have sex. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. She goes into much more depth within the episode itself; be sure to check it out!

Key Links for Susan:

Website for the Sexual Vitality Summit: https://moresexualvitality.com/

Her books: https://susanbratton.com/books/

Personal Website (for all resources): https://susanbratton.com/

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

89: Dr. Justin Lehmiller – Sexual Fantasies

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 16:55:42 GMT

Sexual Fantasies and Eroticism

I know I say it often, but this topic is one of my favorites. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Justin Lehmiller about the all-important topic of sexual fantasies.

Justin is a celebrated speaker, researcher, author, and a very effective educator on the psychology of sexuality. His blog Sex and Psychology (https://www.lehmiller.com/) gets millions of visitors every year, and he regularly contributes his writing to major publications. This talk about his research is guided by his expertise and experience in the field.

The Most Common Sexual Fantasies

Justin says that when he surveyed almost 4,200 Americans from 2014 to 2016, the most common fantasies encompassed 7 different themes.

Multi-partner sex

BDSM

Novelty, Adventure & Variety

Taboo activities

Emotional connection and fulfillment

Homoeroticism and gender-bending

Non-monogamy

Justin describes these as the building blocks of fantasies, meaning that they are not mutually exclusive and many overlap. For example, you can very well dip your toes into multiple categories in your own personal fantasy life.

Are people ashamed of their fantasies?

As Justin states, he found that men reported more shame about their fantasies than women. Overall, the majority of study participants reported that they held a positive relationship with their fantasies, but there were still some who felt negative emotions towards their fantasy.

Another important thing he found during his research is that just sharing sexual fantasies can open up eroticism and alleviate feelings of embarrassment or shame for having certain fantasies.

The Differences between Men and Women regarding fantasy

Although the data showed that both sexes share a lot of commonalities, there were still some marked differences.

Men had more multi-partner fantasies than women did. And women had more fantasies about an emotional connection with a partner. Women also had way more BDSM fantasies than men by a large margin. In addition, men usually had a specific person in mind during their fantasies, and the women focused more on the setting and environment overall. Justin also found that the LGBTQ community had more sexually adventurous fantasies, as well as taboo fantasies.

Justin provides some insight into why women might like BDSM more than men, as well as the LGBTQ community and their sexual fantasy preferences. Listen in for that.

Sexual Fantasy by Personality Type

Justin shares some interesting insight into the correlation between personality type and sexual fantasy. For example, those who are more extroverted by nature will be more outgoing the bedroom. And for those who are ‘agreeable’ personality types, there will be a higher incidence of focusing on their partner’s sexual satisfaction in the bedroom.

He also talks about what conscientiousness has to do with fantasies, as well as self-esteem.

“Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar”

Justin says that sexual fantasies don’t really have to mean all that much. They can offer a glimpse into something deeper, but for the most part, they are just a product of your environment and genetic makeup and can be left out of the examination room. Fantasies can be a good evaluative road map to follow for your own unique sexual satisfaction, though.

But when talking about sexual traumas, there were small connections between sexual victimization and types of fantasies. But there was a lot of inconsistency in the data.

Hear Justin explain the data on this subject.

How to Share Your Fantasies with Your Partner

Justin says that before you share with your partner, you first have to feel good about yourself. You aren’t alone in your fantasies, so there’s a normalization that needs to first occur.

He says to lay low and start slow. A gradual buildup for disclosing your fantasies to your partner is much more powerful than an overwhelming information dump!

He also goes into detail on how important sharing is for increasing overall sexual desire and satisfaction within the relationship.

Key Links for Justin:

Affiliate link for Justin’s book: Tell Me What You Want : https://amzn.to/2ZPPezs

His website: https://www.lehmiller.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinLehmiller

Justin Lehmiller Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/psychologyofsex/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinjlehmiller/

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

88: Dr. Corey Allan – Desire Discrepancy Conversation

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 23:03:14 GMT

My guest is Dr. Corey Allan. He is a professional counselor and host of the podcast Sexy Marriage Radio, which centers on helping couples experience amazing sex within their relationships. He hosts the podcast with his wife, Pam, and they share some pretty stellar information on the topic every week.

Corey also has a private practice in McKinney, Texas and holds a Ph.D. in Family Therapy. And in this episode, Corey talks about desire discrepancy in particular. More specifically, he talks about productive ways for partners to navigate the high seas of fluctuating desires and the frustrations that can occur. One of the most important concepts that he shares (among so many others) is the importance of accepting desire discrepancy as natural, and not as right or wrong.

But this is a complicated subject. And through this episode, we dissect the many nuances of a common phenomenon. Be sure to listen and learn because this affects so many of us. Enjoy!

Framing Desire Discrepancy in a Positive Way

As Corey states, close to two-thirds of all relationships experience some sort of desire discrepancy within the dynamic of the relationship. So this is a common phenomenon that doesn’t mean there’s something inherently wrong within the relationship at all.

Corey likes to frame it in a higher-lower spectrum rather than a right or wrong metric. This relieves some of the pressure and reframes this frequent aspect of relationships in a much more positive light.

He points out that sometimes it’s actually the lower desire partner who brings the necessary perspective to the relationship by shedding light on areas that perhaps need more improvement: this could be manifested in more mindful, present sex and other areas to explore for more meaningful sex for both parties. Often the lower desire partner has a good reason for not wanting sex all that much, and attending to those reasons can shift the whole relationship dynamic in a positive way.

The Harms of Pathologizing Desire

As we discussed during the episode, a common thing that happens within couple dynamics is the ‘pathologizing’ of each other’s differing desires.

The lower desire person will often ask what’s wrong with the higher desire individual, and vice versa, leading to a harmful interplay between each. It’s natural to get defensive, and it’s easy to assume that someone is to blame in the relationship; but mostly, desire discrepancy is a natural byproduct of being in a sexual relationship with anyone.

More on this within the episode.

Don’t Take Rejection Personally

Corey highlights the productive and constructive ways to initiate sex with a lower-desire partner. This means if you are high desire, you should not pout or whine at rejection. In addition, don’t complain that you do all the initiation–that just comes with the high-desire territory. Corey reminds you to play the long game and frame your initiation in a positive way. How you respond to your lower desire partner’s reaction is important!

Corey’s Definition for Great Sex

Corey says that the best sex is when a partner is seeking what they want, and at the same time, trying to give their partner what they want. He calls it a “fluid dance”, which could also be described as a healthy interplay between the wide spectrum of sexual interests that two people can naturally develop in their relationship.

He says that both partners have to show up to achieve this. Frequency has less to do with it. It has to do more with the quality of the sex itself. He says that if you can have good, quality sex, the number doesn’t really matter. In other words, there’s no quota to fulfill, but instead, there’s a standard of quality to achieve between both partners.

The Importance of Communication for Lower-Desire Partners

It can take courage for a lower-desire partner to speak up about their needs, or to break off an initiation, but it is extremely crucial for a healthy relationship and sexual dynamic. If the lower-desire partner can communicate their needs and be in a comfortable enough place to assert their comfort level with sex, then a lot of good can come from that. It is the responsibility of the higher-desire partner to create a space that is conducive for this type of communication to occur.

And for much more within this episode that wasn’t touched on here, be sure to check the rest of this episode out. There’s definitely a lot to chew on and digest!

Key Links

Corey’s podcast: https://smrnation.com/series/sexymarriageradio/

Website: https://smrnation.com/

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

87: [Soapbox] – You Are Not Broken

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 17:33:58 GMT

I get back on my soapbox this week to talk about something I think is important. So many people feel broken or like something is wrong with them when they struggle with sex, but this is not true.

All couples go through lapses and setbacks. This does not mean anything is wrong with you. What you’re going through makes complete sense; we just have to understand why. It’s natural to doubt yourself when you have sexual difficulties; that’s just a normal part of being human. But you are definitely not broken, and steps can be taken to fix that type of mindset and prevent those thoughts from consuming your life.

I want to remind you that grieving and struggling with body image issues or desire discrepancy is normal, but it doesn’t have to take away from your ability to have an engaging, fulfilling sex life. Listen along.

It’s Common to Struggle with Sexual Desire

Despite how the media portrays the subject, consistent sexual desire is not a guarantee. There are so many factors that go into any individual’s libido. And there different ways of experiencing sexual desire.

There are two basic ways I describe sexual desire. First, there is proactive desire. This is sexual desire that is spontaneous, where you think about and want sex, and you’d like to take steps to make it happen. This is what culture teaches us constitutes ‘libido.’

But there is also reactive desire. This is when you only feel desire once you get going and start to be physically (and mentally) aroused. This may mean you feel absolutely no desire at any given moment, but once you get going in the way that elicits that desire within you, you start to react positively to that stimulus. Your desire then emerges.

Often, desire discrepancies occur because of a dynamic interaction between these differing modes of sexual desire. The person more interested in sex often has proactive desire. The person less interested often has the reactive kind. Both types are individual, they can fluctuate, and they are totally normal!

Sexual Performance and Dysfunction

If you struggle with any sort of sexual dysfunction or pain, it might be tempting to consider yourself broken in a tangible, “look at my dysfunction” type of way. But that’s a false narrative that should be restructured to reflect a more positive reality.

You are not broken. You may need to reorient the way you approach sex and get creative with it, but that doesn’t mean you’re broken. You can adapt and even pursue different medical interventions if there are treatments available. There are many approaches to take.

Loss, Grief, and Relationship Issues Can Contribute to Feelings of Brokenness

Sometimes sex will force you to confront issues that are emotionally upsetting–such as procreation struggles or sexual trauma–and this can also contribute to this hurtful cycle of brokenness,

These types of struggles can compound and carry over into your relationship, which can initiate and feed a vicious cycle of even more feelings of being broken. So, depending on how much work you’re putting into your relationship, you can expect there to be momentary (or lengthy) lulls in your sex life as well. This is not an accurate reflection on some innate sense of your self-worth but is a natural ebb and flow of being with a partner.

Lack of Knowledge and Experience

The state of sexual education in the U.S. has certainly not helped to dispel these feelings of inadequacy. And while many people think they’re learning about sex through pornography, porn is not education; it is entertainment. And it can contribute to body image issues and just an unrealistic portrayal of sex in general. This can widely influence feelings of brokenness.

Aging, Illness, and Trauma Affects Desire

As you age, you won’t feel the same sort of sexual readiness and libido as you used to feel. We all go through this, and we all have to adapt to our changing bodies. Instead of feeling broken, try to accept it as a natural progression.

And for more on how illness and sexual trauma can lead to feelings of brokenness, as well as the most important positive message to take away from this episode, keep listening.

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

86: [Reprise] Emily Nagoski – Come As You Are

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 14:32:59 GMT

Come As You Are

My guest today is the acclaimed author of the best selling, Come as You Are. Emily has been a sex educator since 1995, where she put her education to good use (psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy). Quickly, she realized that sex education, woman’s well-being, and violence prevention was far more fulfilling work for her personally. So, she made the switch from more neuro-centric work to that of the sex-education realm. And that switch has made all of the difference for the countless people who have benefited from Emily’s work in the field.

She has a Ph.D. in Health Behavior with an emphasis in human sexuality, and the list of her qualifications could go on. And within just seconds of this interview, you will immediately understand just how smart and articulate Emily is. Listen in.

The Motivation for Come As You Are

As Emily relates, the motivation to write her best-selling book has a very prominent beginning. It was the first day of the semester and Emily was beginning her usual Anatomy class. A student raised her hand and asked if Emily would walk the students through the evolutionary origin of the hymen. Never having contemplated the question, she knew the semester was going to be a challenging but rewarding one. And during the final exam, when asking a question worth 2 points, she asked students to state one thing they had learned. The answer was far from what she expected. She found herself grading the final exams with tears in her eyes. Listen in to learn what most of her students’ answers centered on.

We All Have the Same Parts

Consider the scrotum. Yes, never before has someone provided an opening sentence like that, but stop for a moment and consider it. The central tenet to Come as You Are is that we all have the same parts, they are just organized differently. If you look at the center of the scrotum, there is a demarcating line that runs down the center; during gestation, all it took was a simple hormone and genetic difference that prevented the scrotum from becoming a labia. They are both stretchy and anatomical similar, but they become formed differently during birth. Through this type of thinking, Emily crafted the book to alleviate the stresses and insecurities of sex. With stress-free sex, with more comfort inside one’s skin and the anatomy that we have developed, we can become comfortable in the fact that we are completely normal. For more on this, listen along.

Variance Should Be Celebrated

Getting to know your own sexual parts, as well as your partner’s. There is no one-size-fits-all type of sexual practice. Some women, a minority actually, can experience orgasm through vaginal stimulation alone; the majority cannot. And all because of slight anatomical differences that can’t be controlled. So, the number one message communicated is to celebrate the inevitable variance between everyone!

SES & SIS

This is another extremely interesting section of the interview: Emily talks about the internal sexual excitation system and the sexual inhibition system in our brain that is constantly working behind the scenes. These two work in tandem to balance out sexual excitation with an inhibiting effect that prevents us from being sexually excited all of the time. For more on this dual-control process and how understanding it can help trauma victims, listen along. I am not doing it justice here!

The Ramifications of Stress on Sexual Health

Stress can make one’s body shut down completely when it comes to healthy sexual functioning. As the brain is highly reactive and conditioned through many facets of existence, a stressful situation can kickstart the sexual inhibition system (SIS) which will more often than not win out over any excitation.

But again, variance shows up in this respect as well. Everyone is wired differently. Some people have an increased sex drive once stressed, and others don’t. It’s all a matter of preconditioning.

But what do couples do when they are mismatched in this regard. Emily tackles the question with gusto. Tune in to learn more.

Scheduled Sex

Just because you schedule sex with a partner, doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen. But it is a very good idea if you don’t have a lot of sexual desire or have a partner who doesn’t, to schedule the opportunity for sex. Don’t have an expectation that it’s going to happen, just create the opportunity. Sometimes once in an environment that is conducive for sexual excitation, there can be adequate responsive desire. A no-stress desire! Emily discusses this further in the episode.

Tips for Re-tuning One’s Sexual Response

For the most part, all it takes is a simple change to retune your sexual response to become less stressful. A compromise, a locked door, a new bed that doesn’t squeak, sometimes all it takes is to change your environment to take as many worries off of your mind as possible.

These are just simple fixes though. Sometimes sex can be very stressful, especially for trauma victims or those who have suffered from sexual shaming; but Emily has some information on that that she shares during the episode.

Tips for Overcoming Harsh Self-Criticism

Emily has three tips for the subject of overcoming body shame and insecurity. Two of them are, tune in to your body’s needs and undress in front of a mirror and point something out about your body that you like. Do this every day and eventually, you will get more comfortable with what you have. Instead of hiding it, celebrate it. Again, celebrate the diversity of everybody out there. For the other tip and much more information, tune in.

Concluding Thoughts

For a teaser of her new book Burnout, some fascinating neuroscientific information on context and sexual excitation, as well as another project she is working on, tune into the final minutes of the show. And follow her through her various social media channels, so you can be updated whenever her new book hits the stores.

Links For Emily Nagoski and Other References:

Come As You Are – https://www.amazon.com/Come-You-Are-Surprising-Transform/dp/1476762090

Website – http://www.emilynagoski.com/

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/enagoski/?hl=en

Twitter – https://twitter.com/emilynagoski

Jes Baker Website: Militant Baker Website – http://www.themilitantbaker.com/p/resources.html

More info:

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

85: [Soapbox] – Talking about Sex with your Partner

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 19:18:59 GMT

How can you bring up your sexual concerns with your partner?

On this episode, I focus on talking about sex with your partner when things are not going well. It can be uncomfortable to bring up sexual issues with your partner, and it’s for this reason that I have developed a guide that you can access with the link at the end of these notes.

While these talks may be difficult to broach, they create an arena for constructive feedback and help build healthier relationships. I share that this is how you create a sex life that works for BOTH of you.

A vital part of this is to first get over any fear you may have about talking about sex. Facing these challenges as a team is crucial to solving them. I outline three different stages for having this type of conversation.

Prepare

Like anything, without clarity and knowing what you want, you will have no direction. I emphasize the importance of this step. Highlights are picking up on patterns, emotions, and thoughts in your sex life. As part of the preparation step, I urge you to identify how you contribute to the problem. “Every situation is co-created.” I bring up a few important questions for you to answer and flesh out in this step. Empathy is also a factor in the preparation step, and I gently guide you around this to help you understand your partner, too.

Approach your Partner About the Topic

“Making time” is something to consider as opposed to spontaneously bringing up the sex talk.

I talk about the value of having a time limit on your conversation, too. I genuinely want you to find a solution, and having a collaborative attitude sets a healthy foundation for working together and talking. This will probably not be solved with one go, so expect a series of talks ahead of time.

How to talk about this

With collaboration in mind, I urge the use of “I” language. Tune in to learn more about this. I suggest creating space by allowing your partner to tell you how he/she/they feels. In addition to this, “distinguish between what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling.” Tune in to hear my advice on filters and managing triggers. You will learn about empathizing and exercising control in this step, too.

Among other valuable tips, I also emphasize, “Don’t have sex that makes it worse.” Listen for more!

Important Links

Link to the guide sex: http://bettersexpodcast.com/talk

Join my email list here: http://bettersexpodcast.com/list

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

84: Martha Kauppi – Sexual Desire Issues

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 15:36:50 GMT

My guest today is Martha Kauppi, who is a certified sex therapist and supervisor. Through her practice in Wisconsin, she focuses largely on relationships and how they can affect sex, and vice versa. In addition, she has a background in healthcare, so she brings a very useful perspective and expertise to her practice.

Within the episode, Martha talks about how complicated desire is in particular. She describes it as multifactorial, and she also says that desire and arousal is the complex result of a cluster of systems working together.

Enjoy this very informative talk from an important figure in the field!

Definition of Psychic Energy
When describing the libido, many people would define it as a physical phenomenon or a biological culmination of desire. Martha describes it as a psychic energy, or a “want to want to have sex.”

Martha says that if someone is wanting to cultivate desire, that’s a crucial first step and a great sign for her client. Because there are so many moving parts that go into desire, there are also many ways for a partner to struggle to become aroused.

Martha talks about the internal pressures, of ‘putting out’ in the relationship despite not having the desire, as well as the external pressures, like birthdays or other events.

She says that these pressures can contribute to a loss of arousal, even if subconscious. As the pressures ramp up, so too desire can diminish in relation.

Other Things That Can Make Accessing Desire Difficult
Martha says that sex pain is the biggest obstacle to desire, by far. It’s not technically a desire issue or intimately linked to the desire systems at work, but any sort of sexual pain will kill desire. And unfortunately, a lot of people who have painful sex are not bringing it up because they just assume it’s normal. Or in some cases, a lot of people don’t want to tell their partners because they are afraid of how it will affect the relationship.

Martha states that painful sex is treatable and should be addressed, because sex should not be painful. She also states that the pelvic floor is the usual cause for painful sex. In addition to this, she talks extensively about how a lack of pleasure contributes to decreased desire. Check it out!

Resources for Women and Men
In addition to a lot of valuable information on desire challenges for men and women, Martha shares some good resources: A Woman’s Touch (for men and women), OMG YES and of course The Guide to Getting it on is always a great book to reference.

Talk to a Professional!
She says that so many people are suffering and discouraged because of a lack of pleasure when they don’t need to be. If you can’t figure it out on your own, Martha really stresses the importance of seeing a sex therapist. She says she can often clear up pleasure problems in a couple of sessions.

Anxiety and Depression
A major cause for a lack of sexual desire can stem from mood disorders. And the medication that patients take to combat some of the symptoms can often lead to erectile issues and a decreased libido, so desire can be chemically affected as well as the challenges posed from depression or anxiety.

The Improvisational Sexual Style
Instead of thinking of desire as a linear progression, where kissing leads to touching, which then leads to internal stimulation and climax, Martha’s preferred improvisational style is much more sustainable a way to approach desire. Instead of walking up a staircase and participating in a hierarchy of sexual actions (with a goal in mind), there’s constant communication going on about desire and no script to stick to.

Martha thinks that the usual, linear model of sex actually creates needless sexual dysfunction. She thinks we would all be less broken if we could just ditch the linear model!

Key Links for Martha Kauppi
Martha’s website (for her blog and tons of free information on sexuality!): https://instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/

Amazing article on great sex for a lifetime: https://instituteforrelationalintimacy.com/getting-to-great-sex-for-a-lifetime/

More info:
Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com
Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/
Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman
https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

#83: Dr. Kelifern Pomeranz – Erectile Dysfunction

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 17:08:39 GMT

My guest is Dr. Kelifern Pomeranz. She is a licensed clinical psychiatrist, a sex therapist, and an overall expert on arousal disorders and more. She has a practice in Silicon Valley and is here to talk about erections: in particular, how to have healthy erections, what to do if you are having problems getting them, and various strategies for a healthy functioning penis.

Definition of Erectile Dysfunction

Kelifern says that erectile dysfunction is defined as a recurrent inability to obtain or maintain penile erection. This means that for 75% to 100% of sexual activity, this inability is consistent. And for at least 6 months of consistent inability.

She says that physicians will try to determine if a person is experiencing generalized erectile dysfunction, which means that it occurs across the board, in all sexual episodes, or whether they experience difficulty in very specific situations, which would mean situational erectile dysfunction. Also, professionals look to see if the dysfunction has been present since birth or if it is acquired from certain circumstances.

Also, when asked the difference between performance anxiety and erectile dysfunction, Kelifern says that it’s similar but not the same in that ‘performance anxiety’ doesn’t meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis. It can be temporary and often is determined by psychological effects.

How Common is Erectile Dysfunction?

Kelifern starts off this question by admitting that the stats are all over the map, but she says that some stats show that more than 30 million men struggle with erectile dysfunction. Also, a very well known study in Boston showed that about 43% of the 1,700 men studied (between ages 40-70) had erectile troubles.

What Medical Issues to Talk to Doctor About Before Getting Viagra

She cited a statistic that said around 70% of erectile dysfunction can be traced to physical conditions. Physicians will look at diabetes, smoking, heart disease, hardened arteries, and anything that inhibits or restricts blood flow.

But sadly, a lot of men are being written prescriptions for medication right away instead of being looked at for many of the other contributing causes. A lot of dysfunction is being written off for psychological causes when they are rooted in treatable physical disorders.

The Science of a Hard-On

Kelifern says that the penis is comprised of 3 cylinders. One runs along the bottom of the penis, which encircles the urethra. And then are 2 cylinders that run alongside the penis and are made up of the sponge-like tissue that fills with blood.

As she states, an erection is a complex thing. Not only are the body and the brain working in tandem, but psychological and emotional factors have a lot to do with a successful erection as well. When aroused, a man’s penis will fill with blood at 6-8 times the normal rate of blood flow. It becomes engorged, the arteries suspend, and the penis hardens.

Kelifern also says that men can have erections that do not involve the brain. This is called Reflexogenic erection. These types of erections occur by direct stimulation of the penis and are controlled by nerves found in the lowest part of the spinal cord segments. The brain is not involved.

But there is much more that goes on. Kelifern says it’s a very complex interplay in the body. Hear her describe the process in more detail in the episode!

Psychological Circumstances Surrounding Erectile Dysfunction

Kelifern says that arousal is key, as well as relaxation. Anything that disrupts either one of these can make obtaining or maintaining an erection very difficult. Any discomfort can lead to performance anxiety and can decrease the necessary arousal.

So when the brain is anxious, it disrupts the brain’s ability to send the necessary messages to the penis. And this is not good for getting an erection. This often happens when the man is thinking about performance over being present with the sensation and stimulation.

In addition, a history of trauma can hinder erections. Religious reinforcements and other sociological factors can also negatively affect physical performance.

Treatments for Those Who Are Struggling

She stresses again that for those who are struggling, working with a physician first is key. At this part of the episode, Kelifern talks about some very important side effects of pills like Viagra, the effects, who should take them, alternatives such as prosthetics and pumps, and much more.

For psychological treatment, mindfulness and anxiety reduction are the major players for helping men achieve more consistent, healthier erections.

Key Links for Dr. Kelifern Pomeranz

Kelifern’s website: https://www.drpomeranz.com/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/drkelifernpomeranz

AASECT: https://www.aasect.org/find-professional/listing/1/7303

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

82: [Soapbox] Exploring Eroticism – Jessa Zimmerman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 22:35:46 GMT

The topic today is eroticism, which is our unique fingerprint of what turns us on. It’s a set of things or the theme of things that really arouses us – that we find highly interesting and erotic. We all have the things that we prefer in sex and things that we find more arousing than others. This is a useful concept and area of inquiry if we’re going to make our sex life as good as we can.

Frees Us from Guilt and Shame

I find eroticism fascinating. And one of the theories that I subscribe to was developed by Michael Bader, who wrote a great book called Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies. He talks about how our eroticism, what we find especially arousing, frees us from guilt and shame. It moves those obstacles out of the way so that we can be fully aroused.

I give a great example of what Mr. Bader means, and if you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend the book in terms of trying to figure out why exactly does your eroticism exist? What does it absolve you of or relieve for you?

Why is Eroticism Important?

In some ways, you may have been going along having sex with your partner for a long time. It hasn’t been highly erotic, and it’s been just fine, and that’s part of the problem. We tend, over time, to come down to what a colleague of mine called “lowest common denominator sex.” How do we get to this point and what do we do to move beyond this level? It’s important to understand that maybe there’s room to explore what could reenergize your sex life.

We Need More Fuel for the Fire

Not only is our sex life becoming a little bit more predictable if we’re with the same partner usually, but we tend to need more fuel on the fire to get aroused or to reach an orgasm as we age, as we have more stress, as we have more responsibilities. So, tapping into our eroticism is a great way to up the stimulation because that is mental stimulation. If you’ve ever heard the saying that our brain is our biggest sex organ, that’s what that means to me. I explain it further during the episode.

Mental stimulation has a lot of power. And if we add that, we get our brain engaged and highly charged, and that’s a lot of energy for our sex life. That added stimulation makes it much, much easier to get aroused or reach orgasm, especially as we get older in terms of what we need to really get turned on.

Your Eroticism is Revealed in Different Ways

If you think about the best sex you’ve ever had or the sex that was the most exciting or what you like to do, that might point you in the direction of what you find highly arousing.

A place you could also look is in your reaction to sexual or romantic material. There is so much out there, and we don’t respond equally to all of it. We’re going to be drawn towards things that shine a light on what we find erotic. Watch for those things. And if you haven’t noticed that or you’re not coming across it, maybe seek out some erotic material on purpose and test the waters.

Another place you can look for your eroticism is in your sexual fantasies. If you fantasize, or if you could begin to fantasize about purely erotic material, your own creations really reflect your eroticism. This works because we don’t put stuff in there that doesn’t work for us. If you want to examine your sexual fantasies, spend a little bit of time there, maybe write some of these out. That can be a great place to identify the themes of what turns you on.

Once You Understand Your Eroticism

The next step is to share that with your partner. To learn theirs and to share yours with them. I can’t stress this enough – adopt a stance of curiosity without judgment. Set the stage to have a welcoming conversation and start to explore what really turns you each on without any sense that you must do anything about this yet, or that it means that anything is good or bad. Once you have the sort of common ground and this curiosity, you might share your own fantasies and just delving deeper into what really turns you on.

Find the Overlap

You come out of this process with a real knowledge of yourself and your partner, and I think you’re going to begin to see the overlap. There’s room to put these together. Now it doesn’t mean that what you find erotic, that what you fantasize about, that you want to do it. I describe different ways you can use erotic energy even if you don’t want to do the things in real life. You’re working with another person whose desires and wishes, and their eroticism also matters. And looking for where you can get overlap and you can play together, and you can harness what is wonderful.

Figure Out What Eroticism is for You

I can’t stress enough how powerful I think this is and how useful I think it can be in your sex life. And again, not every time you have sex. But it’s nice to have some of this to draw on and to have a little bit of variance in how arousing sex is… like there are places to pull it out and make it hotter.

And then there are other times where we just sort of want a simple, moderately warm encounter. Right? They’re all okay, but this gives you some flexibility. I hope you enjoy that and thanks again for listening.

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

81: August McLaughlin – Girl Boner

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 22:25:17 GMT

Girl Boner – A Story of Empowerment

My guest is August McLaughlin. She is a celebrated health and sexuality writer, the creator of Girl Boner, wrote a book with the same name, and is a fellow podcaster!

As she states during the talk, her experience with sexual education was very lacking and lopsided. From an early age, she was prepared for the terrifying world of cramps and bleeding without mention of the empowering sexual satisfaction that women can experience. This would lead to her investigating sex on her own terms, and in turn, she has empowered countless women through her work.

She talks about how working in the modeling industry-led an eating disorder, how she discovered masturbation, the way toward empowerment, and much more!

Connection Between her Sexual Shame and Eventual Healing

August says that it’s hard to separate how we feel about our bodies and our emotional selves. If we don’t really talk about our genitalia and sex is considered taboo, we aren’t able to awaken the empowerment within ourselves.

As August went through her eating disorder while she was doing modeling work, she also realized that an underlying cause for her not being sexually empowered was the sexual shame she carried around with her. She says that therapy certainly helped, but she was still not addressing the root of her problem.

She says that a turning point in her transformation was that she started getting uncharacteristically angry. She would get sad, frustrated, and angry with herself. She realized that, as a woman, she was taught not to access her sexuality. August also realized that she didn’t know much about her own anatomy.

She said she was having pleasurable sex at this point, but it became something else entirely when she connected with her body and felt empowered.

Masturbation as a Turning Point

August said that for the majority of her life, she had been more inclined to participate in intercourse than outercourse. She said that external stimulation had never really done anything for her, and besides, there had always been a layer of shame surrounding the act itself.

It wasn’t until she revisited masturbation with a new perspective that it eventually opened up her eyes to more empowerment.

She says that she switched careers. August was a full-time writer, she was in a monogamous relationship, and one day while her partner was traveling work, she was confronted with a desire for sex and no outlet for it. That was when she tried masturbation.

August was 30 years old at this point. On the night she discovered the empowerment of masturbation, she was so excited she called her partner and told him that she had achieved an orgasm on her own! For more on this, listen to August tell the story in her own words.

The “Girl Boner” Origin and Mission

After the orgasm that changed her life, she applied for the trademark on the term ‘girl boner’. The term itself has multiple meanings for August. It’s a humorous term she used in grade school, it stands for sexual potency and empowerment, and it’s one of those titles that gets your attention right away.

How Journaling has Helped August

While she was freewriting and journaling, a lot was coming out about her acting career and her sexual insecurities. She thinks it’s a very powerful tool for unearthing inner sexual desires and to help with fostering curiosity. It also helps you to approach a difficult or awkward sexual subject and get closer to it in a much more comfortable way.

Key Links for August McLaughlin

Affiliate link for Her book: Girl Boner – https://amzn.to/2Run62d

Website: https://augustmclaughlin.com/

Podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/gvb-radio/girl-boner-radio-with-august-mclaughlin

Girl Boner Journal: https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Boner-Journal-Guided-Awareness/dp/1948705214

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

80: [Soapbox] Desire Discrepancy Strategies with Jessa Zimmerman

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 17:03:27 GMT

Desire Discrepancy may or may not be a term that you’ve heard. This is where two different people want different amounts of sex. There’s a discrepancy between your desire and your partner’s. This is universal. It happens all the time, and it is a problem for a lot of people. In this episode, I’m going to talk about Desire Discrepancy, how it occurs naturally, issues that may crop up around it, and give you some strategies to effectively navigate this common challenge.

Desire Discrepancy Doesn’t Need to Be a Struggle

Most of the couples that I see in my practice are struggling with Desire Discrepancy, often in addition to some other issues and concerns. It can be a large part of where they’re struggling emotionally and relationally with each other.

And it doesn’t need to be a struggle. Actually, nothing is broken. It’s just that we tend to handle this poorly. We don’t understand that it’s normal, and we don’t understand how to approach our part of the dynamic to be constructive with our partners.

Having Desire Discrepancy is Natural

It probably makes sense to you, the idea that any two people don’t want the same amount of sex. This is a universal phenomenon in a relationship, at least over time. Why would any two people want exactly the same amount of sex early in your relationship? Maybe it felt like you did, maybe it was easy and you both couldn’t keep your hands off each other. But over time, discrepancy shows up, and for different reasons. This isn’t that somebody is lacking desire or that somebody’s broken. It’s natural for our desire to ebb and flow. It’s harder once we get older, it’s harder once we’ve been with the same person for a while, it’s harder when stresses show up in our lives and we get busy with careers or children or other kinds of things that go on for us.

While everybody experiences it, it’s not a problem by itself, but it can be experienced as a problem. And it’s often thought to be a problem for people that are struggling with sex in their relationship. During this episode, I talk to you a little bit about how this works and how you can approach it differently with your partners.

The Solution Involves Collaboration

So now that we understand it is not a problem, we also need to realize we are not going to get you where you both want the same amount of sex because that’s not the goal. What I want to do is help you get to a place where you’re collaborating in this phenomenon, where you’re working together as a team where it’s not polarizing you, where you don’t consider it in any real issue.

There still may be a little bit of negotiation, or maybe even frustration for either one of you around this, but it shouldn’t be divisive.

The Lower Desire Partner Has The Control

It’s important to understand that as desire discrepancy emerges over time or develops over time, you must realize that the person that wants less has all the control. Not because they want it, not because they enjoy having that kind of control or power, mostly they don’t. But anybody who wants something less kind of has their hand on the spigot, they’re the ones saying if, and when, and how. And this dynamic doesn’t just apply to sex, it applies to almost anything. In these situations, the person who wants something less or who isn’t valuing it as much, they have the control. It is built into the system, not because they are trying to be controlling or because they are enjoying having this control over you, it’s just fundamentally part of the system.

The System is Under Pressure

When somebody wants something more than somebody else, another thing that’s inherent in this situation is pressure. The person who wants something less typically feels a lot of pressure. They’re aware that their partner wants this thing and there’s a lot of pressure in the system. And it’s likely not because the person that wants more sex is trying to pressure you, there’s pressure in the system because you’re aware of that discrepancy.

Don’t Get Caught in These Traps

So those two things, control and pressure, are built in and for a lot of people that get stuck in this, they’re waiting for one or both of those things to go away before there’s forward movement. And that’s part of what gets them caught because those are not going to go away. We have to proceed despite those things.

During this episode, I go deep into the different traps both the lower desires partner and the higher desire partner can fall into, and how to avoid them. It’s ultimately understanding, recognizing, and communicating about these traps that will help keep you and your partner from getting stuck, building resentments, or pathologizing each other.

Remember, You’re Not Broken

Desire Discrepancy is a given, it’s going to happen, and knowing that it is a natural part of every relationship means that it is not a sign of a broken relationship. It’s not about one side or the other “fixing” their sex drive. Neither you nor your partner is the problem, and nobody is broken.

Below are links to some guides, one for those with increased desire, and one for those with decreased desire. And I’m going to follow up with another episode about an exercise you can use to totally transform this using these concepts.

But if you can start to wrap your mind around these different ways to think about this dynamic in a different way, you can interact in your role with each other. But even just the way you’re thinking about this inside your own mind can make a big, big difference. Desire Discrepancy does not need to be this huge divisive factor in your relationship.

Important Links:

Higher Desire Partner Guide: http://bettersexpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/HDP-Guide.pdf

Lower Desire Partner Guide: http://bettersexpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/LDP-Guide.pdf

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jessazimmerman.substack.com/subscribe

79: Feminine Energy – Dr. Sharon Cohen

Jessa Zimmerman — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 15:25:39 GMT

All about Feminine Energy

My guest Sharon Cohen, PhD has been working in the mental health field for over 25 years. She has also specialized in love and relationships for the past 7 years, but as she states during the interview, she has always been passionate about the subject.

Her main clientele is women in their 30’s and 40’s, but she does work with men as well! She says she is committed to helping women find the right relationship for them.

In this episode, in particular, she taps into her knowledge base to teach us about the dynamic energy fields at the root of all relationships. Often there are masculine and feminine interplays in energy and the best, most stable relationships have a healthy balance of the two. She talks much more in-depth about this fascinating subject within. Enjoy!

The Red, Yellow, and Green Flags of a Relationship

In Sharon’s program, she has something called the red/yellow/green flag process, in which she helps her clients to become aware of the people to avoid, as well as the people to pursue a lasting, healthy relationship for you.

Sharon says believes that it’s really important to know completely what you don’t want in a relationship. So she has her clients make a list of the 3 non-negotiables to make sure that once the honeymoon period ends in a relationship, the negative qualities they don’t want will not surface unexpectedly.

The Importance of Self-Awareness

Sharon says that some clients work under the assumption and belief that all of the people they’ve dated are the problem instead of taking some of the ownership for relationship troubles. She said that self-awareness is key to having a healthy relationship, and it’s challenging to work with clients who don’t have any self-awareness.

This goes hand in hand with being willing to change. As Sharon shares, if you’re not willing to change, then no change will happen.

Common Mistakes Her Clients Are Making

A common problem that some of her clients run into is that many of the women feel they have to stop being confident and independent in their work life to have a relationship. But she says that for those who say they want to be completely independent, they might as well not be in a relationship. Relationships, by definition, require interdependency

In addition, she also comes across difficulties regarding the dynamic between feminine and masculine energies. For those who are not aware, a balance of masculine and feminine energies seems to spark a healthier interplay during a relationship. These energies are not the same as your gender identity. All people can have both masculine and feminine energy, and each couple functions better if both energies are represented. Couples often struggle when feminine energy is lacking.

Understanding all of this is very important and Sharon talks much more about it within the episode!

Energy Dynamic Within Same-Sex Couples

Sharon says that even with same-sex couples, some people will tend to be more masculine than feminine in their energies. Again, gender identity is not the defining characteristic here. There is an energy range that fluctuates and changes regularly.

Working with Sex

Sharon says that she works with couples who have trouble communicating their individual sexual desires. Giving each partner a voice and opportunity to respond in an open way is vital for any healthy, fulfilling relationship.

She uses a script that is kind of awkward at first, but also somewhat humorous. And through that practice and approach, the difficult subject can be broached in an effective, non-intimidating way.

Key Links for Dr. Sharon Cohen

Sharon’s website (check out her free-ebook and make a consultation with Sharon!): https://drsharoncohen.com/

More info:

Book and New Course – https://sexwithoutstress.com

Web – https://www.bettersexpodcast.com/

Sex Health Quiz – http://sexhealthquiz.com/

If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to be a part of making sure it continues in the future, consider being a patron. With a small monthly pledge, you can support the costs of putting this show together. For as little as $2 per month, you can get advance access to each episode. For just a bit more, you will receive an advance copy of a chapter of my new book. And for $10 per month, you get all that plus an invitation to an online Q&A chat with me once a quarter. Learn more at https://www.patreon.com/bettersexpodcast

Better Sex with Jessa Zimmerman

https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/better-sex/

More info and resources:

Secret Podcast for the Higher Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/hdppodcast

Secret Podcast for the Lower Desire Partner: https://www.intimacywithease.com/ldppodcast

How Big a Problem is Your Sex Life? Quiz – https://www.sexlifequiz.com

The Course – https://www.intimacywithease.com

The Book – https://www.sexwithoutstress.com

Podcast Website – https://www.intimacywithease.com

Access the Free webinar: Intimacy Made Easy: 3 Secrets to Bridging Libido Differences: https://intimacywithease.com/masterclass

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