The Re-Civilized Woman: Stephanie Welch on Sex, Society, and Self - Pt 2

Many people can get fixated on that agenda around how can I push the right buttons on this person to give them pleasure? And that's very ineffective most of the time versus being connected to one's own pleasure and expressing the enjoyment of the partner through one's own pleasure can actually be one of the most connecting and effective ways to please another person.

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. I am your host, James Barry, part 2 with our guest, Stephanie Welch. So last week, Stephanie Welch shared her journey of overcoming nail biting and building confidence through self-care, as well as her insights on navigating aesthetics and modesty in massage therapy. We explored her late blooming experiences, redefining femininity, and using ancestral health to address modern gender mismatches. This week, Stephanie dives deeper into her experience in the legal sex trade, shares fascinating insights on evolutionary psychology and relationship dynamics, and she challenges modern gender narratives with an ancestral perspective. Very excited for you to hear this episode. And if you like what you're hearing, remember, leave a review, subscribe, share it with a friend. We would appreciate your support, and we look forward to hearing from you. Enjoy part 2 with Stephanie Welch. First of all, how are you doing? Because I, you don't normally talk about this part of your life, right?

This is the first time that I'm actually publicly speaking about this. I talk about it privately to people, you know, because when people, friends I know that know me, um, it's easy for them to understand how this all fits in, but the broader like social environment still has a lot of stigma around it.

You didn't just go and study it and write a book. Like, you're like, no, no, I'm gonna actually go put myself in the, you know, legal sex trade and I'm gonna experience it. And you did it how many years? It was like 3, 4 years?

About 3, 3 years roughly. Yeah.

Yeah. What's the process in a nutshell of like, here's my first day of legal sex work versus here's my last day? What was your first experience like? Where you're now getting paid for your sexual connection with a man? And was it even actual sex? Because I know sometimes it's simply like talking to people, right?

Much like massage therapy is a profession where I saw hundreds of clients for hundreds of sessions and it all kind of blurs together. A lot of it's like that in sex work as well. It's honestly, it's so much more mundane than you would think when it comes to the profession in that regard. So did my first booking ever, did that involve sex? I think it probably did, but it's pretty fuzzy. I remember the room that I had, cuz I only had that room for a short while and it was different from some of the other rooms.

Were the rooms different for different things? Cuz you gotta remember, no one has experienced what you have, right? So can you actually draw us the experience so we have a better understanding?

Yeah. So I mentioned in the legal establishments out there, there are maybe a dozen, give or take, brothels. And it's basically a house. It's a little bit like a hotel. You have a bunch of bedrooms with, they usually have an attached bathroom, so little suites and then some common areas and like a bar parlor area up front where customers come in. So whenever you're there, you have a room that you're assigned to. You essentially rent a room. That's kind of the mechanism for how you're there. You have an arrangement with the house, you have your work card that's given to you by the sheriff. So when you show up the first time, there are a bunch of things that you have to do. You have to fill out paperwork, sign a contract. They usually have a driver that will take you places cuz you're usually flying out there. Most people are coming from all over the country or all over the world for that matter. They take you to the sheriff's office, they get you your paperwork, usually get fingerprinted, background check. You see the doctor every week, you get checked for a variety of things. That's what the health department requires is certain things that you get checked for. Some it's every week, some it's every month.

Do the people coming to the brothel have to be checked?

All the health safety aspect is totally on the provider side. So the STD checks every week or month. You're legally required to use condoms. And they also have this thing they call the DC, stands for dick check. Before you actually take somebody's money and go back behind closed doors, you literally ask them to drop their pants and have a little inspection where you look to make sure that there is no obvious signs of things in disarray. Like from crabs to, you know, open sores or things that are like dirty or It's extraordinarily rare for anyone to show up with any obvious signs of something wrong because they generally know that they're not gonna get a pass. But I would say I've only had to fail 2 or 3 people in like an average of like 1 or 2 a year maybe.

There's a lot of sensationalism around this topic, right? A lot of people just, they only know what they see in the movies. To that point, are the movies about the industry accurate or is it more like sterile than that, or just not as glamorous?

I don't really know what movies we might be talking about. There isn't a whole lot that I know of that references the way the legal industry is out there.

For example, when someone comes to the facility and they're wanting to be with somebody, a lot of times the movies show like all the women come and line up and then the person picks, like, is that how it works?

Sometimes, yes. And that varies depending on where you're at. There are places with a sort of mandatory lineup. So before the person even gets in the door, somebody will say, oh, there's someone coming, and, and everybody will run to the front and get in the line. In those cases, the guys are confronted with the lineup as soon as they walk in the door. I think that's a little bit intense for a lot of people. Some of them will try to decline it, and then depending on who's the house manager, they may insist that the guy has to choose somebody to talk to right away. But usually even if that's the case, you'll go sit at the bar for a while and you'll have a conversation depending on where you're at. Some of the houses have rules on how long you can spend talking to somebody before somebody has to make a move, either that you're gonna go negotiate or you need to get up and make space for somebody else to have a chance to try to get them to book as a customer.

Does ego and competition play into it? Like, is there an aspect of like, You go line up and you're not chosen, do you feel deflated? Is everyone dressing differently or doing little things to get chosen? Like, is there competition in that way? Because you only get paid if you get picked, right?

Yeah, you only get paid if you book with somebody for sure. Yeah. So getting picked is one step towards booking with somebody. Definitely people are trying to, to show up in a way that is likely to get them picked. And I would say There is a huge amount of variation in terms of that. You know, you'll have some people who are especially physically attractive or who present themselves very successfully and maybe they get chosen more, or maybe it's cuz they're blonde more than average, or the preferences that people have when they come in is all over the board. So like, no matter who you are, you'll always get picked at some point, but we certainly all would try to do everything we could to increase our chances. When you're out there, essentially the bottom line is you're trying to make money. That's the reason why people go.

But how did that mix with your psychology? Because you're coming from a place of like, I've been monogamous most of my life. I've only had a handful of boyfriends. I previously felt rejected. So in that competitive environment, is this just playing out that whole process where every other day you're just like, oh man, like I'm just facing my struggles from my past, or I'm facing my past, or did you find like bliss and you were just like, oh no, it is what it is. And whether I get chosen or not, because you also are coming there to pay your school bills, right? You're a little driven towards—

It didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, but— oh, but no, I was on the path of continual improvement. I went in there with a growth mindset. I was like, okay, this is a chance to put money on the line for getting good at this.

What's this?

The getting chosen part. Oh. Once you've negotiated something and, you know, you've exchanged money, that's the hard part. The easy part is going and completing the service. So the focus was on how could I make myself as attractive as possible? So that was the, like, getting better at that every day. And I did. And, and a big part of the way that I did was with the help of many other women there. On the one hand, there's a certain amount of competition, but there's also camaraderie. And that was something that I enormously encouraged, particularly in the house where I first worked. Because actually when I first arrived, the first place I started had a fairly toxic environment when I arrived. And there was one woman in particular who was kind of the bully who was stomping around and stomping on everybody. A variety of things happened. She did some things that caused some issues and I alerted management to it. But also because the turnover is so high there, when you're new, it doesn't take very long before you are not the newest person there. And they have systems that they call it like having a big sister. More experienced women will help the ones who come in who are less experienced. And within a month, I immediately started taking on the mentorship role of being a big sister and welcoming in newer women to the space and creating a very, a much better culture of support and help. Everything that I had learned up to that point, I would tell them and teach them everything I knew. They would feel very appreciative and supported and welcomed. And then as soon as they started being more experienced, they would bring in newer girls with the same kind of attitude. So it only took about 6 months where we went from the most toxic house to the most collaborative, supportive place. And the women that I met there helped me with so many things. I mean, I had to exert a little bit of influence to help in the place where I started, because it's not all like that. But once I did, the support that I got from all these other women was just, you know, fantastic.

My wife was just watching this Dallas cheerleaders documentary. And the actual football team, the Dallas Cheerleaders, the criteria of getting into that program every year they have to renew. It's very, very competitive, but yet they're not paid well. It's one of those things where it's not compensated like football players at all. Like where the women who are running the program, they don't necessarily own it, but they're just running it. And they were previous cheerleaders. They're the ones getting paid. They treat the people that are training to be cheerleaders or are currently cheerleaders like, oh, well, well, they would do this for free. It's an environment that is kind of toxic with— they probably wouldn't see it like that, but it's toxic in that you have women putting other women down, like not allowing for equal pay, not supporting them to get compensated for what they're doing. And they're justifying it. They're saying, oh, this is— Because they would do it for free anyway. And I did it for free and I didn't get paid a lot. So of course they should do it too. That structure is kind of built into that system. And here you're sharing that in many ways, the brothel is set up to be very competitive, but yet that's not the culture that you experienced because you supported the co-creation of it not being toxic like that. Do you think that is One of the things we're missing from female culture, because it does seem like that is the characteristic I hear the most, which is women are so mean to other women. And I have a daughter who's in junior high right now. And literally it comes up all the time. Like girls are so mean to each other.

I gave a talk at the 2019 Ancestral Health Symposium in San Diego. It has a very long title. It was called Tribal Living. How might a gender-segregated housing model outperform the nuclear family as the basic domestic unit of society? And it was kind of based on my experience at the brothel where you had all these women living together under the same roof and sharing, essentially sharing resources. The way that the money works there is it's basically 50/50 split with the house. Whatever your customers come in and pay.

Mm-hmm.

You keep half and the house keeps half. So we are all collectively contributing to the environment that we live in. Half of everything that I make goes to support the house that is providing us this environment, that is generating traffic, that is feeding us, that we're living at. I felt very invested in the environment and the culture there. I wanted to get the most out of it. that I could. And so I wanted to contribute the most that I could. And I experienced that, that I came in with this very optimistic abundance mindset. Like, I'm going to help everybody. I'm not going to be stingy or competitive in the way that I work. I'm going to 100% support and encourage everybody else. Again, because I was able to do that in the environment of like bringing in new people so that they felt that from day one and Because the turnover is so high, the culture got replaced really fast. And I felt like that was one of the coolest things that I ever experienced was this like awesome network of all these women who were just behind each other and who were like completely, you know, wanting to be supportive and generous and giving. And it's like, yeah, this is much more like what our nature is oriented to be that high costs and energetic investment of bearing and raising children leads women to have a very socialist kind of tendency that we want to support and help each other because we know we have so much more to gain by cooperating than by competing against one another. Because if we're trying to tear each other down and, you know, we're making the environment miserable in there, like, what guys are going to want to come in and hang out and spend spend time with us. But if we're all having a great time, we're all like so friendly, we're so happy and laughing and supportive and all that, like that creates an environment where people wanna hang out. We even become more attractive in just our exuberance and the pleasure and things. This could even tie back to the aspect of what men are wanting to experience there. And, and the pleasure of women is A big part of it, that we're having a good time, that they're showing up in an environment where we're getting a lot out of it. I really wanted to actually complete a thought about that from earlier, that one of the things I found is that when guys are coming in and they have this drive to please women, but the incentives are there around making money, what most women learn very quickly is that the way to make the most money is to appear to be Very, very pleased by the customer that you have, even if that's not really the case. Right. And inevitably the sole marker that anybody assumes is the indicator of pleasure is how many orgasms you have. What ends up happening is in that environment, it largely becomes a theatrical performance. And so when a customer comes in and sees a woman, he's basically paying To have her appear to be enjoying herself to the maximum, which basically most women fake a lot of orgasms there to create this experience. What I learned from this, the actual detrimental effect to society in the broader scale is that this gives men who seek these kind of services false positive feedback. For things that are terrible. And it never actually teaches them how to improve their sex lives and those of their partners because they just get this like, oh, you're amazing. Oh, that was wonderful. And if anything, that reinforces that original idea that they may have had that most women just don't like sex because clearly here's the evidence of this woman that he's paid. who is having a wonderful time and he's having all of these orgasms. And so he's not actually bad at sex in his mind. He just hasn't found the right woman.

Oh my gosh. This is so fascinating. It carries over to porn right now. We very much live in a society where young men on up are just getting exposed to sex through porn. And so they have this kind of misconception of what sex is because So many of these porn sites are just extremists and they're not at all accurate towards how intimacy is between 2 loving people. Like they're violent, they're destructive sometimes. You mentioned to me previously, like that obviously there's things like porn-induced erectile dysfunction, but clearly this theatrics, as you call it, which I think is a fantastic way of looking at it.

Mm-hmm.

So this is happening within nutrition as well. I call it the illusion of health. There's this illusion of this is healthy versus that. And it's like usually not accurate at all. So we're also experiencing, there's an illusion of healthy sex, or there's an illusion of sexuality or sex experiences, however you want to describe it. So how do we move away from this? How do we get more honest about Physical connection, because clearly the illusion is continuous, whether it's someone who goes to a brothel, whether it's someone who goes to a prostitute somewhere else, whether it's looking at porn and only getting exposed to sex through that. And then of course, we're not even talking about the women that are contributing to it, like where they are there to please the man. You know, these young women who are just connecting with men physically. So then they continue the illusion. They fake whatever they're doing. They let the guy do what he wants. We're continuing this narrative. We're continuing this cycle. So how do we break it?

We're clearly far off from what is well aligned with our nature as sexual beings. You know, this is why I made my 5th pillar of recivilization, basically sexuality. It's very important. We spend more time having sex than any other animal. It's a big part of our lives. Porn is not helping the case, as you mentioned. That does all kinds of problematic things. It's giving this type of stimulation that in no way corresponds to what somebody has actually done to develop themselves or to pursue partnership or anything like that. It trains your brain on stimuli that have nothing to do with reality. And it doesn't provide a realistic type of guidance to help people improve their lives. Another thing just was the amount of evidence going into the industry, how enormous it is and pervasive, like people are suffering. This was another thing that I got to see firsthand. Of course, I had a very biased sample of people who were coming to me, but There is a great deal of dissatisfaction. There are very few people percentage-wise out there in the world who have as fulfilling and regular sex lives and experiences as they would like to have in their life. So I think that it should be something that we consider more important in society in general. And if anything, I would love to normalize the idea of Supporting and helping and mentoring and training people in that sexuality is a skill that you can learn, that you can improve. You know, the problem that I saw is people coming in for services in Nevada don't come in with a growth mindset. They're already stuck on the idea that they're not bad at sex. They just need to find somebody who likes it. But if you have somebody who's looking at it Like, no, I want to know what I can do to bring the best of myself to the table as an attractive partner, as a, you know, an interesting person to interact with and to become a more experienced and better lover, then that's a path where we could really help people. So that's actually what I've been doing more recently. And the term for it really is surrogate partner. Is being somebody who, instead of creating that sort of theatrical performance and false positive feedback that comes in the kind of prostitution or escort realm, it's about coming into an experience in a very authentic way and providing guidance and a safe space and genuine feedback that can help somebody to recognize how things are working for them and what could they learn and what could they do better. There's a panel at Paleo FX and somebody was talking about masturbating in order to learn what we like. But you know, that's a limited way of looking at how we could learn. You know, if you want to learn how to get better at working out, you could just walk into a gym and start picking up equipment and tossing it around and trying to figure out what to do. Or you could hire a personal trainer and have somebody show you the ropes and like give you a tour and say, here's what this equipment does. And here's what that equipment does. And here's my guess at how much weight you might want to use. And here's some advice on your form so that you don't hurt yourself. And I think that that type of support could be extremely helpful because again, porn is not a very helpful educational source for this. And I actually heard a great quote at a kink conference once that said, you don't save yourself for the one, you practice for the one.

It's an interesting point because in many ways, if your goal is to be really good at self-love, meaning like, obviously I'm talking physically. So like, if your goal is to be really good at masturbation, then practicing on yourself is legit, right? Because In a sense, it's no different than, hey, instead of hiring that personal trainer, I'm going to read books and watch videos and learn to do it on my own. So it's kind of taking it into your own hands. But in both of those scenarios, you're the only person in the scenario. It's not like you need to learn training so that you can train someone else. You're learning it to train for you. But in a sense, what I hear you saying is like, well, if you're talking about sex with another person, it involves someone else. And so this is not something that you're necessarily going to gain.

Mm-hmm.

tons of knowledge from just in your own room all alone.

Let me say one thing on masturbation. There's a very important difference in the intention behind how masturbation is used. And this is one thing that I have talked about with clients. If it's something that is being used as kind of a quick escape and stress relief and a quick fix, it kind of is contributing to the same sort of thing, like an escapism Or like a release valve that isn't necessarily bringing somebody closer to the fulfilling sexual experiences that they want to have. However, if you think of it more as self-pleasure and the intention around the activity is to connect with your body, to just become more aware of it, even on your own, and to take a more mindful approach to your own pleasure and to focus on the idea of your own self-worth and that giving yourself permission for enjoyment and giving yourself time and basically focusing your intention and attention on your own pleasure and enjoyment, then that actually can be a pretty positive contributor to a partnered experience. Because going back to the same thing where so many people would always tell me, I really care about pleasing a woman. One other thing that I find is that many people can get fixated on that agenda around how can I push the right buttons on this person to give them pleasure? And that's very ineffective most of the time versus connecting to one's own pleasure and enjoyment and being very embodied and mindful and present. And many times Actually being connected to one's own pleasure and expressing the enjoyment of the partner through one's own pleasure can actually be one of the most connecting and effective ways to please another person.

How does that look like? How does that feel for the person who's never experienced it so that they have a better understanding of what to go for, to strive for?

If I take on a surrogate partner client who doesn't have any experience or what they find to be a useful amount of experience in their life. We start with things that are very basic, and I actually call it single ingredient sex. A lot of people, when they think about improving their sex lives, they talk about spicing things up. Instead of thinking about spicing it up, I encourage people like, how about let's just think about the most basic recipe or just like one ingredient and actually getting that sorted out before you try to complicate things. And the ingredient is really the quality of presence and connection. So I actually start out any new session with a person with cuddling, fully clothed cuddling, just laying down together. Now we'll also have spoken ahead of time, like maybe on a Zoom call or something, you know, we'll be acquainted. But when I have somebody in person for the first time, the very first thing I do is basically say, all right, make yourself comfortable, lay down. And I scooch up next to them, put my head on their shoulder, and we just breathe for a minute and we start to talk and relax a little bit. And I say, you know what? Okay, here we are. You know, there's all this hormones, there's adrenaline, there's cortisol. You know, you're nervous, things are worked up. You're meeting a new person. You don't know what to expect. There's no pressure here. There's nothing that we need to accomplish. All you have to do right now is just relax. Chill out, lay down, breathe, and be here. The oxytocin and the presence of touch and connection is actually going to help calm down the nervous system, get you back in a parasympathetic state. We just start by talking, being present, connecting, and I'll share observations that I have, what I notice, like your body is stiff in this way. I'll share my observations.

The talk is around supporting them and being as present as possible. You have to be physically touching the person because you're characterizing what you're saying based on what you're physically experiencing.

Yes. So we're having a kinesthetic experience. I will generally verbalize a lot of it initially to draw back the curtain on what's happening for me and what I notice is happening for them. At the same time as helping them tune into what the nonverbal communication is saying. It starts off this way, but then depending on whatever the person's intention of the session is, it can progress from there to whatever it is that they want to explore and experience in an organic way. So unlike back in Nevada, when we would go into a negotiation, you're literally talking about, okay, the guy would say something like, I just want a straight lay.

Mm-hmm.

Meaning just like sex or half and half, which is like a blowjob with sex. You know, you're like talking about specific activities and you're identifying exactly how much money they're gonna pay for it. And all this is decided upfront, essentially. When I work with a surrogate partner client, we don't have an agenda upfront. We're gonna create a space. The boundaries are open here, but we are only going to get there through an organic process, and it's gonna start.

Mm-hmm.

By creating a sense of presence and connection. There's gonna be a lot of communication and there's gonna be touch right off the bat. And we are going to be talking through like, how does this touch feel? What do you notice? What do I notice? What do I like? I'll specifically tell them, I really like the way that you are touching me here, or I would much prefer if you would touch me in this other way instead. Or I'll ask them, Did you notice how I stiffened up in that moment a little bit? You're looking for the nonverbal communication from the person you're interacting with to give you kind of like traffic signals of like, is this a green light, a yellow light, a red light? The MeToo movement really put this huge emphasis on the whole idea of verbal consent, like affirmative consent for everything that you have to ask permission for everything that you do. There is certainly a place for verbal consent, but what I try to encourage people to do is be very attentive to all the nonverbal signals that you're getting from somebody. And this starts from the point that you make eye contact with a person. If the person is making eye contact back with you, that's more of a green light to every step of the connection that you're having. Are you getting signals that this person is with you, is engaged, is enjoying, and is fully present for what is happening? Or are you getting a signal from them that there might be a question or a reservation? Are they getting closer to you, or at least maintaining distance, or are they pulling back a little bit? Is their attention elsewhere, or is it on you? Like, things that you can notice. If you reach a point where there's a little confusion, then you can check in. It's actually a very generous masculine attribute to be willing to take some risks and initiate interactions. Guys initiate a lot of things. It's sort of been incumbent on them, but it really is a generous masculine trait to be willing to take the risk to talk to somebody or to test the waters and see if they're interested to escalate an interaction with you. And if as the male partner, you're able to take small little steps and notice the person's reaction and either proceed or back off or check in with them as needed on green, yellow, red light concepts, then it's very attractive for somebody to be successful at that and to be able to communicate in a way that is skillful and attentive and aware and responsive to the other person's signals. This comes up with kissing. Somebody will have the question like, can I kiss you? The reaction to that is almost always like, if you have to ask me the question, then the answer is probably no. If you don't have enough signs from my body, and if I'm not gravitating toward you in a way that my lips just seem like they're becoming more and more accessible to yours, then you're probably not noticing what signs I'm putting out there and how I'm responding.

But isn't that part of the confusion that's coming with not just the MeToo, but I feel like a lot of our modern sex is so uber consensual and/or hyper-awareness around it that a lot of people are doing that now because they feel they have to. What's the balance there of like staying present with the person, but not getting your head around these kinds of newer societal kinds of expectations?

First off, we just need to view this as a win-win situation that we're trying to create. It's not like the pickup artist idea that men are trying to win by getting women to sleep with them. It's like, this is something that actually contrary to some of that perception, maybe most women actually do like sex and get a lot out of it and want to have experiences with men who are attractive and impressive. And turn them on. And I'm speaking because I mostly help male clients. If as a guy, you can show up with the knowledge and the capacity and the belief in yourself that you have a lot to offer in this interaction, and that you're trying to create a positive experience for the woman in your life, or that you hope could be in your life, you have the right mindset in the first place that you want this to be a mutually beneficial win-win outcome. One thing to work on is your sense of realistic assessment of what you are bringing to the table, or if you need to work on that. Back to the difference between if femininity has to do with being and masculinity has to do with doing, then the taking action on the masculine part is a very attractive element. And if you have the right mindset, you're not going in with the purpose of getting something out of somebody without their consent. And it's a matter of the finesse with which you approach it. If you are being aware and attentive to like, okay, is this person really responding positively to me? Is this person in full control of their faculties in doing so? So it's taking a lot of personal responsibility in being able to have the right motivations going into it, to notice what's going on for the other person, and to instead of preemptively thinking that you have to get permission verbally in advance. Just check in whenever the signals aren't clear. If the signals are just so unclear to you that you have no idea, then you probably need some help.

A couple of questions then, because we talked about the theatricality of kind of the sex industry and just sex in general these days and between men and women. So In this role that you're playing, technically you're in a teacher role. How do you balance that from like, okay, I'm being present with you, but I'm also teaching versus actually feeling something. So how are you balancing that? How do you teach them a non-theatrical aspect of it when you're clearly in a role?

Even when I was working in Nevada, That was less my MO than most people. So I had come already from a background of lots of experience where I knew and know my body really well. I know what works for it and what doesn't. And I also know all the things that turn me on genuinely. And in contrast to the theatrical performance part where you are pretending to enjoy things, I communicate about what I really do like and what I really do enjoy. And I'm giving them the feedback to know how to turn me on. There's another analogy that I like to use that because people fixate on the idea of the orgasm as the sole marker of enjoyment, I like to say, again, if we're talking about food, which this probably resonates with you with all the food stuff. It's like the icing on the cake. We need to bake a cake first, like getting turned on and bringing up the feelings of arousal. For me, that actually starts with the body contact and the cuddling. I get much more turned on by the presence of somebody, like feeling them physically, their body and how it's connecting with me. I often say cuddling is actually my favorite type of foreplay. I don't need anything that involves being naked to get completely turned on.

I love that. There's still a couple of questions, so I want to see if we can answer these ones, if you don't mind. So one is the cuddling thing. I actually struggle with that one. I'll be personal on this. So I love to cuddle. So it's not that I can't cuddle, but what happens is that for me, cuddling then leads towards feeling sexual because physical contact does turn me on. Like I'm a very tactile person. Sometimes the other person just wants the cuddle. For some women out there, the cuddle moving towards sexuality is actually pressure for them. And sometimes it's also a form of trauma of like, I can never just be in the cuddle. I can never just be in that kind of loving embrace that it's always sexual.

Mm-hmm.

How do you advise someone, particularly men, towards just staying present with the cuddle and not going to that other place?

This may be something that's a little bit case by case between the couple and how their lives are generally. I know in my relationships, I have made a big point of maximizing the amount of connection, both in physical touch that's just general affection throughout the day and every environment that I can, as well as expressing myself sexually with my partners as much as possible. So I personally just chosen and have a natural inclination as well, but do actively choose to prioritize it. But if you can develop kind of an atmosphere, both with communication and creating an environment in your relationship that normalizes touch and affection and sexuality as much as possible, we could possibly have less of a necessary agenda on any given encounter. So I think one of the things that a lot of people run into is like, well, we have sex so rarely that anytime I even get physical with somebody, like I immediately start going there. Yes.

Particularly male-female parents, right? It's like, oh, we only have so much connection time. Like, let's get to it. And it becomes almost like a business deal.

When I have a partner, like, I am constantly touching them. Like, if we're going anywhere, I'm holding hands. If we're driving in the car, I'm holding hands. If we're in the kitchen cooking, I'm like bumping up against them on purpose just to like flirt and touch. If we're sitting next to each other, I have my hand on their knee or their shoulder. Like, I create an environment where touch and connection is present as much as possible. It's not like every single touch is going to be leading towards something sexual. Of course, I also like that to happen on a regular basis, but if we both have a feeling that there's a general abundance of touch and connection, then when we get into, you know, a moment of cuddling or something like that, It doesn't have to feel like, oh, this is my only chance. Like that needs to be top of my priority list. Again, this is sensing what's going on with your partner. If you are feeling a little bit of arousal and maybe like, maybe you start to make a little bit of a sound or your hip starts to move a little bit, that's indicating that, and they don't respond, then you can either check in or if you aren't feeling a huge amount of scarcity, then maybe it's no big deal. Maybe like, okay, well, you know what? They don't seem to be responding right now. So hey, I'm just going to hang with this cuddle because this is great and I love cuddling and it's not a big deal. It just has to do with the balance that you have in your relationship overall. If you have a sense of abundance or scarcity with connection and touch, I try to make sure that it's abundance all the way consciously. So that it never feels like, like, oh, well, this is the only chance. So I'm so hung up on it. We might do that now. We might do it later. If somebody has an orgasm this time, somebody doesn't, no big deal, whatever. There's going to be plenty of chances.

Dave Asprey talks about this a lot. He talks about how men, if they're orgasming daily, they're actually lowering their testosterone and that it's biologically affecting them in a negative way. And that really they should only be having an orgasm. I think he says monthly. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be having sexual pleasure, but that when they have this sexual pleasure, they shouldn't climax. That women can climax multiple times throughout the month, of course, the week, whatever, but that men should limit their climax. Do you have any opinion or thought around that?

I don't know for certain about the science on this one, cuz I've heard the opposite. I've heard that testosterone could go up after orgasm. So I honestly can't say that I'm sure about that scientifically. I would say that ejaculation is a signal to the body physiologically of sexual success. So thinking about whether you want your body to be getting a signal of Okay, I was successful. I can chill out and relax and not put a lot more energy into things right now. Or I want to have myself in a more motivated pursuit phase hormonally right now. I think that would be a question to ask is like, what state is your body going to be in based on whether it feels like it just succeeded or whether it's in a pursuit state? You know, I don't know the exact answer, But I would say if you're thinking about how to utilize your sexuality to your greatest advantage in your life, it would be to experiment with those things. So like you could actually get testing and find out what your testosterone levels are, but then you're extrapolating what is the actual effect of that. Or you could observe what happens to you when you try it. I would self-experiment in that way. See what happens to your levels of energy and motivation if you masturbate every day for a week. And then see what happens if you wait a month. Do you feel happier? Do you feel more depressed? Do you feel more energetic? Do you feel more tired? Do you feel more motivated? Do you feel less motivated? Experiment with that rather than trying to figure out what the testing and testosterone levels means.

Do you find that how someone practices, whether it's masturbation or sex, do you find that that practice contributes to their performance? And what I mean by that is, so let's just say if someone's struggling with quickly ejaculating versus not ejaculating, do you think that when they're masturbating, if they're just masturbating to get it out, so for speed, do you think they're training themselves to then when they're with a person to ejaculate prematurely? And vice versa for women, you know, do you think that A woman's kind of mindset over like, well, I'm so hard to please that that mindset's contributing to them to being hard to please or something like that.

Sure. I mean, this isn't the sort of thing that I can verify either, but you know, rehearsal is a good word for what you're saying. If you're training your neural circuitry to expect a specific way that something goes, especially going back to that idea of like, how are you using masturbation if it is just Like, I'm just gonna get this out as quick and fast and hard as I can, then you are acclimating your body. You are running the neural circuits that are accustomed to that. And there's a chance that that's gonna have an impact on you. So I would certainly encourage whatever practices that somebody is using, if they want to enhance their sex life with their partner, that they be as intentional about it as possible, and that they focus on the mindfulness, the presence, the connection to pleasure, the embodiment that they have. I mean, it's almost certain that that is going to have some kind of positive impact on the ability to have a really good experience with a partner. And similarly with, in terms of women, that if you have an idea that you're hard to please, I mean, if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's very unlikely that you're going to experience more pleasure or move yourself in the right direction if that's the way that you're thinking about it. So curiosity and mindfulness presence, like just exploring, having a mindset that sexuality is normal, is healthy, is something that everybody should get to benefit from to whatever extent they're physically capable of. And Just seeing it as part of our human nature that we should connect with and that we can all incrementally improve at, just like with every other aspect of life, that we can better connect with ourselves, our bodies, and our pleasure, and we can better connect with our partners. It's another very important part of human flourishing and ancestral health.

I love it. What a perfect ending to this fascinating conversation, Stephanie. Thank you. Really. Thank you for trusting me to have this conversation with you and being willing to share this very personal experience. You have a perspective that not everyone has, particularly your lens is very specific. It's very different from the person that comes from a troubled home who then enters, you know, prostitution and is struggling through their path to kind of find themselves. You went in very willingly and you went in kind of like very deliberately, but with a bigger agenda. And I think the fact that how it's playing out now and what you're bringing to the table, I feel like you've connected so many of the dots from your lifetime, from health. You know, we didn't even get into all the pillars, but you did share a few of them from the nutrition to sex, to the physicality. You're connecting all those dots and you're bringing those towards supporting people. And I know this is what you call it in a sense, like bringing the ancestral qualities. You call it the uncivilized one. Is that what you call it?

Recivilized.

It's kind of uncivilized because you're redefining civilization.

We approached civilization with a certain approach. We've done it this one way and we haven't gotten all the outcomes that we would like. So how could we rethink how we do it and kind of restructure civilization around reducing the evolutionary mismatches and creating ancestrally based health paradigms.

I love that you have taken it to that level and really it's a culmination of everything you've experienced. So thank you for sharing that. There's so many more questions we could delve into, but of course I don't want to take your entire day. And is there a place that people can go if they're like, hey, I want to get to use your services to get your support, where can they go to find you? And is that something you offer? And what does that look like if someone doesn't live near you? Do they fly in?

My kind of general ancestral health stuff is on recivilizedwoman.com. And, you know, I've got an X account that's @recivewoman. So those are kind of more general, but if somebody is looking for support in terms of the surrogate partnership options or other aspects of coaching in general, I have another website for that, which is evolvesessions.com. Obviously, if somebody's local and wants to have an in-person session, that certainly makes things easier. But if somebody is traveling from a distance, then, you know, there's plenty we can do in terms of meeting in advance virtually to get acquainted and discuss what that would entail. Everyone that I see starts with some kind of an icebreaker session, whether that is virtually or in person, to kind of establish some safety and trust and connection before we try to go into whatever it is, whatever obstacles and challenges and things that they may be trying to overcome. We'll go into their history, their background, whatever it is that they're looking to accomplish and what challenges that they may be facing and how I can help. That one's again, evolvesessions.com.

Excellent. And just to be clear, uh, local is Texas, Austin. So just everyone knows. Well, thank you again. And, uh, I hope this wasn't too painful for you, you know, just delving into this. Wasn't, right?

No, thank you, James. It's been great.

Well, much love to you and I look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you again.

Thanks so much.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestry. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.