6 Roadblocks to Sex & How to Clear Them

There's an orgasm gap. It can take women 20 to 40 minutes to have an orgasm, get aroused. But for men, you know, Kyle, you know, you get turned on and you're.

Ready to go, oh yeah, I get aroused faster than anyone I know. It's insane, Kyle.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's so true.

That's what happens. That's what's up.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. So what's holding you back from having good sex? Is it self confidence? Problem with your partner? Are you under so much stress that it's impossible to feel erotic and turned on? Well, in today's episode, I'm talking about the six most common roadblocks to sex and how to move past them. I'll talk you through how to navigate each of them and also take your questions on personal sexual roadblocks. For example, if you're coupled, is it cheating to get on OnlyFans? What do you do if you're not always wet for sexual? And finally, what's the best way to work with a partner who's prone to jealousy? All this and more on our roadblocks show Intentions with Emily. For each episode, I want to start off by setting an intention for the show and I encourage you to do the same. My intention is to help you identify and clarify what's holding you back from sexual pleasure. Because once you know, you can focus on productive healing so you can reclaim the pleasure that is your birthright. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to this show. My new article, how to use a vibe with a Partner is up at sex with Emily. Plus get ready y'. All. Tis the season and we have a brand new 420 gift guide on our website right now. And if you haven't listened yet, I just did a special 420 episode. Check both of them out while they're hot. Must be 21 or over. To access the gift guide, check out my YouTube channel, social media and TikTok. They're all at Sex with Emily for more sex tips and advice. And if you want to ask me questions, do it. Leave me your questions or Message me at sex with emily.com Ask Emily or or call my hotline 559-TALK-SEX or 559-825-5739. Just include your name, your age, where you live and how you listen to the show. And it's totally cool to change your name or choose to remain Anonymous it's all good. Also, I'm coming out with a book which I am so excited for you to get your hands on and for you to read. I know it's going to change your life. It comes out June 13, but I would just love if you would pre order the book right now. It helps so much. Get the book into more hands so we could have more sexually pleasurable lives. Might even get on the best seller list. And as a little incentive, if you pre order it, you can enter to win a prize pack which is pretty massive and sexy and automatically you'll get our yes, no maybe guide. It's new and improved just for pre ordering. And don't forget you can also request at your libraries or pre order from indie bookstores. Just click on the link in the show notes. Lastly, this episode is brought to you by Lelo. Lelo has amazing toys for all bodies. And what I love about Lelo is that they're all luxurious. They feel incredible, they look really great on your nightstand. People might not even know they're sex toys. I've shared some of my favorite Lelo products with all of you before and I have another one to share. The Lily 3. The Lily 3 is a mini personal massager. It's like mini and adorable, but it packs a punch, it is powerful and it just fits in the palm of your hand. I love mini toys for many reasons. Here's why. Number one, I can just to have my purse. I have it with me all the time in my car, which I actually do. If you get in my car or look at my purse. There are toys but also you just can hold it in your hand which means that you can use it at all different body parts. Nipples, you could use it in the vulva, you could use it on a penis, the shaft, the balls, the back of the neck. If you're giving your partner a massage, this little massager is just really accessible. It's actually an icon because it's the toy that started it off for Lelo. Now they brought it back for their 20 year anniversary, has some upgrades, has 10 different vibration settings, fully waterproof, which I just think let's all get waterproof toys, shall we? And it's USB rechargeable and it's so silent that you can literally bust it out on the go or wherever you go. You don't have to worry about anyone hearing it. Get 25% off on all Lelo products when you use the code Sex with Emily at checkout just go to lelo.com that's lelo.com use code sex with Emily or just click the link in our show notes. All right, everyone, enjoy this episode.

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Before I get into your questions, I want to talk about the roadblocks to sex. What is getting in your way of being turned on? Of wanting to be with your partner or even wanting to be with yourself? Hey, masturbation is sex with someone you love. So I identified some common roadblocks. But first, I have an email and this is what got me thinking about it. This is from Owen, 28, in Ireland. Hey Emily, I'm a new listener to your show, all the way from Ireland, and I love it. Do you have any advice for me? I've been with my partner almost nine years. We've been together since we finished school and I love her dearly. However, lately our lack of sex has really started to play in my mind. The sex has been infrequent over the last 10 years and lately it's just been less and less. I am deeply in love with her. She's my best friend. We have a great relationship outside the bedroom. And for years she's told me our sex life will be better once we have our own place. And now we moved into our own place. So since last October and we've hardly had sex 10 times, we've talked so many times about it, I've done what you Advised, I've expressed an honest, open, calm matter that I'm just not happy with our sex life. I've bought toys with her consent. I've tried to encourage her to mutually masturbate. No luck. Outside the bedroom, she agrees to do things, but we never do them. We generally have sex in just a few positions. After every talk, she always says she's going to make more of an effort, but nothing's changed. I'm always out of ideas. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Owen. All right, Owen, here's why this hit me. You've tried a lot of the things that I suggest all the time. Have communication with your partner outside the bedroom. Try to find out what she's into. Experiment with toys. And she's still finding herself not in the mood for sex. So this got me thinking because I get so many emails from you. You know this thing about mismatched libidos. One partner wants more, the other partner wants less. It's very common in relationships. So I thought, I wanna point out here, Here are the six common roadblocks to sex and what you can do about em. See if you recognize yourself or your partner. Number one, body image. Insecurities. Self esteem. Those negative beliefs about ourselves, whether it's, you know, performance or appearance that keeps us. Do you realize that how much worrying about your body and how you look in the bedroom keeps you from being present sexually? It just keeps us in this self sabotaging.

Now, you know we've all had moments, right? Sometimes we're worried about our body weight. I know that men are often worried about their penis size. We worry that our bodies are lacking no matter what the body part is. And let me tell you about this, about our body shape. These are internal messages that we've subscribed to ourselves. We started telling ourselves these messages. Now, yes, maybe you had someone in your past that shamed you. That is true. We've all had moments, maybe that people didn't make us feel good. But now as an adult, you get to change that message. So you might be leaving, I am bad because of your body. If you think that you are bad because of your body that steals joy. And then it has you searching for external validation, which is like a joy zapper. Maybe you like sex in the dark or you keep your bra on or you don't want to take a shower with a partner. I mean, every time we set this barrier up with a partner that's keeping us from sex. We're keeping ourselves from intimacy and we're keeping ourselves from pleasure. So how do we break this cycle of our self esteem and not loving our bodies? I'll say it again, stop following people on Instagram that make you feel bad. Put the boundaries around the messages that we're seeing now. This is a process. It doesn't mean that you wake up one day and you're like, I love my body. Think of it more like body neutrality than even body love. Look for positive, healthy examples of ourselves to reinforce the process of undoing the damage by society and others. And then you get to follow healthy people who emulate healthy beauty standards. I'm gonna give you an exercise. It's called an exposure exercise, where you can walk around naked, give yourself a loving massage, look in the mirror, sleep naked, walk around naked. Masturbation. Masturbation, sex with someone you love. Once you start to masturbate in a healthy way, and I often have to encourage vulva owners to do this more than penis owners. But once you learn how to give yourself an orgasm, you're gonna start to learn to realize how incredible your body is. Reframe your body from a loving perspective. Replace the negative self talk with positive messages. You can journal about it. You can keep notes in your phone. Cause remember this, every single time we put up a barrier with our partners, we're just reinforcing a cycle of body negativity. And this is what's keeping you from feeling sexual, feeling sexy, and being in your body. All right, number two, stress and anxiety. Who's not stressed these days? Am I right? We've all had experiences where we are super stressed, we're anxious. You know, it could be work or money, our job, our family. And what happens is when we're stressed and anxious, we experience more of a tightness in our body and it literally stops the blood flow. Especially if we're in our head, we're worrying and we're spinning and we're not connected to our body and quite literally to our genitals. Think of it this way. If you're in your head, worried and anxious, the blood's rushing away from your genitals and going right to your head. And then that keeps us from being confident in our bodies. Being intimate with our partners makes it harder to orgasm. So how do you deal with anxiety? Now? You've heard all the anxiety tips, right? People tell you to meditate, to eat healthy, you don't get better, sleep, better exercise, all of that's important. I think we all have to figure out ways to work on our anxiety. And I can tell you, I don't think it ever goes away. We'll have periods that we're more anxious and less anxious. But the important thing is to remove this block. So what I want you to do for the anxiety and stress when it comes to sex, start to prioritize the sex life you have with your partner. How important is it if you're realizing now that stress and anxiety is keeping you from sex and that's important to you, do some research on your own and think about, when am I really turned on? When were the last three times we've had sex that I was in the mood? What was happening before that? What was the sex life that we were having that was the most enjoyable? And then think about it. Maybe you were really relaxed. Maybe you had a massage right before. Maybe you got back from a great workout. Maybe you'd been eating healthy for a while and you were feeling, you know, more in your body. Maybe you guys were on vacation. Maybe that tells me you need some time with. To get away, get a hotel room. Desire and arousal, it doesn't just hit you over the head. We don't just walk around and you're gonna be all of a sudden in the mood. So if you're someone who's highly anxious, highly stressed, I encourage you to look at your arousal cycles and think about what really gets you in the mood. And make an effort to work on that anxiety and the stress. Number three, the media. Okay, the media rarely shows accurate depictions of intimacy. Think about. Even in Hollywood movies, it skips right over the foreplay, right over the safe sex. And a lot of these scenes really show consent, the starting and stopping, the funny parts of sex when you get a cramp. And porn, I mean, don't get me started on porn. I sit there looking at porn going, that is just nowhere near reality. It's not teaching us how to be great lovers. Maybe it's making us feel bad about our bodies and it's just not helpful. So in this case, I want you to just take a look and think, am I watching media television? Do I find people on Instagram that make me feel less than? Do I have a depiction about sex that's actually accurate? I encourage you to do your own research and to start looking around for more accurate representations of sex. Start talking to your partner and creating your own sexual movies. I don't mean making a sex tape, but you could do that. But think about, could I read erotica to my partner? Could we read it to each other in the bathtub? Could we actually find some porn that feels good to me? Can we find some scenes, can we find some things that depict people that look like me, that act like me, and don't make me feel less than. So really, this just comes down to education. How can you educate yourself on what realistic sex looks like? Again, listening to this podcast is a great start. Listening to it with your partner. Do you know how many couples tell me that they listen together and it's sort of been a mini sex therapy slash turn on and it's changed the trajectory of their sex life. All right, the next one. Number four, Shame. Shame, shame, shame. If you grew up in a home where it was a loaded topic in your family, or maybe you heard the messages that sex is just for marriage, that's all you need to know. These are not helpful messages. Or maybe you were slut shamed. Or maybe people told you that, you know, good girls don't have sex. Sexual shame is not just a religious issue, but it happens in a lot of religious communities. And then what we see is people grow out of these communities. Even if you're not practicing the religion or living under your parents roof, it's going to stick with you. Because if you've been hearing a message your entire life as a child, you know you only got to wait for marriage and sex is only for procreation. You bet that when you start having sex, it doesn't mean that all that early messaging and wiring is just gonna go out the window, that you're all of a sudden gonna know how to be a great lover and you're gonna be able to switch this mindset. And especially if you had education that was abstinence only. God, our education's bad. So what I recommend, if you're checking yourself and you're like, wow, yeah, you know what? Hmm, that sounds like me. I just, I don't feel good when I have sex. I actually feel worse after I don't even feel sexual. How do you unblock that? Well, if you're struggling with sexual shame, how you overcome it is start by having empathy for yourself, not rejecting yourself. Make this decision, how do you want to be sexual? What does that actually look like to you? How important is sex to you? Are you understanding now as an adult who can make your own decisions, that maybe the earlier messages you heard didn't serve you, because then you can come from a place of information rather than ignorance. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but you simply were not given accurate information. I grew up without accurate information. So many of us, you know, we just go off and Start having sex. And maybe we learned one or two things in sex ed. Or, you know, worse yet, we had some negative conditioning around it. How are we supposed to know? So check your messages around sexual. Check what still serves you. And if it doesn't serve you, get rid of it. So we're unblocking it by deciding that you want to get educated around sex. Read books again. Listen to this podcast. And I believe that it's only when a person accepts their sexuality as an aspect of themselves that's important and not something that's an external thing. That's when you can truly begin to heal from the shame. That's the only way it's going to promote your sexual health and values and it's gonna help your life, your relationship and your soul. I mean, sex is spiritual. Remember this too. Breday Brown says this so well, the antidote to shame is having empathy and compassion for ourselves. Because if you're not gonna give it to yourself, who is? Number five Is trauma, any kind of sexual trauma, assault, sorry to say that is going to impact our ability to give and receive pleasure and to really be in our bodies for a full sexual experience. When we experience a trauma, even if it was years ago, it doesn't go away. And in fact, over time, trauma can exacerbate and it can really have an impact on our ability to be aroused and turned on by our partner. And our trauma can be triggered by so many things our senses. It could be you touch something or you smell something or words. I mean, those are all part of intimacy. Also, if you've had a trauma and you feel that that is something that's holding you back. If you're with a trusted loving partner, I would share that with them. I would let em know that when certain sex acts happen or you see certain things, that it triggers you and it makes you feel that you can't be sexual. Listen, we're only as sick as our secrets. So my advice is therapy. I recommend trauma therapy. You could try a somatic based therapy or EMDR therapy, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing. It actually helps you rewire your brain around a certain traumatic experience. You can find more about it@mdria.org that's E M--R-I A.org and finally, the final roadblock. Your health and medications. I don't know why we go on medications and doctors don't tell us that there's going to be side effects, antidepressants. There could be a side effect that's going to Dampen your libido, delay orgasm, causes our hormones to fluctuate. Maybe you went on the birth control pill and they didn't tell you medications, these side effects. I'm telling you, if you have a side effect from a medication, you do not have to live that way. I understand if you went on antidepressant and now you feel happy, but you don't want to have sex. That's something we can work on. Go back to your doctor and let them know you're having a side effect no matter what the medication is. There's so much they can do right now. So you don't just have to say, well, guess I'm on a medication. I'm never gonna have an orgasm again. No, you don't have to live that way. And remember, when we eat well, we exercise, we meditate, we take care of our bodies, we're gonna be more in the mood for sex. It just works that way. We're gonna have better blood flow. So I encourage you to look at these roadblocks. Did any of them speak to you? Have a growth mindset around sex? How can you pick just one of these and say, you know what? I'm gonna start to take the first step? So, going back to our email, Owen, what I was thinking of reading your email is, listen to this with your partner. Can she identify any one of these that might be the reason? This is not to shame or make her feel bad, but she might not know why she doesn't want sex. If people knew why they didn't want sex, they'd start having sex again. And I'm telling you, I hear it every single day. You know, not just in Owen's email, but people who just don't understand why or their partner doesn't want it or they want it more than their partner. So check out these roadblocks. Share this with a friend. And I want us all to get into a growth mindset around sex. How can I grow just a little bit? Remember, nothing. Change doesn't happen overnight. Let me know if I spoke to any of your roadblocks here. Of course, there's many of them, but I wanted to give you a jumping off point, because that's what I do. I want to help you. All right, let me know. You can email me feedbackexwithemily.com hey, stay right where you are, because after the break, I'm talking more sexual roadblocks, like vaginal dryness, which I think you all know my solution for, and jealousy in relationships.

Let's talk to Kyle. 21 in Tennessee.

So I've been seeing this girl for a few weeks now, and I really think she'd be the one. And we haven't had the chance to have sex yet, and I feel like every time we get there, I get real nervous, and I feel like if I don't please her, she may not want to stay with me. And I. I just need to figure out, like, how I can calm these nerves and just be. Be myself with her when I get to those points.

Okay, so you're saying you've seen her, you haven't connected. Wait, what has happened so far.

Or nothing. You haven't seen her yet? Well, we kind of.

We've gone on a few days, and when we go back to the house, we start to get serious. And every single time, like, I get. I get too nervous. I feel like I'm not gonna be able to perform to her standard.

She's.

She's really pretty, and it's like I can't live up to those expectations. But I don't know. I just get too nervous and psych myself out.

And then what happens?

I just. I kind of pull out, and I don't keep going and keep playing with her.

You just got to go in with the notion, like, I'm gonna make her feel good. I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna please her and see what she wants. So you. Meaning, like, you go in, you have sex, you put your penis inside of her, and then you pull out because you're nervous?

No, I don't. I don't put my penis cyber. I get to the point where we both get naked. It's like, I really. I want to do it, but I get nervous, so I stop. I don't. I don't know.

Do you think it would be.

Should I go down on her for a while to start, just to kind of maybe calm the nerves and.

Absolutely, Kyle, this is what I always recommend.

I'm not gonna please her.

Yeah, exactly. Kyle, listen, whenever you're in your head, that's exactly what's happening. But I promise you, there is nothing like getting your. Your. Your confidence. Cause you're talking about confidence, and. Kyle, just know that no one at 21. The guys who think they're confident at 21, I'm telling you, if I could go back to my 20, they didn't take a false confidence. Like, yeah, women, like, when I pound away at them, and that feels good. I'm telling you. So you just haven't had enough years on the Planet yet of having sex that you would feel confidence. Just know you're. You're where most many people are your age. So you're not, like, behind the eight ball. There's no problem here. It's just like, it's a new thing. And she's a new partner for you. So you're always going to lead with giving, especially when it comes to sex. So if you go in, you're like, I just want to look at you. I want to undress you. I want to go down on you. I want to finger you. I mean, ask her what turns her on. And then once you are pleasing her, that's how you get your confidence up. You're like, oh, I got this. You know, she's. She's feeling good right now, and then you'll be more focused on her pleasure. And then you won't have been in your head the last 15 minutes getting undressed and then worrying the same thing's gonna happen again, so. Absolutely. And also, we know that you get nervous. Especially like in our 20s like this. Guys are nervous. Women are nervous, too, but they don't have to perform like men do. They feel like, show up, have an erection. It happens, Kyle. So if it happens and you start to get nervous again, just say, you know, I want to take a few deep breaths here. Like, I think you're so hot. I mean, telling you to keep telling her how hot she is and how attracted you are, and you just want to please her. Take a beat. It's okay. But I would ask what feels good to her?

So next time I get in my head, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna go through and look at her and just do everything I can. I'm gonna go down on her and just. And just pleasure her until, like, I get the confidence to get in there.

Yes, exactly, Kyle. That's what you're gonna do. That will work, I'm telling you. It's also a beautiful resolution here for the whole thing because I'm telling you, she. Typically, women, there's an orgasm gap. It can take women 20 to 40 minutes to have an orgasm, get aroused. But for men, you know, Kyle, you know, you get turned on and you're ready to go.

Oh, yeah, I. I get aroused faster than anyone I know. It's insane, Kyle. Yeah, it's like, yeah, that's so true.

That's what happens. That's what's up. So this is just totally normal. Typical. And you're exactly where you need to be at 21 years old. In fact, men don't know this at.

40, so thank you so much, Emily. Thanks for having me on for sex with Emily.

Yeah, Kyle, thanks. This is for. From Shannon, 21 in Kansas. Dear Dr. Emily, sometimes when I'm having sex with my boyfriend, my vagina stops getting wet. It'll start off wet, but midway through sex, it starts feeling dry. I'll still feel turned on, but my vagina just isn't wet. My boyfriend will finger me beforehand, but sometimes not long enough. Could this be why? My boyfriend doesn't do much foreplay in general, but from time to time, he will finger me for a good amount of time, but even if he does, it doesn't stay wet. What do I do? All right, Shannon, first, I think the problem is education. This is why I'm a huge proponent of lube. Get some lube. Just leave your lube out and just apply and reapply if you need to. Educate yourself and your partner. And just know that using lube is protective first off, because then you won't have any. You know, when we're dry, sometimes we tear and we. Then we can get infections. Vulva owners are more likely to orgasm when we use lube, and I'm just a huge fan of it. And also our wetness level, while it's important, isn't always an indicator if we're turned on or not. And in fact, different times of month. Maybe it's your cycle. We can be more wet at certain times and less so in others. Sometimes we're wet at the beginning of sex, but we're not wet at the end. Everything you're describing, I think that many, many vulva owners have experienced. Your boyfriend, you know, while he's putting a finger inside of you, you might need some other forms of arousal. You might need some kissing, and you might need some slow undressing. You. Maybe oral sex would be great for you because for so many vulva owners, the magic is happening externally. So sticking a finger inside of you right away isn't necessarily going to be what's going to keep you turned on. You might need some light touching outside on your clitoris, your labia, you know, using. He could put some. A few drops of lube on his hands and start to rub you outside. Maybe that would really turn you on. So I think it's a combination of understanding that lube is your safety, just have it there. And also explaining to your partner that maybe you guys could experiment with other ways of pleasure and other ways of pleasing you. And then you get to learn when you're Going to be turned on and most aroused. It's also not really safe for us to go right to penetration. Whether it's with a finger or a penis. A lot of vulva owners need some patience. We need it to be slower. We want some care, and we don't want to just go from zero to penetration. We have Gary, 41, in New Jersey. Hi, Gary. What's going on? How can I help you? Hi.

How you doing, Emily?

Good.

Long time listener. Dating someone new. She's about 12 years younger than me. Sex has been good. We get along great in person or together. Now she's got issues over my Instagram. I'm big on social media. Marines Fitness Bodybuilding. Very fit. Got a lot of followers. I follow people. Other people in the industry, other women in industry of the fitness girls. And she's very jealous over that. She's freaking out now. Said, I'm a pig. I don't want to be with someone like that. Disrespectful to me. You like the pictures I'm liking for the health. You know, the fitness aspect. Yeah, she's some jealousy.

Of course. Well, that's her own thing that she's bringing to the table. How long have you guys been together?

Almost three months.

Okay. And she's 12 years younger, so she's in her 20s. You're 41. You know, here's the thing. This is very common. I think we need a name for this right now. Because this is a condition that's happening because you remember back in the day, you wouldn't know who your partner was. There wasn't anything like this. You didn't know who they followed or who they. Whatever. But you're doing it for work. But she's got some other insecurities that aren't coming from you. I'm sure. She. She showed up like this, right? Maybe she was cheated on by a past partner. Maybe her dad cheated on her mom. She has some genuine mistrust.

Yeah, that. That did happen. Her dad did cheat on her mom.

Okay. So she doesn't trust men divorced. And that's the work that she has to do. You're not doing anything wrong. It's part of your business. It's part of your. I would ask her, Gary, besides unfollowing everybody, what does she need from you to feel safe? Now, she could be saying, unfollow these people, but you could say, besides that, because it's business. Like, you can't just. If I followed all my other sex educator friends, they'd be pissed. They'd Be like, why aren't you following me? Like, I get it. It's part of community. It's part of what we do. It's part of our business. Having an Instagram. Instagram having social media. So. So she's.

It's not a business, though. I'm in finance. Is my career. Like, yeah, I'm very into working out, compete state champions this and that, and coach people on the side. So I try to build a brand. A brand that's not failing. A branding. Like you have a branding.

Exactly, exactly. I got. It doesn't matter if it's your business or your brand or paying your rent. It's what you love. I get it. It's building a brand right now. And we. That's. We do what we got to do. So what I'm saying is you really like her. It's still really new, Gary. It's only been a few months and she's showing you who she is. I'm not sure that you're going to be able to convince her, because if it's not the Instagram, it might be something else. You didn't call me. You were flirting with the waitstaff. I mean, has she done any therapy around this? Has she gone to therapy and realized that these are her wounds from her childhood? I mean, because you can't. I mean, unless you. You love her so much that you want to unfollow all these people and stop having active life on Instagram. You know, some people do that and they're cheating, right? Their partners find the DMs, they find the things, and then that is a problem. But I just think coming in after two and a half, three months and saying you're gonna cheat and you're name calling and also to do it. She's doing it to protect herself. Cause she's scared and she probably really likes you. Again, this has nothing to do with you, but maybe you could help her see that. But if she's got her mind made up and this is a deep wound, you could just say, what else? What can I do to make you feel safe? Is there anything else you need from me? Because I don't. I mean, what do you want to do, Gary? I mean, would you be willing to. I'm sure she's going to say, unfollow everybody. Would you be willing to do that?

Which I've started doing. I thought I did it. Now I'm blocked because it's Instagram saying you physically are a bot in your machine and blocking me now from doing anything.

Oh, yeah, they do that. Well, that's really sweet that you did that. But, Gary, it's not about you.

Yeah, it's about her, but it's.

It's emotional maturity. So. All I'm saying is she sounds like she's very controlling. I mean, if someone told me to stop following people or liking things, I would feel that was a sense of control. If I wasn't doing it, if I was, like, really invested in the relationship, it just so frustrating because you're. You're both coming at it with values that are very different or expectations. She expects that all men are cheaters. You're not that guy. So.

Yeah. Yeah. So I was trying to tell her, you're putting your past, you're putting your passion, punching me for it.

Right.

And she's just saying, no, it's disrespectful. You're giving attention to other women when you're with me by liking their pictures and, like, she's stalking me on Instagram, stalking everything. And.

Well, it sounds frustrating. Gary and I would have a talk with her. Just remember my tips for easy communication, timing, tone, and turf. This is from Camreas, and he is 30. Dear Dr. Emily, I've been a fan of the show for almost a year now, and I've heard this topic come up before. Many do not consider porn as cheating. But what about paying to see OnlyFans content? Is that cheating? Okay, here's the thing about cheating every relationship, right? There's two of you in a relationship. Let's say you both get to decide what cheating is. What constitutes cheating? Is it talking to someone about an intimate issue? I typically don't think that watching porn is cheating because masturbation is part of a rich and healthy sex life. But OnlyFans is interesting because there's more interaction. If you're paying OnlyFans and you're paying a particular performer to do something or to interact with you, that sort of might be crossing the line. And if it's something that you're afraid to share with your partner, that leads me to believe that you yourself might not feel that great about it. What is it that you're getting from only fans that you don't think that you can get from your partner? So again, I think that having a healthy conversation, if you're in a relationship with someone that you feel close and intimate with, it's so freeing to be honest. It's so freeing to be open and say, hey, I've got this OnlyFans account, and sometimes I flirt with this person and I pay some money to our account. But I want you to know that it fuels my fantasy and my desire for you even more. So what it's doing for me is actually helping me be a better lover to you. So I think that this could be tricky for some people. Now, there are people you could date that'd be like, do you boo? Like, pay for whatever you want? Our sex is awesome. I don't care what you do when we're not together. So I think if you're asking me you got some guilt around it, then it might. You might need to want to look at yourself and say, why am I paying for this? What am I getting from it? And is anything that I'm getting from this stranger something that I could actually be getting from my partner? So take a look at yourself and take a look at the health and the honesty that's going on in your relationship. All right, thanks for the email.

That's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to, like, subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. SexWithemily. Oh, I've been told I give really good email, so sign up@sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating and or relationships, call my hotline 559-TALK SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or go to sexwithemily.com askemily Special thanks to Acast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedbackexwithemily.com.

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