Dr. Emily Morse on Prioritizing Pleasure and Overcoming Sexual Shame

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Is a Dear Media production.

This is treated with Dr. Sarah Real Talk, real science, real solutions.

Doctor Emily Morse. I am so excited to be with you.

So excited to be with you too.

For our listener who's tuning in, what could they experience that's different in their life as a result of listening to us today?

Listening to you, Imagine if sex could be something that you actually look forward to and that you enjoyed. And it wasn't another item on your to do list, but it was something that whenever you desired it or you were with a partner that you felt confident in your body, you knew what you wanted, you knew what was required to make you feel good, and you knew how to ask for what you want. And sex became a delight in your life. And I'm thinking that we're gonna cover all of that today, how we can all get there whenever we have sex every time.

Well, I'm ready to dig into that. Cause that's really what I hope for everyone I care about. You know, people who follow this work, who, you know, I think about my daughters and sort of at the early end of their sexual journeys, I think about it for everyone I care about. So thank you. I appreciate that. So sexual iq. You talk a lot about sexual IQ in your book Smart Sex. Can you define it for us?

Yeah. So sexual IQ is basically a paradigm that I developed so people could become their own sex experts and they could learn to decode what it is, areas of their life that they could work on that could help them feel more present, more embodied and receive more pleasure. And so I created five pillars of sexual intelligence. And these are really just areas you're not gonna get a score at the end. I feel like you're like, oh, God, I would fail this test. But it's really just areas to troubleshoot and to look at that are all contributing to us having incredible sex. And why I created these because I realized after 20 years now of doing this work that people often want A quick fix, I mean, for everything, as you know, but especially when it comes to sex, because of all the shame and it's hard to talk about. They're like, give me the position, gimme the tip, gimme the sex toy. But it's really multilayered. So sexual intelligence is looking at the pillars, which. The first one is embodiment, meaning am I in my body during sex? Am I receiving pleasure? Am I feeling sensations, or am I thinking about the laundry or disassociating or thinking about my, you know, what's wrong with me, or am I getting an orgasm or not? And the second one was health. This is a massive pillar. This is our mental health and our physical health. So, you know, looking at medications we're taking that might be impacting our ability to be aroused or have an orgasm, Are we moving our bodies? Are we having enough blood flow? Are we eating foods that make us feel good?

So.

So have we had trauma that we haven't treated? The third one is collaboration communication. And that's as well as. That's about communicating to our partners about sex. Do we feel comfortable even talking about sex and asking for what we want? Do we know what we want? Do we have any limiting beliefs around sex, perhaps from our childhood, our environment, society, religion? And then we have self acceptance. This one is more about our confidence in our bodies. Do we accept our bodies where we're at today? Do we accept, you know, the experience we've had to date so that. And then finally we have self knowledge. How well do we know our bodies? Do we know what turns us on? Do we know what's a requirement for arousal? Do we know what's holding us back? So those are the pillars of sexual intelligence.

What you've mapped is body literacy, like sexual literacy, but also body literacy. Like all of these are such critical components of body literacy. You know, I imagine what you do with your podcasts, with your books, with people that you work with. You take them through a process where they figure out which of those five pillars is the one that they really need to focus on. What do you typically find?

When I was writing the book, I thought, okay, so here's what we have to start with, though. We have to start with the pleasure thieves. And these are the things that's holding us back. Because it's really hard to make progress with a lot of these pillars if we don't look at the thieves, which is stress, trauma, and shame. And so it can be really hard for people to really even look at any of it. If, for example, we have stress now, as if we are feeling a lot of stress and anxiety. We have a spike in cortisol. If we have a spike in cortisol, it's really hard to also feel desire and arousal at the same time. So working on our.

It's kind of a switch. It is like it's one or the other, right.

And so a lot of us are like, well, I'm always anxious, okay, well, how's your sex life going? So we have to look at that as well. And then we have. And if we have any kind of trauma, not just sexual trauma, but we know our trauma can put our bodies into all different kinds of just fight or flight. We can have conditioning around sex where it just doesn't feel right. So our bodies might have responded to that. We might have pain, suffering or vaginal pain, a lot of things. And then we have shame. And I think that shame is one of the headiest stews here that we have to unpack. If we have shame about our bodies, about our upbringing, if we were raised in an environment we were told that it wasn't okay to be sexual, or we were one time shamed something we did or the way we looked, it's really hard to get activated in the bedroom. So I look at those and you know, again, those, we don't wipe those out completely. I think it's really a disservice to say we have to clear all those out before we can do the other work. It's just something to look at. And as you said, body literacy, this is what it really is. These five pillars will help you have a happier life, a better life, a more well adjusted life. And the reason why I brought these in is because if you again, sexual, overall wellness. Sexual wellness is wellness. And so for a long time, sexual health and wellness was sort of the bastard child of the wellness industry. You know, it was like, oh, we're gonna bring Emily in to talk about sex. That'll be really fun. But it's not real, but it's not really wellness, but it really is. So if there's a problem with our overall sexual wellness and our sexual health, it will impact every other area of our life. So, you know, wellness, Sexual wellness is wellness. So then when we go into the pillars, I just, you know, we can talk about, I mean, I think they, we all struggle. I would say that most people, a great place to start is with your health pillar too. Because, you know, so many women I know you had this experience too, were at a young age, put on birth control, pill and an ssri, well, that is just a one, two punch for many women that's already dysregulating your hormones and so many other areas. And so you might not have inability to orgasm. It might be, you know, dysregulating just so many things in your body. So we have to look at what medications we're taking that might impact our. Our. Our sex life. And then also, are we moving our bodies? So much about arousal has to do with blood flow. So if we're couch potatoes. Yes. So if we're not moving our bodies, we're not eating foods that make us feel good. That's, you know, that our desire and our drive to actually have sex, you know, might be waning. So that could really help too.

Okay, this is very helpful, and I think it might be worthwhile to talk about birth control pills for a moment, because so many women get started on them, and it used to be that it was for contraception. Now it's given for so many reasons. Acne, you've got painful periods. And instead of addressing the root cause, we go immediately to prescribing a birth control pill. And I think women don't get full informed consent about some of the consequences of being on the birth control bill. So as you described, what can often happen is vaginal dryness. It can lower your testosterone level, your free testosterone level. It can lead to decreased libido, which is the greatest irony if you are taking it for contraception. And it increases inflammation in the body, and it can shrink the clitoris by up to 20%. Yeah. And I feel like if people got full informed consent, they wouldn't agree to go on some of these medications.

Yeah. And also all of those things. And also what I've heard is that it also disrupts your hormones to the point where when you go off of it, it's really hard. You have to do a lot of work to sort of regulate your hormones again. And then the other thing that. That is also important is like the studies that have shown the partners that you pick when you're on the birth control pill, you might not pick them if you weren't on the pill. So what happens when you're on the pill?

That's really frightening.

That one's. I know. I think it was just one study, the T shirt study, where they sleep with the T shirt and they find out that the person. I think that was the scent test, but yeah. So it's all really frightening. And I feel like I didn't have consent. I thought I had no choice. You know, just to go on the pill. I was going off to college and I remember all these years, I was at it for 10 years and I remember thinking it was just a non starter, like. Yeah. Are you on any medication? No, I'm not taking anything but the birth control pill. Like it felt like it was just sort of, you know, an inconsequential part of everything else I was doing. It didn't think that it mattered, but we know now that it does. And the challenge around this is I know there's a lot of young people who still are. You know, I have three nieces who are all asking me, or two of them are on it. They won't. I've tried to send them information and read books and they're still like, but what else am I going to do? And so the problem is a lot of young people, you know, again, this goes to the way society teaches female explains female sexuality and the way they explain male sexuality. We're not supposed to actually entertain condoms because men let us know that they're so uncomfortable and it feels like they're wearing a raincoat. Well, how bad is that? If it feels like we're having all of these other problems? Right. Like you could probably learn to deal with it or they're wearing the wrong size condom or all the other things. And then women sort of, you know, acquiesce to that because we're pleasers and we tend to be oriented towards pleasing our partner sexually more than ourselves.

Okay, so that needs to change. Yes, that's definitely a gender difference that is culturally constructed and I want to take that on. You said another thing that I think is important to highlight, which is when you go on the birth control pill and then at some point you decide to come off of it. What we know is that a year later, the hormonal changes that happened when you were on the pill, you can still detect.

Yeah.

And what happens past a year, we don't even really know. If we just have a quick science moment. It's that you go on the birth control pill, the oral estrogen gets your hormone called sex hormone binding globulin to go up. And sex hormone binding globulin is kind of like a sponge that soaks up all of your free testosterone. And so your free testosterone goes below a certain level. And there are some women who do just fine with that because they've got a super efficient testosterone receptor, and so they don't notice any change. But then there are other women that have a highly sensitive testosterone receptor and when the sex hormone binding globulin goes up and their testosterone goes down, they have the vaginal dryness, they have the decreased libido, they maybe notice that their clitoris is not as responsive as it once was. So we need to understand that there's some long term consequences of medications like the birth control pill, and it's not quite as simple as your doctor may make it out to be.

Yeah, exactly. I'm with you. And I. Yes. That is all such important information. I wish we could have billboards about that.

But we probably need a billboard.

We really do. I mean, but the thing that's so fun. Frustrating after doing something for so long, for 20 years, it's my 20th year. So I keep looking back at, okay, what's changed, what hasn't changed? And then when I'm hearing from young women who are like, I'm getting on the pill and I'm still not having orgasms and I'm just gonna give a blowjob to get someone to like me, I wonder, what are we missing here? Like, why isn't this information getting out? Why are we still just putting young women on the birth control pill? I mean, there's just so much societally that we don't cover culturally. Yeah, it's. I. This information just is so necessary. And then I hear women in their 40s going on the pill, like you said, for their skin.

Right. Or perimenopause, used as sort of a knee jerk response to the dysregulation of perimenopause. There's a lot of other ways that we could be working with that.

Yeah.

We'll be back after this break.

So we're starting to get to the sex and gender differences when it comes to sexual iq, when it comes to body literacy, when it comes to being a great lover and sort of the way our culture shapes us. I love how you talk about vulva owners and penis owners, and I think that's such an inclusive way.

Thank you.

To describe the scientific literature still talks about men and women. And it's frustrating and it's the way I report it. And I just want to acknowledge that.

Yeah, that's okay. There's a lot more purposes we can say men and women are men who identify as I'm. Okay. But in the book, people still push back on that too. But I just thought just because it's your part you were bored with doesn't necessarily mean it's how you identify.

Yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

So let's talk about some of these sex and gender Differences?

Well, first I think about pleasure and I think about. I think about, you know, people. When we think about sex, we often think about orgasms. Now, I could go into why it's not only about orgasm, but when I start there, I think about the orgasm gap. And that's the one that is the most alarming to me is that the majority of men are going to orgasm in 95% of sexual encounters. And women, and I think this is high, say they're gonna orgasm about 65% of the time. And so that's one thing that that gap is just. That is so present and important to note. The other thing, as I mentioned earlier, is that women are often oriented towards pleasing their partners. And I know personally, my sexual experience was if he had a good time, that was probably a great sexual encounter. Like I would do. I would move my body in a certain way and arch my back and make the noises. And if he had an orgasm, I was okay with it for a while, until I wasn't, until I started this career. But so that's one thing too. Just like if that just orientates towards men. The third thing would be. So the first one would be orgasm gap. The second would be that we're just oriented towards, you know, people pleasing and sex. And then the third thing is that we center sex on penetration.

Oh, yes.

And the majority of women are not going to have an orgasm from anything to do with a penis. No, it'll be fingers, mouth or toys. And we all know that. Did you have sex? We think, did a penis go in a vagina in heterosexual couples? So women like only maybe 20 to 30% will have an orgasm that way. But mostly they're not. They're going to need so many other kinds of stimulation. And even that's how we define sex, because we define sex through procreation and, you know, culturally, religiously. That's. That's why. So I think those are some of the main things I want to talk about that are. That are really, really different, that really impact, you know, men versus women. I think that, you know, my hat goes off. I'm not even. This is not to blame men, they're growing up in the same society we are. They're watching porn too. I think the other thing is the proliferation of porn. The last, you know, well, porn's been around forever, but since the last 15 years when we've had porn available in our pocket. And so now there's a whole young generation of people who grew up seeing porn and thinking that's how we're actually gonna have sex. So there's a lot of undoing, there's a lot of learning and we don't. And then overall the big arching problem with this is that we're not a country that prioritizes sex accurate sex education that's comprehensive and also focus.

So where are the countries that do so?

The only countries that do that I found in my research is in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands. Everywhere in the Netherlands. I mean they teach sex education at a very young age. I'm talking pre verbal. When the kids are, you know, when they're babies, they name their parts. They say this is your belly button and your vulva and your knees here we'd say it's your belly button, you're vajayjay. Or we'd skip right over it and say your knees. It's the parts that have no name.

They normalize it.

They normalize it. They name the parts. They talk about consent as the kids get older. They talk about feelings associated to attraction. And you know, they just every single year they have sex education. It's just a non starter. There's. And they teach safety like in, in America our sex ed if we teach at all. Only 17 states require sex ed to be medically accurate in the United States. And when we do teach sex ed, it's mostly fear based and based on, you know, you don't get pregnant or get an STI and be really, we ought to be really careful about it. And here's how you have a baby and here's your men' but we don't talk about pleasure. And so in the Netherlands they do talk about pleasure and safety. That's a big difference.

That's huge.

And then I imagine it's part of like how else do you map that in the Netherlands? Like what else do you know about some of the differences? Cause this is a way of tracking some of those gender differences and cultural differences and seeing another possibility.

Well what we're seeing there is that there's fewer female pregnancies, fewer female only women get pregnant. Fewer pregnancies, teenage pregnancies. There's more talk about pleasure and orgasm with their parents. Like there's not as much shame. Sex is really normalized there. There's more consensual sex. We don't have the numbers of rape and all the things that we have in America. Now I'm actually my next project is I am going to there to do my own research and really look at it America versus the Netherlands. But mostly what we've seen is that, you know, more pleasure, less teenage unwanted pregnancies, less violence against women.

And what about some of these other indicators that you mentioned? 95% of men orgasm, 65% of women. Like, are those numbers similar?

I don't know if I've seen those numbers there, if they've done any comprehensive orgasm studies, but I could only bet that if they are not shamed about masturbation, self exploration, pleasure and consent, that there would be more orgasms.

But I don't know, maybe a smaller orgasm gap.

Yeah, I would hope so. I would hope so. We're gonna find out.

Okay, so I wanna hear back. Cause we're gonna be friends for a long time. So I'm curious about what about the second issue you mentioned of women being oriented toward the pleasure of their partners before their own pleasure. I'm curious if that also happens in the Netherlands.

Yeah, I'm curious too. I would think not. I mean, I remember hearing some studies, some reading some stories about when a young woman has sex for the first time, her parents are like, was it pleasurable? Did you have an orgasm? Are you, you know, did you get. It's something that you just say like here, if someone went on a date, did they open the door, did they pay? Or all the other silly things we have around dating here. So yeah, I have heard that it's just sort of a non negotiable that women are standing up for their pleasure and their needs there.

I love that.

Yeah.

So I'm smiling as you say that because if my daughters listen to this podcast, they'll be like, oh my God, my mom asked me that question all the time in terms of getting my needs met sexually. And did you orgasm? They're like, mom, shut up already.

See, this is enough. How old are your daughters?

They're now 20 and 25.

Okay. One of my passions is educating young people, especially young women. Although young men really need it as well. But because I have so many in my life, my friends send their kids over to my house. I have three nieces, 16, 23 and 25. And we're on the phone all the time, but. But they still, the parents have a really hard time talking to kids about sex. And I think it's because of our culture. Like I said, I know in the Netherlands they do it all, they do it more regularly. And here it's like, ew, mom, I don't wanna hear this, I don't wanna talk about it. But there's a certain, I think there's a certain threshold where you just have to Be like, I'm not gonna stop asking you. It's important we have to talk about it. Because I don't know how else to change that in America. I used to think it was gonna get it in the schools, but as we can see in America, getting. There's a lot of problems right now. So I don't think we're gonna get, like, sex education normalized in education. And so it really is.

It is.

It really is.

It's a dinner table.

It is a dinner table. It's all the time. It's like ongoing. Like, you talk to them about their schoolwork or their goals or doing chores. It's like. And also, masturbation is so shame, because a lot of this starts when we're young and we pleasure ourselves. And so if a kid, when they're younger and they're a toddler, so what happens is a lot of times kids will self soothe and they'll put their hands on their pants, and maybe the first message they ever got was, that's wrong. Take your hand on your pants that's dirty. Do that in private. And so immediately that's wiring into their brain, their nervous system, that anything associated with my genitals is dirty, shameful, and wrong. And so there's just a lot of rewiring to do. There's a lot of misinformation. And so even then, if we didn't have that, like, I don't think that I had that, but it just never occurred to me personally to even masturbate. I don't know why. I mean, now I know. I think I was always. I had a lot of stress growing up, a lot of, you know, some trauma around the home that I think I just sort of was probably at a frozen state and never thought I could relax. I always try to think, like, why did it occur to me to ever touch myself? You know, some people, some young women were like, oh, well, I was riding my bike or I was brushing, you know, use an electric toothbrush or use the shower. And I somehow had an orgasm. Not the electric toothbrush part, that was more conscious. But a lot of women say I was like, riding a bike or in the shower. And so there's these things that happen, but it's still confusing. So I think it's way younger than we think. We have to start talking to our kids about it. Puberty, you're gonna have these feelings. You might have a wet dream. If you have sons, you know, it's okay to touch yourself. It's about pleasure, exploration. So I just Think we have to start talking about it a lot younger.

For sure. So it's dinner table conversation.

Yes, it is. Dinner table. It's driving to soccer practice.

Right. It's like Eve Ensler, you know?

Yes.

Pass the salt. How's your vagina?

Exactly?

We'll be back after this break.

So you just said something, Emily, that I want to unpack a little further.

Okay.

So you talked about your childhood experience and how it didn't occur to you to self pleasure.

Yeah.

Can you share with us maybe first. When did you have your first orgasm?

My first orgasm was when I was in my 20s. It was pretty much after college. And I was with a partner having, like. I figured out that I. I think up until then I was probably faking them and I was with a partner. And it was like. Like kind of during oral sex and then a little bit of penetration. I was really warmed up. But it didn't happen a lot after that. It was just like one time. It was very elusive. And then after that, I got vibrators. I started masturbating. I talked to my mom about it. She was. My mom was really open. She just didn't know to have a conversation with me about it. And it was really. When I was in college and my girlfriend said to me, I said to them, what is the big deal with sex? Why. Why are we doing this? Why are we emphasizing this? You know, I remember my boyfriend driving in to see me. He went to a different school. And he was, like, pounding away at me like a jackhammer every time. I'm like, I just want it to be over. Can this be over? It's really not satisfying. And they said to me, have you ever had an orgasm? And I was like, no. I didn't remember thinking, like, how come I didn't know this? And they were like, do you masturbate? I said, no. So I really started to, you know, unpack it, use my own hands. And then. Yeah. So a lot of it for me, though, was with vibrators and lube. And I would say that's my most. That's a great way to get me going. But I can sometimes. I can usually have it with a partner if there's a lot of oral sex, a lot of foreplay, a lot of warmup.

And then you also linked it to some childhood trauma.

Yeah.

So do you know your adverse childhood experiences? I do.

I do. So I have been diagnosed in therapy in recent years. Like, I've been in therapy forever. Talk therapy. I know. I've heard you say this too. Which for me was great. I was in talk therapy forever. But it wasn't until I started doing a lot of other kinds, things of. Of trauma informed therapy, like EMDR and somatic therapy, that I realized that, you know, I had complex ptsd, which is basically when you have three really kind of traumatic experiences happen for the age of 20. And I had that. And I realized I was constantly just in a state of stress, fight or flight. I had a lot of adaptive, you know, people pleasing and just, you know, thought I had add, thought I was just super anxious, thought I had learning disabilities. And all of that could be true. But it also, it comes from a highly dysregulated stress nervous system. And so what happened was, you know, if you wanna. Parents got divorced at a young age. And then my mom married a stepdad that was really kind of abusive. And it wasn't a great. It was a very scary environment. Physically he was. And it was just a really hard time. And then my father died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 19. And so he was 49. So that was really sudden too. So I think between like the divorce and the stepdad and the family and not having any outlet. And it's funny now cause I know some kids who experience a death of a cause. I track all that. I'm always like paying attention to, like, how are people dealing with these things now? I remember a friend of mine, daughter, like, she lost her husband and the daughter like came home from college for a month and the family mourned together. I remember my dad died, I was 19. I went right back up to college two weeks later and got three jobs. And I was worried about money, I was worried about my life and just started working really hard. And I think that took me to my 20s, my 30s, probably still today. I have this working really hard, getting things done, getting burnt out. And I think that that that cycle for me was. I don't wanna feel my feelings. I don't want to. I didn't know how. I was so shut down. I really didn't know what I was feeling. I think it was just trying to be successful by accomplishing a lot of things, showing that I'm smart and I'm capable and I can do more than a lot of people. I mean, one of my mom's favorite compliments to me and I've told her she needs to. I'd love her to not say this as much anymore. There's other things we can pull on. She's like, but you're so strong, Emily. You'll get through it. You're so strong. You always get through it. Whenever I'm, you know, going through things, and I said, mom, I don't know if that's a compliment anymore. I don't know that I want to be so strong and so tough. You're so resilient. And in many ways it served me right. But I think just this whole experiencing on, like, I can't. I pushed away the feelings. I'm not gonna feel pain. And I know that grief is a. I don't know if you've had to deal with any grief in your life, but dealing with grief is just. It comes in sideways. It's really not anything that we're ever, you know, we don't. You can't really teach grief until you actually are in it. And I just know that I was so grieving so deeply from this relationship with my father and then not really giving myself time to mourn it. And even though intellectually I knew that I should probably be feeling more, I went on, you know, I was on birth control pill, and then I went on antidepressants. And so I just think there was a lot of masking going on. And that went on for a long time. And so I've spent a lot of time doing a lot of things that allow me to be more embodied that I do. A lot of the things I talk about in the book about the pillar of embodiment, which I think is the most confusing to people, and the one that's the hardest for people is like, what does embodiment mean again? And it's really just about being in your body, the mind, body connection. What am I actually feeling? What am I sensing? What's our body's wisdom? And I think a lot of us override that, no matter what our gender.

Let's dive into that because I agree with you. I feel like there's a level of dissociation, functional dissociation, especially those of us who grew up working harder as a way of overriding the pain that we were experiencing. I had an a score of 6.

Say that he had an A score.

So adverse childhood experiences. My score is on the higher side. And it's a difficult pattern to change. And one of the things that's been surprising to me is that embodiment is really the path and, like, coming downstairs from this cognitive approach to most of the problems that you've experienced. So can you walk us through? You know, you went from having your first orgasm in your 20s and having this sequence of trauma, complex post Traumatic stress disorder, Having your first orgasm in your 20s, being someone who works really hard, that was your pattern. And then you became a sex therapist. Like, take me. Like, help me connect the dots.

Okay, I can connect the dots. But one more thing I wanted to say about going back to real quick, the family stuff is those. It's also about, we know, maybe growing up a child back then in the 70s, 80s, 90s, it wasn't really about also parents. Emotional. Not having, like, emotional neglect. Having parents that weren't loving my mom, they all love me. But not having that kind of.

Attunement.

Attunement, exactly. There was no attunement. So I just want to say that too, that very close with my mom, my family, but a lot of us didn't have that. And I think we still work on that. Okay, so I can walk you through that. So in my 20s, my sex got a little bit better and I was focused. I worked in politics. I. I lived in San Francisco. I moved there after college, and I worked on political campaigns. I worked at City Hall. I worked for Willie Brown when he was mayor. I know who'd been there. And I. Barbara Boxer, all the People. And then I made a documentary film about San Francisco politics in the late 90s. And from there, that took me a few years to get out. And once that came out, I realized I was then working in politics and making a film. It was all this drive, and I got my first taste of something that I, you know, that was able to create and interview people and change, you know, change people, tell stories, tell. Basically it was storytelling. And at that time, in my early 30s, when I really started this, I sort of started it before 20, maybe 22 years ago, when I got really, really interested in sex and relationships. Because I was also somebody who wasn't oriented towards relationships and marriage and kids. I should also mention that I attended four of my parents weddings before I was 25. My actual parents. So that was another one of the traumas. I suppose they reached married. I thought only parents got married. So anyway, I also understand that my upbringing was like, why would I get married? If it doesn't work, you leave. So then I thought, okay, I see though there's gotta be something that I could learn in here. They always say, research is me. Search. And so I went on a journey. I would always talk to people. Tell me about how you met your partner and tell me about your marriage and what makes it successful. And I really just wanted to start out knowing how it all started, was interviewing people about their Sex lives and their relationships. Because I was always hearing that half of marriages end in divorce. And when you go beneath the surface, it was like, usually about sex, money or kids. And I thought, okay, well, like, like, let's talk about the sex thing. Because in my experience of being in long, longer term relationships and then ending them, the sex always got really stale after six to nine months every single time. So I just thought, well, that's how were other people making it last? Because there was always someone new and shiny to have sex with. And I knew that would be better. But in my mind, I knew I must be broken. Research is me. Search what are the answers? What's the secret to successful sex and relationships? So that's when I started doing a cable ax. There's a long version, but due to a cable access show in San Francisco, which anybody can have a cable access show if you take a Saturday workshop. And then I just started doing this cable access show around the time I heard interviewing people about Saturday and relationships. I hadn't gone to grad school. I did not have a. I wasn't studying sex then. I was just a student of it. Just, you know, on my. Kind of more organic. And then I heard about podcasting. This was in 2005. And I. What I loved about podcasting was it was. It was audio only. I didn't need cameras. I knew that there was more anonymity to people's experiences if they didn't have a camera on them. And so I just started my podcast that day in my living room in San Francisco and invited a bunch of friends over and interviewed them about their sex lives and their relationships. And from there I thought, this is it. Like, this is gonna be the thing that's going to change people's lives. I was learning, they were learning. And yeah, I've been doing it ever since. And then I went back to grad school in San Francisco. At the time, there wasn't a lot of degrees I could get into human sexuality. But there was one school there called the Institute for the advance of Human Sexuality. I don't know if you know it, it was a hippie school that had been there since like the 60s. And yeah, I went there. It was night school for like four years. It was nights and weekends and like long months. You would go to school and all the while doing podcasting. And that's been my journey. Moved to LA about 12 years ago.

And can you layer in what you learned about sex and relationships? And maybe I imagine you went through a process of resolving the trauma Signature in your body. And I'm just curious about that process. I imagine it's not a linear path. It's more of a circuitous path. What are some of the stops?

Yeah, I realized I just gave you the facts. The linear path of, like, the work. And I didn't get into the evolution of it. So when I started. Let's see. I don't think I've ever really mapped this out. So when I started, I realized pretty early on, like, probably the first year that I had been having sex in a way that was very performative. I'd probably faked most of my orgasms. I would get four to sex. I wasn't a great communicator. I didn't really know what I wanted. I would say that was the first few years.

It wasn't modeled for you.

It was never modeled for me.

And you talk about this in your book, this whole section here, and sort of this myth of how sex and how long it lasts.

Yeah, how long it lasts. I thought there was this myth that it's supposed to last forever and that sex should always be amazing and we shouldn't have to talk about it. And if you do have to talk about it, there's a problem that still lives today, by the way. That's still one of the biggest myths I hear. Like, I don't wanna talk. If we talk about it, then it means that there's a problem, we should break up. So I learned how to communicate. I learned how to really just sort of realizing that that wasn't a normal way to have sex. And so that I started having partners where I was actually trying to communicate and slow everything down. One of my top sex tips, if you said to me, like, what's your top tip? I'd say, top three would be to go. Go five times slower. Like, we usually rush through sex that all of a sudden you're making out with someone and then you're naked and you're having penetrative sex. And for me, a lot of the delight was in the making out, the kissing, the slowness. So that's something I really learned to just say, we gotta slow down. And I learned how to. There's another big thing. I learned how to stop sex. I learned that it was okay to take a pause in the middle of sex. I didn't think it was okay to stop it if it was already going. Because I thought blue balls, like, they're gonna call 911 and they're gonna die and they're gonna tell their friend. Right? Like, you know, not a thing. Maybe a little painful, maybe it's not a great night for you, but, like, it's okay.

They can handle it just fine. Yeah, and I love the specificity of what you're describing. Like five times slower. Five times slower. Not, you know, half as fast, but five times slower.

Go slower. Like really think, am I going too fast? Slow it down. Because then that's really going to, you know. So I would slow everything down. I would stop. I'd say, you know what? Can we really go back to the kissing? I love that. A great perk of my job was I was always getting sex toys and lubes and fun things sent to me. So I was like, I've got this really fun thing, research I have to do for work. Will you try this toy with me? Can we try this lube? Can we try this massage oil? So that was fun. I had a lot of, A lot of props along the way. And in the meantime, I was in therapy. I started trying to think where I was at that point. I started to really just not only share what I wanted sexually, but what kind of relationships I wanted. I thought that this notion that you have to date someone and have sex with them, and then there was an assumption that it was going to lead towards marriage, family, kids. I still wasn't sure that was for me. And so I'd say, I'm just dating people right now. I'm figuring out where I'm at. And that wasn't always okay for everybody, but it just, you know, that's why I just really learned to speak out for what I needed. I learned to go to some. I've done some great therapy around trauma and EMDR therapy, eye movement desensitization, reprocessing, which really does rewire the neural pathways in your brain.

And that worked for you?

Yeah, that really did work for me. I love that therapy. I love.

Can you talk a little bit about what your experience was of it?

Yeah. I realized that, you know, I had particular things from childhood memories and things with family that whenever and something particular happened with something came up with a family member that I was going into therapy for that because it was so traumatic and I had to learn how to work with, deal with this person. But in the process of that, so many other things became apparent. So basically with this therapy, I was able to look at. I'm trying to think of how to, how to break this down. I think a lot of it was about like attachment and self soothing. Here's what I. What I love about EMDR is You don't. It's not a lot of talking. You don't have to go in and talk about all the history and all the.

I'm so tired of talking.

I'm so tired of talking.

In therapy.

Yeah, in therapy or even, like, in dating, you're like, can't you just know my story? But yes, definitely in therapy. It's like, I know my. At this point, I probably been in therapy on and off since I was, like, 10. Like, when my parents first got divorced, they put me in therapy and I was like, I don't want to have to explain it all. And I knew enough to say, I know that these things happen to me, but. But this is how I'm reacting today. But the thing about that was I would explain something that was happening with this conflict with a family member. And what they would say is, well, how does it make you feel? And I might say, it makes me feel like I'm not enough. And then the reverse of that were like, how do you wanna feel? So what would. The opposite. Well, I'd wanna feel that I am enough. And then she'd say, okay, let's go into that. That you're not enough. And this thing happened. And then you close your eyes and you either can use buzzers, which I love is there's little vibrators you can hold, or they use the dots that go back, back and forth, and I'm like, all of vibration is here.

Vibrators.

Vibrators.

I never got offered vibrators. No.

Okay. They do the dot going back and forth, and then you just. As these pulse as you're pulsing back and forth with these vibrators or with the dots in your eyes, and you're. So you take a few minutes and she say, well, what are you feeling now? Or what comes up for you? And I found that it would just start to unlit. It would start to unravel. And a lot of different details of my childhood would come up and it would start to. I start to remember things, and I start to remember feelings towards things that I hadn't really remembered. And then these. It would start to string together. It was almost like it was. All the dots were coming together in my life. I could see the way something that happened when I was 8 or 15 or currently were all connected. And my reaction to those events were pretty much the same. And so by talking about these things or just talking to her about what was coming up in the moment of doing the. The process of emdr, she would say, well, what now? And I'D say, oh, I'm remembering this time that, you know, my mom didn't call me and this thing happened, say, okay. And then she'd go back to the dots, go back to the buzzing. Okay, what next? What next? And just through this thing, even though it seemed very unrelated, the process of talking about my emotions and feeling not enough when it was done. After a few sessions, I felt less charged by these experiences that were happening in my family. So I could still be with my family or be with these family members, and certain things would come up, and I thought, oh, I'm not reaction. Or about having the same senses that desensitization part. And so it was like it was gone. Like I felt.

So you weren't triggered?

I wasn't triggered. I wasn't triggered by things that had triggered me before. So it was a kind of like an unearthing of a lot of things, but it feels very safe and it's embodied. Like, I was noticing things in my body more. I was noticing the way things connected, and I think it's the process of the rewiring and breathing.

Did you feel more regulated?

I did. I felt way more regulated from that, so that was really helpful. Another practice is the somatic therapy, which I can tell you this. In my 20s, when I was seeking a therapist, a friend of mine said to me in San Francisco, go see this. She was in therapy school. She said, you have to go see this therapist. You're gonna love her. I love her, right? I was like, okay, I'm gonna go. She's training to be a therapist. She probably has a great recommendation. I walked into this therapy office, and the first thing she said to me was, how are you feeling? And I said, anxious. And she said, well, where are you feeling this in your body? And I remember getting so pissed. Like, I was probably 25 years old. Like, I have no idea. Like, that's a terrible question. All I feel is anxiety and numbness. And I left, and I never went back. Okay, cut to 25 years later. Somatic therapy is really only about, where are you feeling this in your body? And I still. I'm still not completely there with it, but now I'm like, okay, that was in my stomach, or I felt a charge in my chest. You know, I think the goal is. My therapist tells me that sometimes people feel their blood flowing through their veins. I don't feel my blood flow, but I do feel certain, you know, ways that my body, even if my back's hurting or the way I'm sitting, like, I just I'm much more, much more body awareness, which we know is connected to trauma and our thoughts. And so that's been really helpful. I love heat therapy. I love saunas, hot yoga, you know, walking, nature massage. I mean the stuff that's just like releasing lymphatic drainage. All the things that help me feel more in touch with my body.

This is so good. And what's the role of sex, sexuality, orgasm?

Okay, right.

Regulating the body.

So for me, what I've learned is really how to, I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges, what people could learn is if they, if they learn a meditation practice or a breath work practice or a mindfulness practice. If it's been something in your life, you're like, I know I want to get to that yog and that breath work. It's actually gonna help you in the bedroom. Because so many people are distracted, disassociated. That for me, the more I learn to breathe and be present during sex and really be present to the sex that's happening, I'm able to experience more pleasure. Cause I'm also, I'm also able to really show what I need and ask for what I want and have more orgasms. So I, it is, it is completely different than how it was 20 years ago. So, yeah, I'm able to, like, there's certain, you know, non negotiable, like I have to be warm enough in the bedroom. I have to have my lube. I have a lube on every nightstand is like one of my missions. Like when I'm dead, if they're like, she got a lube on every nightstand, I'm happy, right? Like Steve Jobs on the computer. That's that, you know, computer at every, every desk. I want a lube on every nightstand. I have my toys charged. I have great communication. I have sex when I feel safe, when I want to. I'll say to my partners, you know, I. Tonight, can we just like give each other a massage? Can we just do oral? Can you just go down on me? We're not gonna have sex. Like, I'm able to like, call it because I, I. And I've been able to put words around things. Like I can say to my partner, you know, sex isn't happening tonight or it's not gonna happen Monday night. 11 ever. Like, I'm tired, I'm in bed. Like just, just being very, very clear because I think what happens a lot, I know this happened for me and for a lot of people that there's the expectation that sex has to happen Every single night. Or. And if it doesn't. Or it has to happen and I, gosh, I don't want it to, so I'm gonna fake. You know, it's that whole old trope of like, not tonight, dear. I have a headache. I don't want to be that. I don't want that to be. Women get so, so battered by that. Like, we get so. There's so much negativity around women's sexuality. We're frigid. No. We just never really made sex work for us. We never really understood what it take for us to be online for sex. And so for me personally, I've just realized. And that's a lot. Through the sexual intelligence of, like, I'm even able to stop that I want. People always think like, oh, you must be having incredible sex all the time and want it all the time. No, I'm literally like every other human on the planet that it regulates. It changes. Sometimes I'm in sex relationships where I don't want it, but I know the conditions that are required for me to feel the most turned on and online for sex.

This is huge, Emily. So you're speaking into. It sounds like especially for women to define sex on your own terms.

On your own terms. You have to. I mean, we have to. We have never, ever defined it on our terms. Even, you know, I know. Even young people, people our age, I think we're always learning. And I very hard to find women who've actually learned to have a voice around their needs. We have to.

And what are the steps? So let's break this down.

Let's break it down. I think the first step is I love. You know, I like masturbation. Solo sex, solo play. It's a huge, huge part of discovering what actually feels good to you. Because when you're. When you're having sex with a partner, even we talked about performative sex, we really still wanna please them or in relation to someone else. So if you can say, okay, I'm gonna do some mindful masturbation, I talk about that too in smart sex, about mindfully taking time to. The goal is not orgasm. The goal is exploration. And this goes for men, too. I know we're talking a lot about women, but a lot of men, too, always have the pressure that you have to be erect. You have to always want it. And that is not the case for every man either. So. But going back to this mindful practice, it's. I'm gonna take some time. I'm gonna lock the doors. I'm Gonna turn.

I'm going to get into my body, I'm going to breathe, and I'm going to slowly learn to. I'm going to touch myself all over my body and think like, you know, even look at secondary roti stones. You don't have to go right to your nipples and your vulva and your clitoris, but like the nape of your neck, your inner elbow, your inner thighs. And you just start to tease yourself and think like, what actually feels good to me? What do I like? What kinds of pressures, what kind of motions? So that would be the first thing is, you know, getting a vibrator. I'm a huge fan. All this, like shaming around vibrators is just so tired, you know, it's just a nut. We use our aura rings, our smartwatch. Just if that helps you, that's amazing. And discover ways that you feel good. And I think what we're gonna find is that we need to be warmed up, we need to feel safe. Safety is a huge factor for women. If we don't feel safe with somebody, we're not getting our needs met or it's a new partner. It can be really hard to also be online because when we're not, we don't feel safe. We're in our heads, right? We're worried about, you know, our bodies. And I think a lot of times we don't. We don't feel safe. So.

And here you're speaking into window of tolerance, which I think is really important. The window of physiology in which you feel like you're regulated. What I love about mindful masturbation is that it's helping to expand your window of tolerance and also get you into a re. Patterning around understanding what your needs are and being able to communicate them. That body literacy that I think so many of us are lacking.

That's it. Yeah, it's body literacy and getting it. So you. Exactly. So you asked about orgasm. And it's funny cause you said about regulation and about orgasm. And I think that orgasm is a great release. But I don't know that it's necessarily about the regulation. It's more like when I'm feeling the most regulated and my nervous system feels calm, then I'm more open to have orgasms and pleasure. But. But all these other things, like I need to work out. Like working out's big for me. Like every day I have to move my body or do something. I have to walk, I have to move without apologies. Like the days that I don't are less. I'm less on, you know, I'm less available for sex. So. Yeah. So that all those things really help I breathe with my partner. I, you know, well, I want to.

Address the orgasm gap. I also feel like in some ways orgasm feels like the touchdown.

Yeah. Yes.

And. And I want people to have fun playing the game. Like to be really present, deeply present for the game, and not always be focused on orgasm. There's a field, like a field of orgasm that I really enjoy. And I like to be in that field, either alone or with my partner, exploring and playing, working with my window of tolerance, learning without always coming to climax and going over. So, you know, some of this came up when I first met Nicole dedone and one taste and orgasmic meditation. And the goal with orgasmic meditation was 13 minutes of stroking the clitoris at the 1 o' clock position, as you well know, and not going over, not climaxing. So just being deeply present to the experience, similar to meditation of other forms. And I still feel like there's a lot of value in that experience. So how do you frame that? And my experience is that women understand this and they're more open to it. And I don't like to generalize, but I see a lot of men who are like, oh no, my job is to give you an orgasm. Like, that is my job. That's the goal. It's not always my goal.

No, no, it's not always our goal. And our goal is to. I would say that we're responsible for our own orgasm and it's not your partner's responsibility. So even if we're like, are expecting that or blaming them, like, we have to know what is actually required for us to get to orgasm. We get to decide if we want one and we don't want one. But yeah, the thing I love about that, I wonder if we were there to say probably did the only like in late 2000s or like 2007, 8 when they were like in south of Market, San Francisco. OG and what I loved about that was like, we are just focusing on like stroke. I mean, the thing is the clitoris is this incredible, incredible body organ. Body part. Would you even, you know, glands function.

It's an organ.

It's an organ. Thank you, doctor. That they. You have to remember this too. And this is what blows my mind. The clitoris wasn't even on the map or even in medical journals till 1997. Okay. So I'm talking 2005. I started this podcast. So it's like, that's why like oming and all that Stuff was so it still is. It's still like what you got your clitoris stroked by a stranger for? But. But yes, it'd be like, so we're still. And even then people think it's just a little bud, right? But it actually has, you know, 12,000 nerve endings. By the way, it was 8,000 when I was in the middle of writing my book and then I had to change it because we just discovered 4,000 more. So like even the study Amen of female sexuality is evolving right now, every day, minute by minute, month by month. We're still finally looking at it. And so yes, I think that to know that we can have so much pleasure, that isn't just about the bud, but it's the nerve endings that extend deep inside because the clitoris has legs. And people like to say, is it a g spa g area? I think it's internal clitoral nerves if you really have to, to break it down. But it doesn't. Once you can get those areas, you know, once you can start to send blood flow and arouse those zones, it means the possibilities are endless for women to start to feel arousal in their entire bodies. Full body orgasms, thinking their self to orgasm, energetic orgasms. So I mean, it's all related. But yes, I'm all for. That's why the slowness. If you go five times slower, it's like we are amazing human men too. We are covered in nerve endings that feel amazing when stroked and touched and teased and tantalized and using like vibrations are really great. Warm massaging oil, warm massage oil. Like all of this is just, this is the delight, this is the excitement, this is the arousal process. This helps with our desire. And so slowing everything down and taking time to massage and build our arousal through breath and through touch is the process that is the game. It's not the touchdown. And so getting people to even slow down in this culture when we're in a hit it and quit it culture. And I say like, if it takes a Woman Typically between 20 and 40 minutes of orgasm, here's the orgasm gap part two. If it takes a woman between 20 and 40 minutes and it takes a man between 5 and 8 minutes, that's already a built in gap. But then you've got people of young kids and they're couples and they're married and they have jobs and they have things, they're like, I don't have 45 minutes, so that's really hard too. And I get the limitations. But even if it's once a week on Your date night or your time away. And you say, this is an hour for our sex life. You might not find that you need this quick fix every night. Just building in time to discover your erogen zones, to play with each other, to do massage, to do mutual masturbation, too, is a great fun thing for couples to lie side by side and do mindful practices, like do it together with a partner and like, explain to them. And it can be hard for men who are like, I immediately get hard and have to put it inside you. That is all I've ever seen. That's all I've ever been told. And that is. Sex is like, mind blowing and like a lot of heavy lifting we have to do as women to explain it. So I get what we get pushback back. But the men I know who have been involved with these practices have seen it. They start to understand that female sexuality is really a beautiful thing to witness, to be a part of. It's so expansive. We opening like a flower, we blossom. And we're really in our energy and our orgasm and our vibrancy. But we have to also, as women, be willing to hold their hands through it and just say, like, come with me on this journey. You'll get yours too. When you. I'm fully in my energy, I want to give back to you. I want you to be a part of this. But it's a, you know, it's a journey.

Oh, it's so good. So I feel like we need to do two parts to this conversation. So I want to wrap up this conversation and I want to go deeper in our next conversation about what I think of as the climactic sneeze that a lot of women have. You know, like the 30 second, five minute climax that isn't really utilizing all of the anatomy that women have available to them. So I'm just going to use that as a little teaser to our next conversation. Any teasers you want to throw in as we wrap up?

Oh, gosh, this was amazing. I think the teaser is. I feel like this is our foreplay episode then, right?

Yes.

I feel like just wait. Just wait for what comes next because you might too.

Beautiful. Thank you, Emily.

Thank you, foreign.

That was treated. And I'm Dr. Sarah. Thank you for listening. Subscribe wherever you podcast and if you enjoyed the show, rate it five stars. Follow me on Instagram Sarah GotraTemd. If you have a question, head to speakpipe.com.

And leave a voicemail. Links to that and more are in the description to this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Take care. Be kind to yourself. And remember, your body is always on your side.