Finding Our Desire (Emily Morse)

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Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. I'm thrilled to welcome today's very special guest sex therapist and dear friend, Dr. Emily Morse. She's the host of Sex with Emily and the author of the brand new book Smart Sex.

Foreign.

Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we're here. Pulling the Thread is about big questions. Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better and what's required to heal ourselves and our world. I'll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks in their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming. My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.

Sex is not a quick fix. When there's these foundational challenges that you're having, you're like, I know how to give, you know, oral sex, you know, million different ways, but I'm not in the mood and I'm not turned on. And I know that sex is important because I love my partner and I, I know sex is important, but we can't quite hack how to be turned on and ready to go and ready for sex at the right time. And a lot of that is because we don't understand our our arousal desire process. We don't know that, like if the house is a mesh and mess and there's dishes in the sink or I have resentments with my partner or haven't worked out in a week or that there's all these factors of why you're not turned on. And so I think getting people to actually think about their sex life in that way and trying to think about like, what do I know to date just from my sexual history, but like, what's happening with my hormones, what's happening with my, my psychology? Do I have unhealed trauma? Do I? So and you'd think that that would be sort of obvious, but it's really not. Like if you've been on an antidepressant for four years or even just recently or any other blood pressure medication and now you're like, not as turned on. People often don't make that connection.

Emily Morse is not only a dear, dear friend and a stellar human, she's also a doctor of human sexuality, revolutionizing discussions surrounding sex and the pursuit of pleasure. She's already a best selling author, though her just released book Smart how to Boost your Sex IQ and Own youn Pleasure is the navigational guide we all need in our lives. She also leads a masterclass on sex and communication and hosts the top rated and chart topping podcast Sex with Emily. Through candid conversations, she challenges the inaccurate cultural programming surrounding sex and promotes the value of open conversation to foster connection. Today we talk about how women often find themselves disconnected from sex and their bodies, often due to social conditioning and traumatic events that occur during our sexual development. Emily helps us consider ways to reconnect with ourselves in order to feel more embodied, more aligned, and more pleasure. Before we get to today's conversation, just a quick note that at the end of this episode you can hear an excerpt from the audio version of On Our Best Behavior. So stick around if you're curious to hear what it's about. Okay, let's get to our conversation.

Congrats on your book. And I know in some ways it's just a bow on your incredibly long and varied career teaching us all about sex. But as I know from my many conversations with you, you're really interested more in pleasure and desire. And that's where there's a great Venn diagram between our work. Even though I am, it's funny. It's like I even want to call myself. I'm prudish, I'm traumatized, I'm all of these things. But in talking to you, your push to re embody and actually get in touch with our wanting is very much aligned for me with the Last few years of my life. And also the way that you connect it in many ways to an essential part of our wellness.

Yeah, it is. Pleasure is. Pleasure is part of our wellness. And it's something that we put conditions on, right? We don't deserve pleasure unless we do these certain things or we check everything off our to do list. Or I had this, you know, I don't deserve dessert tonight because I didn't work out or I don't deserve to go see a friend. Whatever you look at as pleasure, we often put out the back burner. And the whole premise of my work and of this book too, is prioritizing pleasure and. And also looking at it as something that we. And that pleasure is presence. Pleasure is productive. Like, the more you actually think about your life and you think about what can I do that actually feels good? And I'm not even just talking about sex. That's the other thing. I want to expand the definition of pleasure. What makes you feel good and actually help people. Put together a list of myself. I was like. Cause I had. I did this thing. I went on this retreat a few years ago. And they were like, cause I love doing all the retreats and learning, right? I was trying to better myself. And they had this thing called I have it in the book. The pleasure percentage. Like, how much of your week do you spend doing things that make you feel good, that are giving you pleasure? And it could be anything. Picking flowers, gardening, seeing friends, going for a walk, cooking, baking, sex. And you had to write it all down. And then there was a formula, which I put in the book. And then you do, like, the math, and you figure out what percentage of your life, of the week do you have anything pleasurable? And mine was like 1.2%. I was like, that is a very pathetic percentage of time that is pleasure. And I had already been doing this work. This was like 10 years ago. And I said, how do I upset up that pleasure? Like, because then you realize once you start really consciously and intentionally placing pleasure into your life, like how you would plan your weekly workouts or your weekly. Other things that are important, then I realized that you will have more, you know, more joy in your life. And I tried to get that number up to at least, like, my goal is to get up to like 20%, 15%. And I definitely have gotten that number up. So just like, in thinking about all the things that are important, we don't prioritize our pleasure. So my mission is to get people to look at that. We. What makes us feel good do more of that.

Yeah, we're gonna talk about dissociation and embodiment in a minute. Because I think so many of us, at least I found I was not really in my body, but pleasure, particularly in our culture and our society, it feels sinful. And again, taking it to this idea of the way that you don't have to be religious for these tenants to live in us, there's something about pleasure seeking. We hear so much about our overly addictive society and this idea that all we want is pleasure. And there's still this puritanical vibe that runs through us, that we should be denying ourselves, that this should all be hard, that it's wrong to receive. We're also going to talk about the masculine and the feminine. And, you know, that certainly lives in me. It's really difficult for me to shift to a place of allowing myself to feel good and to even have sort of that. That sense of the world and the way that I encounter it and. And I write about this a lot, but just. Even the way that I was eating, where it was sort of this thing that I needed to do, and I would stand and shove food in my mouth, but I wasn't really tasting anything. I wasn't enjoying it. Do you find that it's gendered? Do you feel like men are better at allowing pleasure, or do you think we're all deeply cut off?

I think we're all deeply cut off. Cause there's two different kinds of pleasure. So now when you're talking, I'm listening to you thinking there is the numbing pleasure. There's like the sitting and scrolling and social. I don't know if that's really pleasure or there's drugs or there's scrolling shopping or there's a lot of numbing pleasure. But then there's the pleasure. That's presence and that's the more embodied pleasure where you're really, you know, what am I feeling in my body right now? What am I tasting? What am I going to take? You know, this whole. Take a bite of food, put the fork down, taste it. Like if I. I've heard that so many times. And I. Then I look down and my meal's gone, right? So it's the slowness. I think that's the kind of pleasure that I'm talking about is that being really slow, really tasting what I'm tasting. Like, how does the food taste? What are the. You know, how does it feel going down my throat? What are the after aftertaste? What does touch feel like? I think we Just we all go so fast. I think that is not necessarily gendered. I think what is gendered is that maybe men give themselves more permission to do more things that make them feel good. I'm gonna go. This is very like stereotype. I'm gonna go golf, I'm gonna go drink beers or hang out with my friends. But a lot of that is more the disassociative, distracted pleasure. I guess really what I talk about is pleasure that is embodied, meaning it's free, fully in my body, but I also don't have any judgment around it. It's like I fully deserve this time with you as a friend. Like when we go on our walks, to me that's a lot of pleasure is connectivity, like the authentic connection with friends, getting a massage, allowing my partner, you know, being with my partner and doing like touching that feels good and not feeling like I have to immediately give back. So I think that pleasure is a very confusing word. I do think pleasure is a feminine word too. Sometimes I think when I talk about pleasure, you kind of get. Sometimes we shut off from it. But I think, you know, just the way, the way I think we all deserve more conscious pleasure and slow pleasure.

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I don't know if other women relate to this and again, it might be my own pattern of repression, but I for me too, my sexuality or sexual energy I think has always scared me a little bit or it's gotten. It's been dangerous for me as a child or as a teen. And so what I always sense in myself too is this sort of. I can feel it as a physical sensation in my pelvic floor of a tamping down and wanting to control the world by controlling my own response to it. And that might be. I don't know if that's uniquely me or whether for women too there's sort.

Of this like I think it's common. I think that it's more common than not that most of us are disassociated. But I think if your experience, if you want to talk about it, I don't know how much you've talked about you in your book and I think it is in your last chapter where you talk about your experience disassociating. I mean I got to be honest, it's good a globally most. Some of the most common questions I get asked is why am I so anxious during sex? Why can't I focus? Why am I numb? Why aren't I feeling it? Why am I thinking about the to do list? But you get into your own experience of disassociating, which again is really, really common. So if you want to share more about that.

Yeah, and this is obviously powerful and real and yeah, I hope it's. I hope it's universal. I mean the point of writing about myself in the parts that I do in my book is with the intention that obviously the personal is often universal. So hopefully there are women who are recognized themselves and my experience and now have a name for it. But I Didn't know that I was dissociating. So I would just often have this sensation of spinning and sort of being elsewhere when I was intimate and particularly in intimate encounters. But it would happen also in other high stress moments for me where I would find myself spinning in what is now I now know is a dissociated way. And I have done a lot of therapy around it now. MDMA specifically was really helpful for me. And it was two things. It was the revelation of an early childhood experience when I was probably 8 or 9 with a friend of a family friend. And I don't think that he. I don't even know what he did to me at this point. And I don't really care. Which I know sounds so odd because for me it was more about being in the presence of this man who made me feel like he loved me and found me irresistible and that it was my fault, my responsibility for inspiring this in him.

Right.

There was something that you did, there's something that I did. There was like something about my body or my sensibility, even as a child, that was responsible for his reaction to me. I was making him lose control. That's what I remember. And. And then I had an experience in high school that I had sort of shrugged off. I remember it very vividly now. I would call it a rape. I had spent an entire day trying to dog and avoid this guy and express to him my lack of interest, and then ultimately ended up in a room alone with him. And in that instance, the big thing for me was one, feeling like I inherently was making myself unsafe. And two, was I had an orgasm and.

Then never managed to do that again until my 40s. In the presence of anyone else. In the presence of anyone else. Because it was so disconnect between what I wanted. This, I know is universal, that there is this confusion between what we want and what our body does. And then after, when I sort of decided to write this book and to go back into that experience, which I was able to sort of recontextualize after understanding what happened to me as a child. Because what I remember was with this, when I was a child was this sort of like, I will make myself very still and he will leave me alone. And that was my move in high school, was like, I will essentially go away and this won't happen. So anyway, I.

So powerful. Thank you for sharing all this.

This is just.

I mean, just both of those back to back, but they're not like.

I think that a lot of women have the same experience, but there's this disconnect, this feeling of betrayal from my body that I had. And so I think I. Throughout. For the next several decades, I was proving to myself that I had control and that there was something that couldn't be taken from me. Yeah. Even though I was with my husband, who's like the best guy in the world, Right?

Exactly. Well, your earliest conditioning. Well, thank you for sharing all that. I don't know how much you've talked about. I know in book we talk about it, but, I mean, that's just so. So that exactly explains it. And it is. It's really common. Each of us kind of interpret kind of a sexual assault or rape in different ways. And it's probably the most common thing that happens to women.

Yep.

And then what happens as a result of that is you just. You literally shut it down. Yeah, you are. I mean, after the first experience, you were like, I'm not safe. Men are not safe.

I'm too powerful.

Yeah. I'm power. It's my fault. So you hear all these messages. I'm too powerful. I'm. I'm not safe. I did something wrong. It's my fault. Because you're so young. Right. That's what kids do. Right. You think something goes out, parents explode or they're fighting or whatever it is. That's what our default is. I did something wrong. It's my body. My body's not a safe place. And so I'm going to learn to disconnect everything. It's all energy. Right. Like your pelvic floor, like, you did feel tingling. Right. Because it's. It's also physiological. Like, someone touches you, maybe there was some around, but you're like, I'm shutting it down. And then. So it would make sense that ending. And then talk about the. The experience in high school where then you had an orgasm, which is so confusing. Right. Anyway, because you're like, I don't want this. But it felt good. But you can't control it, so it's all being out of control.

Yeah.

So you decided the next 20 years of life that there's, like, no way I'm going to be able to even tap into what I want, because I never even. You never even got, like. What makes me, like, so sad is that you never even got the chance to go on the journey to figure out what you wanted because sex became an unsafe place where you couldn't express yourself. You couldn't be free. You couldn't be out there. You just kind of had to be a vessel.

Yeah.

And shut down.

Yeah.

And I have a feeling that that particular experience.

Very common.

It's common. And as is the programming that sort of women aren't supposed to really enjoy sex. And all the rampant sort of slut shaming that we do, well, that's the other thing.

So I think that is super, super common. And. And most women don't know what we want because it's not okay to be sexual. It's not okay to be lusty. It's not okay to ask for what we want. It's more about performing for our partners, performing for our men, performing for, you know, to use. Use gender. So you had, like, the 1, 2, 3, punch. Because I didn't. I didn't think it was okay to ask for what I wanted ever. Just because I was told that it was about men's pleasure. And if they had a good time, well, then it was a good time. Yes, Right. They had an orgasm. They got off. I did all the moves that were sexy. It was. Check. I was a great lover. But for you, you couldn't even, like, go there. So you had to go into overdrive. You probably couldn't even feel it. I don't know. Like, did you have feeling in your body? Like.

Not really.

Yeah, not really. I think that there was sort of like a deadening. And that's been really interesting for me to. And a lot of it is learning where my pelvic floor was and then having sort of an education in that and this understanding also for anyone who's listening, that, you know, that's like sort of your Kegel zone. But we just clench it. And so many women, I think, don't feel safe. And then it's, you know, then you have a baby and you're worried about peeing all over yourself. But you notice one of the bodywork people that I work with is like, just pay attention to how you feel in any situation. And around people. Are you holding or are you relaxed?

Yes.

It's a really interesting, interesting.

So I've been working on that. You're gonna love this. I've been working on this as well, because, again, yeah, it is the pelvic floor. It's the power source. As our friend Lauren Rockshors, Right. Her book is the Power Source. We all walk around with this very clenching tension feeling that we're not even aware of. And a lot of women, first off, like, about 80% of women have pain during sex at some point in their life. For many women, it's chronic. Every time they have pain, like they have Sex, even if a tampon goes in, they have pain, and it is because of this. And there's a lot of different reasons. For some women are just born. They have overgrowth of nerve endings. But for many of us, it's because they had an early sexual experience. And we just walk around this clenching. So there's little. If you think about a clench, there's no way that this energy can flow. Because if you think about the time you might have felt aroused or turned on for anybody, if you just take a hand or you put it over your body or you touch yourself and you're like, what am I feeling? And then you start to breathe in your pelvic floor. Then you start to feel tingles. But for many of us, like, you have to actively get into that. But for many, we just don't feel it because we've been shut down for whatever reasons. And I've been calling lately, and I had a friend who coined this, but she's like. When I'm trying to make a decision, and I don't know, she's like, emily, is it a vagina blast or is it a vagina clench? She's like, it could be like, do you want to go out with that person? She's like, is it a blast or a clench? And I'm like, and it's so funny to get touched because that's literally when we talk about our intuition, how women to follow it. And that's something that I've had to work on too. Like, I think I shut down things, and I'm like, it's kind of like a hell yes or hell no. But taking it back to be like, what does your vagina actually say? There's messaging in there.

There is.

And it's interesting to be in your presence, just out in the world, because, yes, you're a beautiful woman. But that aside, I've been around many beautiful women, and when I am with you, I think I joke. I know it's called a vulva, but I say that you have a magical vagina, but you have. And I'm sure people can sort of take an inventory of. Of people in their lives who are capable, who exude, who aren't sexy, they're sexual, and they have sort of this, like, erotic energy moving in their bodies. And so I will be with Emily. And people are like, let me walk this coffee around the counter to give it to you. Let me like. The way that men and women alike of all ages are just generally attracted to you is fascinating, but I credit it. Besides, the fact that you're infectiously appealing to the fact that you're open and, you know, you're embodied and you're running this energy that's very open and magnetic.

So you.

I know in the book you teach us all how to do that, but it is special.

That's so. Thank you for. I mean, that's. That's so. It's a practice. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah.

That's really lovely.

Because you'll be wearing track pants. It's not about a performance, a sexiness. It's about a sexuality that I feel like you exude and that we should all work to exude so that we can have magical vaginas.

I love that you think that. Well, thank you. I guess it's good. Good, good branding if we think of that.

Right.

Good marketing. First accidentally like to have a magical vagina.

But it's ten days unleashing your magical vagina.

Ten days magical vagina. At least. And I are working on something because it's energy and it's a practice. So I am not always. Let me. This is the thing about being embodied and running the energy. I have plenty of days, moments, times where I am not that.

Yeah.

And it's a practice, which I love that everything is a practice. I can work on breathing into my pelvic floor and like a great way to start with that, like, if you're. And I love to know some of the work you've done to kind of open up more and feel more, like, in touch with your husband. Because it's like, it's a. It's really just. I mean, honestly, the end of the day, it's breath work. It's eye gazing. It's kegels, the. The peace stopping muscles that we use to stop and start the flow of urine. I want to remind people that men can do kegels too, which is always shocking to people. But we all have a pelvic floor. And so even if you're feeling like you are disconnected, like one of the great places to start, even for me, I do. Even if I could do three minutes a day of breath work, I've got this great app. It's literally called, like, breathing. Yeah. And it's three minutes and I'll just go breathe. And at the top of the breath, I'm like. And I do like a little kegel and then I release it and I do it again. And that just kind of. That really. It's like a pumping. Pumping. It starts to flow through you. So I just sort of. Anything we can do. It's all blood flow, too. So moving our bodies, walking, talking, releasing, you know, whatever's holding us back. There's a lot to it. But I think that if you just think of the mechanics of it, it's being more in touch with it. Because talking about your experience or what a lot of us go through with sex or just having shame around it, we completely shut down. And this is what I find from so many women. This is something that is different with genders, is that for a lot of women, we are shut down. We don't want to take a mirror. We don't want to look at our. We don't want to look at our vagina. Like, we had pictures of them up on a wall, and you're like, pick yours out of a lineup. Like, I don't think we could. You couldn't say, what does my vagina look like? Or my vulva? Because we just kind of want it to go away. Maybe there was shame. There was bad messaging around it. Maybe one person shamed us. Who knows? It's just not acting as if we want it. And then you have a baby. I didn't do that. Hats off to you, because some women don't love their bodies. Right. And then they have a baby, they're like, I just had a human come out of my vagina, and now I definitely don't know what's happening with it. I'm dissociated. So throughout our lifetimes from shaming, from being told not to masturbate, being told it's not okay. We are disassociated.

Yeah. And this, again, is so ancient and cultural. I was talking to my friend Laura about this, and she was like, please write an op ed. This is a better op ed for you. But she was walking around the Met and she was like, it's wild. Because you look at ancient and modern art, but primarily you look at these sculptures, you look at these paintings where, like, every wrinkle on the testicle is rendered like it is like an anatomical model of a penis. And then all of the women are Barbie dolled out.

Yeah.

You don't see any detail ever. So of course, women are like. I don't know what these are even supposed to look like, much less whether mine. The intricacies of mine.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's completely. It's been shamed, it's been hitting, it's been ridiculed. And then we see the advent of porn. Right? The advent. Porn's been around for the beginning of time. The evidence of porn being available in our pockets the last 18, 20 years. And then that's even made it worse because women are like, oh, it's supposed to look like this thing that I'm seeing in porn. Which, by the way, is like, they're like cheating towards camera. It's tucked, there's makeup on it. Or maybe there's certain vulvas and vaginas that are attractive. So there's just been a whole shitstorm of information for women about their bodies. They're like, it's not okay, it's not safe, it's not sexy, it's not not pretty, it's dirty, it's wrong. And then we're supposed to be like, feeling sexy and ready to go at the drop of a hat. Sex is supposed to be amazing, much.

Less like, you watch porn. And I think you say it's like watching F1 and like trying to learn how to drive, but not even. Because F1 is like a certain amount of artistry and excellence, whereas porn is just pure performance. So women are fed this like, you should be shrieking like a banshee, and pleasure as like your pummeled from behind. Whereas I've heard you say, like, women need fingers, toys, mouth.

Mouth.

Yeah, period. Fingers toy mouth is how we're going to orgasm. Like, that's how we're going to have the most pleasure. There are people who can of course, have pleasured through a penis. And there's reason for that. It's actually our anatomy. If your clitoris is a inch or too, the closer your clitoris is to your vaginal opening, you're more likely to have an orgasm. During penetrative sex. It's not, you know, and that's just. We can't. That's just how you were born. But otherwise it is fingers, it's a mouth, it's a toy, it's slowness, it's foreplay. Whether it's verbal or it's touching. There's just all of these ways that we are told. And of course because of. Because of being told that sex is only for procreation for so many years. And if I'm telling you now that penis going vagina is not going to give women the most pleasure, can you imagine just how? But there's all this. The cards are stacked against stuff. Yes.

And so there's a funny moment in smart sex where you write too, about fielding, you know, calls, I mean, over the decades, right from. And the way that men are consumed often, obviously erectile dysfunction, but also by the size or girth of their penis. And you're like, it really doesn't matter because women, it's like not. Not shouldn't be the main thing.

No, not the main thing at all. But men are way. I always say, like, men are way more obsessed with their people penises, I think, than. Than women are. Women are with men. And it's not that. It's. And. And also just to say that there are women who will definitely want that larger penis, but just like there'll be men who want really large breasts. I'm not, I'm not. I'm not their girl.

Right.

I'm not the person. And it's okay. Like, you know what I mean? There's something for everyone. But there's so many other things that we can worry about. Just. I wish I just. And I guess I tried to do that in smart sexes. Re. I just want to rebrand sex altogether because so much of what we know about it is wrong and untrue and actually just not even true, not factual. And so most of us are walking around with dearth of pleasure and a lot of pain around sex.

Yeah.

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I want to talk a bit about the masculine and the feminine because I was so happy to see you explore this too. This is I think obvious to many, but for some it's like new information. Yeah, that you know. And the idea is that there's your sexuality, it's different from your gender. We're there as a culture, kind of. And then there's masculine and feminine energy, which is different from being female and male. These are energies that are not attached to gender and we each have masculine and feminine energy and masculine being. I don't know how you would define it. I define it typically as like truth, order, structure. This is balance, masculinity, divine masculinity, balance, divine femininity, creativity, nurturance, care, receptivity. And that we're in, in and out of our ma. You and I both spend a lot of time in our masculine. I'm probably more comfortable in my masculine. But to have sexual polarity with your partner, regardless of gender, regardless of whether you are you identify as non binary or are very sort of binary. And absent those that sort of polarity, you're going to struggle to have sexual tension. So can you talk a bit about and then you have some great exercises, but can you talk? Did you always know that?

No, I've had to study this as well. I did not always do it. What I always knew was that attraction was so elusive. Like why is it hot sometimes and not hot other times? And what makes attraction? I've always been fascinated by that. But the masculine feminine. Just in recent years, by studying with different people and reading different teachers and studying, I realized that like I, I've. I've come to understand it more so about the polarity with masculine feminine. I think you Do. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Like we all have it inside of us, you know, you can have. And I too live more my masculine. Except for when, I guess my magical vaginas on display, according to you, which I'm just going to take that with me forever. But no, like in business, getting shit done, being productive, being. I think you cover this in your sloth chapter, right in your book, which is brilliant because it's like this productivity, getting things done. Check it off the list, keep going. That is. I'm running a business, right? I'm talking sex. But when I'm sitting here talking about sex, I'm not necessarily my feminine. Maybe we were breathing for a second. I was in my feminine just now. But mostly I'm like performing and I'm talking to you and we're being directive. So the polarity and how I like to think about it is like. Think about like two. Two magnets, right? Opposite side, you got the plus and the minus. They're going to detract, right? Unless you have the opposites. And the opposite is. What we're talking about is the polarity of the masculine and the feminine. So when you think about celep. Sexual polarity, it's. I mean, an easy way to think about is like, who's initiating and who's receiving. Because in every situation, if we are both in a relationship and we're in our masculine and we're both initiating, that's not going to work. Because I want it. No, you want it. I'm leading, you're leading. Or if we're both passive, like, I hope that you initiate tonight. Are you going to initiate? I'm going to initiate. It's then. Then nothing happens. So in every sexual situation you need someone to lead and someone to follow, to be in their masculine, to be in their feminine. And again, that can switch. It can be two men, two women, non binary, like you said. But.

It'S a concept that can be tricky for people because first they get caught up on the gender. But all I'm saying is for attraction to happen, for that sexual chemistry to happen, you need somebody to be bringing more of the masculine, which is the, I guess purposeful, directed, the container, the moving. I guess you can start with this initiation and then the feminine. How? If you want to be more in your. Because I can give you an example for me. So if I'm in my masculine all day and I'm working and I'm doing my things, I'm in meetings, I'm on my zooms. But Then I know I have date night. I'm going out. My partner that night. Well, I know that if I want to feel. Because I tend to be more in my feminine when I want to bring the polarity. I mean, there are times where I'm like, okay, I'm going to give you a massage tonight, and I'm going to lead this. But mostly I'm a receptor. I'm receiving. So what I have to do is to get out of that is I take a shower.

I'm gonna shower. I'm gonna take a little bit longer shower. Maybe I take a bath. A bath is a great way to get into your feminine, to kind of surround yourself with the hot water to start to touch myself. Like, it was more like suds and getting more in touch with my body. I always bring in breath work. I mean, to me, breath is just something that. Doing more breath work. Because, again, a lot of us are just disconnected and shut down. And I do the little Kegels and I breathe. Maybe I find some fabric. Sorry. But first, I'll, like, rub low oil on my body, and I put lotion on or something that makes. Makes good fabrics that make me feel good. And I literally just try to ground myself, even if it's like a half hour, an hour before I go out with my partner and just try and feel like, how do I show up in my feminine? And then I have a lim to allow him to show up. And maybe he's making the plan or he's leading. Like, while it's so tempting to be like, did you get the reservation? Are we going? Are you driving? Like, the exercises that I've learned and I've studied with some coaches. There's a guy named John Wineland, who I did some retreats with. He's fascinating about this, where we would go on these retreats. It was kind of like a tantric, breathwork, masculine, feminine retreat. And you get paired up with partners for the evening. And I wasn't allowed to, no matter how hard it is, because a lot of it's like, we're getting shit done. I know you talk about this. You're the. You're the mom. You're the boss. You're getting things done. When, like, maybe Rob tries to do things, you're like, I've got this. Like, I can make the sandwich better than you. You have to try to allow my partner to be like, I'm not putting the address. Like, if we're going to a restaurant, I'm not putting the address into ways I'm not opening the door. I'm not. I'm not making the plans. As much as I want to lead it, I have to allow them to lead because when they're leading, they're in their masculine and I'm following. And the same goes into the bedroom. If this is making. It's harder to. It is a little bit more esoteric to explain, but because it's really energy. It's really like my energy is that I'm showing up, I'm feeling sensual and connected to my body, to my breath, and I'm allowing my partner to make the plans to lead, whether we're going out that night or whether we're staying at home. And then he's making the move. He's kissing me, he's touching me, and then I'm responding to that. And that energy is a cycle that is feeding each other to stoke our masculine and our feminine.

Yeah, No, I think it makes a lot of sense. And like you, I think it's. It's can be difficult for women to say, particularly at this moment in time. Wait, so I'm supposed to be, you know, submissive? And that's not really what it is. It's more of a letting. Which is also difficult.

Yes.

To let people do stuff for us to. Again, going back to beginning of the conversation. To allow pleasure and let someone make you feel good. Yeah, I think can be.

It's really hard.

It's really hard.

It's really hard to do that. But I also. So if you take it into the bedroom now, just talk about sexual polarity in the bedroom, it's like I, and I believe this, like my. If I'm receptive and open to what my partner's doing, which I have to show them, like, if he's kissing me or doing things, I want to show it in a real way, an authentic way. Like before I started this work almost two decades ago, like, let's show the opposite of that. I was performative. I'd be moaning, I'd be like, this feels good. Arching my back, doing all the things. Because that's what I thought was good. And that worked. Yeah, and that worked. Worked because then he's getting the feedback that it feels good. And that's making him feel more confident in his masculine. But now what I work on is being. I genuinely. Like, I love receiving touch. That's like my, My, my language, my love language. Like, it's touch. So when he touches me, I let him know, like, oh, that kiss feels good. Or the way you stroke my hand or the Way you anything. In fact, there's some embodied. We've actually worked with a somatic coach where we learned that, like, pleasure is expansive. So we actually learned how to touch each other's. Close our eyes, touch each other, just starting with touch on our hands and being able to give feedback and allowing the touch to expand through our bodies. So we've done some slow, slow work around it. But really I just let him know. And that's the energy, that's the feedback loop. So I'm feeling good, then he's feeling good because I'm feeling good. And then eventually I want to give to him and he gives me to me, and it's a dance. But if we're both waiting for the other person or there's no response, like, I've been with men too, who don't feel comfortable expressing their needs and they're like, mute. I'm like, are you feeling any. Like, does this feel good? Are you making a moan? Are you making a sound? So I think there's a lot to be said for breath and letting our partner know that they're pleasing us.

Well, it's so interesting too, sort of the wide curve. And I know this just from sort of paying attention to you over the years and the breadth of calls that you take. And you have sort of. We're all on this spectrum of, you know, you have people who are like, how do I. I don't even know what pegging is, for example. But like, people who are like.

You know, like, wanting sort of like advanced lessons and BDSM or. Or a lot of kink, etc. And then you have people who are mute, right? Who are not even. It's just. It's such a wide range. And then to figure out how to get people on the same page to get them to a place where they can feel safe. Let's talk about. I keep calling them trauma wounds. I know that that's not right. But when you. Because again, I don't think I'm alone in. We live in a culture that teaches unwanted pregnancy, erections and STDs. The Dutch coach, responsibility and joy. But we have horrible sex ed. Nobody's talking to us about going beyond sort of, you could have sex and die. 2. How do you actually get in touch with your own desire? How do you figure out what you want? How do you talk about it? Like, we don't. We're inept at that culturally. And I feel like most. I don't want to say most, but a lot of people don't even know what they like. Right. Or they have so much shame. One of the things that I wrote about that was incredibly helpful was Michael Bader and his research in the book Arousal. And I want to talk to you about these because you write about this too, but you hear sort of women who think that they're having, for example, a rape fantasy, but it's really more of a ravaging fantasy. But it comes from this feeling that a woman might want to be overpowered or overwhelmed by both a man's wanting, but also because she has been told throughout her life that she is too much and this somehow is confirmation that she's not. And similarly, like, fantasies around having someone, like, put their hand up your skirt under a table where you're sort of being sexual against your will.

Cause we're, like, absolved. I would never ask for.

I didn't ask. Yeah. So it was really. It's a really interesting read. But you write about this too. Can you sort of take us through.

You have the Meredith Shivers experience in your book about how women are attracted to everything. Because we don't really know. We're not even told.

We have an arousal response, even though we. It doesn't track to what we say we want.

Right. We're just disconnected from our wanting.

We're disconnected.

We don't know.

So disconnected from our wanting. And again, a lot of it does go back to the Dutch countries as they're teaching responsibility and joy and we're teaching fear and danger. Yes, that's our sex ed. Like, just so everyone knows, like, our sex ed was you. It's fearful and it's dangerous, and there's no talk of pleasure or joy. So as a result of that, we're going into sex. Like, literally, we're going into sex without any training, thinking, this is going to be scary and this is going to be weird. And then, like, no one's saying, did that feel good? What did you like? So, like, that whole knowing what we want, like, knowing what actually feels good is so foreign. And no one's even asking us that. So I think that, yes, to be, like, one of the most common fantasies is, like, up for women. And so we're talking was, like, the forced sex fantasy or the rape fantasy, we're saying. Because women can say, well, I. I've never felt okay to be desired. I'll be shamed for it if I am. If I do have desire, I'm shamed for it. So I'll be called a. I'll be labeled. That's not okay. And then there's nothing in our culture that's even like asking us for what we want. So sex is very, very confusing and becomes performative. So a lot of the work to do is to say, okay, I'll accept the fact that I don't know that I actually. Because this is where I started too. I was like, I actually don't know what feel goods. I remember partners asking me my 20s, saying to me, you know, we'd be hugging up. They'd be like, does that feel good? And I just say, yeah, everything you're doing feels good.

Feels amazing.

Like, what else do you want?

I want to keep dry humping my leg. That's amazing.

All you want? Yes, baby. Dry hump me. Like, what else do you want? And I'm thinking, I have no idea. Even if I knew, I wouldn't even know what's on the fucking menu. I don't know what to ask for. Because there is nothing that celebrates women's sexuality and says, here's what's on the menu. Here's what you can eat. And a lot of it does start with recognizing that and saying, okay, so knowing what we know and maybe we've had trauma, and I would love to, like, it's in my mind, circle back to how you've learned to be more embodied. I think that's just really important to close that at some point, to get back to, like, how you got to where you are now from where you were knowing whether women had trauma, a rape trauma that had something like that, or just. Just the cultural trauma of never even recognizing that you're sexual being that you're basically a vessel.

Yeah.

Is that what someone, like, I may vessel. And really that's what, like, penetration is. Or for semen or for birth. So how do we learn what our knowing is? Like, how do I know? And that's starts. The first thing is the embodiment practice. I think that we talk about core desires or core erotic themes. There was a guy named Jack Morin, and I think he's the first, like, in the 70s. He started because, remember the field of sex, Human sexuality is still very, very new, especially in our culture. In America, we had like the Kinsey Institute, who started to study in the late 50s. And then Jack Morin talked a lot about desire. And he says that we all. And this is still debatable, but in some of it. But basically it's all. We have core erotic desires and we have something that happened to us. We have these desires that. And I think for me, I like to look at As a starting point, because none of this is prescriptive. Like, this is not for everybody. But when you think about sexual, something sexual, what. Where does your mind go? Like, where do you. Where do you want. This is. This is. This is more of the intellectual way of thinking about it. But, like, when you think of sex, do you want to be ravished? Do you want to be desired? Do you want to be. Is it transgression? Do you want to feel beautiful? Do you want to feel worshiped? Do you want to feel, you know, do you want to be spanked? Do you want aggression? Like what. What kind of adjectives? Like, what words come up for you? And a great place. That, too, is just really, again, maybe when you're touching yourself or you're doing, like, mindfulness practices, like what, breathing into your pelvic floor? Doing a touch. I just tell you, this is how you awaken it. So I'm going to keep mentioning that, like, breathing. What do you. What do you. What have you wanted in the past? What's felt good to you? Are there any scenarios that come up and then not shaming yourself for them? It's like we're trying to get kernels along the way of your sexual. Because we're all sexual beings. And even if it was tied to an earlier, you know, assault or something, like, that's okay, too, because I think for a lot of women who have had that, they might want more of aggressive sex, but then they feel shame around it. It's very. Like, it's a shame Stew. But just. Even just without judgment, recognizing what are my fantasies, what has turned me on? And so that's like recognizing some of those themes, which he says comes from something earlier in childhood. Now, it could be. And that's because we're going through puberty, so our hormones are racing. And maybe at the time that we started having, like, an explosion of hormones, we saw something sexual. So, like, let's talk about this as a very generic, like, you have a foot fetish, right? And that's something that men are like. I don't know why I have this fetish, but maybe you were, like, 12 years old and you were sitting in math class and you were having some kind of hormonal surge at the same moment where you looked over and Mrs. Jones was leaning down and, like, straightening her socks. And for a second you saw a foot, and maybe that got linked up in your brain to something erotic. And so now you have a thing for feet. And so for women, it could be something like, you know, you had a Math teacher who you thought was really sexy. And so now whenever you see a man teaching you something in some way, you like that kind of authority. I mean, it's a very. Like, there's a long and winding road to think about what you might find attract. But your core, we have these erotic themes. And for me, here's the thing. So when I studied this in grad school, there were some women. We have, like, one of our homework was fantasies, right? You had to go home and think about your fantasies. Now there are some women who had these fantasies that were like, I'm picturing myself being, like, penetrated into the ground, and I'm being, you know, bucked by nature, and there's all these trees around me. I'm being, like, sunken into the ground. And I'm just like, that's not my fantasy. That's not my fantasy. And I had to. I don't naturally have fantasies, but what I knew was I like a little bit of spank. Like, I like someone to take charge, wake me up and be. And like, I like a spanking, or I like to be pulled or I like to be thrown on the bed. Now, that could be because I haven't felt safe to be sexual, and I don't want to be the one leading sex. So I'm giving up my power. But sometimes it just feels good to let go and allowed me to be free. It allowed me to be free when someone was aggressive with me.

Yeah. So I think for me, going back to sort of the rerouting or reconnecting and getting the sort of phantoms out of the bedroom, because I think that was what was so present for me, feeling, like, the presence of this guy from high school. Or, like, I could revoke. I could take it back. I could. I'll show him, you know, and that's not very helpful 20 plus years later. And so the big gift from that initial MDMA session and this feeling of re embodiment is that it allowed me to connect somatically with my body. And this might sound so basic, but even just to be able to interrogate or understand that I was holding certain things in my body. And so working with a therapist who could say where I'd say, oh, my right shoulder hurts. And then it's like, okay, talk to your shoulder. And this sounds so silly, but this was really helpful for me. Okay, shoulder.

Right shoulder.

What is it? Oh, it's my. It's tired. It, like, doesn't want to be doing all of these things anymore, et cetera.

It's amazing.

The information that you get from your body when you start paying attention and you let your body talk to you. And it's possible that a lot of people have this ongoing relationship with their body from childhood, but for me, it was actually accessing everything that I had repressed and suppressed and shoved down. And as I started to interrogate my body and sort of feel more comfortable in it and not just in my head, it let me get back in my body and, you know, part of it is partner work and having really loving and patient husband who I think could always sense that I was elsewhere but had no proof. You know, again, like, I'm a good performer and I like it.

I like closeness.

It's not like I. It was fun, but it wasn't taking me all the way there. And so getting into this, like, inquisitive presencing with Rob was what I needed to sort of. Of start being like, oh, I actually function pretty normally. If I don't just speed through it and refuse, you know, I would sort of go straight to, like, I, this is what I want. I don't, like, don't linger, you know, get done.

We got stuff to do it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. So much sex is like the slowness around sex, and we just speed it up. But going back to, like, the. The therapy, which is so key, it's like, why body scans are so important. Like, doing a body scan, breath work thing, where you're like, you start, and so it takes forever. You're like, really? We're going to go through everything. If you do, those body scans are like, your left eye, your right eye, your left. You're like, oh, my God. But you go through literally every part of your body. But that's so you can say, like, my left cheek, my. What am I actually feeling in that moment? So you start with your shoulder. Yeah, just an awakening. Because, right. Like, I think there's a lot of times where, like, I remember this first experience of this in my 20s going to a therapist, and I was not ready for her yet. Now, she'd probably be the best therapist, but she's like, I. Like, I went in there, I said, all I feel is anxious. And she's like, well, that can't be true. Like, that's the only thing I feel. She's like, no, but what do you feel in your body now? And I was like, that's like crazy talk. Like, what do you feel? My body, I feel nothing but anxiety. So I think that that's so relatable. Too, that you have to unpack it. So like in starting with your shoulder.

Yeah.

And again they say like, your issues are in your tissues, right? Was it Van der Kirk? The body keeps a score, right? Your issues. Literally everything that has happened to us is stored in our body. So for you starting to say, like, I'm feeling tension in my shoulder and this is not easy. Like, maybe for some people it is. And I would love those people, I would love to know who those people are, that they literally at every moment know what's happening. Like, even right now, like, the practice of embodiment is just, okay, I'm feeling your couch beneath me. I'm feeling that my butt's on the couch, I got my one foot on the floor. Like, that is the practice of embodiment. And if you do that throughout the day or during sex even, that allows you to be present and grounded and out of your head, cause the disassociation. Then you were probably out of what you were in your head during sex. Or you were just.

I was just not absent. I was physically absent. And it's so power, I mean, and it's so powerful for, you know, even my husband, who is not nearly as sort of woo woo as me, has.

Had to sort of acknowledge this.

Like he, his lower back on the left side, his feminine side, you would say, always goes out. And only now after we've been together for what, 15 years, does he recognize a pattern that if I get into a high stress state or something happens to me, his back goes out. And it's interesting, like, we're so, we're such somatic creatures. And I'm not saying that every, everything physical is like, has an emotional root, but there's probably a component.

I think most things, I think a lot of physical pain, a lot of physical suffering, a lot of diseases, I'm going to say I think a lot of it is related to this. We don't know how to process emotions. We literally do not know how to. So we numb, we are addicted, we move, we do all these other things. And what they say, like emotions just take, what is it like 90 seconds to really process or two minutes to go through a full emotion. But since it's so scary, we just tense, we clench, we hold, we stuff, we stuff, we do all the things. So I love that you guys are attuned and you can talk about it. Because even during sex, why I tell people, like, I, I'll do this and I'll start having sex and I realize because again, I don't Think that you ever embody. I don't walk around embodied 247 at all. But I guess I have a knowing when I'm not. So even during sex with my partner, I'll say, I'll tell when I start getting to this, like, route where I'm just going through it and I'll like, stop and I'll say, and sometimes I bring him into it, sometimes I don't. But I'll take a deep breath, I'll breathe. Sometimes I focus on my senses and I'll say, and this is great even when you're driving stress, but especially in the bedroom, I'll say, okay, where are my hands? Like, my hands are on his body. I'm feeling his skin. What am I hearing? I'm hearing my breath. What am I smelling? I'm smelling the candle. And when you do that loop with your senses, it immediately grounds you in the present moment. It takes you out of your head. Even if you do that like 10 times during sex. I think that just a great practice for people who are feeling disassociated to come back into the moment. As many times you have to do that to learn to be like, what am I feeling now? And then another thing is just to slow down sex. Like, take the penetration off the table and start with just some basic touching exercises with your partner.

It's good that you mentioned too, because Rob is good. Once we sort of knew what I was contending with. He's really good at calling me back and sort of in this, like, where'd you go? You know, like, where are you? Sort of demanding eye contact or presencing. Another thing that I would definitely avoid previous eye contact.

Yeah. And now you can't get away with it. Once you bring.

Once you do the work, you can't.

Get away with it. You've good support.

Jerk.

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So the book obviously has tons of actual activities and practices and I know that you're gonna bring us more and like just I'm gonna put the pressure on Emily right now that all I want for her to do is to create a basic simple video like a sub stack membership where every week you get a very Short assignment and video with something to do with your partner. And I think eventually, obviously you can make it sort of a solo study, but. But just presencing exercises or try this or like actually map your pleasure and.

Tell your partner maybe for once.

I actually don't like it when you do this thing that you love to me, like, I love. My ears are so sensitive. And Rob finally, like, year three was like, please stop. I don't like that. The same way that you like ears.

Right. So you like when he touches your ear, but if you touch his ear.

He'S not into it. No, he's always. I like to be tickled. Like, he finds tickling, like for after. And he does not find it erotic.

So.

But like, it took us a minute to get there. So anyway, I want Emily to create this course. But having counseled just thousands, probably thousands of people at this point, like with a live call in show.

Yeah.

Millions of listeners. What is the question? Not to put you on the spot and make you answer the question that you are so tired of answering, because part of this I'm like, Emily, we gotta categorize your content. Because I'm sure there are certain things where you're like, I've only answered this question 702 times. But what's most present for people? What's the. What are the most common? Is it erectile dysfunction?

Is it also common?

Yeah.

What were you gonna say?

I was just gonna say that just as a brief.

We.

We mentioned Meredith Chivers. But the way that desire and arousal are mapped culturally to a physical expression is so.

And I feel like this whole like, oh, she was wet, quote unquote, she wanted. It is wrong. And also that men should really understand that because often men cannot show a physical sign of arousal when they actually feel aroused or are like, why do I have a boner right now? This is embarrassing. I'm not aroused. So just wanted to say that because it's one of those things that we have to stop and combining or conflating those things culturally do conflate.

We, we conflate desire and arousal. And we were never taught it. Right. Like, like, basically desire is the wanting to have sex and arousal is the physical manifestation. So interaction, blood flow, heart quickening. And then how we're going to get to that desire is so. Is so hard because that's where it starts, the wanting to have sex. And so. So I can unpack that in a minute. Because one of the top questions I get asked is, yes, people have the physical things. Like I would say off the top of my head, why from women? Why can't I have an orgasm just in general with a partner? Why can't I? What is wrong with me? For men, yeah, there's something like penis put under the umbrella. Like, penis problems come too fast, can't come at all. Delayed ejaculation. And then I would say for couples, like, the most common thing is mismatched desire. How to mismatch your libidos. How do we want sex at the same rate, the same speed? And that's a lot of what smart sex is about is like, how do you figure out. How do you almost, like, reverse engineer so you understand everything that needs to happen for you both to have. Want to have sex or at least make sex happen at the very same time. It's like negotiation. It's understanding your body. It's understanding what's turned you on in the past. That's why it's so good to know, like, your core desires, which we kind of touched on. But, like, what turns me on? What time of day am I turned on? What time of month am I more turned on? What has to happen in my environment? So I am the most aroused. Which is why in the book I write about these pillars of sexual intelligence. Because it's really not just because what I realized after all these years, people come to you for tips, right? I could give you a million tips. I could give you the right vibrator, I could give you the right move for oral sex. I give you a million positions. I give you all the things. And that. That is like in a book. It is a bible. It'll all be there. But it's. Sex is not a quick fix. When there's these foundational challenges that you're having, you're like, I know how to give, you know, oral sex, you know, million different ways, but I'm not in the mood and I'm not turned on. And I know that sex is important because I love my partner and I. I know sex is important, but we can't quite hack how to be turned on and ready to go and ready for sex at the right time. And a lot of that is because we don't understand our arousal desire process. We don't know that, like, if the house is a mesh and mess and there's dishes in the sink, or I have resentments with my partner or haven't worked out in a week, or that there's all these factors of why you're not turned on. And so I think getting people to actually think about their sex life in that way and trying to think about, like, what do I know to date just from my sexual history, but, like, what's happening with my hormones? What's happening with my psychology? Do I have unhealed trauma? Do I? So. And you'd think that that would be sort of obvious, but it's really not. Like, if you've been on an antidepressant for four years or even just recently or any other blood pressure medication, and now you're, like, not as turned on, people often don't make that connection. So I try to unpack it for people, wherever you're at on your sexual journey, these are the things that you need to know to get yourself to the place where you can have sex and be present, conscious, embodied, and have more pleasure.

Yeah. And you do a wonderful job of normalizing all of these questions and all of these experiences and making people feel not alone. And I love sort of the central thesis of this book, which is in many ways the same as mine, which is, can we just get in touch with our wanting?

Yes, exactly.

Can we start there and feel okay.

With it without shame? Can we want without exactly it? Literally the same. Our book is basically the same. Just kidding. So different. I love your book so much, Elise. But it is really about wanting and feeling okay with it and. And knowing that, like, it. Pleasure is your birthright, really is what mine is, is like, how do I. How do I know it? And how do you feel okay with it? And, like, there's literally no roadmap for us to know what it is until we do the internal work.

I'm so grateful that people like Emily Morse are leading the conversations that culturally.

We so desperately need to be having about pleasure, not just the practicalities of sex.

And while certainly she's happy to sort of get into the weeds with callers to her show, and it's detailed extensively in her book about positions and technique and all of that stuff. I think the core conversation that she's trying to stoke in America for all.

Of us is around our pleasure and what we want. And for too many of us, we've.

Never actually really allowed ourselves to examine that as a core driving impulse in our lives. And so hopefully this is a small invitation to begin that work.

Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next week. And now here's a little preview of the audio of On Our Best Behavior, available wherever you get your audiobooks. The whole thing is read by me.

The Natural Superiority of Women. Did I get your attention? That was the title of an article that anthropologist Ashley Montague published in the Saturday evening post in 1952, followed by a book that's been updated over the decades. As he explains, while the term superiority feels distasteful to women, it's the truth. On every measure, we are better built for survival. There's another insidious consequence of the hamster wheel women find ourselves on. Because we're so consumed by our busyness, because so much of our attention is trained on living up to society's expectations for survival, it's impossible to find the space to think and plan our way out of these inequities. We're too overwhelmed. We don't have time to fight for our reproductive rights, for equal pay, for paid family leave, and reasonable gun laws to keep our children safe. We don't have time to expand. Denying us space and stillness is the most pernicious way those at the top of the patriarchy keep their feet on our necks. I understand their fear. Those who benefit from this system of dominance understand that when women and other marginalized communities rise in righteous anger, pulling each other up into full resistance in the process, their time and power will come to an end. Not only will we outwork them. Let the preceding pages be proof of our unfailing industriousness, we will also outperform them. When zoom school became an unexpected and uninvited full time job, it provided an initiation into a knowing most women have long understood. The girls run circles around the boys. In my observations from peering over my son's shoulder at the screen, the girls seem to be grades ahead in reading, in math, in sitting still and listening and putting on their own clothes and combing their hair. As the mother of two sons, I wonder if I should fear for my children's future. They are not primed for a post patriarchal world. The work of sociologists Thomas Dupreet and Claudia Buckman illustrates that girls have outperformed boys in school for a century. But you wouldn't know that from the power stack in society or the ways in which women feel like they can't win. Women are still widely unrepresented outside school hallways. We're all well aware that there are more CEOs named John and David in the Fortune 500 than women with that title. As of 2021, women represented only 27% of Congress and held only 18% of governor's seats, 58% of jobs that pay less than $11 per hour are held by women, and 56% of women live in poverty, particularly women of color. We know that systemically nothing feels right or balanced. We know that this way of living and doing is not sustainable, while we must be unrepentant in our efforts for more than equity in the boardrooms and the courtrooms. After all, you don't get to equal representation the middle by aiming for the middle, particularly when things are so unbalanced in our disfavor. Focusing on systemic change is not the only work. This isn't simply a numbers game. It requires an energetic shift, an equalization between the divine masculine structure, order and the divine feminine nurturance, care, creativity in each of us and in our systems. We need to change the standards of society, and that will not happen while we keep doing it all ourselves. We must drop the ball and force others to pick it up. We must let ourselves off the hook, cultivate deep self love, and then learn how to turn and reflect it back on other women, unabashedly, fervently, with the full force of our empathy and compassion. We need our rest, our energetic reserves for putting the world back in order. We need to move past our worry that we're not doing enough and get on side with each other so that we can expand together. This work requires rest, self care and support. It requires boundaries and letting go of perfection or any expectation that pulls us away from what absolutely needs to get done and distracts us from what we feel called to do. Our planet and our future depend on our tender care, our capacity, innate or not, to help tend to the messes we've made. It's not that we don't need men, we certainly do. But we need their energy to be focused on on easing the burdens of care. The cleaning up of messes in the home and outside of it must be shared.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode. You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes@the elisepodcast.com while there, please sign up for my Substack newsletter. I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive on Substance Sundays. Or follow me on Instagram at eliseloon. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, please pre order my book coming May 23rd. It's called On Our Best Behavior, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, and it's an exploration of the ways we've been programmed to police ourselves and each other. I'd also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible. Please support them the way way they support this podcast. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review and follow pulling the thread Available for now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcast.

I want to give a shout out.

To Phil Sweetek, Lauren legrasso, Mary Kate McDonough, Ali Brockman and the entire Cadence 13 team for producing the episodes and to Valero Duvall for my key art. Take care of yourselves. I'll see you next week.

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