E266: Ask a Sex Therapist (Part 3) Sex Pillows, Squirting, and Standing-Up Sex

Okay, a little behind the scenes peek here. We had to stop for a second because Xander can't remember what PE stands for.

I know exactly what they're talking about.

It's like penis erection. Hello and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Marin.

I'm a sex therapist with over 20 years of experience. And I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step-by-step techniques for improving yours.

Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. Welcome back to another round of Ask a Sex Therapist. Therapist. So we do weekly ask us anything question boxes on Instagram on Thursdays. You should definitely be checking that out. We're @vanessainzander and we have a lot of fun with it, but you only get 60 seconds to answer a question on Instagram.

And there's only so many that we can answer before Instagram starts to penalize us for posting too many stories.

Yeah.

And then no one sees anything that we post, which is Instagram is really like a love-hate relationship over here. We love it. It's the platform that really helped us grow and get, you know, help all the people that we've helped. And they are so restrictive in what you can actually do and what you can say and how much you say it.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, they don't really give people the control of like, hey, I really like what these people have to say and I want to listen to everything that they say. No, if we say too many things, they're just like, no, we're not going to show you their stories today. You're going to have to seek them out.

So we take some of the questions and we drag them on over into this podcast series where we have the opportunity to go a little deeper, to not have to censor every word and call it socks instead of sex, which is very annoying.

We can say whatever the fuck we want here. No one's stopping us.

I can't tell you how many times we've done a take on Instagram and we'll get like to the end of the minute and Xander will be like, da da da da da, sex. And I'm like, no, we have to redo the whole thing. The whole thing. So it's so much nicer to not have to think about that stuff over here on Instagram. So we have a whole slew of questions in front of us. Xander, you can just, do you wanna just like lob them at me? Fire away. No specific order.

Yeah. Why do I like fingers in my mouth during the act?

I don't know.

I just love fingers in my mouth. My fingers, her fingers. No, it's. I don't know. Have you ever put your fingers in my mouth when we've had sex?

Yes. Oh no, your, your fingers in my mouth?

Yeah.

Yes.

I don't think I've never put yours. I feel like— I mean, sure I have, but in 18 years, like, it's had to have happened once, even if by accident. I don't know, I feel like I'd suck on one of your fingers for a second.

Okay, so I answered the question by saying I don't know because I genuinely don't know. And here's the thing about sexual preferences and also like sexual fantasies too, I think so many of us read into them too much. Like we want to understand, why do I like that? Why is that interesting to me? Why do I want to do that thing?

Yeah, what's the reason? What happened to me at one time when I was 4 years old and 3 months that now I like this?

Yeah, and people usually want to connect it to some sort of trauma too. Like something must have happened to me that I like this thing. And what I really want people to understand is is that our sexual preferences are like our food preferences. You might have some specific reason why you like or don't like specific things, but the vast majority of your preferences are totally random. Like, okay, so I don't like oysters. There's no trauma behind me not liking oysters. There's no story behind it. I have tried them. I just don't like them. They're not my thing.

But I don't eat— Well, I know what the trauma is. The trauma is that you were in a non— That's so mean. You were in a non-seafood-friendly household growing up.

That's true. Okay. That's true. Maybe there's a slightly deeper story. My family did not eat seafood at all.

But to be fair, I also don't really like oysters. I only like them in very specific ways. And I did eat seafood growing up, but I feel like I kind of did have like fish trauma. Growing up, like, my dad would always buy fish with a lot of bones and he wouldn't really do a very good job taking them out.

Okay, let's use a different example. Like, I don't like— what else do I not like that much? Okra. I don't know. Like, it's fine. Whatever.

Who are you, Tom Colicchio? We've been watching Top Chef over here.

The niche references over here. Yeah, so I don't— yeah, I don't like okra that much, but like I'm not judging myself. I'm not trying to find this, what is this deeper reasoning why I don't like okra? I'm just like, I don't really like it. It's got a weird slimy texture. Maybe that's the thing. That's my little undercurrent. I don't like slimy things. But yeah, I don't like judge it. And so I want people to look at their sexual preferences in the same way. Sure, you might have a specific thing. Maybe there was a trauma. Maybe you explored something as a kid and it just like really wired into your brain. Or were curious about something as a kid and that interested you. But a lot of our preferences and likes and dislikes are just kind of random the way that they are with food.

I mean, I have an idea of why one may like fingers in their mouth during the act because it simulates oral sex. So presumably you're having intercourse or any other kind of sexual stimulation or interaction, right? And you have fingers in your mouth and it's like, it's just getting another sense involved.

Yeah, so I think like if you enjoy giving oral sex, maybe there's, you know, giving a blowjob, maybe there's something about like having a finger in your mouth that kind of replicates that same sort of thing. It might also be a power dynamic thing. I mean, somebody putting their fingers in your mouth like can be a power move. It can be, you know, a little intense in that way. So maybe there's something where you like that feeling of like, ooh, somebody, they're in control of me. They're doing something to me. I'm in this more submissive position of just receiving. So it could be that, but again, bottom line is I wouldn't get too in your head about what does this mean.

All right, is it selfish to not want husband to masturbate because it feels like wasting around that could have been used on me?

Oh, um, I would say no, I don't think that's selfish. Okay, so our general rule of thumb with masturbation in long-term relationships is that we feel that everybody's entitled to own relationship with their own body, regardless of whether or not you're in a relationship. So just because you're in a relationship doesn't mean you can't ever masturbate ever again. That being said, like this question is saying, there is a dynamic where at times you might be choosing between masturbating and being with your partner. And it's, it's not always 100% because I think of masturbation and sex with a partner as two different experiences. You might be in the mood for one thing but not in the mood for the other or vice versa. Like masturbation's a lot easier. Most of us have really locked in our routine.

We've honed our skills.

You can do it in a couple of minutes. There's not the complication of like another person and emotions and initiating and when are we gonna find the time to do it and a lot of times people masturbate just to like have a quick stress relief, to help them get to sleep faster, to just like have a moment to themselves. So it's not a one-to-one kind of thing. But in general, our guideline is if you feel like masturbating, at least half the time initiate with your partner first, or at least check in with yourself and say, hey, could I be open to intimacy with my partner here? So what you're doing is you're not denying yourself an experience with your own body, but you're prioritizing the intimacy with with your partner. So again, you can totally have times where you're just like, no, I'm not really in the mood. I literally just want to spend 30 seconds so I can get to sleep a little bit faster, or I just want to have a moment to myself. That's totally fine. But as long as the majority of the time you're kind of checking in with yourself and asking your partner to be intimate with you. So in the case though of, of like the other partner wondering, yeah, is it selfish that my partner is doing it? I guess I would ask this person Are you genuinely open to being intimate with your husband every single time he's thinking about masturbating? Are there any deeper dynamics at play here? I'm kind of curious about— I'm wondering if maybe— we don't know the gender of this person, but the majority of our audience is straight couples. So I wonder if it's a woman who feels like she has higher desire than her husband, and it feels frustrating that You know, he's kind of doing it.

Wasting it.

Yeah, he's wasting the sessions without me.

Yeah, I mean, I think the way I would grossly simplify this one, if you are regularly finding that your partner is not open to having sex with you because they've been masturbating instead, then it is absolutely not selfish of you to have some feelings about that. Because it's like, hey, we're missing out on opportunities for intimacy that I want and you are focusing your sexual energy elsewhere, not on another person, but just on yourself. And I'm getting cut out of that as a result, and that's adversely impacting me. On the other hand, if this is a situation where you're like, oh, well, I was out of town for a couple of days and I knew that he was masturbating and I didn't feel good about that because it felt like, well, you know, we could have had more sex when I got home or something like that. In that case, then yeah, I would say that that is a little selfish. Okay, well, is there still a benefit to try new things/shake things up if the routine sex is amazing?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

So we've all heard the advice to spice things up in the bedroom. And I think we've heard it so much that people think that it's bad advice, but it actually is really good advice. And also, I think we have this tendency to believe that It's advice that we follow if things are bad. Like, oh, your sex life sucks.

Or until things get really good.

Yeah, then you gotta keep spicing it up. But there is some pretty great research behind this showing that our brains light up when we have new experiences with our partner. Our brains are really good at maintaining a status quo. So when we—

Homeostasis?

Homeostasis, yes. So when we have like positive experiences, or a lot of positive experiences, like our brain can kind of acclimate to that. When we have a lot of negative experiences, our brain kind of acclimate to that. Like we're really hardwired to kind of find this middle ground wherever we are. And so we do need to continue having these random experiences of novelty to get ourselves out of that homeostatic state and be able to like see ourselves, our partner, and the world with fresh eyes. So having new experiences with your partner gives you this feeling of being able to see them in a new light, being able to appreciate them. One of the biggest downfalls that we run into in long-term relationships is we just get used to each other and we stop appreciating each other. We stop seeing all the incredible things. It's just like, yeah, that's just my partner. And so being able to have that experience of new things like reinvigorates you and your relationship. So it doesn't need to be all the time and it doesn't need to be only if things are bad, but just regularly. So I would say, you know, let's— okay, let's say you have a great relationship, things are going great, you love your sex life. How about like once a month? Try something different once a month and it doesn't have to be a big different thing.

Slightly different is fine.

Yeah, a different position, doing it in a different room, at a different time of day, initiating in a new way, something like that. And then maybe a couple times of year, try to have like a slightly bigger new experience. Try like role-playing a little scenario that you've never role-played before or getting a new toy or a new thing of like piece of lingerie, something like that. But it definitely, it is really important to stay ahead of this and just regularly have those new experiences with each other.

Yeah, I think the stay ahead of it is a really good way to look at it. 'Cause the way that I think of it is you can absolutely get into a routine of sex being really amazing. That happens for us all the time, all the time. And the interesting thing though is that usually that comes out of us having tried something a little new or gone back to something old that is effectively like trying something new where you're like, "Oh, oh my God, I forgot about that thing," or, "Oh, we just discovered this other little variant," and then we work that into the routine. It's like, "Oh my God, this is so good." And what I found is that over time, like you said, you acclimate or you kind of tolerate to a certain level of whatever, of amazingness or whatever it is. And then it starts to become more and more routine. And yeah, and eventually it will start to feel a bit stale. And I think most people wait until things feel really stale to make a change. And that's where it can feel a little tricky. Because then it can feel like, oh, are you trying to say that I'm doing something wrong? Or like, what we're doing is bad? And it can kind of feel like a contentious thing almost. So yeah, I think it's getting ahead of the inevitable kind of almost like downregulation that your brain will do of like, oh, this is amazing, this is amazing, this is amazing. This is normal, this is normal, this is normal. And then it will be like, huh, this isn't quite doing it for me. And I'm not saying that like sex is going to become bad, just that it will become routine. So there's a reason we use the word routine. It becomes a routine and eventually it will start to feel routine. And especially if you found a specific routine that you really like, you can preserve that routine being really amazing by mixing it up with other stuff so that it is not just the only thing that you do.

I had the funniest conversation with my Pilates teacher the other day. She was like, my girlfriend sent me this website and was telling me this has the most incredible clothing for the best prices. You have to check it out. It's this website called Quince. She's Mexican and she thought it was pronounced quince. It's Quince. And I, as soon as I figured it out, I was like, oh my God, no, you mean Quince. And yes, they do make incredible products. I like, I'm actually blown away by how many different kinds of products Quince keeps adding, we originally started buying for— from them. We bought, um, linen napkins were the very first things that we ever bought. And I love these linen napkins. They were so much cheaper than I found at other places, but the quality was super high. Since then we have bought clothing, bedding, shoes, wallets, like they have so much stuff and they work directly with ethical factories to cut out the middleman. So you're just paying for the quality, not the brand markup, but they've got everything. Sofas, ceramic cookware, cookware, premium bedding, like you will end up like my Pilates teacher's friend recommending it to everybody. My current favorite Quince item is their gauze sleeveless maxi dress. I always get compliments whenever I wear it. It's so comfortable. You feel like you're wearing nothing, but you still look effortlessly chic. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/pillow for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E quince.com/pillow for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/pillow. Xander made me the best dinner the other day. We got our Wild Alaskan shipment with some of our absolute favorite fish— Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, Pacific rockfish— and we ended up making these tacos with the halibut. Xander put like a simple gluten-free breading on them, and we made these incredible tacos with like a slaw. It was so good, and I was able to really enjoy them because I knew that this was super high-quality, wild-caught, sustainable seafood from Wild Alaskan. Their seafood is 100% wild-caught, never farmed, no antibiotics, GMO, or additives. It's frozen fresh off the boat to lock in taste, texture, and nutrients. And wild-caught from Alaska Every order supports sustainable harvesting practices. And your membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel-good seafood. If you are not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan Company will give you a full refund, no questions asked. Maggie is giving it her endorsement as well, because sometimes we give her a little scrap and she loves it. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com/pillow for $35 off your first box of premium wild-caught seafood.

Food.

That's wildalaskan.com/pillow for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. Okay, a little behind the scenes. Did you know that couples who get better sleep have more sex?

I mean, the more sleep I get, the more up for it I certainly am the next day.

If you want to get a better night's sleep, we highly recommend a Birch mattress. People are always asking us for our mattress recommendations, and we are obsessed with our Birch mattress. It's so comfortable, firm but still cozy, really supportive, and most importantly, it is made without fiberglass, without polyurethane foams. It's made with natural and organic materials, which I think a lot of people don't realize how important it is to sleep on a healthy mattress with like made with good high-quality materials.

Yeah, I mean, you're spending so much time on— you're spending a third of your life on that thing.

There's better way to test a new Birch mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. So Birch makes this really easy with a 120-night risk-free trial to make sure that you love it. Their mattresses are shipped directly from their facility straight to your door for free. The mattress comes rolled up in a box, it's super easy to set up, and they believe so strongly in their mattress quality that each one includes a limited lifetime warranty. We want all of our listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com/pillowtalks to get 27% off sitewide during their Memorial Day sale. That's birchliving.com/pillowtalks to get 27% off sitewide. Behind the scenes peek here. We had to stop for a second because Xander can't remember.

What?

They don't remember what PE stands for.

I know exactly what they're talking about.

It's like penis erection.

Because my first thought was, well, it's like, it's like EB, performance anxiety. It's all the, all the penis performance problems.

Penis anxiety.

Penis anxiety. No, no, I know it's not performance anxiety, but that's just where my head—

Penis erection.

What the hell is the PE?

Coming too fast. There's your clue.

Premature ejaculation. There you go. Thank you. Thank you.

We stopped and Xander was like, we can't include.

And I was like, no, no, no, we have to include this.

I'm sorry. Like penis erection is sending me.

All right. So how do you feel with men?

I'm hot now. Oh my God.

How do you feel? Good. You should be hot. This is a hot one. How do you feel about men with penis erection issues, premature ejaculation issues, using strap-ons to give longer sex.

Okay, premature ejaculation using a strap-on instead. Okay, that's a creative solution. Hell yeah. Totally. If you're into that, if that excites you and you like that, absolutely go ahead and do that.

You can go all night. You really can until your hips give out.

Feel free to do that. I will say though, there are plenty of other techniques for managing premature ejaculation and learning how to last longer. Longer, we can put— we have a guide called The Modern Man's Guide to Conquering Performance Pressure. A little bit of a long title there, but you know exactly what you're getting. We can put the link to that in the show notes. That's an exclusive thing that only our podcast listeners can get access to, so we'll, we'll put that link in there for you. So there are other techniques that you can do to learn how to last longer, and I'll say the main place that men typically go to is trying to distract themselves. Like, think about baseball, think about Aunt Shirley, think about children dying from hunger. You try to like have these horrible thoughts in your head. And number one, that doesn't work. Number two, that pulls you out of connection with your body, which is actually— you need to be more in contact with your body in order to last longer. And number three, that pulls you out of connection with your partner, and your partner notices that. And especially if your partner is a woman, that bothers her more than how long you last. Like, we women can tell if you are not there with us in the moment, you're somewhere else, you're thinking about Aunt Shirley.

Just the same way that guys can tell when she is letting him have it and not enjoying herself. I think it's really, this is like the swap the genders type equivalent of that, I think, because, you know, Every single man that writes into us is like, I know when she's throwing me a bone and it sucks. It fucking sucks. Like, that's not what I want. I can tell that she doesn't— she's not into this. She's just lying there. This is the same thing. She can tell when you are thinking about baseball or whatever because you're desperately trying to last longer.

Yes. So if you want to learn other techniques for lasting longer, go check that link out. But if you're into using the strap-on, by all means, go for it.

Yeah, I mean, I do think one of the biggest recommendations we do give, and you know, there's a lot of specifics on how to achieve this in, um, in that guide, it's taking— finding ways to take the pressure off of you to feel like the entire experience is reliant on your erection. And so yes, I can see that using a strap-on or having that, having that option in your arsenal could help alleviate some pressure. But in general, we would, we would recommend trying a number of other approaches first. There are other ways to take the pressure off of you before you've had an orgasm. This takes the pressure off you after you've had an orgasm, which doesn't really help you with the PE necessarily. So it's like it could help a little. It could help you psychologically, but it's not really like going to take the pressure off you you in the moment beforehand. It might help a little, who knows, we'll see. But yeah, go for it. All right, the people want to know, how do you find decently ethical porn?

Oh, this question—

I wish there was a better answer to this one.

Really hard for me. I cannot recommend anything, unfortunately.

You've been burned by everything that you have recommended in the past.

I have, yeah. I used to have specific recommendations that I gave, and then stories would come out of actors complaining mistreatment on set or, you know, not being paid fairly or not being allowed to have boundaries and preferences in the scenes that they were filming. It just like—

all the same stuff. All the same stuff that we know is the problem with the mainstream stuff.

Yeah, so that was very difficult to see stories like that, and it really made me struggle to, yeah, just be able to trust those recommendations. And Something about me just as a person is I take recommendations very, very seriously. Like if I'm giving something my seal of approval, like that means a lot to me. I don't want to put, you know, back something that then I find out afterwards that they're, you know, mistreating their actors. I mean, that's awful. So I unfortunately can't— that does not mean that there isn't ethical porn out there. I'm sure there is. I'm sure there are people who are like working really hard to do it.

Or ethical for now.

Yeah, but I just can't I can't, personally can't recommend anything. Yeah, porn is something that I've really changed a lot of my opinions about over the years. I think I really used to look at it as, you know, being sex positive meant being porn positive. And I always talked about the issues with, you know, the porn industry and with the way porn is consumed. And I've just seen those things get so much worse over the years. Like even the last couple of years, the rate that it's escalating.

Not to mention the way it impacts people and especially young people who are on their phone all the time. Like it's just, yeah, it's horrifying when you think about the availability of stuff like this versus what it was like when we were younger. And it's like, I don't want to have any part in that.

So yeah, just the issues with the ways that it gets made, the ways people are watching it, the ways we're disconnecting from our own bodies, watching it obsessively, addictively, subjectively, it's very complex. So I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with watching people have sex and being turned on by it.

We see that in like Hollywood movies, TV shows.

Movies, TV shows.

All the time. But it's not, they're not actually doing, they're simulating it.

Yeah.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. But unfortunately, they're just, I mean, this is a separate episode that we could really do a deep dive into. Let us know if you're interested in that. But for now, my unfortunate answer is I got nothing for you.

We just focus on having the absolute best sex that we can with each other. And that's—

What does that have to do with porn?

I don't know. Well, I think it was pretty obvious from what we just said what our relationship with porn is.

Oh my God. It reminds me of— I sent you that screenshot of that weird DM that we got the other day. I kind of want to find it right now. Where did it go? Oh, do y'all ever do live shows for someone to watch? Not a weirdo here. Honest question. Thank you.

We should have sent them the link to our, you know, the truth about female orgasm live workshop that we did a couple of weeks ago because we do go live occasionally.

Just not the kind of live show that he was thinking about.

Not the kind of live show that he was looking for, but maybe he would have learned a thing or two.

Might have. I just thought that cracked me up so much. Not a weirdo here. "Here, just want to watch the two of you have sex." I'm flattered, but no. But no.

Yeah, no.

All right. Now I think we might be able to give a one-word answer to this upcoming one. Maybe a sentence because the person might not know what the one-word answer means. But what does toss salad mean? 34 years old. If it's too late to ask.

Oh, sweet. A one-word answer?

I can think of one.

Oh, rimming?

Or analingus.

Okay, sure. That's not a very nice answer though to a person still like, I don't know what I'm getting at.

Tongue to butt.

Tongue to butthole. That is what tossing someone's salad is.

Eating ass.

Yeah, eating ass, rimming, rim job, analingus. What else? I'm sure there are other words.

There's gotta be more. That's all I can think of right now.

You know, I actually don't know the origination of of tossing salad. Like, what is that? Where did that come from? We should look that up. Tossing salad meaning.

Well, no, you need like etymology.

Origin.

Yeah, origin.

I don't think anybody's out here making pages about etymology. Okay. In culinary terms. Hold on. Okay. The colloquialism originated in the early '70s within gay subcultures and later became popularized in US prison slang.

Okay. Interesting. But why?

It was likely created as a playful, slightly vulgar play on words comparing the tossing of a salad for maximum taste and pleasure. Okay. It says it was derived from the fact that salad dressing was often used to help suppress the taste.

Ah.

Other condiments such as grape jelly, maple syrup, and ketchup has also been used for this purpose as well.

Interesting. I don't think that's happening anymore.

I said a joke by Chris Rock based on the HBO special. If he's a newcomer, I want him to suck my ass with jelly, what they call tossing the salad. That's the slang word, toss salad. It means sucking my ass, right? With jelly or without jelly. Some people use syrup. I preferred for the guy to use jelly. I mean, this is coming from Urban Dictionary, so who knows the legitimacy of that, but there's your little deep dive on where tossing salad came from. But yes, it is referring to the practice of using your mouth and tongue on someone's anus. And the reason people do it, because that is inevitably the question that I get asked afterwards, is like, but why?

Well, it's for the salad dressing flavor, or you really like jelly.

It's because the butt has nerve endings.

Sure does.

And nerve endings can make things feel good. So obviously we still have a bit of a taboo around butt play in this country, but we're working on it. I mean, now you see You see people tossing salad in shows. Like, remember Girls a few years ago? There was like a very graphic—

A few years ago? We're aging ourselves here.

Was it really long ago?

It was a real long time ago.

How long ago? Oh, no.

I mean, like, those actors are all our age.

So like 10 years ago?

Longer than that?

Possibly more, I want to say.

Okay.

I almost got old.

It just feels just like yesterday, guys.

A few years ago. Okay. Oh, 2012. Yeah.

Yeah.

That was much closer to the beginning of our relationship than to now. I got to say. There were a lot of seasons. Okay.

Well, it was one of the later seasons where they had the tossing salad episode.

There you go.

Throw yourself a bone.

I don't know.

All right.

Yeah.

That's what it is. We've successfully answered that question. Now let's just move around the body very slightly, one hole over. Or two, depending. How do I know if I'm about to squirt or pee myself? I really don't want to be wrong.

Okay. So this is a very common experience that women have. And typically it happens when you're having internal stimulation and internal stimulation of the front wall of the vagina. That's like the wall that's under your stomach rather than the wall that's under your back.

So yes, if you're doing the come hither, it is the area that you are hithering.

Hithering.

Yes, and that is because that region— so that includes the inner legs of the clitoris. We sometimes call it the G-spot, but it's not like a unique special magic spot. It's the internal legs of the clitoris. And when you put pressure there, it can also put pressure on the bladder because the bladder is pretty close, pretty all up in the action around there too. And your brain can interpret pressure on the bladder as meaning I need to go to the bathroom. But typically that sensation will go away if you continue stimulating that area. Sometimes it does linger though, and some women get left with this feeling of like, I feel, you know, an orgasm building, or, you know, potentially that I'm gonna squirt, but I can't tell, like, do I have to pee or am I about to have an orgasm? So what I can tell you is that it's actually extremely difficult to pee when you have an orgasm. Orgasm. The contractions of orgasm actually can close the sphincter, making it like really difficult for urine to actually come out. It can happen if you have pelvic floor issues or, you know, incontinence issues, but for the average person who's not dealing with any sort of issues, like it's extremely difficult to pee and orgasm at the same time.

That's a relief.

So that's good to know. If you still feel anxious or nervous about it, you could try doing that, whatever stimulation was getting you there, try doing that in the shower or put a bunch of towels down on your bed so that you at least have that peace of mind of like, okay, I'm gonna let myself go regardless of what comes out, you know, I'm gonna be able to like take care of it and clean it all up.

Is like, is this a sign that this person might be about to squirt? I'm assuming like, you know, I'm assuming that they are, that they have not they're not— they don't regularly squirt because they're probably scared about what's going to happen.

Yes, if you feel that sensation building up and you feel like you're wanting to like release some fluid and you don't have any sort of incontinence issues or pelvic floor issues, then 99 times out of 100, like, I mean, that's not scientific, but, um, yeah, it's gonna be that you're squirting.

So let her rip.

Let her rip.

All right, you heard it from us.

Also though, you might not squat. Like, yeah, a lot of women get that sensation around orgasm in general and they don't squirt, but that's one of the things that holds women back so often, especially women who have never had an orgasm or have rarely had them. It's just like, I want to let go but I can't let go because I'm afraid of what's going to happen. So again, I think just having that peace of mind of knowing it's extremely difficult to pee when you have an orgasm, hopefully that gives you enough peace of mind that you can Just relax and allow yourself to have the experience.

Let it go.

Let her rip.

Well, this is kind of related and you sort of mentioned it in the— this last answer. So is a G-spot orgasm real?

Yeah. So like I was saying a minute ago, the G-spot is not some magic spot. A lot of people think like, oh, you just have to find it and it's like a button that you press and then magically you're having an orgasm. It is not that. The G-spot is just the internal legs of the clitoris. So you can feel sensation there because you're still stimulating the clitoris. You're just stimulating a different part of the clitoris. For some women, this feels good. For other women, it doesn't because you're having to stimulate the clitoris through a whole bunch of other tissues. So sometimes the comparison I make is like, it's like giving somebody a back massage directly on their skin versus somebody who's wearing a thick wool sweater. Like, sometimes it's just harder when you have all that stuff in the way to like actually truly feel the massage.

Maybe if you're like super sensitive. Then, and you don't like normal massage, then through the sweater is actually gonna help. I think the other confounding variable here, which does not get talked about enough, is that yes, there is, like you said, there is an area in that come to, come hither region where you have the opportunity to potentially stimulate the internal legs of the clitoris. But every woman's anatomy is different and those legs may be closer to the vaginal wall for some women and maybe further in others. And so, for people that talk about, "Oh, I have G-spot orgasms all the time," or, "When my G-spot gets stimulated, it feels so good," they are almost certainly people that have been blessed with an anatomy where the legs are much closer to the vaginal walls and they are able to receive like good successful stimulation in that area. What's not helpful about that though is that people don't People don't really recognize, hey, I may actually just be lucky that this works for me, and talk about it to others as if like this is the, you know, the be-all end-all, or like, oh yeah, no, if you're not feeling it there, you just haven't found it yet. That's bullshit.

Yeah, and this like, this whole types of orgasm thing is something that we only do to women. When we talk about male orgasm, it's just orgasm. There's not 15 kinds of orgasm. We're not telling men like, oh, you only have penis orgasms? What about your ball orgasms? Why aren't you having taint orgasms? Why aren't you having the little crease where your thigh meets your genitals orgasm?

Well, there is prostate orgasm, which is a bit different, but that's really all there is. And most men don't ever go down that road.

Yeah. So we don't, we don't categorize orgasms in this way. We respect that if you're a man and you want to have an orgasm, orgasm, there needs to be some penis stimulation involved. But we don't give the clitoris the same respect that we give to the penis. The clitoris and the penis are biological equivalents. They are made of the same tissues. They— like, we, when we start out as little fetuses in the womb, we don't have genitals until we're like 11, 8 to 11 weeks. And our genitals come from the same tissue. So the tissues that go and make a penis for a man make a clitoris for a woman, or someone who's going to be born a woman or born a And so they are the same thing. But with the clitoris, first of all, we kind of look down on the clitoris. It's like, oh, the clitoris is so difficult, it's so complicated, where is it, doesn't even exist. And clitoral orgasms are seen as lesser than. Well, I don't want to have clitoral orgasm, I want to be able to have a G-spot orgasm, I want an orgasm from intercourse alone, I want a cervical orgasm, I want a blended orgasm, I want an A-spot orgasm. You, like, we come up with all this shit that really just makes women feel bad about wanting stimulation of the part of our body that feels the most sensation.

Which is gonna be maybe slightly different for different women depending on their anatomy and—

So, yeah, I mean, it's like, it's all clitoral orgasms. If you're having an orgasm, it is because there is stimulation of your clitoris in one way or another. Just the same way that we don't, like, we don't even say penis orgasms. Nobody says that. You said penis and penis erection the other, like, a few minutes ago. But like, nobody says penis orgasm, so why are we out here being like, oh, clitoral orgasms? Like, it's an orgasm, it's just an orgasm. So yes, you can— you might be able to have an orgasm from stimulating the internal parts of your clitoris, but it's a clitoral orgasm. I think most people know that they really should be drinking more water, but they just don't. And this is seriously a problem, especially in these hot summer months.

Yeah, hydration is important, guys.

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I do. I just booked another epic surf trip with a couple of friends. Unfortunately, it's not for another year, but I am already planning to be bringing my peach iced tea Cure. I love it.

He's packing it a year in advance.

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You're probably bad at foreplay. But that is totally normal. We are not saying this to make you feel bad or ashamed. Even though I am a sex therapist, I was bad at foreplay.

I was bad at foreplay too.

And that's because foreplay is a skill. This is one of the most important messages about sex that we really try to drill in. Like, none of us are ever taught how to have sex, how to do foreplay well. So it's kind of like basketball. Like, I know generally how basketball works. I could kind of like muck my way through playing it, but I'm not gonna know how to actually be good at it unless somebody teaches me how, like how to actually play the game.

Yeah, and that's exactly where our Ultimate Foreplay Guides come in. Want to take your foreplay game to the next level and actually have fun doing it? These guys are all about exploring, experimenting, and discovering exactly what makes your partner melt.

So we give you step-by-step instructions. Like, there's no vague or generic advice here. We literally lay it out exactly what to do for you, and we cover hand jobs, blowjobs, fingering, and oral. We also have tasteful custom illustrations and GIFs that show you exactly how to do each move. You're a podcast listener, so clearly you like hearing things. So we have—

like in your ear.

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Yeah, this is our number one top-selling guide. So head on over to vmtherapy.com/foreplay. That's F-O-R-E-P-L-A-Y to check out the guides. Um, we're also gonna link to it in the show notes.

Get ready to laugh, play, and discover new ways to turn your partner on and yourself 2.

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All right, thoughts on sex pillows, pros and cons.

We love sex pillows.

And we do love a certain one.

We do love a certain one. Okay, I think I need to tell our sex pillow story. So we have tried a ton of different sex pillows.

Professional obligation.

Yes, absolutely. I get sent sent so many products by sex toy companies that want me to like test things out and recommend them. And so we've tried a bunch of them, never really liked them. The main versions of them that we've tried have been like big bulky wedges.

They're always some bright color and usually a weird fabric. Horrible. Like really extra soft like velour.

Yeah, purple. You have to hide them in your closet because they're so bulky.

And everyone knows what it is.

They take up so much space. It's just been annoying. And physically, I never liked it. Like it was hard to, I don't know, I feel like it was always moving around and it didn't really change any positions that much. It just felt like this big clunky thing. But Christmas, when was this? 2 years ago?

2 years ago, yeah.

Yeah, 2 years ago. Xander's very difficult to buy for. And I got served an ad on Instagram for this sex pillow that was a totally different shape. It was a round, like an oval shape. It had a beautiful linen neutral cover on it that like looked, you could just put it on your bed and it wouldn't look out of place. It didn't look like a sex product at all. And so I was like, ugh, fuck it. I can't think of anything else creative. I'm just gonna get him this pillow. So got the pillow, honestly had like very low expectations. I think you were like, oh cool.

I was like, oh, one of these.

Another sex pillow, thanks. It was like not one of my greatest Christmases.

I feel like we might have even waited embarrassingly long to use it.

Yeah, I don't think we even used it. Yeah, so then finally we were like, okay, let's just try this thing out. And we tried it, and holy shit, from the very first time trying it, we were like, this thing is amazing. So it changes the angle slightly when you're having intercourse. You put it under your butt, um, there are a bunch of other positions that you can use, but like the standard, you know, beginner position is you put it under your butt, have missionary sex. It changes the angle a little bit in a way that just feels so good for me.

And even better for me.

Yeah, you really like it.

Well, I don't know about even better, but it gives you a great view. It gives me, yeah, just an insane view and the angle feels better. It gives me a couple opportunities to like, to like, you know, actually do kind of regular missionary, but also to sit up in a way that is really comfortable and hot and like it And then we started exploring other positions with it too and just found like this whole other world opened up.

So we have been loving this pillow. So then fast forward a few months or maybe even a year later and we're doing an event at our local bookstore giving a talk and the person asks us like, "What's something that you've been really enjoying in the bedroom lately?" And I was like, "This pillow. We have this incredible sex pillow. We love it so much. It's so much fun." And so afterwards, people are, you know, coming up and talking to us and we're signing books and whatnot. And this couple walks up to us and they're like, "Hey, so that's our pillow." So there's— they're this couple that lives 5 minutes away from us. It just blew my mind. I had no clue, like I had no connection to the company whatsoever. I just bought it because of an Instagram ad. But they're this super sweet couple. We totally hit it off with them, ended up up like becoming friends, going out to dinner, talking about ways to collaborate with each other because we like we just couldn't stop gushing over how obsessed we are with this. So we eventually ended up becoming advisors to this company. That is how much we became obsessed and we're like we like everybody needs this pillow. We want to help do anything we can to get this pillow into the hands of as many people as we possibly could. So we are We are major, major, major fans. And we are actually even in the middle of updating our Ultimate Sex Positions Guide to include, in the end, I think it's 15 new positions that use the pillow.

Yep, creates a lot of possibilities. So yeah, if you want to see what that pillow is for yourself, just go to vmtherapy.com/pillow.

Yeah, we will put that link in the show notes for you as well, but it's also, yeah, just vmtherapy.com/pillow. And we'll put the link for the Sex Positions Guide too, will be, it'll be soon updated with 15 different pillow-specific positions. Okay, so the pros of it though are it changes the angle. If you're somebody who deals with any sort of discomfort or even pain during sex.

Yeah, like hip or pain or back.

Definitely always see a pelvic floor physical therapist or pelvic pain specialist, but this really can help as well. A great view for you. It's just, it's something new to experiment with, which can feel very fun. It makes me more flexible. So I can like get my legs way back. I'm not the most flexible person, but like I can get my legs way back. It opens up new positions that you can't otherwise do. I could go on and on. The cons.

Well, there's cons for like the typical typical sex pillow, which is like, you already went over them, like that they don't usually look very good. They're, they're kind of gross looking. Yeah, they're kind of gross looking. You got—

you—

most people have to like shove them in the closet. When it's in the closet, it's not the first thing that you think of because it's not on the bed for you. And most people in the middle of sex are not going to be like, oh, let's, you know, go into the closet and grab the thing, you know. Like, so it usually doesn't happen unless you're just really dedicated related to, you know, the velour pillow on your bed. But that's kind of like that. That's why we were kind of anti-sex pillow. And then this one came along and it was like, oh yeah, no, this literally can just live on the bed.

With this pillow in particular, there really aren't any cons. I mean, I would, I will say like there still is that moment of like, hey, do you want to use the pillow? Like, yeah, the initial getting on to it. Well, I don't find anything awkward about do you want to use the pillow? Some people probably will. Yeah. But that's It's also something that we want people to get over. Like it's okay to communicate about the sex you're about to have and it's okay to like set things up. Like hey, should we turn the lights down? Do you want to put the playlist on? Do you want to grab the pillow?

Yeah, should I put it on the bed for us? You know, take it from the chair and put it on the bed, whatever.

Yeah, I will say like there is the initial like getting yourself up onto it. There's like a split second where it feels like a little bit awkward trying to just like kind of hop on up to it.

It.

Yeah, but I mean, there's also—

I'm just trying to be like brutally honest.

Yeah, there's also that similar— if you're gonna start intercourse with the pillow, then there's less of that kind of awkward gap because you still, you know, if you're— whenever you start intercourse, pillow or not, you have this moment of like one person has to get on top of the other and then get, you know, bodies lined up and actually insert, right? And so it's like if you're gonna be doing that and kind of moving around, you might might as well just put the pillow underneath too.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of positions, why can't I figure out standing up sex with my husband? It just doesn't seem to work. I can think of a couple of reasons why.

Probably your height difference. Yeah. In order to have standing up sex, you have to be like pretty similar heights or even like the receiving partner has to be a little bit taller than the penetrating part.

Really? I mean, we don't— I mean, I feel like there has to be— you have to be within a very specific range. I honestly don't know what that range is because we are so far off of it. It's just completely off the table. Yeah. For us.

It's very, very difficult to do it.

I think we've successfully done it in the shower a couple of times.

But your quads get a burn and all that.

And oh my god, like I was barely able to come. Like, as I, like, I think like, like we got you across the finish line. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, I'm on fire. My quads are on fire. I'm like, how can I come in the next 20 seconds? You know, you're doing the math of like, oh my God, how many seconds more can I hold this? And how long is it going to take? And if I'm thinking about this, it's going to take me longer. Right. And. Yeah, so it ended up, it was fun until it was not enjoyable at the end and then it was sort of like a painful orgasm.

Yeah, so it's probably that you don't have the right heights. I mean, you can try using like a stool or a piece of furniture. You have to be really careful because if you're like, you know, you can get rocking and then fall off. Sex accidents can happen for sure. But yeah, if it's just not in the cards for the two of you, that's okay. You're not missing too much.

Okay. All right. Well, let's keep it on sex positions. Why does my partner go soft when I'm on top?

So I'm assuming that this person is a woman. You're talking about like cowgirl position. Yeah.

It says the partner's male, 48-year-old male. I'm not sure why the age is relevant, but—

So, okay. Cowgirl is one of the most effective positions for female pleasure and orgasm because we're in control of the pace and the depth and the angle, and it can really like hit all the right spots for us. But for men, it doesn't tend to be one of the most physically stimulating positions.

It can actually be a really great position for someone that might be struggling with, um, with PE. Premature ejaculation.

Penis erection.

I like, I just like cannot say I get it now. Because yeah, anyway, that can be a great position because it can, it can give a disproportionate amount of stimulation to the receiving partner versus the, the penis partner. And so it can be good for like, kind of getting into a rhythm, or you can kind of adjust your bodies a bit so that it is stimulating you less. So that can be really great. But yeah, the flip side of that, and I definitely experienced this at times, is it can be really good and then you can kind of like get into, because I think it's like once you sort of get into a rhythm that's really good for you, I can notice it can kind of start to be like less and less stimulating. Either I gotta hold on until she comes and then we'll switch this up and then I'll have at it. Or like if it feels like I might not make it that long, then it's like, okay, should I suggest that we, that we adjust position? So I think that this is something that is worth talking about is not that something is wrong with you, the person doing the riding. It is just a body configuration and positional thing. And so, you know, if, if you're finding, hey, when we do the entire session as cowgirl and he's starting to go soft, honestly, he's probably not want— he's probably feeling hesitant to communicate to you. He might feel scared to say, hey, let's switch position. So it's like you got to have that conversation and open up the door for, hey, if you're feeling like you're not getting enough stimulation, let's change. I would rather this be good for both of us. You could also get more strategic about, okay, well, because, because if you love cowgirl, because it really stimulates you, then it would be like, hey, let's maybe start with another position and start getting things going, and then right towards the very end switch into that position, um, rather than trying to be like, hey, we need to do like 10 minutes in this position or something like that.

Yeah, I mean, you can also take breaks from that position too and switch to something else. So maybe you hop off and go down on him for a little bit, or use your hand on him, or you switch to a different position. So there are plenty of things that you can do. But yeah, I think the main thing that comes up for women is they feel self-conscious, or they feel like they've done something wrong. And that is not at all the case. It's just that it's not— yeah, it's just not one of the most physically stimulating ones for All right, babe, let us finish real strong here.

Is spit okay for lube?

No, no, you deserve better.

Well, I mean, for a very short period of time, like, yeah, like how much spit can you really produce? Like, it can work for like a minute. Yeah, depending on how much lube you need and for what activity.

So the problem with spit is that it dries up very quickly. So you're not going to get much mileage out of it. If you're, yeah, like Xander is saying, if you're doing some sort of activity that's like very fast that you just, you know, want to quickly get something going, that's totally fine. But if you're going to be spending longer doing that thing, I mean, you can keep spitting over and over and over again if you want, but it just—

You will dry up though.

Yeah, it gets tiring.

The spitter will dry up.

It gets tiring quickly. And there are products made for this. There is lube. Which you can use that will last a whole lot longer and feel a whole lot better.

That being said, though, I feel like the question might be like— what might be behind this is, is spit bad for me? Like, should that not be a part of— because I think that we see this portrayed a lot of, you know, the— this—

Don't make the sound.

I'm not gonna make the sound, but yeah, you know, like someone spitting on somebody's part.

Yeah. No, I mean, in general, it's fine. I mean, you— we do have bacteria in our mouths and—

which you are swapping by kissing.

Yes, you're swapping by kissing, you're swapping if you're, you know, doing unprotected oral sex. Um, sometimes, you know, in rare circumstances, like, that bacteria can get into the vulva and like disrupt the natural bacteria balance that's within the vulva.

But I mean, in general, if you're okay with your partner going down on you, then, then there's going to be no problem with their spit being spat onto you. So if that's the question, have at it. Just know that if you do actually need or want lasting lubrication, use the product, the— an actual lube product that is meant to provide longer lasting lubrication than spit can.

And I will say absolutely hard no to using spit for anal anal stuff. Like, you, you have to use an actual lube.

Yes.

And lube is a non-negotiable for anal play because the anus does not self-lubricate the way that the vagina does. So absolutely for that. All right, well, that wraps up this round of Ask a Sex Therapist. We are always, uh, looking for your questions, always happy to answer your questions. It's always fun to see what the questions are —too. So remember, you can always pop on over to Instagram. We're @vanessainzander and ask your question during our weekly Ask Us Anything on Thursdays. And as a reminder, we will also put a couple of links in the show notes for you. We have our favorite sex pillow, our ultimate sex positions guide, which we are about to update with 15 brand new pillow positions, and our Modern Man's Guide for dealing PE. What does it stand for, Xander? Penis erection?

Performance anxiety.

Anxiety. Premature ejaculation.

There you go.

All right. Thanks so much for listening.

Thanks, guys.

Join us again next week. We release new episodes every Thursday.