E269: Tie-Breakers: We Referee Your Realest Relationship Standoffs

Should you always have one side of the bed or should it switch every couple of months?

I feel like we always get this one.

This is a serious topic question.

This is a wild one. This is a wild one.

Every couple of months?

To me.

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. We wanted to have a little bit of fun today. So we thought— We do. Let's bring back one of our favorite games that we've played One or two times on the podcast. I think we've done it.

Probably more. Maybe more on Instagram.

Yeah, we do it more on Instagram, but it is called Tiebreakers. So here's how the game works. We ask you, what is something that you and your partner just cannot agree on? Whether it's a serious thing, a funny thing, a ridiculous thing, like whatever it is that you guys just cannot agree on, and we will break the tie for you.

We are the referees.

We are, because we are the ultimate authorities on all things in your life.

We should have worn ref jerseys.

Oh, because we have ref jerseys.

Yeah, of course, because we do. Because you know, in our—

Because we're all role-playing.

Yeah, in our costume closet.

You got a red card.

I know, it is World Cup season. We could get some sexy World Cup things going. Ooh, a free kick in my penalty box.

That sounds awful. Why do you want to—

Bend that ball in here.

I don't think anybody wants a kick in the penalty box.

No.

All right. So we got a ton of amazing submissions. I think this is going to be really fun and maybe it also ends up being some helpful conversation openers.

Yeah, maybe it's healing for you. Maybe we finally solved your 10-year-old argument.

We did. We have had somebody reach out to us who was like, you did solve it for us. We decided to accept your advice. We took it and now we do not fight about it again.

So to everyone who wrote in, if you hear your question read, this— let this be your notification that this is binding arbitration. You actually unknowingly signed that clause just by listening to the podcast, and you will now be obliged to comply with our judgment if we agree.

Okay, but before we get into it, we would love to just ask a super quick favor. It would be so, so So deeply helpful to us if you would take half a second to just hit subscribe wherever you are listening to your podcast right now. I know it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but it really makes a huge difference.

Yeah, subscribe or follow. Depends on the platform. It'll say one of those two things.

Yeah.

Smash that button.

Having a podcast these days is hard, y'all. I'm in a podcasting group and there are just so many people feeling so beaten down by the podcasting world and algorithms and all the weird insider stuff that I won't bore you with, but we would greatly appreciate that support. It honestly does make a big difference. And if you want a gold star, you could leave us a rating or a review. We would be so appreciative of that. Okay, let's hop into these. TV in the bedroom, yes or no? Should we count down and start watching?

On this one, yeah, let's do that.

Okay, 3, 2, 1. No! No!

Absolutely not. We've done it before and it was a mistake. Hard. And our sex life suffered.

Hard no on this one. So look, I get it. Like, the idea of just being in bed together watching TV, it is nice and cozy, it can be very relaxing.

You can always do that on your— with your laptop or an iPad if you really need to, but like having the TV there is a— brings it to another level.

There are two main things that having a TV in the bedroom affects: your sex life and your sleep. So with your sex life, there was a study found that having a TV in the bathroom— bathroom. Actually, I'm curious to know that.

You know what? You want it in the bedroom. You know, you can't. It's bad for you. Just put it in the bathroom. Just every time you go pee, get like 30 seconds of your show.

TV's not— I mean, men would never leave the bathroom if there was a TV in there.

Yeah, that would be a problem. That would be a problem. It's the the one time men suddenly want to read. So yeah, if there was a TV, um, all bets would be off. It would be great during football season, I'll tell you that.

Oh my God. There was a study that found that couples who do not have a TV in their bedroom have way more sex than couples who do have a TV in their bedroom. So if you have a TV in your bedroom, you are going to have about half as much sex. As a couple who does not have one.

That is wild. That's wild. Yeah, I mean, if you heard just the finding, like the headline, like that people with TVs in the bedroom have less sex, you'd probably think, oh, it's like, you know, maybe like 20% less, 30% less. But yeah, like 50% less, literally half. That's significant. Think about how often you have sex and think about what twice that much is or half that much is. That's a serious number, no matter how often you do or don't do it.

We have to be really honest with ourselves about our TV watching habits because they are really getting in the way of our sex lives. And let's be honest, TV is very alluring. It's addicting. It sucks you in. It feels so nice to just conk out on the sofa and watch something brainless after a long day. We are so heavy into Love Island right now. I get it. There is nothing I want more at the end of the day than putting on a new episode of Love Island. But you get started watching and every minute that goes by, it just feels harder and harder and harder to imagine getting up off the couch and going to have sex with your partner.

Yeah, and I mean, the difference with the bedroom is there's no natural end to the watching of the TV. You're already in bed. Like, you know, if you're watching TV in the living room, at least at a certain point you have to say, Hey, let's stop watching TV and go get ready for bed. Like you have to make a change to switch activities. But like if it's in the bedroom, you don't at all. And most, many people, most people, many people are like, oh, well, I like to fall asleep with the TV on. So it's like you're, you literally have no reason to ever stop.

So it hurts your sex life. It also hurts your sleep. And I'm not a sleep expert, but there are just tons of studies showing that when we're watching, you know, watching screens in bed makes it harder to fall asleep, makes our sleep— like, makes us more likely to wake up in the middle of the night, disrupts our sleep, lower quality sleep. Just having, you know, screens in front of your eyes disrupts your circadian rhythms.

And surprise, surprise, people who get less sleep, what do you think, they have more or less sex than people who get good sleep? I guarantee you it is a hell of a lot less. So it's like a double whammy. It all— I mean, That's probably the reason ultimately why, but it's like, yeah, you have this, you know, you have this clear quantifiable factor of lower quality sleep. Then you have a less quantifiable factor of like, well, you know, you're kind of in bed, it's harder to stop watching TV, or TV watching just kind of slides through the time where maybe you might have had a chance to have sex. So yeah, it's just this total double whammy.

Your bed should be used for two things and two things only: sex and sleeping, not watching TV. The only exception that I'll I will make for this one though.

Okay.

Is if you are a parent and you have concerns about sound privacy and you use the TV just for like privacy. So a lot of parents will tell us, hey, we put a show on so our kids just think we're watching TV rather than, you know, them being able to hear us have sex. So if having the TV on only when you're having sex and it's only for the purposes of having a little bit of sound privacy, I'll give it to you in that case.

But honestly, if that's what your goal is, I can think of a better solution for the, the same cost of a TV, or possibly less, which would be to get like a good Bluetooth speaker type of sound system for your bedroom, which you could like connect your iPad to. So you still have that plausible deniability, oh, we're putting a show on, but an actual like sound system is better than the crappy little speakers that are built into a TV. And so you will get more sound privacy. You'll get way better bang for your buck. Then it's like, then you have the deniability of, oh yeah, no, we have speakers in a room. We listen to music. Oh, speakers in a room. We watch TV shows like that. Don't waste your money on the TV in the bedroom that you aren't going to use except to pretend that you're watching it so that your kids don't know you're having sex. Just spend that money on some better speakers. They will be louder and they will actually block the sound out better.

All right, fine. That's the sound of zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and the power to burn body fat. Storm, energy for life. Storm Energy Blend helps boost metabolism, which in combination with exercise and a healthy diet helps burn fat. This product alone does not produce weight loss. Individual results may vary. Which rack of the dishwasher should be unloaded first? There is an objective right answer to this question.

It's the bottom rack.

Yes.

And that is because sometimes there is water that gets stuck in, you know, bowls or on top of cups or whatever. And so if you start unloading the top, you pull the top rack out, or, you know, ours has a silverware rack up at the very top. Like, if you start pulling the upper racks out, often water spills down and gets onto the what were already dry dishes. So yeah, if you start from the bottom, you guarantee that you don't wet the dishes above.

Thank God you knew that. So attractive.

I knew that. I knew that. And when I, yep, when I empty the dishwasher solo, I always do it that way. The only exception is if I'm in a pinch, like in a rush, and I'm like, oh, there's no knives. I need to grab a knife really quick and the dishwasher's clean. I'll just, you know, reach in there and grab one.

Okay, let's say though that I'm sure the context that this comes up in is it's probably like a mental load or, you know, household responsibilities. Conversation where I'm gonna guess, because this is the dynamic that we hear about most often, male-female relationship, the man is unloading that dishwasher willy-nilly and she's like, "No, you have to unload the bottom first," and he's like, "Just let me do it how I do it." Yeah, let him fucking do it. Okay, say more.

I mean, if he is unloading the dishwasher and that is his job, or it's your job but he's doing it for you, then you telling him that he's doing it wrong is— all you're doing is hurting yourself. Because then he is— well, if he's literally taking something off of your plate, you are decreasing the likelihood that he is going to do it, that he is going to continue to do that for you, because he's going to be like, "Hey, how does this bother you? I'm taking care of it." No, I think the way more likely scenario is like, "It's his job." Okay, well, and yeah, so then in that scenario, it's his job, so who the fuck cares? He's the one that suffers possibly from wet dishes. The only exception I can think of here—

Oh, you're going to get some people mad with that.

Well, yeah, who cares? So the only exception—

Who cares if you get people mad?

Well, let me explain my exception.

Wow, he's coming back to that.

My God, my God, let me just say what the exception is, okay?

Damn, tiebreaker just got Xander heated on the second question.

Okay, the exception is if you do something right after the dishwasher gets emptied where then having wet dishes adversely impacts you, or like, you know, consistently wet dishes are getting put away in cupboards and they're not drying because it's closed up, or, you know, you're having an issue of like the wood in your cabinets is starting to get warped because like there's all this wet stuff in it, because really wetness is the only adverse adverse impact to unloading it wrong, like, you know, top-down instead of bottom-up. But if you're just saying you're doing it wrong, and it doesn't adversely impact you at all, I think the question is, who cares? Because all you're doing is creating a dynamic where you are the authority on things and he is not the authority. And that creates the situation where then he goes, oh, well, I must not know how to do stuff. So then I'm going to always ask you questions because you clearly have a stronger perspective than I do. And I think that is the other— that's the flip side of mental load that I think people don't like to acknowledge. The question asking, the weaponized incompetence, sometimes it's real, sometimes it is learned. And I think that we have to be able to take responsibility for that, that element of it. Am I making it harder for him to just do things that he's gonna do on his own? And also, I think men, we like to understand why. "if this impacts you, then absolutely, that makes sense." And he's going to be like, "Yeah, that makes logical sense that this is adversely impacting you." But if you can't tell him why he has to do it that way, then he's going to have this, like, he's going to have this sort of internal conflict when he hears that and goes, "I can't understand why she's doing, why she's acting like this towards me." I'll say a few things.

This is why it's so important when you're having a mental load and responsibilities conversation to talk about what does done look like for each task. And I will be honest, this is a hard conversation. It's— it takes so long, it can feel really grueling. But you guys have to agree on what does done look like. And I think you are right that we do have to think through the question, does it really matter? I've used this example a ton of times before. Like, I have a fixation on folding the towels in a certain way. It's just like my brain I want the towels to look that way. And I have to ask myself, does it actually matter? Has anybody ever come over and opened our linen closet and been like, oh my God, that's the way you fold our towels? Would it matter for our towel usage if we just crumpled the towels up and threw them all in the closet? No, it wouldn't.

Well, that would matter because it would be hard to find the right towels. They need to be organized.

All right, fine.

Right? I don't— the last thing I want to do when I'm like, "Oh shoot, there's not a hand towel in this bathroom," is run to the little linen closet and then not be able to find my towel. I know exactly where to go, right? So that makes sense, but yeah, I mean it's like—

But I think the point I'm trying to make is life is full. We all have so many things on our plate. It is worth us asking ourselves, "Would I rather us be able to get more things done at like 80-85% or less things done at 95-100% and we're fighting with each other all the time?" But I think the thing you have to call out though is 85% of my standard. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I think that the conversation often turns into this thing where we somehow think that the person that has the higher standards is somehow objectively right. And we have to do away with that idea.

Yeah. Yeah, they are not always right. Like I've talked about with the towels, I've had to examine like, where does that come from? Why does that feel so important to me? And I don't think I am objectively right about that. I think it's just a weird quirk my brain has. Which kind of leads me into the next thing that when Xander and I have divided up our chores and responsibilities, we did try to think about, and this isn't the case for every single thing, but we tried to think about what are the things that matter more to each of us. So I do the laundry because I do like having the things folded in a certain way. I do like making sure that certain, you know, stuff is dried on delicate and some things are air dried and, you know, all of that. So I chose, hey, I'm gonna do laundry. So having that be a part of the conversation can also be really helpful. Woo, who knew we would go so deep on, uh, just on the dishwasher rack.

Well, if we go deep on the next one, we're going to be in trouble.

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Okay, well, next up, I think that we can do— cover this one quickly. Um, houseplants. I love them, he doesn't.

We're team houseplants over here. I mean, we literally have them right behind us. Okay, houseplants are great because they add decor. They also clean your air.

They do. They are the nature's air purifiers.

They're very healthy for you to have in your home.

I feel like they're Specific, like there are specific plants that do better at filtering air than others too, if that's important to you.

And they're just beautiful. They give you something nice to look at. Nature is beautiful. It's cool to like bring a little bit of that indoors. I will say though, like, okay, if he really doesn't like houseplants, maybe you guys designate certain rooms that the plants are in.

Houseplant-free zone.

And certain, maybe he gets to have a little houseplant-free zone. He definitely should not have to take care of the houseplants. If he doesn't like having them around.

Yeah, that's fair.

Maybe there's like— okay, you know how some people go a little bit nutty with the plants and it's like a whole room full of— if you can't navigate around your house without having to walk around houseplants, then yeah, maybe a bit fewer houseplants.

Yeah, I mean, we don't have enough detail, but just don't take this as permission to be like, "Okay, yeah, I'm a houseplant hoarder and I'm good with it. Like now we get to do this." You can have 2 houseplants per room.

How about that?

Okay, interesting. In the bathroom too? Tiny little bathroom?

Sure.

But yeah, no, yeah, I mean, my question is just, yeah, why not? Like, I could understand that you're like, I don't want to take care of them. I don't want to have to go pick them out of the nursery. I get that. But if the other person is like, well, I'll take care of that. I think that if it's someone where it's like, they're like, I don't really want these plants. And the partner's like, well, I do. And then you got to water them and take care of them and blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

I've never had plants before we got together. I mean, I lived in dorm room and I lived in a shit little like flat share in San Francisco with some college friends, so there was no opportunity for them. But like, plants are not something that I would naturally think of. That being said, having a lot of plants in our house is definitely increased my quality of life. There you go. Yeah.

Okay, so team house plant over here. Okay, here's the next one and it made me laugh because it has a really cute typo. Plutonic. I don't know why typos bring me so much delight. I love typos. Okay, plutonic. Plutonic relationship with the opposite sex. I say not possible. My wife disagrees.

You mean platonic. Platonic. What would plutonic Like of Pluto? Yeah, but like what is, what is like Pluto in like, I don't know, in like Greek Roman mythology? Like what is—

The god of?

Yeah, what is Pluto the god of? Because, oh, is it like wealth?

I think it might be.

I think it's wealth.

No, no, the dead.

The dead? Oh.

In the underworld.

So yeah, what would plutonic mean? Like of death or something? Interesting.

Okay.

Yeah, I think that it is not possible to have a relationship with someone who's dead. But no, for real, platonic.

Platonic.

Yeah, I mean, I think bottom line for terms of platonic relationship with the opposite sex, I say it is absolutely possible. I think that, yeah, I mean, it's just a matter of what are the actual boundaries in that friendship and how well are both people actually upholding those boundaries. I think it's bullshit when people are like, you know, oh, there's no way that like a man and a woman can be friends without any kind of like sexual inevitability. Are we really saying that we have that little control? And also it somehow implies that like any man and any woman are— have like somehow sexual attraction to each other, which that is not how I experience life, I can tell you that.

Yeah, I think this is just a really old, tired debate. Like, people can be friends and have it not be sexualized. Also, people are different sexual orientations too. So like, you could have a woman and a man be friends and there's no way they would even gonna think about having sex with each other. So yeah, I just think this is, this is old and tired and silly. And I think it's really important for us to encourage opposite-sex friendships. I think men who have a lot of female friends, that is often very much a green flag where they are learning to have more complex, nuanced friendships, where they are learning more emotional intelligence, where they are learning, you know, for straight men, like what women are looking for and what they want and need. I think there are a lot of benefits to having female friendships.

Yeah, I think that this is a— this is just an overly black and white way of looking at it. What someone who is saying this is really saying is, I don't want to do the work to have to think of like, what are actual realistic boundaries for, you know, for me or for my partner in this type of relationship? And then we actually have to enforce them. I mean, you can set the gender aside, but for this case, we can say an opposite sex friendship, you know, it is completely inappropriate if like, you are like calling them at all hours of the day, you know, you're with your partner, like on date night, and it's like, oh my god, like so-and-so's calling me, I gotta pick up the phone, or like you're texting them the whole thing, you know, it's like, your relationship is literally taking away from your ability to have a romantic relationship with someone. Or, you know, like, you keep making like sexual jokes. Or, you know, you're sharing more about your own internal experience with your friend than you are with your partner, like, Those are all red flags, or at least potential boundary violations, if, you know, if that's important to you. And so I think it's, yeah, it's not a black and white thing, but we have to think about at what point do I draw the line on, like, you know, the bounds of my romantic relationship versus the bounds of my friendship. Because I mean, similarly, the same thing could be said of a same-sex relationship. If it's like all those things I described, oh, like you can't stop texting them when we're supposed to be on date night, or like, you keep making like sexualized jokes with each other, or like girth check, Love Island reference, um, you know, yeah, or, or you are, yeah, like sharing more of your internal experience with someone else than you are with your partner. Like those are all reasons where you might be like, hey, this doesn't feel very good. Like where, like I thought that that's what this relationship was meant to be. And it's not that you can't do any of those things with somebody else, but to think about how it would feel if you're like, oh, they are getting all of their needs met in this area by this other person. I feel like I'm not really there for them. And it's like, why? Why? What are we doing here?

Yeah.

Okay, Vanessa, are audiobooks considered reading?

Technically, no, but I think that this is a stupid question. Um, yes, you are not reading Reading is the act of looking at words on a page, so you're not reading when you're listening to an audiobook, but if the question is, is an audiobook— like, is listening to an audiobook consuming a book? Yes, absolutely. And I don't think we should make this—

We need a better word for—

Okay, I like— I'm a literary snob. I'm a book snob. I don't really listen to audiobooks. I don't get it. Like, I love having a book in my hand.

Yeah, she's kind of anti-Kindle.

I'm not a Kindle person. Like, Like everybody—

But you should buy our book on Kindle or audiobook. You absolutely should because we— well, on audiobook we read our book, which is pretty awesome.

Yeah. No, I love it. But that— all that being said, I still think it's dumb to create this hierarchy around different types of reading. Like you're not a better person if you read the hard copy of a book versus if you listen to the book. And for lots of people audiobooks are the only way that they have the time to consume a book.

Yeah, that just sounds awful. Yeah, I've consumed that one. I've experienced it.

They listened to it. It's the only way, you know, if that's the only way for you to be able to have a book or that's your most enjoyable way to do it. You like, you're just more of an auditory person. You like getting lost in the like soundscape. You like listening to the different narrators and all of that kind of stuff. So I think it's silly to make this a hierarchy. But technically I would say audiobooks are not reading.

This argument kind of reminds me of like, uh, I feel like this is less of a thing anymore, but that was an, you know, in the era when we were younger, I think that was, there was a vibe around like real music versus like electronic music or like sampled music where it's like, is it really music if you didn't play an instrument or Or, you know, then it turned into a point where it's like, okay, well, like electric, like, like everything is— there's some digital or electronic element, but like, was it an analog synthesizer versus a digital thing? Did you make it on a laptop versus did you have a bunch of like studio equipment?

AI music, music.

I mean, if it sounds like music, I think it's music. But like, but yeah, we finally gotten to a point where this has gone on for so long. Along, almost every single, like, produced track has some kind of digital element in it that it's like people aren't making this argument anymore. But it honestly, it's like that. It's like the ultimate experience is the same. Like, you can listen to the thing and enjoy it. Um, with the book, you could read the book and I could listen to the book. We could have the same kind of conversation afterwards about the book that we could have if we had both read it, if we had both listened to it, if if the tables had been turned. Like, what we can do with that knowledge and experience is the same.

Yeah, doesn't matter. Don't be a snob about it.

Don't be a snob.

Okay. Is peeing in the shower an acceptable practice?

Ah, no, it is not. However, it is highly enjoyable. Um, I used— I was team pee in the shower for a long time, but it does I'll let you describe what it does, 'cause I was starting to experience this and have, once I stopped, I also, yeah, I also stopped peeing in my wetsuit surfing. This is another—

So foul.

This is a surfer question.

It's so foul.

Yeah, unbeknownst to you, most surfers do pee in their wetsuit, but I stopped 'cause I started buying nicer wetsuits and they said, if you pee in this thing, you're gonna ruin the seams, your pee's acidic. And I was like, oh, I want my wetsuit to last longer, so I stopped. But yeah, not doing that actually had some positive benefits. Which Vanessa will explain.

Okay, so here's what I have learned from my pelvic floor physical therapist friends. Peeing in the shower unintentionally is not a good thing to do. So a lot of people get into the shower and they just start peeing and they're not even really like conscious of it. They're not even really thinking about it. I got into this very bad habit myself many years ago where I was getting into the shower and I would just realize like, oh my God, I think I'm peeing. I didn't even realize that I was doing that. And it coincided with a lot of other bladder issues that I developed that we ended up doing a podcast episode about this, didn't we?

I think so.

Like my bladder journey. Yeah, bladder journey. I ended up having frequency issues where it felt like I had to go like every 30 to 60 minutes and it was starting to drive me nuts. And so I eventually learned that peeing in the shower, doing like just because pee, like, oh well, I'm about to leave the house so I might as well go pee now, Going into a meeting that's 30 minutes, like might as well pee now. Doing all those things was training my bladder to tell my brain that it needed to empty itself super frequently when in reality it didn't actually have to. So I stopped peeing in the shower and changed a couple of other habits and now my bladder is totally fine. So yeah, it's like doing it without thinking about it.

But good luck, good luck trying to pee in the shower intentionally. That was my experience. Yeah. Vanessa told me all of that and I'm like, "Oh yeah, well no, I mean, I choose when I pee in the shower." And yeah, it was never that it was like just starting to happen. If I'm being honest, the moment I get into the shower, I start thinking, "Oh, I need to pee." And I would usually wait. I would like do a couple of things in the shower. I wouldn't just like walk in and piss. But then I was like, "Well, huh." I'm like, the moment I get in, I want to. I was like, so how— yeah, okay, so I'm holding it a bit to like try to prove to myself that I am in control of this thing. But then it's like, so what? Like, am I supposed to hold it the whole time? I can, I can absolutely hold it the whole time in the shower, but that makes the shower really unpleasant.

Yeah.

So I just started, if I need to pee, then I'll pee in the toilet, then I'll get in the shower. And it is a pleasant shower experience. I don't think about peeing.

But you still, if you're turning the shower on, you're still making the association of the sound of peeing. Of running water because a lot of people run into this issue with like using the sinks. They start hearing the running water and it's like on their hand and like, oh my God, I gotta go pee. So that could be an issue too. But yeah, I do think a lot of people I know, you wanna pee in the shower 'cause it like saves a toilet flush and I get that too. So you could do one of two things. Go into the shower and just pee and then turn the shower on Or if you can genuinely wait until the end of the shower and then you're making this conscious decision of like, I am choosing to go right now. But if you ever start, if you ever get into the shower and you just feel like what Xander was describing, feel that like, oh my God, I'm feeling the water, I'm hearing the water, I gotta go, then I would say don't pee in the shower. Okay, this one cracked me up. If your pet is sleeping on you, you are not allowed to do anything and your partner has to do all of the things. Do you agree or disagree?

I disagree with this because—

How dare you?

Because you use this on me all the time and I don't use it on you.

This is clearly a rule. If your pet is sleeping on you, you cannot disturb them. Look, we have a prime example here right now. I can't do anything to disturb little Maggie sleeping on my lap.

I don't know.

She's peaceful. She's happy.

Yeah.

She shouldn't have to get disturbed.

And she'll stay there all day if she can.

I think if your dog, your pet is sleeping on you, you can't get up.

You're wrong.

Wow. Well, I guess we'll have to turn this one over. Well, okay. Other than you don't like that I use it on you, what's your argument for why this should not be?

Well, because if you follow that argument, then chores don't matter. You know, responsibilities don't matter anymore, because it's like, "Oh, I can't do the laundry today." Benji's on me.

No, that's a dumb argument. This happens so infrequently. It's like you're watching TV on the couch and all that it ever is is like, "Can you get me a glass of water? Can you bring me a snack?" Well, and I do.

I do often.

Okay, so tell me what's your argument against this, then. Well, if you want to disagree, you have to—

What happens if both dogs are on— one dog's on you and one dog's on me?

Then you have to roshambo.

That's fair. All right, sure.

So I've convinced you?

I don't know. I'm going to start trying to get Chauncey or Maggie on me and utilize the shit out of this one.

That's fine. But you're talking about something different. You're talking about just being salty that you have to do it versus an actual disagreement with the concept.

Well, I think that it's— Yeah, okay. For like little things like go get a glass of water, sure. I think sometimes you send me on like like, go find whatever. I'm like, I don't know where that is, and you don't know where that is. Because Vanessa has a way of putting things or leaving things in unusual places, inconsistent places. So it— I'm like, if it's a simple, like, grab this from the, from the cupboard or whatever, I don't have a problem with it. But sometimes it turns into, like, go on a wild goose for something after, and it usually comes right after I've just gotten comfortable.

All right, I'm gonna call it. We agree with you on this one.

If you have 10, you, the, the person is allowed like 10 minutes to like be comfortable, and then after 10 minutes, then game on.

No, we're gonna, we're gonna agree. Let's move on.

Okay. "I need chores to be done to relax. Husband disagrees. We fight about this all the time." Well, if you want to never have sex, then you're right.

But— I'm going to disagree. I'm on your husband's side with this one. I get it. My brain often works that way. And I think your brain works that way too sometimes.

Yeah, once it gets triggered.

Yeah, you're you're like, "Oh, I just wanna finish this thing," or, "I just want to clear my to-do list out a little bit and just have that peace of mind." And sometimes even like the visual, you know, being able to see a clean and tidy kitchen, you just go, "Oh, okay, thank God." So I get it. I really empathize with it. I've experienced this myself. And at the same time, I think it's an unhealthy habit for us to get ourselves into because—

It's like a dopamine addiction. Type of—

Maybe, but yeah, I mean, what we're, what we're doing is we're training our brains that chores matter more than connection, and that's not good. We have to be willing to prioritize connection with each other over the chores. And often what you will find is when you do prioritize connection with your partner, you feel better, you feel more like a team, and then you guys can tackle those chores so much faster and so much more effectively.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I have a similar experience of sometimes it'll be a chore, sometimes it'll be a work task or a personal task, something like that, where it's like, I'm in the middle of it. It's reaching a point in time where normally I would have stopped, or like Vanessa's sitting on the couch and wondering if I'm going to come over so we can watch our show or whatever the case is. And I have that feeling just come over me. Oh, I just really want to get this done. I'm going to be so much happier if I can just have this thing done. Almost every single time, if I can get myself to really think, hey, does this absolutely have to be done right now? If this gets— if this doesn't get done right now, like, is something bad going to happen? Is someone not going to have something that they need? Whatever. But beyond that, no one, nothing else is going to suffer. If I can then walk away from it, I found that it— the walking away is the part that hurts. And then once it's out of sight, it's out of mind. Like, it— that feeling dissipates so quickly once you separate yourself from it. That's what I have found. And then I'm like, oh, thank God I'm not spending another half an hour doing this. I can totally do it another time. In that moment, you're just— you have the tunnel vision. And— but the only way— yeah, all— if you find yourself consistently doing that, you are you're just habituating yourself to— you are getting dependent on that tunnel vision. "Oh, no, I got the tunnel vision. It's got to be done." And think about what that feels like for your partner. Like, "Hey, where is the person that I love?

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Disagree, unless that is the actual arrangement that you have, how you've split up the task. I do think that is not a smart way to split up that task though.

I agree.

Unless you are somehow agreeing, because 'Cause the way for that to work is, okay, so we both have to be at home at the time when we do that, because the trash bag does need to go in right afterwards. Otherwise you can't put trash in the trash can, right? So it's like, so we have to be there together. We have to communicate, okay, it's happening right now. So if you wanna be like, okay, yeah, at 3:32 PM on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we do the trash, like, sure, but that is a really inefficient use of time and resources.

Yeah, no, I disagree that the person has to put the bag in. I agree with you that that's a dumb way to split up the chore. And I think in general it is best to split up chores where you have like the full chore from start to beginning, from ideation to reviewing at the end. Like that should be one person's sole job. It's so much easier, so much cleaner done that way. It'll lead to so many fewer arguments between the two of you as well.

So yeah, you're setting yourself up for the argument, for the— you're, you're creating a situation where it is more likely that the other person will fail. If that's the experience you want to have, then go ahead and split up tasks halfway. Um, but it just seems like, yeah. And there's usually enough tasks to run a household where you can split up full-ass tasks. Not split up, you can give— each person gets assigned full-ass tasks where there doesn't need to—

Full-ass tasks.

Full-ass tasks where you don't need to do this type of thing. All right. Is oral a part of foreplay? He thinks yes, but I think foreplay is more like kissing and touching. This is a good question. This is— I feel like it depends, honestly.

I think it doesn't matter.

Yes.

So we, okay, we have a guide called our Ultimate Foreplay Guides that teaches you how to give your partner the most incredible, best ever, so good I can't even speak for 10 minutes afterwards sexual experience.

It is our best-selling guide and our most hated title.

Well, we say—

By us, by us.

By us, yes. No, it's our most popular guide, best-reviewed guide by far. But we say on the first page of the guide, we actually hate the word foreplay. We use it because that's the word that everybody uses, but we hate that word because it implies that these are the things you do before intercourse, meaning that they are lesser than. Foreplay is like the main event, the big thing, the home run, the whole enchilada, that kind of thing. But foreplay is just, ugh, it's just the things that you do on the way there. There. And most of us don't, in male-female relationships, don't spend very much time on foreplay. We treat it as something that we just have to breeze through. So we have oral sex in our Ultimate Foreplay Guides. We have categorized oral sex as foreplay, but it's also sex.

Oral sex.

Yeah, it does fall under that umbrella of like why we hate the word foreplay. Oral sex absolutely is sex. It can be— you know, when I was dating, I would rather have intercourse with somebody than oral sex. Oral sex felt so much more intimate and vulnerable than having intercourse. But yeah, I think that it's, it's still— it counts as sex. Absolutely.

Well, yeah, I mean, especially because it is something that could absolutely be the main event. It could absolutely be the thing you know, okay, we spent a couple minutes kissing each other, we spent a couple minutes touching each other, and then we spent 10 minutes on oral sex. Whether you had intercourse or not afterwards, like, that was the main event, the oral sex that you had. So yeah, it's easier to just consider it's all sex. I think that oral sex and manual handjobs, um, fingering, these can fall into either category of like, is it a, is it a we're warming up to spend more time on something else? Or they could take the form of this is the main event where, you know, we want to spend 10 minutes like fingering each other, um, or, you know, 10 minutes going down on each other, giving blowjobs, etc. Um, so yeah, who cares? Who cares? Because it can be either.

It also reminds me, um, our social media employee brought Vanessa brought something to our attention. There's this tweet that somebody wrote about our content. She didn't name us in it, sadly, but this tweet blew up. It has like— it got like 12 million views or something like that, where she was talking about how she said, "There's this sex therapist and her husband, and she made a reel about how they make out every night before bed, and I need men to understand that kissing is non-sexual." Or I think she said, "I need men to understand the importance of non-sexual touch." And in the comments, where there were like thousands of comments, it turned into this debate of, is kissing sexual or non-sexual? And so what do you think about that? Do we think kissing is sexual or non-sexual?

I think once you get a tongue involved, I think it is sexual. Now, but here's what I would say about our nighttime makeouts. Workout routine. Yes, I do think it is sexual. I like it. It gives me a bit of a sexual zing.

Gives you the zing.

It gives me a zing.

The Zander zing.

It gives me a zing. But what it reminds me of, the sexual nature of our relationship, which I think is a huge positive thing. It reminds me that we have a sexual relationship whether we are actively having sex in that moment or not. For me, it created this positive feedback loop of like, oh, I can enjoy a sexual moment at any time during the day, and it's supportive of me having an active sex drive, rather than it feeling like I need to be completely turned off until this one moment where I'm allowed to be turned on.

That's a really good point. Yeah, I've been thinking about that question because I— yeah, I, I didn't get a clear answer come to— like I didn't have a clear answer immediately come to mind as soon as I saw that. But I think I like your categorization there. I think a peck doesn't feel necessarily sexual to me.

Well, yeah, because also many cultures peck each other like platonically.

Platonically?

Yeah, I mean like if you go to France, you're going to get two kisses on the cheek.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think a peck is not necessarily sexual.

Could a peck be sexual? I mean, a parent— like, I mean, well, no.

What if you're like, "Vanessa Marin"?

Like a parent kisses their child on the lips.

Yeah.

And there's clearly nothing sexual about that.

Well, it's definitely— it's context-dependent and person-dependent, too. But, yeah, I do think a peck is not sexual.

Yeah, but there is no context where a tongue kiss is not sexual.

Oh, well, that's how I kiss all my friends, especially the male ones. The platonic ones. I do think, yeah, that getting the tongue involved makes it sexual.

I'm sorry, I meant platonic. There's no case where like playing tongue hockey is totally platonic.

Tongue hockey? Tonsil hockey.

Tongue hockey?

Tonsil hockey. Tongue hockey is not a thing.

Yeah, it is.

It's— Oh my God, you are turning into a Vanessa. You're getting it wrong.

Look it up.

It's not tongue hockey. It's tonsil hockey. Tongue hockey. Okay.

Yeah, what's the tonsil thing?

It says both tonsil hockey and tongue hockey are slang idioms used to describe intense French kissing. But it says tongue hockey, this is less of an established idiom, but a highly literal alternative way.

Okay. Well, where I grew up, people said tongue hockey.

Really? I've never heard that in my life. Let me just Google tongue hockey. Tongue hockey.

What do you think you're going to find?

Okay. It can refer to kissing passionately with tongues or to the classic ice hockey debate about whether to wear skates— wear skate— wait. Whether to wear skate tongues tucked inside or tucked outside of your shin guard.

Right. Okay.

Tongue hockey. Okay. Let us— we need to like put polls up on some of these. Tell us like where did you grow up hearing tongue hockey or tongue slacking?

Anyway. Let me bring up this very good—

I want to go back to what you were saying. That I think it's really important for us to have sexual moments with each other that aren't leading to sex.

Yes.

I think that's actually one of the secrets of having a great sex life and maintaining that thread of an intimate connection between the two of you.

Yeah, I think I would go further and say if you are trying to insist that kissing— and again, you know, with that whole argument in that, in in that tweet or that X thread or whatever. I don't know, like, you know, I don't know what to call them. I know saying X sounds so dumb. Everyone here knows it as tweet, but like, whatever. I don't know if people are arguing, you know, are we talking about like a peck versus a tongue kiss? I'm guessing that people are meaning more making out, which most people assume includes tongue. I think that if you're insisting that that is non-sexual, like, you are actually actively or kind of subtly be disconnecting yourself from your own sexuality and your own sex drive because you're saying, oh, like, no, like, I want to have these specific moments that are completely non-sexual. And it's like, no, like, we are in sexual relationships with our, you know, long-term partner, with a spouse. Like, that's what it is. And if we are denying some, you know, denying our sexuality for majority of the day, majority of the time, like, that makes it harder to switch to being sexual. Like, no, like, we are sexual beings. We have a sexual— beings. We are sexual beings.

Um, I have a sexual—

you do have a sexual being. I, I don't. I mean, actually, I, I'd have a, you know, my, my prostate maybe internally, an internal being. But no, we are sexual beings, and I think that we do ourselves a disservice when me deny that, especially in our relationship. I think that can be a disorienting thing. So I think that it's easy to get confused with non-sexual touch because touch can definitely— there can be plenty of touch that is highly sexual, and then there can be other touch that is not explicitly sexual. Like I hold your hand or I put my arm around you, we're snuggled up on the couch. That's not explicitly sexual. That doesn't mean that it can't ever be sexual. But I think that if we are like, oh, I— we need to have this explicitly non-sexual kissing with tongues, which is an activity that in other moments can be very highly sexual, like, that creates a weird distinction that I think actually hurts us.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's a really good point. Should you always have one side of the bed or should it switch every couple of months?

I feel like we always get this one.

This is a serious topic question.

This is a wild one. This is a wild one.

Every couple of months?

Actually, you know, you want to hear something crazy? I've been having some like, I've been having some back pain for the last couple of months, which I think has been like I keep exacerbating in my sleep. Sleep. I think I'm finally over it, fingers crossed. So I went to go—

I'm not switching sides.

I don't know. I went to go see my physiotherapist for a couple of sessions to give me some PT exercises. I, and I, I love this guy, he's great, he is amazing. But we were talking about like which way I was sleeping and stuff, and he was like, oh well, like maybe you should switch sides with Vanessa for like a couple months so that you can— because he was like trying to encourage me to sleep my left side sometimes, which I never do because I like to be on the right towards the edge of the bed. Like, I don't know why, that's just what I like. Um, but he was like, oh yeah, no, you should just switch. If that's so you like to be facing that way, then switch sides. And I was like, you're crazy, I'm not doing that.

We have switched sides though before.

I think we've done it once.

Once, yeah.

And it was, it was for safety reasons, right? You wanted You wanted to be— or wait, no, I thought it wasn't— was it you wanted to be further from the door or like further from the window or closer?

I generally like to be further from the door. But in our apartment here, I'm closer to the door.

But yeah, it was in San Francisco though, and I slept on the side that was furthest from the door and furthest from the bathroom. But what, did I initially sleep on the right side of that bed?

I think so.

God, I can't even— I feel like as long as I can remember, I've been sleeping sleeping on the left.

Yeah, when you're looking at the bed.

Yeah, when you're looking at the bed.

Yeah, I mean, hey, it's personal.

But that was early days. It was early days. We didn't know what we liked and then we were like, this is wrong, we're switching.

Do whatever you want to do in your own home, but the idea of switching every couple of months is absolutely insane.

The day you see me on the right side of the bed, you'll know we have a real problem.

Okay, let's tackle this last one really quickly. Exactly. My husband wants me to shave down there. I get razor burn and ingrowns. Who gets to decide?

Well, for shaving, I would say your razor burn and ingrowns are making that decision for you.

This is an interesting one because I think it comes up— well, we don't really know what are the husband's exact reasons for it. We hear people of all genders will sometimes bring this up with like, it makes giving oral sex easier to have the hair like trimmed or not there. It might be also a like aesthetic preference. I like the way, you know, I like being able to see the whole thing. I like the way it looks without any hair there. I think everybody's allowed to have their own preferences, but ultimately it comes down to the person whose body it is that gets to decide what they want to do. So if you don't want to remove your pubic hair, then you get to make that decision. That being said though, I have an in-between suggestion for you.

They're all freaking nuts.

Shaving is the worst thing to do. Actually, to bring it back to Love Island again.

This is like a teenage thing because it was like the only, I feel like it was the only option that teenagers know about. So I'm just shaving it.

No, even all these, I mean, they're barely older than teenagers, but on Love Island, Melanie was like, when they had that, the whole Casa Amor night, she's like, we shaved our whole cooters just for this. And like, we don't even get to play the heart rate challenge. With the boys. So anyway, I just like cringed when I heard that phrase. So shaving is the absolute worst thing to do. It's super irritating. You are just gonna get razor burns and ingrowns. I've met one woman in my life who was like, "Oh no, it's super easy on me. It's the easiest thing to do." You, my friend, should look into sugaring. That's my personal favorite, or waxing. They're just so much— they're painful, and they can be expensive, but they are just so much better on your skin. You're not gonna get razor burn, so much less likely to get ingrown. So I recommend that, or maybe just a little trim if it's purely about a like, hey, it's just easier for me to give you oral sex when it's a little bit trimmed. Maybe consider that. But again, it's your body. I think it's your body and you get to decide.

You request that I trim every now and then, and if you were to request like a different thing, like if you wanted me to be be totally bare, like I would absolutely do that for you.

Would you?

Yeah, for sure. If I was like, if she's gonna think it's super sexy for me to look a certain way, absolutely.

But what if you had to like get it sugared and it was super painful?

Um, I would give it— I'd at least give it a try.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, I absolutely would.

If— I mean, I do your preference. I would—

I mean, it feels exciting to me to be like, if, if you were like, that's going to be super hot, I would be Well, fuck yeah, I want to experience like showing that off to you.

It is like, I think it is a little bit more complicated for women because there's a whole lot of like weird socialization and stuff around like, yeah, all that that comes up around pubic hair. Pubic hair is surprisingly political. But I do think that's a good point that you bring up that we, you know, maybe there are certain ways that we can be excited about doing things and our partner finds sexy.

To be fair, part of it is nobody has ever ever asked or like insisted that I do something that I didn't want to do. So I've not ever had that experience. That being said, that if like, if I saw like that, that was going to be something that really lit you up sexually, like that would— that sounds exciting to me.

I feel like we're gonna get off this and you're like, would that— I don't need you to remove all your pubic hair. I don't, I don't want to see you totally bald down there. All right, well, that is it for tiebreakers. We would love here. If you agree with us, disagree with us, you can leave a comment on Spotify, or you can come over to Instagram. We're @VanessaMarinXander and let us know what you think. But join us again next week. We release new episodes every Thursday.