EPISODE 15: The Secret To Feeling More Pleasure In The Bedroom

We think that you deserve a joyful, pleasurable, relaxed, and loving relationship with your own damn body.

Hell yeah. You deserve to take time for yourself.

Hello, and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Xander Marin. I'm a sex therapist with 20 years.

Of experience, and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step techniques for improving yours.

So make sure to 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. Have you ever found yourself thinking, sex just feels so blah? I don't get what all the fuss is about. Today's episode is for the ladies because this is one of the most common complaints that we hear about from women. So maybe you should just leave.

Okay, cool. I'm out.

Great. So a lot of women tell us that they want to feel more in the bedroom. They want to get more out of the experience, enjoy themselves, have more pleasure, but they just don't know how to. We're going to jump right into it today and we are going to tell you.

Spoiler alert.

The key to feeling more pleasure in the bedroom. We've got a one word answer for you. This is going to be the shortest podcast episode we've ever done, but you.

Might not like it.

Oh. The key to experiencing more pleasure with sex is masturbation. So we're going to tell you why in a minute. But we first want to acknowledge that, like Xander just said, you probably are not loving that answer. Maybe you're even thinking, oh, my gosh, I'm just going to stop listening to this episode right here, right now. And we want to acknowledge. Pretty much every woman that we've ever worked with has felt uncomfortable about masturbation in one way or another.

So.

So we actually went over to our Instagram audience and we asked them, tell us how you feel about masturbation. Like, what does it stir up for you? And by far and away, the number one response was shame. And so we really dug into that a little bit more, and here were some of the many, many things that women felt shame about when it comes to masturbation.

My religion taught me that it's a sin. That was our number one response, far and away.

The second one was, I have no idea how to. So just feeling ashamed about, like, how can I do something that I just, you know, I feel like it's supposed to be natural. I'm supposed to know how to do it, but I don't.

The third most common one was some variation on these two quotes. I was raised that women are to save their sexual needs for when men want them. Or it feels like I'm cheating on my partner by masturbating.

Yeah. Like that masturbation was somehow like taking something away from your relationship or like being selfish or hoarding it all to your yourself kind of thing.

So even with just those three, it is not a surprise at all why women are worried about masturbation. Feeling like there's something sinful or wrong about it, combined with the fact that you don't really know how. And then it feels like you're taking something away from your partner or maybe even yourself. Man. The deck is just stacked against you. Why would you want to do something when you feel those three things?

But there were even more responses than that. So here are some of the other things that we heard. It kind of feels like as a woman, you're shamed if you're too sexual.

Masturbation is dirty and gross.

This was a kind of a hilarious way of describing it. But this woman said, it's like watching yourself dance poorly on camera. Awkward and uncomfortable, even if no one else sees it.

I can totally relate with this one because I am a super awkward dancer. I was actually just talking with Vanessa about this and it's like, I am 36 and I think that I could maybe up level my dancing skills, but I need to ask for a little bit of help.

You have been dancing on Instagram a fair amount, but not well.

It's kind of knowing that it's a joke dance.

Yeah. I mean, I think that idea is so interesting. Like, you know, even if nobody else sees it, even women who do masturbate express this discomfort with how they do it. And they say, you know, I just would be so ashamed if anyone ever found out my technique. You know, even my partner that I'm having sex with, I don't want them to see me because my technique feels unsexy.

Other people felt ashamed. That they want pleasure.

Yeah. That they even want pleasure in the first place. This is a huge issue that comes up for so many women. A lot of women said taking that time for myself again, going back to this idea that it feels kind of selfish or there are other things, better things that you could be doing with your time.

Then plenty of people are worried about the classic getting caught.

Yeah. So there were a lot of responses about, you know, I'd be Worried about my partner coming into the room or my kids coming into the room and catching me. But there were also a lot of people who expressed that they'd been taught that like God is always watching you or even your dead relatives are always watching you. And so it wasn't like, you know, literally they didn't feel like someone was going to open the door and get caught. But this feeling of God is watching down on you and he's seeing what you're doing and it's really bad.

Oh my God. I'm just having flashbacks to the Pen15 episode about masturbation. So ever just. Sorry, we have to have a little aside. One of our all time favorite TV shows is Pen15. I think it's on Hulu. Or it was on Hulu when we were watching it. It is just incredible. Like I, I won't go too far in telling you about it. You should just watch it. Especially if you were a child of the 90s.

Yeah. If you were born in the 80s.

If you were born. Yeah, sorry, you, you were. You had your childhood in the 90s. It's pretty incredible. And there's an amazing scene where one of the characters discovers masturbation for the first time and. And also finds out that possibly her dead grandpa is watching over her and hilarity ensues. But also, you know, relatable hilarity.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Check it out. Another common response was I dislike the way that my vulva looks.

And some women expressed concern that masturbation felt easier than partnered sex. So something about how easy it is, like there must be something wrong with it.

Yeah. And finally another very common response was because no one touched talks about it. One woman said, you know, women never talk about it with each other, so you think that you're the only one. So we are really determined to take the taboo out of masturbation because we do think it really is the key to greater enjoyment and pleasure in the bedroom. Especially with that last point. Like we are going to talk about it. We are really going to get into it today and talk about masturbation. How to feel more comfortable, more confident with it. Because we don't want it to feel like this secretive tactic, taboo, hidden thing.

Taking masturbation out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

Oh, into the sunlight.

You know, shadow light.

You know what it's reminding me of those that like, butthole sunning meme that was going around for a while.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I do that every day.

I don't know.

So many health benefits. My sex Drive has increased. My penis got bigger. I'm living longer.

Oh, God, I hope that you have seen this meme that we're talking about. Otherwise, you're just thinking, like, what the hell are Vanessa and Xander talking about right now?

We might. We might have to put it on the episode page. Sure.

Okay, so there are some people who believe in butthole sunning.

Perennium.

Sunning perineum.

Yeah.

That if you, you know, go outside, spread your cheeks, get some sunlight to the. That part of your body never sees the sunlight. The butthole in particular is, you know, supposed to have a lot of health benefits. And we were just dying at, like, pictures of people bent over, spreading their cheeks, getting that sun in there. So.

But before you rush out to do it, I think it was all really a joke. I don't think there are any.

People really do.

But are there real health benefits?

No, there are not real.

That's what I'm getting at. Before you. Before you rush out to do it, there are no real, scientifically proven health benefits to doing it, other than having a tan butthole and maybe giving yourself skin cancer in your butthole, which is probably not what you want.

Also funny, because a lot of people want to bleach their buttholes because they don't want them to be tan.

It's mixed messages. Real mixed messages here.

I'm not sure how we got down this little butthole. Rabbit hole. Let's get back to the masturbation. So we.

Yeah, next time you're masturbating, think about, well, it can't be as bad as butthole sunning.

Well, that's what you made it sound like, bringing it into the sunlight. I'm like, oh, is that our new technique? You go out into the sun and just masturbate in the sun? That actually sounds delightful, to be honest.

There you go. All right, so something to try.

So we polled our Instagram audience, got a little bit more information about masturbation. 50% of women say that they regularly masturbate. So it was like exactly half and half. 50% don't. 50% do.

So, first of all, for all the people that say no one talks about it, they feel like they're the only ones you can. You can rest at ease at. Half of women are doing it regularly.

42% said that they feel shame about masturbation. But interestingly, I think this number is actually lower than it is for the general population, because we had a lot of women reach out to us on Instagram, and they said, hey, I only stopped feeling Shame about masturbation since following your account. So that made us feel really good.

Yes, we need, we need to create a burner account, get a lot of followers so that we can ask poll questions like this, get a more realistic sampling of the general public. Kudos to us, I guess, for moving the needle for people following us. So one more reason to follow along on Instagram as well as the podcast.

And we're at Vanessa Marin Therapy. Yeah, I mean, my estimate, you know, as a sex therapist, having done this professionally for many years, I think that number would be closer to 60, 65, maybe even 70%. It's really, really so common to feel shame about it. And finally, 60% of women said that they want to stop feeling shame about masturbation. So that is who we are going to be talking to today in this episode.

But first, we are going to give you the review of the week. Best sex ed ever. This has quickly become one of my favorite podcasts. Vanessa and Xander are hilarious. Talking about butthole signing. Yeah, sorry, she did not write that. After just a few episodes, I felt myself become more confident both in the bedroom and just as a woman in general. I love the honest, raw examples and the large database community they have on Instagram that make for valuable and relatable questions and answers.

Pretty cool that we get to poll people and like get these real world results and things to share with you.

Oh, yeah, no, we could not do this without that Instagram audience that really lets us do so much research, real world research, so that we can come up with these great podcast episodes. Please keep leaving us reviews on Apple Podcasts. If you leave us a review, we will enter you into a drawing to win, basically the reviewer of the week. And if we pick your review to feature in the podcast, we will answer a question that you have, like privately, just between Vanessa and me, you send us a DM on Instagram and we will record a response that will be way more thorough than what we typically do in our Instagram stories. So it's super cool. All you need to do, leave a review on Apple podcasts. Take a screenshot of it because Apple doesn't always post them promptly. Send that picture to us on Instagram. DM us. Vanessa Marin Therapy. If we pick your review, let us know and you're the winner.

You're the winner. Yeah. And once you submit your review, you are eligible to win every single week going forward. So it's just a one and done kind of thing. Okay, so let's get back to our conversation about experiencing more pleasure in the bedroom. And we want to first start off talking about why masturbation is the key. Key. We're guessing that maybe you heard the intro of this episode and you were expecting us to talk about sex positions or foreplay techniques or something like that. And you might be thinking, like, masturbation, what the hell are they talking about?

What does that even have to do with sex?

So let us give you a few reasons why masturbation is the key to experiencing more pleasures. The first thing is that masturbation is the best way for you to explore what your body likes and doesn't like. So when you're touching your body, you get that experience of like, oh, I like that kind of touch. I don't like that kind of touch. This is kind of okay. And it's just a little bit easier to pay attention to those signals on your own than it is when you're with your partner. Because when you're with your partner, there are all these other dynamics of you're feeling like, oh, I want my partner to feel like they're doing a good job. I don't want them to get bored. I want them to, like, you know, I'm supposed to give them feedback. Like, there are all these other dynamics that come into play that can make it trickier to really tune into what you like and don't like.

Yeah. And I just want to acknowledge that it is a little unfair to women out there that, you know, if you don't start masturbating early, you start having sex and you just don't really know what your body likes. Most men, on the flip side, start masturbating fairly early, usually earlier than they become sexually active. And. And, you know, the way men masturbate typically is just like a really, a one for one replication of the type of stimulation you get during intercourse. So by the time a man becomes sexually active, most. Most guys have been doing this thing for a while. They. They understand, like, what it feels like. They kind of understand, like, pressure and stroke and speed and stuff. And so it's. It's a much easier transition into, you know, that's why you don't hear stories of men being like, for the most part, like, I started having sex and I can't figure out how to come.

Yeah, exactly. And we'll talk about this a little bit more in a second, too. Another reason is that it really transforms your relationship with your body and helps improve your body confidence. As women, we spend our entire lives being taught to be ashamed of our genitals. You know, Our genitals, they look weird, they're icky, they smell bad, they taste bad, all this stuff. And so masturbation really is the best way for you to reconnect with your body and to recognize, like, all that stuff that you've been taught is bullshit. Your body is perfect and beautiful. Genitals are lovely and wonderful. And so it really helps you connect with this part of your body that you've been taught for so long to be disconnected from. And even though we're talking specifically about your genitals, I really think it extends to the rest of your body, too. Because as women, we're taught a whole bunch of BS about pretty much every single part of our bodies. And so I think if we can heal this relationship with the most challenging part of our bodies, those benefits spread to other areas of our bodies, too. It really has such a huge impact on body confidence.

Before I started masturbating, like, maybe right at the very early part of puberty, like, I was kind of confused by my genitals. It was like your general. My generals now call a general. Call my generals. Yeah, could be. But no, serious, you're worried about, like, how they work. You're getting both, like, without knowing what, like, in the middle of class and stuff. And it's kind of this big embarrassing thing. And then, you know, at least for me, was sort of like, I discovered masturbation, and it was like a way to be like, oh, okay, like, I have a better understanding of how my body works. This is how this happens. This is how it works. And, you know, you develop some company, like, oh, this is. This thing feels good. Like, I feel good about myself. I don't know, it's just a. An interesting thing. And it makes me feel sorry for people that didn't get to have that experience earlier on in life. But it is a huge opportunity. You can see still have that. It is never too late. You can still have that experience. And honestly, that experience might be even more meaningful later on in your life.

Yeah, seriously. I mean, yeah, we have a course called finishing school where we teach women how to have their first orgasms on their own and with their partner. And one of the biggest results that women report, they're like, yeah, I learned how to. Orgasm is great, but, like, my confidence is just miles above what it was when I first started this course. This feeling of, like, learning how to get myself off, learning how to be so in tune with my body and bring my body pleasure, like, that was the most empowering experience I've ever had. It really, like, we can't understate how big of an impact masturbation can have on your confidence. And if you go into the bedroom feeling confident, knowing, like, I'm connected to my body, I feel proud of my body. I. I know how to get myself off. How can you not enjoy yourself in the bedroom?

Yeah, it's like, I know what I want, I know what I need, I know how to get it.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Like, if you felt that way in the bedroom, imagine you might feel a little more like that out in real life, too.

Oh, yes.

Outside the bedroom, absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, confidence is really one of the biggest issues that people complain about, especially around their sex lives. How do I feel more confident? I want to try new things. I want to be more present in the moment. I want to feel sexier. Confidence. It's a big one. Another reason why masturbation is the key to experiencing more pleasure in the bedroom is because it helps you get comfortable taking in pleasure. So when you masturbate, you're literally, like, teaching yourself how to experience pleasure, and you're having to get comfortable with that, with this idea of, like, okay, I'm masturbating, I'm setting aside this time for myself, I'm going to do it. And I think this is another really big challenge that comes up for so many women in the bedroom, is we have a hard time allowing ourselves to receive. And. And I talked about this in the episode about my journey with orgasm. I really struggled for so long to allow myself to receive. You know, I would let a partner, like, touch me or go down on me for a minute, maybe two minutes, and then it would feel too uncomfortable, so I would make him stop. And so, you know, I think that this is such a challenge. If we want to experience more pleasure in the bedroom, we have to allow ourselves to receive it. And so masturbation is such a great way for you to start to get more comfortable with receiving because you're receiving from yourself first. And then finally, masturbation is the best way to have your first orgasm and then to learn how to get there with your partner as well. So, like I was sharing in my orgasm story, masturbation was the way that I learned how to orgasm. And honestly, in my entire career, like working with thousands of women, teaching them how to orgasm. There have only been a handful of times that I have worked with a woman who was able to orgasm with her partner for first before she was able to orgasm on her own. Seriously, like three, maybe five times. It's so rare. So it really is so important for you to learn how to get there on your own first. And then masturbation again can be the key to you learning how to get there with a partner. So orgasm isn't the only way to experience pleasure. But of course, a lot of us really want to have that big O. So masturbation is. Is absolutely the best way for you to learn how to get there on your own and with your partner.

All right, so having said all of that, are you on board with masturbation? Are you just, like, ready to get started? If you are, then I think you should just stop listening to this episode and go do it. But if you are not hitting, stop right now and running off, keep listening, because you're probably feeling a little squeamish inside. You're probably feeling a little worried. So we're not just going to leave you hanging here with why you should do it and not help you any further. We acknowledge that you probably are feeling some shame. You're feeling some embarrassment, feeling like you don't know what to do. So we're going to talk about that.

Yeah, feeling shame is so common. So we definitely want to normalize that and give you tips for how to get over that shame. Our first tip here is to have compassion for yourself. I think it's so important to acknowledge you were not born feeling ashamed of masturbation. You were taught to be. Take a little bit of time to think about, like, where did that come from? For me?

Yeah, like, specifically for you. Like, it's easy to be like, oh, well, society taught me that. But think for yourself. Like, each of us have our own specific ways that it really happened.

Yeah. So it might have been your religion, it might have been your parents, maybe the media. Just a lack of communication in general. So it's really useful to take that time to think about where was I taught these beliefs and also what were the specific beliefs that I was taught? So was it that masturbation was a sin? Was it you're supposed to save that for your partner? Was it your genitals are gross and icky and you just shouldn't touch them. So really identifying, like, what are the blockages?

Or maybe you have, like, one or two really embarrassing experiences or something. Like, maybe you were caught masturbating one time and you've just felt so ashamed and you never did it again. Or like you were talking with your girlfriends about it once and you said something about it and then everyone else made fun of you. Like, these are the type of things that we Think, like, oh, yeah. Well, that just happened once. In reality, those type of experiences can have real, lasting impacts on us.

Oh, yeah. I mean, just the other day, a woman DMed us on Instagram, and she said she had this awful experience as a child where she was just explaining exploring her body. She didn't really even think about it as masturbation. We talked about this in the orgasm episode. You know, we all kind of explore our bodies as kids. It's not this, like, sexual thing. But anyway, she said that her mom came in and saw her hands under the COVID and, like, pulled her hands out and smelled them, and then, you know, got so furious with her for masturbating. And it was this incredible moment of shame for her that's lasted for, you know, the rest of her life. And so I think it's so important for us to have compassion with ourselves for going through these kinds of experiences. Who could go through something like that and not feel ashamed? If that happened to me, I would feel deeply ashamed. You know, just recognizing, like, yeah, you know, these beliefs, this shame, it's not coming from me. It was given to me. And so I have to have compassion for the things that I've gone through.

And I think a lot of us just undervalue the way that childhood experiences can have a lasting, traumatic effect on us, because a lot of us will go, oh, okay, well, yeah, that happened. But, like, I wasn't physically hurt, or nobody actually yelled at me. No one was verbally abusive to me. You know, something like that. What Vanessa just described is a deeply shameful, a deeply traumatic thing for a child to experience. And you learn immediately after that, okay, well, I definitely cannot ever do that again.

The other piece of this that we want to talk about is acknowledging that as women, we weren't really given a fair chance. Male masturbation is seen as a lot more permissible. Like, female masturbation is much, much more taboo. And so it's not a level playing field, you know, when it comes to this. So many of us were really deeply discouraged from exploring our own bodies, really may never have or not ever come back to it until we were, you know, much later in life.

I'm not trying to say men are encouraged to masturbate necessarily, but there's for sure a dynamic of boys will be bo boys, or it's, you know, you can't stop guys from doing this. And, you know, I mean, I look back at my coming of age, no one really talked to me about masturbation, but it was obviously very easily tolerated. Like, I think it was probably pretty obvious from my sheets what was going on. And I think my mom was washing my sheets for me. I don't know. I. I didn't even think twice about it. No one ever said anything to me. So I was like, well, okay, I guess this.

No one was grabbing your hand and smelling them, seeing if you were doing it.

Thank goodness.

So, yeah, I mean, it's just so many women were just not given this opportunity to explore our bodies, figure out what we like, and just have this, like, playful and joyful relationship with our own bodies and with masturbation. And I think that contributes a lot to shame. You know, there's so many women who go through finishing school and say, you know, I'm 20 years old, I'm 30 years old, I'm 40 years old. I'm 50 years old, and I've never masturbated. I've never learned how to orgasm. Like, it must be too late to. For me. And the reality is, like we said earlier, it never is too late. But it's okay to have compassion with yourself for feeling like, yeah, I never was able to, like, explore this earlier in my life.

Maybe things are starting to change for the better a little bit. You know, I'm thinking about, like, pop culture movies and TV and how, you know, in the past, there's. There's always examples of, like, male masturbation in, like, teen movies or whatever. For the most part, for us growing up, there weren't really any. There were certainly not any positive examples, I can't think of, of female masturbation. You know, nowadays, maybe there's a little bit more. I was talking about that scene from Pen15. But on the flip side, even though it's funny in that scene, it's like she basically stops doing it because she's scared that her grandpa is looking down on her. So it doesn't really end up being, like, a positive thing necessarily, like me. At the end of the episode, I think maybe she kind of realizes, oh, he's not literally looking down on me constantly. But it never, like. It doesn't, like, show her doing it again. It is kind of like she, like, has some good experiences, and you're like, oh, great, this is going in a really positive direction. And then, like, grandpa appears, and then she never does it again. So who knows? I mean, hopefully we get more and more examples like that, because people need to see stuff like that to just feel like, oh, this is permissible. This is what is happening out there in the world. This is what's being portrayed in the movies and on tv.

And our final note about having compassion for yourself is to also recognize that you are not alone. There are so many other women who are struggling with feeling comfortable with their own bodies, with masturbation, with sex in general. If you haven't listened to our purity culture episode yet, that could be a great one to listen to. Even if you didn't grow up in purity culture.

Yeah. Because most of us, even if we don't grow up in it, we are impacted by. I know I certainly was. I was. I grew up very. Not religious. But still, all of these ideas of purity culture really seeped into my worldview growing up in the United States, at least.

Yeah. The next topic that we want to talk about is taking control of your mindset. So we just talked a lot about these beliefs that we were taught to believe about masturbation and pleasure in our bodies. The bottom line is that we can't control what was taught to us. We can't rewind the clock and make sure we never learn those lessons. Lessons. But what we can do is consciously and thoughtfully decide, what do I want to believe going forward? So we want to encourage you to think about, like, why are you listening to this episode? What made you press play? So what goals do you have for your sexuality or for your sex life with your partner? Because that can be a way of you reorienting and kind of deciding, okay, yeah, this is all the BS that I'm. I was taught, but this is what I want to believe going forward. And that's such a powerful step to identify those beliefs for yourself.

And if you are like, huh, I'm not even sure what I want going forward. We've got a couple ideas for you because we think you deserve a lot.

We think that you deserve a joyful, pleasurable, relaxed, and loving relationship with your own damn body.

Hell, yeah. You deserve to take time for yourself.

You deserve to have a relationship with your sexuality that exists within you, not just with another person. So your sexuality is not just, like, in your relationship or in whoever you're dating at that time. Like, your sexuality is yours.

It's yours. And you get to share it with someone else when you want to, but it is still yours. And of course, you deserve to experience pleasure in your own body.

Taking these beliefs or whatever other ones you want to add, like, this can be such a great way to manage feelings of shame around embarrassment in the moment is, you know, you can't control those feelings from coming up, but you can remind yourself, okay, yeah. I know I feel this shame because I was taught that. But this is my chance to remind myself, like, I deserve to experience pleasure in my own body. All right, our next idea is we want to encourage you to change the.

Definition of masturbation because you probably have some negative associations. If you're listening this long, we got to rewire your brain a bit little. Yes.

You know, a lot of women tell us, like, the idea of masturbating for pleasure, like, it just feels like too much initially, especially if you're somebody who's never masturbated or like, you know, very rarely has masturbated. So instead of thinking about, like, masturbation for pleasure, what if you thought about masturbation as an act of self love, as a way of, like, taking care of yourself. So we do all these other things, like taking a bath, going on a walk, drinking water, and we think of them as like, this is self love. This is my way of showing my body love, taking care of myself. Could you see masturbation in that same sort of way?

And if that still feels a bit challenging for you, could you just see it as connecting with yourself so that you can learn how to show up intimately with your partner?

Yeah. Well, you sort of think of masturbation just as a tool to help you learn how to experience more intimacy with your partner.

Yes, you can share more of your sexuality, share more intimacy with your partner.

And this one is a really big game changer. If you're really freaked out by the idea of touching your own genitals, like, again, you've been taught you're in entire life to believe they're icky and weird, and you're just like, oh, God, I'm not ready for that yet. You can start with a broader definition.

You don't have to jump right into the deep end.

You don't. So I actually like to say that masturbation is any form of touching your body with sensuality. So you could masturbate by touching your thighs, by touching your arms, touching your elbows. And that can be a really nice way to ease yourself into. It is if you. You can think about, yeah, how can I touch my elbow with love? How can I touch it? You know, paying attention to the sensations that I'm feeling, trying to really tune into that part of my body. That can help you get so much more comfortable with the idea of masturbation. So you can start there. And then we have another exercise that we actually do in finishing school. It ends up being a very, very powerful exercise. So we'll just give you, like, a condensed version of it here where you just put your hand over your vulva and you can leave your clothes on. You can literally do this right now as you're listening, as long as you're not, like, out on a walk or, you know, like on the bus or something like that. But when you're at home and in private, just put your hand over your vulva and imagine yourself sending love to that part of your body. So you can imagine love, like, flowing through your arm, flowing through your hand, directly into your vulva. And you can even say some of those positive or, you know, affirming statements that we were talking about earlier. You can even say something like, I feel embarrassed of you, but I want to learn how to feel proud of you or how to feel connected to you. So it's kind of, you know, talking to your body a little bit, but imagining sending love. So again, you know, if the idea of, like, oh, my gosh, I don't. I don't want to start, like, touching my clitoris and what do I do? All this stuff, you know, like, just start with just placing your hand there and imagining yourself sending love to your body.

And I imagine it can be powerful, like you were saying, just to verbalize what it is that you're worried about. I'm sending love to you, and I'm feeling scared about touching you or something like that. Just verbalizing that stuff. That's really a great way to get those fears, like, out of your body and out of your head. Yep. Get them out into the sunlight with your butthole.

No, it really is. I think a lot of women, they think like, oh, gosh, I've got to start masturbating. I to have to feel so confident and I have to be this, like, sex goddess.

I gotta use a dildo.

Yeah. All this kind of stuff comes up and, you know, the reality is it doesn't have to be that way. Like, it's okay to acknowledge. I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed. I don't know how to do this. You don't have to pretend to have this, you know, wild overnight confidence. And like Xander was saying, sometimes just bringing those fears out into the sunlight really helps them fade away so much faster.

Yeah. You might be surprised when you hear yourself say it. You might listen to it and be like, huh, that is maybe not as scary as I thought it was. Or, you know, that sounds a little ridiculous. Like, wonder if I could re examine that. You would be surprised when you say it out loud. Oftentimes, it is not as powerful as it feels inside when you don't say it.

Okay, our next tip is to talk about it. So we really believe that the way that we get more comfortable with masturbation is by talking about it more, acknowledging that it exists. I mean, that's kind of our belief or anything sex related, like we've got to talk about it. That's what makes this change start to happen. So we know that this can feel really overwhelming and scary. So we recommend that you start with your partner. Listen to this episode with your partner. This can be a great way to open up a conversation. Or if you're feeling really nervous about initiating that conversation, the sneaky way to do it would be put this episode on in the background so that your partner can over hear. And then I assure you, the second that they hear the word masturbation, they're going to get really curious and ask you about it. And that's just like a nice way to invite them into listening with you. Finally, our last tip is to learn some actual techniques. It's really easy to feel shame about masturbation because you don't know how to do it. Like we were saying earlier, that was the second most common response that women said. Like, I just feel so ashamed that I'm X years old and I don't know how to do it. The good news here is that we have got your back. I'm so passionate about teaching women step by step techniques for orgasming because again, like I shared in that orgasm episode, I struggled with my orgasm for many years and I didn't have any techniques. That was such a challenge for me. So once I finally figured it out, it was like, I have got to share this with other women. So we have a guide for you called the best way to have your first orgasm.

I bet you can guess what the best way is now that you listened this far.

It's a little spoiler alert. But there's lots of great tips and techniques in that guide. It's such a great starting point. We will put the link to download that in the show notes for you or you can go right now to vmtherapy.com episode 15 the number 15 and it will be there for you. So we really think, you know, once you learn some techniques, once you get started, that's what builds confidence. We talked about this in another episode. This idea that like a lot of us want to focus, feel confidence before we take action, but it's really the other way around. It's taking action that helps us Build confidence. So once you start actually masturbating, even if you're still feeling like, oh, God, I don't know how to do this, I'm not sure how it works. The act of starting and realizing, like, okay, I got this, I did it, I masturbated, and the world didn't explode. Like, that builds confidence and gives you the motivation to keep going forward.

Well, let's get into some listener questions because we got a couple. First question is, I just don't want to have to masturbate. I just want to be able to get there during sex with my husband. What do I do?

This comes up a lot, and I totally get it. You know, again, we're taught to feel so ashamed and embarrassed of masturbation. Of course we would feel this desire to just want to skip to having it with a partner.

And this is really similar to the common thing that we hear from women of, like, why can't my partner just do it to me? Don't they know how to make it happen for me? This sounds so similar to that.

So like I was saying earlier, in all these years of coaching thousands of women how to orgasm, it really has only been a couple of times that I have seen a woman have an orgasm with their partner first before having one on her own. So just from a numbers standpoint, you can make the decision to say, I'm not going to masturbate. I'm just going to hope it happens, happens with my partner. That is totally your decision to make. But from a number standpoint, like, it's really, really unlikely to work out in your favor.

The odds are not in your favor.

The odds are not in your favor at all. The other thing that I want to say about this is that if you don't learn how to do it on your own, you really are missing out on this opportunity to have this incredibly empowering, exciting experience. I know that learning how to masturbate, like, it. You know, it can be a challenging process. There's so many feelings that can come up and can be hard to like to do it. But the end result of it is so powerful. Like, go over to the finishing school page and read stories of women who have gone through the course and, like, come out the other end, taught themselves how to orgasm. Like, it is life changing. And so when that is an experience where you're like, I did this for me, I did it, that feels so much more exciting than like, oh, my partner. Just somehow it magically happened with my partner. That doesn't feel like an empowering experience.

Yeah, because then you're dependent on them. You're like, hey, do. Do that thing again. Because I don't know how to do it.

Yeah, I don't know what you did. And then your partner's like, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

We were just having sex. All right, next question is, do people in happy relationships still masturbate? Because I think there's this assumption that it's like masturbation is only necessary if you're not. Not having sex. You're not getting any regularly, something's wrong with you. But I have a feeling that's not the answer.

It's not. People in happy relationships still masturbate. It gets back to what we were saying earlier about how you deserve to have a relationship with your own sexuality that just exists within you. So even if you're with a partner, even if you have a very happy relationship, a wild, sexy sex life, it's still okay for you to want to have time with yourself and experience experiences with yourself. And also, we can be in very different moods, like when we're in the mood for masturbation versus when we're in the mood for partnered intimacy. Like, those can be very different things. So a lot of times people will masturbate because I just want a quick stress relief or I want to get to sleep quickly or I'm bored. We can be in the mood for it in different ways. Whereas with a partner, it might be like, yeah, I want to experience closeness with my partner. I want to be playful with my partner. I'm really turned on and I want to connect with my partner. You know, it's just they can be different experiences. I guess this goes back to that idea of, like, taking away something from your partner. Like, if you masturbate, it doesn't necessarily mean that you could have gone and had sex with your partner. For me, I'll just say there have been times where I'm like, yeah, I'm just like, you know, feeling tired and I want to get to sleep. So I'm going to do this really quickly. But I wouldn't have wanted to have sex with. With you.

Yeah. I mean, it is not a zero sum game. Especially for women who don't have the same kind of physical refractory period that men have. It is definitely. It's not even a zero sum game for men unless you're doing it constantly. Yeah, especially for women. No refractory period. It is absolutely not a zero sum game. It is, you know, you developing confidence, you learning how to bring yourself more pleasure so that you can bring that pleasure into the bedroom with your partner and have even better self. All right, so the next question. Is masturbation an important step to increasing my libido?

Oh, yes. Yeah. So it's really important to recognize that our sex drive is very intimately connected to our enjoyment of sex. So if we're having sex that's not particularly pleasurable, why would you crave it?

Yeah, when you say sex, you're not just meaning intercourse. Like, we're talking about pleasure in general, whether that's from masturbation, from manual sex, from oral sex, all the way to intercourse.

Yeah. So, like we've been saying, we really believe that masturbation is the key to unlocking more pleasure. And the more pleasure you're experiencing on your own with your partner, the more you're going to desire that pleasure as well. So we really should have added this up in our section about why masturbation is the key. Definitely going to have a huge impact on your sex drive. That's another one of the benefits that the women who go through finishing school mention all the time. I never wanted to have sex sex before, and now I want to have it all the time.

That's not bad.

Oh, no, that's good.

All right, so the last question is, I masturbated a few times in college, but it just didn't feel like it was right for me. Was I doing something wrong?

So I think that that's probably tied into this idea of, like, yeah, I don't know how to do it. I feel embarrassed. And a lot of women feel like masturbation is supposed to come so instinctually. Like, you're just supposed to put your hand down between your legs and figure out how to do it. And the reality is that learning how to masturbate and definitely learning how to orgasm takes time. It's not something that just comes naturally to us. Pun intended.

Yeah. We actually had a question on Instagram the other day about that from a woman kind of saying it doesn't feel fair that men just know how to masturbate and women have to learn. And it was like, that kind of caught me off guard because I was like, oh, yeah, no. Like, I did not naturally know how to orgasm. Like, I had to teach myself. You know, the difference was that I started years before I became sexually active. So by the time I was sexually active, I was very adept at making myself orgasm. I knew exactly what I needed, but if I hadn't done that. Yeah. When I started having sex, I don't know what would have happened. It would have been definitely more of an adventure, I guess.

Check out our best way to have your first orgasm guide. Give yourself some time to learn. Check out finishing school if you really want to do a deep dive into this. But give yourself time for that relationship to change. All right, so that wraps up our episode on why we think masturbation really is the key to experiencing more pleasure in the bedroom. We know that it's something that can feel so challenging for so many women because we've really been taught to be ashamed of and embarrassed by it. But like we said earlier, masturbation, it's the key to exploring your body and figuring out what you like and don't like. It transforms your relationship with your body and increases your confidence. It helps you get comfortable taking in pleasure, receiving pleasure. It's the best way to have your first orgasm and to orgasm with your partner. And like we just covered, it even increases your libido. Even if you heard us say masturbation for the very first time in this episode and your heart just dropped and you wanted to press stop on the episode, we really hope that we've convinced you to give it a shot. And like I mentioned earlier, we have that free guide for you. The best way to have your first orgasm. You can head over to vmtherapy.com best dashway. It's also on the show notes@vmtherapy.com episode 15, number 15.

That's it for today's episode of Pillow Talks. Thank you so much for listening. Hit that follow button so you keep getting notified as soon as we post a new podcast, which is every Thursday. And next week we'll be talking about what feelings are and what the hell you're supposed to do with those suckers.

Oh, yeah, this is gonna be a really big episode. Finally, if you have a question that you want answered on the podcast, just a reminder that you can give us a call at 774-P-I- L L O W1. That's 774. For pillow one, we have our very own sex hotline.

Not that kind of hotline. No.

Yes.

Not pay per minute.

You can leave us a voicemail and let us know your sex and relationship question that you want answered on the podcast. And don't worry, nobody ever picks up that line. It just goes straight through to voicemail. But it's always fun to be able to hear your voices and to know what you guys are wanting to learn about next. All right, thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.