EPISODE 43: How To STOP Getting Distracted During Sex!

Be curious about your distractions, because oftentimes, they're there for a reason. 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. So last night we had some pretty spectacular sex, right?

I do believe we did. We were just talking about that.

It was one of those, like, catches you by surprise times. Like, I think we went both went into it expecting it to be like, a quickie. Let's just kind of get down to the point. And then it ended up being really good.

Yeah. We were both kind of tired. We are. If you follow us on Instagram, you probably know we were in the process of moving. We're packing up stuff. We spent the whole day driving up to Santa Barbara, doing some things up there, prepping for our move up there. Coming back. We were tired. We wanted to hang out. And then, you know, we went to get it in. I don't know, we just got started and it was like, oh, it's not a quickie.

We're.

We're doing this.

Okay. So I want you, Xander, to take yourself back to last night. In the middle of it, maybe, like, right as we were starting to realize, like, oh, this is really good.

Yeah.

And I want you to imagine that you start thinking about taxes.

Oh, I don't like that feeling. I'm already. I've already got taxes, like, in the back of my mind because it's that time of year, and that doesn't feel good. I don't want to be thinking about that.

Yeah. And not only. It doesn't just, like, slip into your mind and you're like, I'll think about that later. It's like it comes into your mind and then you cannot get it off of your mind.

Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, shit, we're late. The CPA is going to be pissed off. We're going to have to pay a huge penalty.

So what do you think would have happened had that happened to you last night?

I don't think the sex would have been nearly as good. I think it would have been hard to get back to that excitement. Yeah. I might have been tempted to just try to get it over with quickly. Or I might have been so distracted that I lost my erection. And then we would have had to stop or start over or who knows what.

So that is what we are talking about today because this is truly one of the worst feelings. Like, you are in the middle of having really great sleep, or maybe you're even just, like, on the way there. You're getting in the mood, you're getting excited.

Yeah. You don't know how good the sex is gonna be yet, but it could be great.

And then all of a sudden, you start thinking distracting thoughts. I think we've all had experience with this. Whether you were already in the middle of it and then you're like, shoot, now my brain's on something and I just cannot get it off of that. Or in that lead up of, like, you really wanna be intimate with your partner. Maybe this is like the one chance that you've had with the kids being up all the time and crying and all kinds of stuff. And you're like, this is our one chance. Why can't I just turn my brain off and get into the mood? Right. This can be so frustrating in the moment. And I think what makes it even more frustrating is that most of us just don't know how to deal with it.

No.

Yeah. It's like that thought comes into our head and we feel powerless over it.

Yeah, we feel powerless. We start beating ourselves up, we start judging ourselves. We feel ashamed, we feel defensive. Like, all kinds of things come up.

Yeah. It's this horrible combination of something that happens very frequently and to the majority of people, but also feeling like we don't have any tools in our toolkit for navigating what to do when it does happen. And, of course, there's also the whole flip side of this, too. Like, maybe you can notice in the moment that your partner is seeming distracted. And that's bringing up questions for you of, like, are they not into it? What's going on with them?

Are they into me? Are they not into me?

Yeah, for sure. Today we are diving deep into getting distracted during sex and how to navigate those distractions. And we are going to give you our top five tips.

Oh, boy. But before we get into all of that, you know what time it is. It is time for the review of the week. Vanessa knows what time it is. She's laughing.

I love how you get so formal about it. It's like, I feel like we're actual RA radio DJs or something like that.

Well, I Mean, you've built this whole thing up. We're so excited about, like, getting into the meat of it, and I gotta, you know, be like, screeching halt. One second.

That was a weird screeching halt.

I don't know. How do you make a. How do you make a screeching hall? That sounds more like that more. Sounds like a bad horn on a car.

Oh, my God, this is the worst. Okay, we're gonna need our podcast editor to slip in, like, a good sound effect of a screeching halt.

Great. Yeah, we'll see who is closer. I don't know. I don't know. Does it even matter? Not sure. All right, so to the review of the week. Thank you. Now that we have been properly derailed, it's easy to get into the review of the week. I can do it really informally because, you know.

No, I like it formal.

Okay. All right. Well, guys, this podcast is for you too. That's the title, in case you weren't sure. As a. As an eggplant emoji haver, I'm sadly in the minority of listeners. Guys, this podcast is great. My partner suggested it to me, and I've learned so much about my own pleasure as well as hers. And in parentheses is like a woeful face squirt blowing, like. Is this, like, upset blowing out breath or like, phew, I don't know. Like a sigh.

It's like.

It's a sigh.

Describe what it looks like.

It looks like a sad face blowing out a puff of air.

I think they look more worried or tiring.

Yeah, I think it's a sigh. Like a kind of negative sigh and then star eyes. So maybe it's like going from going from some problem, some wet problems, to.

Really happy wet problem.

That's all I can say is what it looks like.

We have to make that the name of a course.

Wet problem.

Wet problem.

Great. Okay. Well, let's continue, because it's not done.

Dirty whispers and wet problems.

Yeah, Dirty whispers and wet problems. Have we said what? Dirty whispers.

We have not.

You're gonna have to give some context.

Now, we recently asked you guys on Instagram to help us name our Dirty Talk Guide. And I gotta say, guys, usually you have really wonderful, really creative suggestions. Whenever I put question boxes up like that, I'm always blown away by the responses that we get. But this time, you guys struggled.

Well, you can't blame it. Well, you can't blame it on them because we similarly. We similarly struggled. And, you know, the reality is there is no good, like, Alliterative word to use with dirty talk. Like, dirty talk, it needs to start with a D. Like, dirty talk something. There's no D word that is like guide or course or handbook or whatever. And so there was just, like, no natural thing. So there were a lot of people forcing really weird titles together. But, yeah, Dirty Whispers was a. Was an interesting. An interesting submission.

I had, like, did not reaction to that one. Like, I was like, oh, God, no, I don't want. Dirty talk is like, oh, that's hot. But there's something about Dirty Whispers that just sounded very wrong to me.

Dirty Whispers, web problems. Anyways, all right, so we'll continue. We're definitely closer as a result of this podcast. Vanessa and Xander are relatable and funny, and I love hearing what they have to say each week. Thank you so much. That is a. That's a really nice review from one of my bros. Oh, thank you, bro.

And down.

Thank you. Yeah.

Yes, we appreciate your reviews so much. Seriously, it is the best way for the podcast to grow and reach new couples. And it honestly means the world to us when we get to read reviews like this and just hear the impact that we're having on your life. So if you have enjoyed one of our podcast episodes, if it's brought any value into your life, we would so deeply appreciate you taking a minute of your time to leave a rating or a review. You can only leave reviews on Apple podcasts now. You can leave ratings on Spotify.

Do that too.

Yeah, do all the things, please. And as our way of saying thank you, we do a review of the week giveaway every week. If you're chosen as the winner, you can DM us on Instagram anessamarintherapy, and we will give you an absolutely free personalized coaching session. You can ask a question. We'll give you our best advice and tips. So thank you, seriously, from the bottom of our hearts for leaving reviews. All right, so let's get into it. As always, we turned to our trusty Instagram community. We wanted to get a sense of how distraction works for different genders. So we wanted to ask men and women separately just to see if there was a gender dynamic around this. We had a hunch, and our hunch was proven correctly. So we asked women, do you regularly find yourself getting distracted during sex? 70% of women said yes.

And this is not like, have you been distracted during sex? This is regularly.

Regularly. Yeah, exactly. Then we asked men the exact same question. Do you regularly find yourself getting distracted during sex? And only 16% said yes. So 70 versus 16.

Wow. That's a discrepancy. And it's a discrepancy that I can relate with. I think I understand where this is coming from. You know, I guess I haven't really, like, talked directly to too many men about this, but I think that the experience that most men probably relate with and kind of refer to and they're talking about sex, it's like, once you get hard and once you get started, it is game on. Like, there is this instinctual urge to complete the job sometimes very quickly complete the job. I mean, honestly, that is what the instinctual urge is. The urge is not like, let's stretch this out and make this last a while. The urge is like, let's get this done, let's get this done. Let's make some babies.

Oh, wow.

You know, let's sow our seed, so to speak.

Sow your oath.

I shouldn't say never, but I've very rarely gotten distracted during sex. However, I've had plenty of times where I've definitely been distracted beforehand. I think I definitely get distracted from thinking about initiating sex. Maybe I'll be thinking about sex during the day, and then, like, I get home and all of a sudden it's like, oh, there's all these household things I need to do. Or like, oh, the taxes, those taxes. Something comes up and you're like, all this momentum that maybe you feel like you have, it's gone. And then like, the thought of, oh, yeah, I wanted to have sex, it just kind of disappears. Or the other way that distractions come in is, you know, if I'm wanting to get hard, but I can't just flip a switch and be like, oh, hard penis. If we're starting to make out or something, you know, leading towards sexual. If I don't. Or in the past, if I haven't gotten hard very quickly, it's easy for distractions to start coming, go, oh, huh. Like, huh, what's going on? How good? Do you. Do you not want it? What's. What's wrong with you? Blah, blah, blah. And so it's very easy to get distracted if you're struggling with your erections. All kinds of thoughts can enter at that point, but those are kind of separate issues from, like, we're in the middle of it, and now I'm distracted.

Okay. Yeah. You know, I have this very vivid memory of asking you once, do you find yourself getting distracted during sex? And you gave me this look. Why? Like, why?

Why?

Or how? What do you even mean?

It was like, I didn't even understand the question. It was like, what? Yeah, that's even possible.

It's a very funny moment. So for me personally, I've definitely dealt with a lot of distracting thoughts during sex. And I've worked on it to the point now where I still have lots of thoughts, lots of distracting thoughts that pop into my head during sex, but I do not get distracted. So I think that's a very great distinction to make and that's what we're gonna teach you how to do. Spoiler alert in the rest of this episode. But before we get into it, we also asked our community on Instagram, tell us why you think you're getting so distracted during sex. What are the things that are coming up for you? And here were the most common answers. Mental load kids bored of the same sexual routine, not being relaxed, unable to.

Decompress before or feeling touched out, insecurity about my body, not interested. Having past trauma around sex.

And so for so many of those, it was kind of interesting to see them because fortunately, we have resources for all of these for dealing with mental load, for feeling bored of the same routine, all kinds of stuff. So we will put links to a bunch of our courses, some of them even for as low as $19. So we'll put links to those in the show notes so you can check out any of those common distractions are coming up for you. You can definitely get a lot of great tools and resources in our guides. So let's talk about the distracting thoughts themselves. We take what may be a somewhat controversial opinion on these, which is it is impossible to stop yourself from being distracted during sex. And that might feel a little bit frustrating initially. Like, wait a minute, why am I listening to this podcast episode if they're telling me right at the beginning that I'm not going to be to stop being distracted. But it goes back to that distinction that I mentioned a minute ago. We will teach you how to stop getting distracted, but we can't teach you how to stop your brain from thinking thoughts because that's just you actually want thoughts.

Thoughts are good.

We can't stop our brains. We can't control our brains. We cannot dictate exactly what our brains do and do not think of. Like, that's just not how it works at all. So instead, we want to give you these tips for how to make sure that those thoughts don't turn into actual distractions.

Yeah. And if you are familiar at all with meditation, this is a very common example that's used in meditation, is that the Thoughts in your brain are kind of like a stream or a river. Sometimes when there's a lot of them, you have a choice. What you see a thought coming down that stream or coming down that raging river, you have a choice. When you notice that thought, you can jump in and go down the river with it, or you can sit on the riverbank and just watch it go by. And that's easier said than done. But we're gonna talk about ways to help get you set up to have that be a little easier.

What a nice little visual. Okay, so let's get into step number one. The first thing that you can do is remove distractions. So this tip and the next tip are more about, like, kind of setting yourself up for success before beforehand. So I think it's really important for us to recognize that our environment sets the tone for sex. So a really simple but very effective exercise that you can do is go into your bedroom as soon as you can and take a look at your bedroom and ask yourself, is this a place where I could be fully present and undistracted in the moment?

I think this is a really great question to ask because I think a lot of people's inclination immediately is to be like, I don't need to do that, because the problem is I just get distracted. Like, I need to find a way to be able to deal with these distractions, with everything the way it is. And the reality is you can do a lot of stuff to set yourself up for success. You don't. You don't need to punish yourself and be like, oh, I'm so broken. I don't deserve to make this easier on myself.

Yeah, I mean, I think this tip, it's a really obvious one, but it's something that so few people do. But, like, if you go into your bedroom and there are piles of laundry all over the place, you're going to see that pile of laundry while you're being intimate, and it's going to distract you. You're going to think, oh, my God, I haven't done all that laundry, or, oh, my God, all that laundry is clean and I haven't folded it. And now I'm going to have to put it back into the dryer and fluff it all up again. Your brain is just naturally going to latch onto things that are in that environment. So it might be like piles of paper. Maybe you have mail, maybe there are a bunch of your kids toys all over the place. You know, there are just so many things that can distract you in your environment. And you really want your bedroom to be the sanctuary, you know, for you and your partner to rest, to relax, to unwind, to connect. And so whatever you can do to clear out distractions can go such a long way. So that could be as simple as taking five minutes to even just throw all the clutter into the closet or something, or into the bathroom, like, close the door so you don't have to see it. But it could range all the way up to maybe you want to do a little bedroom makeover and make the room just feel more soothing, maybe take a lot of stuff out of it. If all you have time to do is just, like a couple of minutes of tidying up, you can actually make that a little ritual or a routine that you and your partner do together. It's kind of like the two of you setting the mood together, cleaning up your space. Other things that you can do is, like, you know, if you have a pet, taking some time to get it a treat, put it in its kennel, you know, whatever you need to do to get it sorted. Obviously, kids can bring up a lot of distractions, so I think that's a whole other podcast episode in and of itself. But just taking the time to sort of think through what do I need to do to set myself up for success in terms of minimizing possible distractions and disruptions from kids. Even stuff like putting your phone on silent or tucking it away somewhere that you can.

Simple but effective.

Yeah. So those are some other things that you can do here, too.

You know, I was actually thinking earlier today about the gendered differences that we found that we just discussed earlier on, where most women find that they do get regularly distracted during sex, and most men. Most men don't. And now I just want to preface this by saying not all men work outside of the house, and not all women are or should be housewives or stay at home moms and don't work outside of the house. But what we do know is that in most heterosexual relationships, it is more often that the man is working outside of the house more. And so if you are, you know, if you're a guy and you're finding yourself just having trouble empathizing with the type of distractions that your partner is facing. Here's an idea to perhaps build a little more empathy. Think about your workplace. Think about what would it be like instead of having sex at home, you guys were having sex at work. That might be a little more challenging. Think about the type of distracting. Think about. Yeah. The type of challenges or distractions that might come up. There's the obvious ones, like, how are you going to do it without your coworkers seeing you? That would be distracting. That might be a little stressful. Let's set that one aside. Let's take that one off the table. Even if you are at no risk of your coworkers seeing you, they might hear you. Like, noise could be an issue. We could set that one aside even. Let's just say you're like, closed up in your office. No one is going to barge in on you. Think about, like, you might have, like, piles of notes or files or little reminders of projects that you're working on at work. And what, what if you're like in the middle of it and you really sexy, you know, you're having sex with her, she's on the desk, you look to the left and there's some notes about, oh, shit, that project was due like three hours ago and I forgot to do this and that. It would be pretty distracting.

Absolutely. And I think that's what we hear about from so many stay at home moms is the sense of, like, I have a hard time transitioning from mom mode into sexy mode because there's just constant reminders, constant distractions. And again, like, I do feel like we have to make a separate episode, like, specifically for parents, about how to navigate the distractions of having kids at home. Because there are a lot of different dynamics that come up. But I really like that example because it's just a way to think of it differently. Because we do hear sometimes from men being like, why don't you just focus on this? Like, this is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be enjoyable. Like, why would you be caring more about the laundry than about with me? But I think, yeah, if you're viewing it as like, yes, this is my home and my bedroom, but it's also like my workplace as reminders of my work all over.

You know, to make it even weirder and more detailed, you're having sex and like, your coworker pops in the office and it's like, oh, hey, remember to do the whatever thing on this project. And you're like, okay, yeah, sure. But like, wait, how am I gonna remember that? Like, we're in the middle of having sex. That's kind of what might be going on with your partner. You're in the middle of having sex and your partner looks and goes, oh, my God, that laundry needed to go in an hour ago because the kids have soccer practice and their soccer clothes are in there. Like, it is like that example happening in your house.

Yeah. Okay, let's move on to tip number two, which is to purge your thoughts. So this is, again, another setting yourself up for success type of tip. So if you already have a lot of thoughts that are just swirling around in your head and you sort of. Like, sometimes we just go into it knowing, oh, my God, my head is a mess. Like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to focus. If you're in that kind of place, take a minute to yourself to jot down your thoughts. If you have a journal, if you just have a little note on your phone, on your to do list. You know, sometimes I'm like, I have this list of things in my head that I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to forget that. And I don't want to be in the middle of sex with you trying to think through, like, okay, pick up the laundry, the dry cleaners, unload the dishwasher. You know, it's like, so instead, just take that time to write those things out. It can be really cathartic to just do a brain dump like that and make sure, you know, like, okay, I've got those thoughts written down. I can come back to them later. I won't forget them. And even if it's not to do list stuff, even if you're just, I don't know, you're ruminating about a disagreement that you had with your sister or something like that, if you could take 30 seconds to just write down a few thoughts and just sort of get it out of your head and out into the world, out onto a piece of paper, out onto your phone. It can actually have a surprisingly big impact.

Yeah. This made me think of, like, this is just a really good example of how you can live in acceptance or just meet yourself where you're at. Because I think that a lot of us probably go. People always tell me that sex is a great way to clear my mind. That, like, oh, once I get into it, all those thoughts are going to melt away. And so I keep pushing myself to try to do that when I am really distracted already and, like, waiting to have the sex where all of a sudden, then, like, all those thoughts go away. Yeah. And, yeah, that is how it works for some people. That's how it works for a lot of men, according to our survey results. And it's not the way that it happens for a lot of women. And so, you know, it's just acknowledging. I have tried having sex a number of times. And fighting through distracting thoughts, and it doesn't work so well. I am not one of those people where sex just, like, wipes my brain clean. So you know what? What's the next best thing I can do? I'm gonna have distracting thoughts. If I'm super distracted, I'm gonna take some action before I start to try to set myself up.

Absolutely. And we did mention mental load a minute ago, too. That was one of the top reasons that people gave about why they're getting distracted. So if that's something that you're finding yourself, you know, you just constantly have that to do list going. All that mental labor that you're doing of like, trying to remember this task, and I've gotta order that and pick up that and do this. Then we just wanna point you again to our mental lo. It's a really inexpensive product, and it will help you and your partner get on exactly the same page about what tasks are which partner's responsibilities make a game plan. It talks about how to actually split up that load so that you are not the only person carrying it and that you can go into moments of intimacy with your partner feeling less burdened, less weighed down. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes. All right, tip number three. So now we're going to move into. You're in the moment. The distracting thought is there.

Yeah. You've already done your best to try to set yourself up, but it's not just about setting yourself up, because, again.

That'S how our brain happens. Yeah, that's how our brains work. We cannot control our brains from thinking thoughts. So here's what usually happens. You're in the middle of having sex, you think of a distracting thought, and then you get frustrated at yourself for getting distracted. Maybe you feel angry, you're upset, you feel a sense of shame, you're embarrassed, you feel guilty. Like all these different feelings can come up about it. Right. And that ends up leading us down this distraction spiral. Instead of going down that spiral. What we want to encourage you to do is acknowledge the thought. It's exactly like the little image that Xander was sharing before. Like, don't jump into the stream and get carried away with the water. Just let. Let the water pass by. You watch it.

I see it. That's interesting. And I'm gonna let that one. I was about to say slide on by.

Sure. Slide on by.

That one. Float on by.

Yeah. It's really the fighting against our thoughts that ends up taking so much more time and space and energy. But if you can just let the thoughts be. And again, it's coming from this place of recognizing I have no control over you. There you are. I can't do anything about you. I could not have prevented you from showing up, so I'm just gonna let you be there. I know that this can feel a little weird sometimes, so I wanna give you, like, a really practical example. So here's what this will look like if you allow yourself to get carried away by the thought. So let's say you're having sex and the thought pops into your head that you have to go to a bridal shower this weekend. So here's what it might look like if you let yourself get carried away with that thought. Okay, I have that bridal shower this weekend. I can't believe I waited so long to look at the registry. I bet that most of the gifts have already been bought. Okay, well, if they are, then I guess maybe there's some way I can contribute to the honeymoon fund or something. Do they have one set up? I've got to go check in with them and ask if they have a link to that. I'm not sure if they do have that. Wait, what the hell? Why am I thinking about this honeymoon fund and the bridal shower in the middle of sex? Shouldn't I be present with my partner? I'm never present with my partner. Why is sex always like this? Why can't I just, like. See what I mean? Right?

This is why sex isn't very good for me.

You can go down a real rabbit hole and just take up so much time, so much energy. Get yourself so worked up by this versus. Okay, I'm having a thought about that bridal shower this weekend. I will circle back to that later.

Yeah, it could even be I'm having sex right now. There's literally nothing I can do about that right now. I'll come back to this when I can do something about it.

Yeah, so I like that act of actually naming the thought, like saying to yourself what the thought is. I'm thinking about the bridal shower. I'm thinking about taxes. I'm thinking about the laundry. There's a phrase like name it to tame it that I think can sort of apply here. It's just like, yeah, that's there, you're there. But again, you're not letting yourself go down that maddening distraction spiral. And even if you do, let's say you start to think a few more little thoughts, you can still stop yourself there and say, ah, okay, there's that distraction spiral. That Xander and Mesta were talking about. I'm going to put a little pause in that right now. All right, tip number four. This one kind of goes hand in hand with tip number three. So this one is to remind yourself of why you want to be present. Why is this something that's important to you? Why are you listening to this whole podcast episode about not getting distracted during sex?

Why are you even here?

Why are you even here on this earth?

Oh, get real, Meta.

No, don't think about that.

Don't think about that during sex. That's not. I mean, I don't know if it's a good or a bad thought, but, you know, it's likely to spawn a lot of other thoughts.

No, so don't think about your. Your motivations in the middle of sex while you're getting distracted. Like, think about this beforehand so that you can call upon that in the moment.

Yeah, just think about Xander and Vanessa's shame spiral.

Oh, boy.

No, don't do that. You said that a minute ago.

Xander and Vanessa is shame spiral.

You said that a little while ago. You're like, oh, yeah. You can name it and be like, oh, yeah. This is just like Vanessa and Xander shame spiral. You know, don't think about us explicitly during sex. Lantern.

Vanessa's patented shame spiral. Okay, so, no, what we want you to do right now is, like, take a moment to think about, why do you want to be present during sex? Why do you want to stop feeling so distracted? Because I think it's really powerful for us to tap into our sense of motivation. We very rarely think about the why. We think about the what we want to do or what we don't want to do, but we don't often think about the why. So what is it for you? Is it, I want to be more present during sex so I can fully connect with my partner? Is it, I want to be more present so I can experience more pleasure in my own body, have an orgasm, experience more intimacy, have more fun, have an escape. Like, whatever it is for you, take a moment to think about what your why is. And so then, in the moment when you find yourself having that distracting thought, try step number three first. Just acknowledge it, name it to tame it. Then kind of redirect yourself back to what is truly important for you, remind yourself of what that why is. And you can even. You could get a little sassy with yourself and sort of present it as a choice to yourself of, okay, I can keep thinking about that asshole who cut me off on the freeway, or I can enjoy finally getting a chance to be alone with my incredibly sexy partner. So you can be really gentle with yourself around it, or you can be kind of sassy. You can play around with the tone a little bit and see what lands more with you. But reminding yourself of your why is just such a powerful way to bring yourself back into the moment, to like reconnect with yourself and with your partner. And again, like, you can play around with the tone, but the general idea here is that you're not beating yourself up being like, you fucking idiot. There you go again, you know, you're being gentle with yourself and reminding yourself of like, okay, this is why I want to be present. This is why I want to be connected to myself, to my partner. That is just such a powerful way to bring yourself back into that moment and to really just stop those distractions in their track sex.

I feel like there's also a little bit of a tangent here as well, around.

Oh, we always got tangents around like.

But like in this one, around being present, there's sort of a maybe not tangent, but like a parallel element which is like, are you actually having enjoyable sex? Do you have a history of having enjoyable sex with the person you're having sex with? Because I can totally imagine that if you are having really one sided sex, if you don't know how to orgasm, if your partner is kind of of not very giving necessarily, then it must be so much easier to get distracted if you're not like, oh yeah, I want to be present to have this great sex. Like, I want to be present to have this sex that isn't very good. So like, why would I actually want to be present for that? Not saying that that is the problem, but I think that's a parallel issue that can really kind of feed into the distraction. Or even like, you didn't have very pleasurable sex for a long time and so your brain got really used to just, just going other places during sex. Maybe you're having more pleasurable sex now you've figured that out. But you've trained your brain to like, go somewhere else when you have sex.

Yeah, I mean, we did ask people on Instagram, what do you think are the reasons why you're getting distracted? And I do think that that's a powerful question for everybody listening to ask themselves. Sometimes we just get distracted by random thoughts. Like I've had really random thoughts come into my mind during sex, so I'm like, where did that come from? But oftentimes we're getting distracted for things that Make a lot of sense. So maybe it's what Xander was saying, that you're not having very pleasurable sex. Maybe you're even having painful sex. Maybe there's some sort of conflict or resentment with your partner. Maybe there's something going on with your kids that you need to address.

Maybe you need to rebalance the mental load in your relationship. That's a really good sign. Like, oh, I can't stop thinking about all my mental load tasks and my partner sure isn't thinking about them because they ain't doing shit.

Uh huh. Check out that mental load workbook in the show notes. We should have added this as a step, I guess. But this is another tip, is to like, be curious about your distractions because oftentimes they're there for a reason. They're trying to get your attention because it's something that's important and it needs some energy. So, all right, that's bonus tip number six right there. So get curious about your distractions and see if there's a lesson in there for you. All right. And I guess now we're gonna have to go backwards into step five or tip five. I know we just got kind of meta on you, so I wanted to bring us home with something super practical, super actionable.

Oh yeah, everyone can do this.

No thoughts, no feelings, no curiosity necessary.

You might have to think about it once in order to do it, but after that, maybe you don't.

So tip number five is to make eye contact with your partner. You know what, we should like really cue this one up as like the one second trick to banishing distractions.

Yeah, you know, we really should because this is rewinding things a bit. But early on, when Vanessa was building her business, before I was very involved, we consistently found that one of the most commonly searched things that was bringing people to Vanessa's really old website before we started selling courses and doing anything close to what we do now was like eye contact during sex. Somehow you had written a blog post or something about it. Vanessa was coming up as like the number one thing on Google and someone wrote eye contact during sex. And it was like, wow, there's a lot of people searching for this. Like, guess this is a thing.

Yeah. So I mean, the reason why eye contact works so well is that it's, it's very vulnerable. You actually would be surprised by how few people make eye contact during sex with their partner.

Yeah. Good luck getting distracted when you're staring at someone else.

Yes, exactly. Like, it just jolts you back into the moment and It's a really powerful reminder that there's another person there with you. A person who you very likely, like, care a lot about, hopefully. Well, you don't have to care about somebody to have sex with them.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But I know. I'm saying if you're finding yourself consistently distracted during sex, presumably it's someone you're consistently having sex with. Probably you have some level of care for them.

If it's consistent care for them as a human being, we can say that. But, yeah, I think when we get distracted, when we get up in our heads, it's just so easy for us to feel alone and cut off and we just. We retreat into ourselves. Right?

Yeah. Or it's like, I gotta fix this by myself, and therefore, I need to not look at my partner because I can't let them know that I'm distracted. I gotta kind of hide it from them. I gotta deal with this myself.

Yeah.

And you're not alone in pretty much any problem you're gonna face in this world. You are not alone. There's always someone who can be there with you. And it's usually. It just takes asking for a little help in order for that problem to seem a lot smaller.

Wow, that's sweet.

All right, so let's get into a couple listener questions then.

All right.

All right. First one is how to come back to feeling present without feeling shame about getting distracted. So you've already talked about this a little bit. They teed us up.

Yeah. So you do not want to send yourself down that shame spiral. Remember, you just want to start with acknowledging the thoughts as quickly as you can, because the earlier in the process that you can name them and pause them there, the less likely you are to go down into that spiral. But it may also help to come up with some sort of phrase beforehand that you can remind yourself of something like, it's okay to get distracted. It's normal to get distracted. I'm never gonna be able to prevent myself from ever getting distracted. Just some sort of short, to the point phrase where you can remind yourself that this is normal. It happens to everyone. It's okay.

Yeah. I think that's super powerful because when you say without feeling shame about getting distracted, I think implicit in that statement is this idea that you shouldn't ever get distracted. And so it's not about not feeling shame. It's about breaking down this idea that somehow you should never get distracted, that you should never have a certain type of thoughts, except you should always have a certain other type of thoughts. It doesn't really make any sense. So if you can just convince yourself, oh, yeah, this is going to happen no matter what, it kind of takes the shame out of the equation because you're like, oh, yeah, this normal thing is happening. That's normal. What do I do now?

Yeah.

All right, next question is. I feel like my husband gets frustrated because my arousal takes longer when I can't focus, but feeling his frustration just makes it even more difficult. He says he's not frustrated, but his non verbals make me feel rushed or stressed. When I feel like he wants to rush through it, I feel less important and unloved. He said before that it feels unbalanced because my pleasure takes more time.

Ooh, a lot to unpack here. I feel like we could make a whole episode out of this one question.

Yeah, I kind of had, like, a response and then the very last sentence, and I was like, oh, buddy, don't say that. That's messed up.

Yeah, it's fucked up for him to say that it's unbalanced because this person's pleasure takes more time.

Yeah, I hate to bring it to you. Life is unbalanced, buddy.

Life's unbalanced. It doesn't matter whose pleasure takes more or less time. Like, you don't want to be having a fucking stopwatch during sex, where you're each, like, keeping track of exactly how much time you're taking up and you need to get it down to the second. Like, what kind of sex would that be? That's so bleh. That's terrible, right?

It's like professional chess.

Yeah.

Sex. All right, I got my five seconds. Your five seconds. My five seconds. Click, click.

It's terrible. So I don't want to assume the gender of the person who wrote this question initially, but if it is a woman, then I think it's really important to recognize that the way that men and women are socialized to have sex, it highly, highly prioritizes male pleasure. So of course, men tend to get pleasure much faster because we're doing the things that feel more pleasurable to their bodies. Right. If you have not heard us go on a rant about this before, definitely go over to Instagram vanessamarintherapy and watch our orgasm highlight because we talk about this a lot there. So bottom line there, screw him. It does not matter who takes up more time and attention or energy. What matters is that you both have pleasurable experiences because you both deserve to have sex that is for you and enjoyable for you. So let's take that Part out of it with him getting frustrated because arousal takes longer. And it sounds like he's saying that he's not frustrated, but the person is saying like his non verbal. So one thing I would say is, could you just describe to him what are the specific non verbals that you're picking up on? Because you may not be correct about that. Like, you may tell your partner, like, oh, you have like a weird look on your face, or you're doing this thing and your partner will be like, oh, that's how I feel.

Pleasure.

Yeah. So it might be that you're reading the signals incorrectly. And it also might be because you have your own internal insecurity about like, ooh, I'm not supposed to take up time or not supposed to be too much work or anything like that. So you may be over interpreting certain things.

Yeah, I have an idea as well of what might be going on if we're looking at this in a gendered way. Because I know I have felt this. This is a really easy way to think about it if you don't communicate very much about what each of your experiences are during sex. But I think that I know for myself, I have felt frustration or worry around my erection when we're having sex. And it's sort of taking a while to get started, or it's sort of seeming like we're needing to pause or take a break to kind of get back into the moment. Because there's this feeling as a man that you can get of sort of being the sexual gatekeeper. In order for us to have sex. I need to be hard. And in order for me to be hard, I need this or that or whatever. And then if all of a sudden you are no longer hard or you feel yourself losing that erection, like it's a challenging feeling to have in the moment. It's hard to describe, but. But you can feel yourself losing it. And there's sort of these short moments where it's like, okay, I could maybe get back on track or try to make myself come really fast. And it's just this battle of like, well, do I kind of slow down and just let myself lose this thing and start over, or do I try to get it done? It's just. It can feel like a really impossible position to be in. And of course, the backdrop against all that is that you are assuming that you must be hard in order to have sex. The reality is, if you talk about it, if you talk about what else can you do, There are all kinds of things that you can do. You don't need to have an erection in order for your partner to get pleasure. But if you never talked about it, it's really easy to just think that's the only way it goes. If I lose this thing, it's over. And then we got no chance.

Yeah. The last thing I would say here too, is that it can also be really beneficial to tell your partner, here's what I need from you in order for me to feel comfortable. Like, I want you to say these things or have this body language or do this action, like, teach them, you know, set them up for success about what you need in order to feel present and not distracted in the moment.

All right, next question. Final question. Should I tell my partner if I'm feeling distracted in the moment?

Interesting. So here's my thought. I would say first, try to see if you can tame those thoughts on your own. So try out all of the tips that we mentioned and see if you can get a little bit more hold on your distraction yourself. If you're still in the moment, this is gonna happen. Sometimes despite your best efforts, sometimes you are just going to get too distracted and not be able to come back from that. And if that happens, then, yes, definitely tell your partner. And I think this can be like a really bonding and intimate moment too. I know sometimes a lot of us, we don't wanna tell our partner. Cause it feels embarrassing. We've gone down that shame spiral. Now we're ashamed.

Or like, my partner's gonna take it the wrong way. Way, they're gonna think I'm not into them or something like that.

So I think here's like, the phrase that you use with your partner is to tell them, hey, I'm feeling really distracted right now. And I'm really struggling with this because I so badly want to be present in the moment with you. I want to feel connected with you. So it's like you're acknowledging the distraction, but you're also couching it in that language of what your intentions are. So I think that helps your partner recognize, like. Like, oh, my partner wants to be here with me. They want to connect with me. And they're just struggling to do that.

Yeah. I think another scenario where you may want to be a little more upfront or just kind of continuously checking in with your distractions is if you are in a dynamic already where your partner has sort of like accused you of not being there fully or expressed worries of like, hey, what's going on? Or it seems like you're not really into having sex with Me. And you're coming to realize you. Oh, I'm really distracted. Then I would say, yeah, talk about it. Bring it up. Think of a safe way that you can say something in the moment so that they know whatever I'm seeing on you. This is distraction. It's not like you thinking about somebody else or you not being into me. I think that would be a scenario where. Yeah, you would want to talk about it more often, because we hear about that a lot from people. Or like, my partner's telling me that it doesn't feel like I'm there with them and I don't know what to do.

Yeah.

So, yeah, don't hide that.

All right, well, you know what? We added a tip number six in the middle of recording, and I actually have tip number seven, too.

Oh, you're getting more than you bargained for, people.

Seven for the price of five, which was already free. But another great tip for navigating distractions is actually dirty talk.

Oh, so kind of like eye contact. If you are actively talking, if you're actively giving dirty whispers, it's gonna be real hard to be distracted.

So, yeah, it can be a great way to just eliminate distractions. You kind of take the space away from them to even be there in the first place. It's a great way to bring yourself back into the moment. And it's just really hot and sexy.

Hell, yeah.

Have some dirty talk in the bedroom. So we just released our brand spanking dirty talk guide. So we will put a link to that in the show notes to check it out. It is such a fun guide. I'm really excited about this because I will confess that I was not very good at dirty talk for a very long time. And I tell a little bit of my story in the guide, but we wanted to make this very practical. So we have worksheets for you to help you identify the specific words that you and your partner like. We have have hundreds of examples. So many examples that you can just steal word for word. We even have troubleshooting tips. It's just. It's such a great guide. So we will put a link to check that out in the show notes. And we will also put links to some of the other courses that we talked about, the Mental Load Workbook. And then we have some other courses that are about helping you feel more excited about the sex that you're having, like the 30 day sex challenge, our Foreplay guides, and the Sex Position Playbook. So we will put all of those resources for you in the show notes. Make sure to check them out.

All right, well, that's it for today's episode of Pillow Talks. Thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week when we talk about how to get your partner to open up.

Well, kind of opening up their legs.

Yeah, I was about to say something much more vulgar, and I'm glad you jumped in. Thank you.

I know exactly what you were thinking about. No, it is not that kind of opening up. It is emotional opening up. Yes, but, you know, sometimes emotional opening up can lead to opening up those legs, too.

Who the hell knows? You'll just have to listen and find out.

See you next week.

Sam.