EPISODE 54: Ask Us Anything Part 2: MORE Of Your Burning Questions, Answered

And I'm like, I don't want to do therapy. I don't want to do this again. I don't want to go down this road. I don't want to have another breakup. 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. I gotta fess up to something today. I was wrong. People are interested in learning about us.

Really? Wow.

So we. A couple of months ago, we recorded our first Ask us Anything episode. And I will admit, I was not on board with the idea at first. I think I had to be convinced. I was like, people already know everything about us. They don't want to have a whole episode about.

Or they just don't want to know anything about it.

Or they just don't care.

We want to listen to you. We want to listen to everything you say about all these topics, but we want to know nothing about you.

I don't know. That's what I kind of thought.

I like my advice. Faceless.

Faceless.

I don't know.

That's creepy.

Anonymous advice.

But of course, that episode ended up being one of our most pretty popular episodes, so I stand corrected. You guys want to know about us? I've got to get over my weird hang up about sharing about my personal life, even though I do it every day on Instagram already.

Well, I mean, two things that. That made me think of. I think we've been wrong about pretty much all of our most popular episodes.

That's true.

Most of our most popular episodes, we're like, oh, this seems like kind of a weird topic. Or like, all right, like, we'll do this, but, like, it's just gonna be one of those, like, okay episodes. And then it gets a ton of downlo woods.

Well, okay. But butt stuff. We knew butt stuff was gonna be popular.

Yeah, that's true. We did not think that the how to Kiss episode.

Oh, yeah.

Would be so popular. We also didn't really know that our child free episode was gonna just knock the socks off of anything that we'd done.

Oh, yeah.

But second thing, speaking of, you know, asking us anything and Learning more about us. I feel like this just. It gets back to you. And as you were building this business, it took a long time before you shifted from kind of like psychotherapist to professional psycho to, you know, to. To be our couple on Instagram. And we share a lot of stuff about. About our lives.

Like, you know, earlier, my mind is like, when I role played how to wipe yourself after you pee. That was the moment on Instagram where I was like, I cannot believe I'm doing this. This is my job. I'm wipe. I'm sitting on the toilet. I had pants on, but I'm like, I'm sitting on the. Wiping my vulva with toilet paper for a quarter of a million people.

Yeah. I mean, or. Or the times that we've acted out horrible sex positions that we would never recommend in real life just because we think it's funny.

Well, now we've got part two. So we're doing part two of our Ask us anything series. Maybe it'll be a series now. So these are questions that you guys sent in from Instagram. So if you are not already, make sure you're following us at Vanessa Marin therapy. If you're like, what the hell are they talking about? We're wiping themselves in sex positions. You gotta join the fun on Instagram and watch stories every day because you're never know.

Yeah, you never know what you'll miss if you don't watch it every day.

Before we get any further, we just want to say an extra special thank you to our returning podcast sponsor, Storyworth. We really appreciate their support of pillow talks. They help you share stories and memories so you can give the dad in your life a meaningful gift that you'll both cherish for years to come with StoryWorth and save $10 on your first purchase when you go to StoryWorth.comPillow all.

Right, so speaking of not wanting to miss anything, I don't want to miss our review of the week because look.

At that transition now that it is.

Hidden in our little notes document. You know, it's hidden for my surprise. It's easy also for me to skip over it. So, all right, we are going to expand our review of the week. I am going to find out for the very first time what this says. A podcast every man should listen to.

Wait, you have to look at the username. We don't usually say these, but it's cornbread.

Cornbread.

Which if we're doing an ask us anything episode, I have to say cornbread is one of my favorite things to Eat.

Babe, nobody asked you that.

I know, but I just want to share. I love cornbread.

Vanessa does love cornbread. The real question, though, is there. Is there a cornbread emoji? And I think the answer is no. There's a horn.

Anna.

That's a travesty, though. It is. That's a travesty. Is there a biscuit emoji? Because that's Vanessa's other second favorite thing. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a biscuit either, which is kind of messed up. Let's write into Apple or who's in charge of emojis?

The emoji makers.

The emoji mafia. All right, I'm going to read this now. This podcast brings this guy so much peace of mind and understanding. I can't remember the episode, but Vanessa asked for more hetero men to voice their views on here. So here is one. Banana and eggplant. I like redundancy there, in case you weren't sure. A little bit of both. Two possible dicks. Okay. Before listening to this podcast, Microphone emoji. I thought my wife and my sexual appetite. There's a picture of a chef. Was so different. And I was totally lost on what to do next. Luckily, I discovered this podcast and learned. Okay, there's emojis. A man and a woman learning, and then one person is graduating. Only one person graduated. Luckily, I discovered this podcast and learned that our struggles are not that different than others. Amazing work, you guys, and thank you so much for what you do. Keep the.

Wait, you're not. You don't remember this? It's an inside joke from our own damn podcast.

Keep the house of teeth. Come. Coming.

You don't remember?

I don't remember.

It's not the house.

Oh, my God. What is it?

It's a shed.

Oh, the shed of tooth. The shed of tooth. Oh, yeah. Keep the shred of truth. What? What was that front? Was that like a myth busting episode where there's a. There's a shred of truth to this one? All right, thank you. Wow.

My idioms.

This guy. Thank you, cornbread. Thank you, Cornbread, for being in on all these inside jokes. You are more in inside jokes than I am. I think this is our 54th episode, so, you know, it's a lot to remember. It's a lot to remember. So thank you.

Thank you for this delightful review. We do a review of the week giveaway every week, so if you write us a review on Apple podcasts, thank you so much because it really helps the podcast grow. And reach new people. And every week, we pick a review at random, and you are our winner. And you get to come over to us on Instagram at Vanessa Marin Therapy, ask us a question, and we will shoot you back a personalized coaching session as our way of saying thank you.

So bring it, cornbread.

Can't wait to see what question you're gonna ask. All right, so let's get into it. We've got a list of questions to go through. We are answering these off the cuff. First one, what do we fight about? So I think there's a misconception that we never fight, because we do. We have a lot of fun on Instagram, and we do love each other. We enjoy each other's company.

We do love each other.

We love each other, and we like each other, but we absolutely fight like we're a normal couple. We have a lot of fights, for sure. A common thing that we fight about is time. We both have different perceptions of time. Like, I can get a little too anal about being on time, or, like, I like to be, like, one to two minutes ahead of time. That's on time. To me, Xander has a more lackadaisical relationship with time, and, you know, he likes to be on time as well. But, like, I think you would say on time is, like, up to five minutes past the start time, maybe.

I mean, we also may have a disagreement, a more meta disagreement about this disagreement in general. I think that we are a lot closer than Vanessa realizes. But that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. Maybe we used to have much more of a difference, and we used to fight about this.

We. We stress about, like, leaving the house. We. I think we just posted on Instagram this weekend, somebody else was saying, like, they have a continuous argument about, like, who's the one waiting for the other person to get out of the house. And I was like, oh, my God, we do that. It's like, I'm ready. No, I was ready. Well, I was waiting for you. No, I was waiting for you. It's kind of ridiculous.

I mean, getting two people out of the house is challenging and harder than one person. Harder than one person.

Other things that we fight about are I have a low frustration tolerance. So if something isn't going my way or, like, something unexpected happens, it's pretty easy for me to get rattled in the moment. And I can get frustrate. I get kind of shut down, maybe a little cold or snappy. Like, I tune Xander out. And I think the challenge for us is so I'm somebody Who. I react to things in the moment quickly. Like, I kind of have a short fuse. I don't want to say fuse because it's not like I get explosive or angry. Like, I get very internal. Like, my frustration goes internal.

Instead of your fuse being like a bomb detonating, you have a short fuse to, like, it implodes.

It implodes me. So the challenge between us is that, like, I react to something quickly, but then I can often let it go pretty quickly as well. And Xander will get rattled by me being rattled. Like, Xander's much more easygoing than I am day to day. He has a higher frustration tolerance.

Or it'll be like, okay, this isn't working anymore. What's the next best. Yeah, what's the next best approach? And I'll just, like, switch gears and maybe later be like, yeah, that was annoying that that original thing didn't work. I don't get thrown off in the moment. Whereas Vanessa gets very thrown off in the moment. And then we butt heads about that because I'm like. She's, like, really upset or disappointed, and I'm like, we're in the middle of this. Like, let's just. We're just gonna move on to the next thing, and we can. We can voice our frustration about this later, but, like, we're on the clock right now. Let's do this.

Yeah. So I think you tend to be a bit more positive in the moment of, like, trying to redirect me or, like, get me out of my funk, but then you, like, hold onto it for longer. It can be harder for you sometimes to let go because I've rattled you a little bit. So it usually is initiated by me, but we both can have different timelines around it.

Yeah. And then the other most common fight or disagreement is about. It's a physical thing. It is about.

Oh, I don't know what you're gonna say.

Bumping. Bumping each other.

Oh.

Or me bumping you. Vanessa is small.

That hasn't happened in a while. Really?

It hasn't? No.

You know what it's morphed into how tightly you screw the lid on that fucking water bottle that's sitting right in front of you.

I can't help myself. I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to tighten it tight now. It's. Yeah. Okay, so Vanessa gets a little passive aggressive about that. She was washing the dishes, I think, yesterday, and she.

Wait, wait, hold on. I have to back up and explain this whole thing.

Okay.

Okay, so. Okay. This used to be a Big issue in our. I'm very small. I'm five feet tall. I was picked on my entire childhood for being tiny. And so Xander is, like, kind of a clumsy person. Maybe not, like, entirely aware of his body at all times. And so he bumps into me on a pretty decent frequency. Like, not anything wildly egregious or anything like that, but you'd bump into me a lot. And for some reason, it just really triggered these feelings of feeling, like, small and unimportant and, like, kind of being, like, pushed around and people picking me up when I didn't want to be picked up and messing with me because they were teasing me for being so short.

And so. Yeah. And so because of that, Vanessa also is hyper attuned to her space. And she will, like, box you out like a basketball player. Like, she claims her space. Like, Vanessa. Vanessa takes the charge.

Oh, yeah.

Like, we are, if we are going into basketball terminology. And so it exacerbates it because I guess my perspective is, like, you're sharing a small space, like two people, maybe, like, in a small kitchen or something. Like, sometimes you bump into each other, and that kind of just is what it is. And Vanessa's like, I'm standing my ground. Like, how dare you bump it. Like, oh, you stepped on me. Ouch.

It would not be that intense a reaction. It would be another internalized reaction. Like, I would feel I would get that swell of emotion coming up. But that actually hasn't been a big deal that much in recent years. But it has morphed into what I was saying earlier. Like, we have these nice water bottles with screw top lids, and Xander screws the shit out of these lids.

Anyway, I just screw it. All I do is I screw it. It's not like a matter of intense.

But I can't unscrew it. And it brings up the same sorts of feelings for me of being, like, small and inconsequential and, like. And it makes me feel powerless, too, because it's like. So what you were referencing earlier is yesterday I was washing the dishes and I was trying to wash that bottle and. And trying and trying and, like, actually hurting my hands to unscrew it. And I can't. And so I just feel helpless and small and dumb. And so then I, yes, I did get a little passive aggressive. And I was like, I can't wash this. You screwed it too tight.

And you didn't even say that I screwed it. You were just like, I can't wash this if I can't open it. And so I Just quietly got up and I opened it.

But I will say the ironic thing about this is that I don't screw things tightly enough. And so they.

Or ever or at all. Oh, my God.

I'm very guilty of, like, putting a jar in the refrigerator with the lid barely on, and so Xander will, like, grab something by the lid, and it just goes flying everywhere. So, you know, we just each have our own things. But, yes, short answer to that question is, we definitely fight. All right, so I have another question for you. What was your reaction to finding out about my interest in sex therapy?

This is a really interesting question. I've reflected on this a lot over the years as I've gotten more comfortable myself with my own sexuality. I thought it was pretty cool. I was into it because I was like, well, this is a cool thing for my girlfriend to do. It's a cool thing to tell my friends, like, they're gonna think I'm cool for dating someone that wants to be a sex therapist. I think that I was a little nervous myself. I wasn't really. I didn't really give myself permission to actually feel that way, because the reality was I thought it was really cool that that's what you wanted to do. I didn't feel like the most adventurous person sexually. And I think early on I really assumed, oh, she must be, like, super kinky. She must want to do. She must do everything. And I. I don't know if you've ever told the story. I'm not going to tell it now because at the very least, least it's in our book, which will be coming out next February, I believe. So I don't want to spoil it. But early on, I kind of had the sense that, like, oh, I needed to step up my sexual game. And, you know, in reality, that that wasn't true. Like, just because somebody wants to be a sex therapist doesn't mean that they do everything. Nothing's off the table. But, yeah, I mean, I wasn't the most confident person sexually. I wasn't, like, not confident, but I. I think that I didn't really want to think about, like, my own sexuality and the. The sex that we were having and really talk about that very much. So. We kind of talked in theory about, like, other people or what and whatnot. And it was only in the last couple of years that I think I've really leaned into it in terms of, like, yeah, let's talk about us.

Well, that sort of leads into another question that we got, which is, is there anything you won' Sexually So you sort of talked about that. I think that's the impression that a lot of people get, that we just have the most wildly kinky, no limits, like, everything's on the table. We do it all kind of sex.

Like the. We have a. We have a sex dungeon in the basement that's actually bigger than our house.

And nothing wrong with a sex dungeon, but we absolutely have our own, like, boundaries and preferences in our sex life. Like, there are plenty of things that we're not really interested in doing. I mean, we're really clear about. We don't shame each other or anyone for that matter, for having any sort of, like, curiosities or interests. But we just each know ourselves and each other pretty well, and we have ideas of, like, yeah, that's just not really something I'm interested in doing. We've also tried a lot of stuff and realized, like, yeah, no, I'm fine not doing that again. Like, that's okay. But we definitely do have things that we don't do sexually. I mean, I think our sex life is way less kinky than most people think it is.

Oh, definitely is. And we also definitely don't have a sex dungeon.

We don't. Speaking of which, though, favorite place in the house to have sex.

The bed. Our bedroom. In the bed. It's that simple for me. But Vanessa maybe has a different opinion.

Okay, if we're saying favorite place, like, I think it's just the bed. It's the most comfortable and the most options and all of that. But I am much more open to having sex in different places. Like, I don't. You are a creature of comfort. Like, you want to be comfortable when you're having sex, and I'm like, whatever. On the stairs, on the floor. I don't care. Usually you, like, you have sex on the floor for, like, 30 seconds, and then you're like, this sucks. My back hurts. You know?

Yeah.

So it's. It's not often practical, but I would do it much more often outside of the bedroom. But you're pretty. Like, we'll start getting going, like, on the sofa or in the kitchen or somewhere, and you're like, let's go up to the bedroom. And I'm like, okay. Yeah.

You know, I guess in my experience and as a. As a penis owner, what I can say is I don't know if it's like this for all. All penis owners, but it is much harder to maintain an erection when you are standing up and moving around. It is, like, significantly harder. I mean, that's why Outside of, like, pubescent boys. I didn't. Not. Yeah, I got that. Right. Right. Not pre pubet. Yeah. Boys going through puberty, like, for the most part, you're not walking around with a raging boner. Like, it just doesn't happen. And. And that's because when you're standing up, it's kind of hard to keep it that way. So I don't know, there's an element of it which is sort of being comfortable and relaxed helps you get hard and stay hard. But, yeah, I could. I could. The other element is our dogs. I think, like, maybe if I were. If I could separate the two things, you know, it's like, oh, we just had a vacation without the dogs. Then, yeah, you know, then it's game on, babe.

All right, I'm ready. Okay, the next question is a really good one. How has the intensity of entrepreneurship affected your relationship? How do you manage that? Work, life balance. So working with your partner, who you're also, like, in a relationship with and spend a lot of time with, like, it is not for the faint of heart.

Nope.

I would not recommend it to most people. Like, it, definitely. It's challenging to have these two different roles, you know, that you're having with the same person. So this is something. I mean, we've been working together since 2016. Kind of wild to say that it's been a long time.

Oh, yeah.

But, yeah, we've been working together for a while, so we've had the chance to kind of figure this out. And also, Xander did have a consulting job on the side for, like, years of that. So it was a business?

A consulting business?

Yes.

I had more than one client business.

So it was kind of a gradual transition into working with each other, like, fully full time. But I will say, like, one of the main things is you have to be able to spend a lot of time together.

Yes.

And I think that's a strength of ours, is, like, we spend a lot of time together and we don't get sick of each other. We don't get too snappy, and we're good about taking alone time when we can and, like, doing our own separate things. But if you're not the kind of person who can spend a lot of. A lot of time with your partner, I definitely would not encourage going into business with them as well. And we also have to put a lot of work into our communication. So it's like, not only do we have to learn how to communicate as romantic partners, we also have to learn how to communicate as business partners. Those are very different kinds of communication, and we have to learn to communicate about when we're in those separate roles. So we do a lot of talking pretty much all day, every day. And there are definitely times where I feel like, oh, my God, we have to talk about everything. We've got to dissect this, and we've got to process that, like, a lot. But I think we're both, you know, we've both developed, I would say, excellent communication skills.

I think so.

And we're both really committed to continuing to be better communicators. So that helps a lot too.

Yeah, we're gonna have to put together a course someday. Or do, like, do a group. Do, like, do like a mastermind. Like, lead a mastermind or a group for, like, couples who work together.

I'm very curious if they're, like, how many of you are there out there?

Yeah, I mean, this is definitely a niche. A niche.

Message us on Instagram. If you work with your partner and you'd be interested in learning more about, like, how to do it well or.

Being in, like, a support group around it or something. I mean, a mastermind, I think, is the proper word for it.

What will we call it? Like, sexy business partner? Let's get down to business. But, I mean, it is challenging, but I would not take it back for anything. I mean, I love being able to work with you, and I think that the business that we've built, especially in the last two years, is really, really special. And I love that we get to be like, a real couple talking to other couples about, like, yeah, this kind of shit happens, and we go through it too, and here's what we've learned, and here's what we're still struggling with. So I really like it.

Yeah. Okay. But how do we manage work? Life balance? I would say a couple things or two to the two main things that come up for me. One, we're really clear with each other about sort of our priorities around work and life.

And we.

We are entrepreneurs. We own our own business because we want our business to support our life for us, like, living our life, traveling, having fun, doing what we want to do, like, that is the most important thing. And so we have built a business. We intentionally built a business that supports that. And so I think that we are on the same page when it comes to, like. Like, self care always comes first. Like, you know, if we want to take a vacation, like, we take a vacation, and then we figure out, like, okay, are we gonna. Are we not gonna work at all? Are we gonna work some of the days that we're on this trip or whatever? You know, Like, I think the. The work kind of comes second to our life. So, yeah, I think that's good, because I think, Mo, you know, as an entrepreneur, that can be really hard when you tie your value into the success of your business, and that's, like, the only way that you see yourself. So I think that that's super important. And the other thing is that we. We have grown a team. Like, you know, we started out just doing everything ourselves, and we definitely could have continued to go down that path, because then you're not responsible for other people. You don't have to develop as a leader. You just get to be a sort of solo or. There's not a good word for a bipreneur or two.

Duopeneur.

Duo preneur. But, yeah, you know, we really invested in building a team in terms of, you know, both, like, the financial investment of hiring other people to take stuff off of our plate and also the investment in ourselves and learning how to actually lead a team and not just. Not just run a business.

I think one of the challenges of work life balance is when you have a business together and you're in a relationship. Relationship together is it's a lot harder to leave work at work. Like, we don't have that experience of leaving an office and going home. And I think when we had separate jobs, we would spend, like, a little bit of time checking in. Like, how was your day? Oh, I had this meeting. This went on, and then we'd stop talking about it. But I think it's a lot harder for us to create that separation because mostly because we love this business so freaking much. We get really excited, so we'll be like, you know, watching tv, and I'll say, like, oh, my God. I just had an idea of something we could do, you know, so we end up talking about work a lot. I think we could get a little bit better about trying to, like, make a bit of a boundary, but that's.

Why I try to talk about surfing all the time. Babe.

Somebody sent us a meme on Instagram or. No, it was on a TV show.

It was like a date. It was like a dating.

Yeah. People who are. People who are like, surfers only ever want to talk about surfing.

Oh, yeah. Some woman's like, oh, I stopped dating surfers because all they wanted to do is talk about surfing.

It's true.

And I was like, it's true. I could talk about surfing all day, every day.

But yeah, we could stand to have some better boundaries around not talking about work quite so often. Before we go any further, we just want to tell you a little bit more about Storyworth. So with Father's Day coming up, this is such a great gift to give to your dad. So we mentioned a couple of episodes ago that we got both of my parents signed up. We had to test it out beforehand to make sure we liked it before we would recommend it to you guys. So we had to try it out to make sure that we liked it before we would recommend them on the podcast. And it has been so freaking cute just getting them started. The first funny thing that happened was my dad really got curious about if he could send voice memos over and somebody could type them up for him. He recently has learned how to do the voice to text feature and he got voice to text confused with voice memos. So I got these pretty hysterical and really adorable voice memos from him. Like talking slowly, trying to figure out, like, can I send this to Storyworth? It was very adorable, but it's been really sweet because every week he gets sent a new question by Storyworth. So if you haven't heard of them before, this is how they work. They send out a prompt to your loved one once you get them signed up. And at the end of the year, you get this really beautiful book with all of the questions, the stories that they share, photos even, and it's just this amazing keepsake that the whole family can share for generations. So I've been able to get this little sneak peek at my dad's progress throughout the weeks. He's been very diligent about answering his questions. He really seems to love it and it's just adorable to see these stories come through my email of like, you know, his experiences of childhood and what his mom was like and his favorite recipes and his favorite toys as a kid. Just some really cute things. So we're really excited to be able to recommend this. Especially with Father's Day around the corner. I know most of us really struggle to come up with something creative and unique. I know my dad has gotten socks many, many times for Father's Day and he's pretty sick of socks by this point. So we just want to encourage you to give your dad the most meaningful gift this Father's Day Storyworth. And right now, for a limited time, you'll save $10 on your first purchase when you go to StoryWorth.com pillow that's S T O R Y W O R-T H.com pillow to save $10 on your first purchase. StoryWorth.com pillow all right, the next question is, did we ever struggle with our sexual compatibility in the beginning?

So we have not right in the beginning, but we did later.

We have an episode about having sex with somebody new for the first time where we talk about our first time together. So you can go back and check that one out if you're curious. But I think we had pretty good chemistry at the beginning. There weren't any huge red flags or like, ooh, this is not working. But it also wasn't jaw droppingly incredible from the beginning. And I think that's something for us that has been so important to share that, like, we really think that chemistry can be created. Chemistry can be a slow burn. Like, it was great from the beginning, but, like, I think what it's grown into now is way better.

Yeah. These last couple years, really something else.

So I think it's so important for us to normalize, like, not having immediate chemistry with somebody. Like, it just doesn't always happen. But I mean, the other thing about compatibility is that I think a lot of people think that in order to be compatible, you have to be in perfect alignment with stuff. And, like, we just don't think that's true. Like, we're different people, we have different interests. I mean, you just heard us talking about our preferences for where we have sex. Like, that is an incompatibility, but it's not a deal breaker. It's not something that causes any, you know, significant issues in our relationship. It's just like, yeah, we're two different people. We have two different. Different experiences. So I think that's another important thing to normalize. And yeah, you were saying that we've had some. We've had ups and downs in our compatibility too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, from a compatibility perspective, I think in just in terms of what we were doing and enjoying it, like, we were very compatible in the beginning. I think that. God, I can't even remember the timeline anymore, but probably in like year one through three of our relationship, I would say we started to struggle with some compatibility issues when it came to our desire for frequency.

Yeah.

And a lot of that was just because, like, life was happening. And at least for me, I did not know how to deal with it. I was really busy, I was really stressed. I was not taking care of myself physically or emotionally, and my desire for sex just plummeted. And we also didn't really know how to talk about it in a effective way. So, yeah, we definitely Struggled with compatibility in that respect.

All right. Do you have a morning routine?

Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, if I'm surfing, yes, I do.

Um, it's surfing. That's morning routine.

I mean, I wake up most mornings. I mean, yeah, things have changed now that we have moved, and it's. I don't have to drive an hour to get to the surf. Um, I can actually. Don't need to wake up to an alarm most mornings. Wake up up around 6 when the sun comes up, and take the dogs out to go to the bathroom, feed them, grab my little surf smoothie, and I hop in the car.

And for me, my morning routine is taking Maggie, our pug, on a walk on the beach. That's been our routine the last two months. When we've been in this rental, I always take her for a walk in the morning. That's just, like, my best way to start the day.

It's just like now you might always. You might always have to do the beach.

I do love these beach walks, man. It is really nice. Oh, she loves it. She loves it.

And you might be wondering, we have another dog. He doesn't come because he is older and just really does not. He hates walking.

He's always hated it his entire life. But, yeah, I think that for me, getting some fresh air, it's my chance to exchange voice notes with good friends, watch Maggie being a little ridiculous, silly thing on the beach, and get my body moving. Those are really important for me.

All right, I got one for you. Now, Vanessa, how often is sex the topic when we're hanging out with friends or when you are hanging out with friends?

I mean, probably every time we hang out. Yeah, I think it comes up at least once. I think, for, you know, for good reason. Like, our friends enjoy being able to talk about this stuff openly. They enjoy being able to share what's going on in their lives and ask for advice. A lot of times it's just asking us about how the business is going and what project we're working on. But, I mean, it's like, it's just a fun topic. Does everybody want to talk about it all the time?

Yeah. I think our friends have always have realized from very early on that they can. They feel very free speaking with Vanessa, and I guess, me, by extension, they feel very free to talk about sex and even, like, their own stuff. Yeah, their own stuff that's coming up, which is awesome. I think that's really cool. I think that's really cool. I think that's. That's why Vanessa is awesome.

Oh, thank you. You're welcome.

All right, Heavy hitter. Now, do either of you go to individual therapy?

Why don't you answer this one first?

Yes. I have been in individual therapy throughout our in and out of it throughout our relationship. I currently am in it right now. Vanessa and I have also been in couples therapy on and off throughout our relationship. We are not currently right now.

Yeah. I have been in individual therapy on and off through most of my life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family. That's very pro therapy. And also I had to do a lot of therapy to become a therapist.

Yeah.

Legally a lot of therapy. So I went through. I did that. I guess I'll be brutally honest here. I was in therapy recently. I've had found a new therapist and had been working. Working with her for a little while and was really excited about the work that we were doing. And I had a pretty bad therapist breakup. I won't go into all the details of it, I guess, but.

Bad breakup?

Yeah. We had to stop working together due to us moving up here, and it was really hard and really hard. I'll be okay. I'm just gonna be totally honest here. Like, I'm feeling a little anti therapy right now. Not in general. Not for everybody. Like, yeah. I mean, people reach out to us on Instagram, and every day I'm like, recommending therapy. I think therapy as a whole is a great and wonderful thing that everybody should do at least once in their lives. But I just keep going deeper. I'm like, okay, this is now my third really difficult therapist breakup. And it's been hard. It's been really hard. It's really hard to, like, put yourself out there and be honest and form this relationship and start doing all this vulnerable work, and it's like a relationship, like a breakup. I'm calling it a breakup. So right now, I'm feeling in a pretty tender spot, and, like, I don't want to do therapy. And I'm like, I don't want to do therapy. I don't want to do this again. I don't want to go down this road. I don't want to have another breakup. So I'm just sitting in that right now, and I will need a little time to process that. I know I will go back to therapy at some point. I value it. I think it's important, but I am having to process my feelings about it, and it's a little bit tough right now. Oh, okay. Big question that came up next was, tell us about Living in Berlin. Why? What did you do there? Why did you move back? Yeah, I guess we haven't really ever told our full Berlin story, so I'll give the quick recap.

Okay.

Basically it was. We were living in San Francisco for almost 10 years when we first met. We met in San Francisco and the city was just really starting to change. We wasn't feeling like home anymore and we wanted to do something different. And, and that was sort of at the point where we were thinking, like, I guess we're not gonna have kids. So we really wanted to do something different. And we had visited Berlin three or four times at that point, like, had really fallen in love with the city just as tourists. And we kept going back for longer and longer, like six weeks. And then we spent a whole summer there. And we were finally like, let's just pull the fricking trigger and move there. We were never anticipating that it was gonna be a permanent move. We just thought, you know, let's go there for like a year or two.

Yeah, I think we said one to two years. We ended up doing two years and a half years.

Yeah, two and a half years.

So we actually made it longer than we.

Yeah.

Than we originally planned for or anticipated. It was also right around the time that Vanessa was starting to transition from being purely a one on one psychotherapist into building online courses. Online courses. So at that time I had been working at Google and I was just starting to feel burned out with that job with, you know, working in tech, working in a corporate HR role. And so it was sort of this nice moment of, you know, I expressed to Vanessa, hey, I'm just, I'm really feeling burnt out. I can't stop thinking about Berlin and wanting to go back. Even though we just spent three months there. And Vanessa was like, all right, let's, let's do it. Like, you can quit your job, I'll cover you. You can take some time off, I'll cover you. Because you covered me when I went to grad school. And that was kind of how we did it. So I went there without a job. I was to. I was going to play around with some music production because I DJed at the time. That was one of the other reasons we love Berlin for the electronic music scene. And we had friends in the music scene there. And so I had always wanted to kind of give DJing and music production more of a true shot. And so I did, I did. And I did realize that it wasn't really, for me, it's a, it's a brutal lifestyle.

It is, yeah.

It is a brutal lifestyle. We have a number of friends who are quite successful, successful in that world and, you know, I'm really proud of them. And it is a challenge.

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that Berlin was where we built up this business that we have today, like building online courses, starting to make that transition into being, you know, fully digital. And we just loved the city. We made really great friends. It's such a cool, vibrant, historical city. There's just so many interesting things to explore there. We traveled a lot. We went somewhere, you know, probably every three to four weeks because you could get tickets for so cheap within Europe. And we had an amazing time. And what ultimately ended up doing us in was the winters.

Yep.

We're California kids, man, born and raised.

And can't ever really properly fully leave.

Yeah, I mean, it's just having snow, not seeing the sun for weeks at a time. Getting dark so early. Early, like.

Oh, yeah. The amount of, the amount of light is really what does you. I think if you're, if you don't grow up with that, even when you do grow up with it, it's really hard. A lot, I mean, a lot of people just get out. Like, I mean, I feel like whenever we go, whenever we go to like Central America to travel, I feel like I meet so many Germans or Northern Europeans who are like, as soon as I turned 18, I got out and I moved to the tropics. I want my 12 hours of sunshine a day. Day every single day of the year.

Yeah, I'm not, I don't think either one of us are those people who think like, bad weather makes you tough. You know, we're just like, no, I'd rather be comfortable. I'd rather see the sun and beautiful blue sky and the ocean every day. Like, I'm. I'm set. So, yeah, we, we moved back before we had to deal with another winter. But our time there was really great and we loved it and we've gone back since then, but we, we were just also really glad to be back in California. Which I guess leads us into another question. A bunch of people asked how our house hunt is going. We recently moved back to my hometown of Santa Barbara after being in la. We went from Berlin to la, lived in LA for about four and a half years. And Santa Barbara's always been part of the long term plan. And we were finally feeling like, all right, let's do it. So we are currently in a rental right now. Now. So we've been here for about Two months now. We had to sell our house in LA first, so we've really only had the last two weeks where we actually could buy a house. So, yeah, in some ways we're sort of right at the beginning of our house hunt process.

It's weird because we've been looking the whole time we've been here and maybe even while we were still in LA for the last month or so. So it feels like we've been house hunting for a while, but the reality is for only two weeks have we been really true, really able to do anything about it.

So the big update there is that just yesterday we put in our first offer on a place. So we will hear back, we'll see.

Fingers crossed.

We'll see. We might have. We will have the news by the time this episode comes out. So cheers to us. Hopefully, maybe this will have to be.

A regular segment over the next couple episodes. House update. All right, now shifting gears a little bit. What do our families think about our profession?

So our families are both very supportive. If you want to see my family, you can come over to Instagram. They have their own highlight because they enjoy being featured now. They've gotten really comfortable talking about sex on Instagram. So, yeah, they're wonderful. They're super, super proud. They love telling other people about what we do. I think my mom gets a little kick out of embarrassing people, which cracks me up. Cause she used to be pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. But it's been really nice to see my family be able to go on this journey of kind of letting go of their own shame and embarrassment around sex. My parents have always been really proud and supportive of me, but like everybody else, they had their own baggage around sex. But now they're to the point where they talk about it on Instagram.

Yeah, yeah. And my family is. Is great too, I think. You know, they've always been super proud of Vanessa for what she does and, you know, only more recently have I really gotten involved in, especially in the last couple of years, gotten involved more as like one of the faces of the business rather than a behind the scenes person. So it's been cool transitioning into that. And, you know, I think it's cool for my parents to be able to actually be able to point more towards like, oh, this is what my son is doing. Rather than like, oh, he's like behind the scenes running this business that we don't really fully understand because it is, you know, this whole online course business is. It's a new thing. Like none of our Parents have any idea what it really is and. And how it all works? Because it just. That didn't exist. Like, there was no Internet when they were. Well, actually, I shouldn't say when they were our age. I think that when my parents were my. My dad was my age.

We're old now. Yeah.

Yeah. When my dad was my age, I was a little kid, and I think that was, like, the very beginning of the Internet. Yeah, my dad was very ahead of his time, technology wise.

He was. No, your parents are great. Yeah, they ask a lot of questions. They're always very curious. Even your grandma is.

Oh, yeah. I think my grandma might actually be our biggest fan.

She might be. Yeah, she really is.

All right, babe, we made it to the last question.

Oh, boy.

This is the real heavy hitter. Is there anything that you keep from us?

Yes, there are a lot of things that we do keep from you. I mean, look, we do our best to be, like, really transparent with you guys about all aspects of our business, you know, our values and how we operate our business. And we try to be really open and honest and super vulnerable about our relationship and personally and all of that. Like, it's very important to us. It's literally written into our company values that, like, we value transparency and we want to be open. And at the same time, I think it's really important, especially in this day of social media. I feel so old saying that, but I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that, like, we do not share everything with our audience. Absolutely not. I think we're very open and vulnerable, but, like, there is so much of our lives, our individual lives, our relationship, our families that we do not share. So, like, if you're following us on Instagram, like, we love that you're getting to know us and that we're getting to show ourselves to you, but I think it's really important for all of us to recognize, like, we're never seeing the full story. Right.

We're not super picky and choosy where it's like, oh, we are, like, developing this image. Social media, There's a word for that, right? I've totally forgotten what the word is.

But it's like, we're not. Yeah, we're not grooming ourselves to, like, present this picture perfect vision. Like, we are not strategic about, like, oh, what if we share this? And what if we don't share that? Like, you just have to watch our Instagram story for a day and realize, like, there is not a lot of, like, strategy that goes into that. So we're not, like, strategic or manipulative. Like, we don't use filters, even stuff like that.

Like, yeah, we're not manipulative. I swear.

I'm gonna start using filters and everyone. But, yeah, so we're not manipulative about what we do show. But you're only seeing snippets of our life. You're not seeing the whole thing. You know, sometimes we get feedback from people saying, like, hey, well, we want you to show us, like, more of the fights that you get into or, like, the bad stuff that happens in your relationship. And I think it's important to think about even the logistics of that.

Like, yeah, I don't know how to do that.

Yeah. Like, let's say that Xander and I got in this huge fight, and we were really upset with each other. Maybe, like, we're not talking. We're in different rooms. Like, I'm not gonna go onto Instagram and do a story about, like, hey, guys, I'm so pissed off. You won't believe what he did and what he said and da, da, da, da. That would be so disrespectful to our relationship.

Yeah, Just like, I'm not gonna call up Vanessa's mom if we're in the.

Middle of a fight. Oh, my God.

And be like, oh, my God, you won't believe what your daughter just did to me.

Yeah. Ye. So on the one hand, it's like, I actually could see the value of really getting this raw look at somebody else's relationship and their sex life. I think we're all so hungry for those kinds of conversations, but the realities of how you would deliver it just don't work out. Like, I could never make a story about a tough thing that we were going through without talking to you first, or at least getting to a place where maybe we haven't fully resolved it, but we feel like. Like we're working towards it or we're back on the same team, you know? So it's like, by the time we do share something on Instagram, we've had that opportunity to process it. And so we're still choosing to share it because we think that, you know, maybe there's something valuable. Hey, we have this fight, and this is what we learned, but the way that we're presenting it to you, like, we probably seem. We seem calm. We seem in love. Maybe we can laugh about it. And so I think sometimes it gives people this impression of, like, oh, wow, they never fight. Or even when they do fight, it's just these, like, Cute, silly little moments, and it's like, no, but we just literally can't show it any other way. Like, we need to put ourselves in our relationship first and process it before we share something on Instagram.

Yeah. I mean, kind of like going back to the question about, like, work, life, balance. Like, we, for us, our life is more important than everything else. Like, I'm not gonna put you on blast for the sake of the business.

Put me on blast. So I think it's, you know, if you're somebody who consumes a lot of media, it's important to remind yourself of that, too. Like, I know everybody says it all the time, but we really have to internalize it. That, like, you are seeing snapshots of somebody else's life. And for most accounts, I think that they do do that, like, grooming and being really strategic about what we do show and what we don't show. So, you know, we just need to remember we're never seeing the full picture.

Yeah. We also don't claim to show everything. I think there's a lot of people out there that are more in the sort of, like, vlogging world where it's like their thing is like, oh, I'm showing you everything that's going on. Like, that's not what we're trying to do at all.

Yeah. And there are even just, like, whole aspects of our individual lives or of our relationship that we have made a decision not to talk about. You know, so it's not even like that we're waiting until after we processed it. Like, there are certain things that we're just like, no, we're not going to share. And practically, we each have veto pass, like, full and complete veto power if we, you know, somebody wants to do a story about something and the other doesn't feel comfortable with it or even if we record it.

Yeah, that happens. That happens. I was about to say often. It doesn't happen often, but that does happen. I would say more often than not, it's that we record something and then like, yeah, that. That actually doesn't feel so good. That doesn't really feel in alignment with, like, my values or how I feel or whatever.

So I. I love talking about this question. I think it's really interesting. But, yeah, bottom line is it's important to us to share ourselves with you and to be. Be vulnerable and honest and raw. And we also really value taking care of ourselves and respecting our relationship and not sharing so much that it, you know, doesn't end up feeling good to us.

Yeah. I Would, however, rephrase or reframe the question a bit. The question is, is there anything you keep from us which kind of implies sort of an active, like, we don't want you to know about. Whatever, Whatever. It's more of a.

There are certain things that we're like, yeah, we're not gonna talk about that.

Yeah, I don't think we're actively keeping.

Well, not in a. Like, I guess you're, you're putting like a manipulative twist on keeping, like, oh, let's not tell them that for a specific reason.

Do you guys have, do you guys have boundaries about what you share? Yeah, we for sure have boundaries.

Okay. Right now I should have done a whole episode on this one. But now I'm thinking about another aspect of this too, which is the. That I want people to understand that like, when you share your life on social media and you have like at least a decent following, you are subjecting yourself to so much negativity and judgment. Judgment, criticism, unwanted advice. Like, we are extremely lucky. Our community is so kind, so generous. Like, you know, it's actually pretty rare that we get that.

It's shocking.

Yeah, we don't get a ton of like, really nasty, out of nowhere comments, but we are all unique individuals and we all react to different things. And when you have a quarter of a million people following you, like, of course something that you say is gonna rub some people the wrong way or they're gonna interpret it, or they have a different view on that. And so that's another thing that, like, for any accounts that you follow, you know, they're thinking about that a lot. Thinking about like, oh God, I wanna share this thing. But I'm already anticipating the DMs that I'm gonna get of people saying like, oh my God, how dare you do that? Or why didn't you think of this? Or whatever it is. And it can be challenging to like, just see that many opinions about your life. And especially when you're talking about something vulnerable, you like, hit upload and you're like, oh my God, oh my God, that felt really vulnerable to post. And then you start getting DMs of people saying like, well, I, da, da, da, da, da. You know, it's like, it's hard. It's really hard. So it's, you know, it is a piece of the puzzle for sure when it's, it comes to how much we share. I mean, I think we try not to make decisions about what we share based on the response that we think we're gonna get like, we have pretty thick skin. We can handle people having different opinions than we do. But it still is challenging to get messages back where somebody's criticizing you or saying how dare you? Or something like that.

Absolutely.

It's hard. Woo. All right, we did it. I got into it. Ask if anything part two, we even have an extra spicy idea for a potential ask us anything part three, in a couple of months, we'll see about that. But in the meantime, if you're not already, definitely follow us on Instagram and share our account with your friends.

Share this podcast Share this episode with.

Your friends Share this episode with your friends. Just do all the sharing. But yeah, we talked about Instagram a lot in this episode, so if you're not following us there, make sure you are.

There's a lot of good stuff on Instagram, like us acting out bad sex positions or Vanessa modeling how you how you wipe yourself after you go pee while fully clothed. 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 69 on 6 9. June 9th. And we're celebrating a year of podcasts.

Can you believe that?

Wow.

Yeah. A year of podcast. Pretty wild.

I love it.

That's creepy.

Take out the I love it. Just end it on that show.

Oh, no, I like the I love it. I love it.

All right, you can keep it.

All right, see you then.

Okay.