Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP. 60: High-Functioning. Overperforming. Sexually Disconnected w/ Rena Martine | The Ambitious Podcast

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EP. 60: High-Functioning. Overperforming. Sexually Disconnected w/ Rena Martine | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:08
  So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about
• 0:10
  something that's probably going to be a title that you haven't
• 0:12
  seen on the Ambitious podcast so far.
• 0:14
  And this is one of the experts we are going to be bringing you
• 0:17
  on that's going to be starting a new lens of Ambitious.
• 0:21
  We're going to be talking about a more wider variety of topics
• 0:24
  that are going to support women like yourself who are both
• 0:27
  driven and business, but also in your everyday day life.
• 0:30
  And today we are talking with Rena Martin, who we're going to
• 0:33
  be talking with about all things sex and intimacy.
• 0:36
  We cover why we feel even just in saying that you might be
• 0:40
  feeling, Oh my gosh, this is something so different to be
• 0:42
  listening to have Kate talk about on the show.
• 0:45
  We're going to talk about that. We're going to say, why is sex
• 0:47
  intimacy something that still for many feels so taboo?
• 0:50
  We're going to talk about the role of of shame and how shame
• 0:54
  plays a role in our perception around our sexuality.
• 0:57
  Understanding the difference between what is sex with
• 1:00
  ourselves or our partners versus what is intimacy.
• 1:03
  How do we reframe sexuality and understanding pleasure for
• 1:06
  ourselves and for our partners? And how do we communicate our
• 1:10
  desires and strengthen connection within our
• 1:12
  relationships? I am so excited for today's
• 1:14
  episode. I have had the absolute pleasure
• 1:16
  of getting to know personally all of the works of Rena and
• 1:21
  what she has done. She is a women's intimacy coach,
• 1:23
  educator, author who is dedicated to empowering women to
• 1:27
  embracing their sexuality and cultivating A deeper, more
• 1:30
  intimate relationship with themselves and with others.
• 1:33
  She has a background in law and personal journey of overcoming
• 1:36
  sexual shame and now she focuses on helping women to achieve a
• 1:40
  fulfilling shame free sexual experience.
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  She's a former deputive District Attorney who specialized in
• 1:46
  child abuse, sex crimes and domestic violence cases for 14
• 1:49
  years in LA County who provided then through that a deep
• 1:53
  understanding of trauma and its impact on intimacy.
• 1:56
  From there she then started and founded Shameless Coaching,
• 1:59
  which is a eight week program that is designed to use evidence
• 2:03
  based techniques to help women to better understand and love
• 2:05
  their bodies, experience deep intimacy and have great sex
• 2:09
  without the shame. She's also the author of The Sex
• 2:12
  You Want, publishing a book that is really helping to redefine
• 2:17
  our journey with intimacy and offer a honest view on how to
• 2:20
  have a life free from sexual shame.
• 2:23
  She's not only that, but a TE DX speaker who also has given talks
• 2:26
  on sexual shame and sharing insights from both her personal
• 2:29
  and her professional journey. Reena has such a insane wealth
• 2:34
  of knowledge from all the experience of her career, plus
• 2:36
  all of her work with clients, and I could not be more excited
• 2:40
  for you to dive into today's episode.
• 2:42
  So without further ado, let's get into today with Reena.
• 2:45
  Reena, welcome to Ambitious. I'm so excited to have you.
• 2:48
  Here we are excited to dive into so many things cuz I obviously
• 2:53
  was just saying guys before I press record, she has absolutely
• 2:56
  incredible book which we're gonna be unpacking today.
• 2:58
  But like there's, I feel like I could probably interview for
• 3:00
  like 4 hours because you know, so much.
• 3:03
  So we're gonna try to keep it into the 60 minute mark, but
• 3:05
  we're excited to have you here. So welcome to Ambitious.
• 3:08
  Thanks for having me, Kate. Yeah, I, I really, I want to
• 3:12
  start off today because I feel like for anyone maybe who even
• 3:15
  pressed play on this episode or someone who is wanting to listen
• 3:20
  to this. I was prepping for today's
• 3:22
  episode and our interview. And it was interesting because
• 3:25
  when I had mentioned it to a couple people, what we were
• 3:28
  going to be talking about, I could physically see their state
• 3:31
  change. When I had talked to the fact
• 3:33
  that we were going to be covering intimacy and sex and
• 3:36
  pleasure and things like that. And they said, you know, are you
• 3:38
  nervous to to have this interview to talk about this in
• 3:41
  a public way? And So what it instantly brought
• 3:44
  forward for me was this aspect of shame that we all have
• 3:47
  connected to or that I shouldn't say we all have that many people
• 3:49
  have connected to what we're going to talk about today.
• 3:52
  And I know you talk a lot about this within your work.
• 3:55
  So I'm curious like, why is that still today, even after so much
• 4:00
  that's unfolded, still something that feels so taboo in your
• 4:03
  opinion? Wolf I mean, that's the
• 4:06
  $1,000,000 question, right? Because sex is something that we
• 4:10
  have all done, we are doing or we want to do, unless of course,
• 4:14
  you fall in the asexual spectrum, different story.
• 4:17
  But it's this thing that is so ubiquitous, it's so common, yet
• 4:21
  we have such a hard time talking about it.
• 4:24
  So why is that? I mean, could I go down on all
• 4:27
  the lists about the patriarchy? XY and ZI mean, I think a lot of
• 4:31
  this is rooted in patriarchy. A lot of this is rooted in in
• 4:35
  religion when it comes to not wanting folks to have sex
• 4:40
  outside of marriage, A gendered view about what women should and
• 4:44
  should not be doing with their bodies.
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  Because when we look at different cultures, different
• 4:48
  countries, sex is really, it's not just a thing we do.
• 4:52
  There's, there's a sociological, there's a cultural aspect to it.
• 4:56
  So here in the Western world, our views of sex aren't
• 4:59
  necessarily the same as they would be in other parts of the
• 5:01
  world. And do you feel like with, you
• 5:05
  know, I'm sure even with the clients that come to work with
• 5:08
  you, do you ever feel like even people wanting to reach out to
• 5:11
  get support from you, I'm sure there must be an aspect of
• 5:13
  potentially shame or kind of feeling that super private to
• 5:17
  them and not knowing how to talk about it.
• 5:20
  Yeah, yeah. And you know, when I tell folks,
• 5:23
  because not everybody walks around using the word shame, but
• 5:26
  anytime a question starts off with, or you think this to
• 5:31
  yourself, you know, is it normal that XYZ, right?
• 5:35
  Is it normal that I need a vibrator to orgasm?
• 5:39
  Is it normal that I'm not in the mood at night, right?
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  What's wrong with me that XYZ? So anytime you find yourself
• 5:48
  thinking or saying one of those things, that is shame.
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  Shame is this feeling that there is something wrong with us, with
• 5:56
  our bodies, with our attractions, right?
• 5:59
  How we look, how our bodies function, and that because there
• 6:03
  is something wrong with us, we are therefore not worthy of the
• 6:05
  same thing that the average air quote sexual person is worthy
• 6:09
  of. So in terms of how this shows up
• 6:12
  in my business, it's normally that, you know, there's
• 6:15
  something that's making me feel like I'm not normal.
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  I haven't figured this thing out.
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  The reality is, I mean, there's no one normal when it comes to
• 6:24
  sex. And, and it's so much not
• 6:27
  learning, but unlearning that we do during our time together in
• 6:30
  the coaching space. Right, because I would imagine,
• 6:33
  you know, you even see, I'm thinking of things like when I
• 6:37
  years ago would read things like Cosmopolitan, who would talk
• 6:40
  about, you know, the, the X amount of times you're supposed
• 6:43
  to have sex a week or the X amount of, you know, this is the
• 6:45
  right way. This is the wrong way.
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  What's normal in a relationship? And I know, you know, today
• 6:49
  we're going to unpack the individual, the individual in
• 6:52
  connection to their partner. But I think it's helpful for
• 6:55
  someone here that there isn't a normal because I think to your
• 6:57
  point, we always have this benchmark of like, do I want too
• 7:01
  much of this? Is there something wrong with me
• 7:02
  because I have a low libido and I'm not as interested?
• 7:05
  And I think, you know, specifically because obviously a
• 7:08
  lot of our listeners are women, I think that there's a lot of
• 7:11
  women who maybe even potentially compare themselves to other
• 7:13
  women when we have these conversations in private
• 7:16
  wondering, you know, what is normal or that benchmark.
• 7:20
  So really what you're saying for anyone listening is whatever
• 7:22
  we're going to talk about today, there really isn't considered a
• 7:25
  quote, UN quote, normal or standard in any of this.
• 7:29
  Right, right. I mean it's all just different
• 7:32
  points on the spectrum when it comes to pretty much most things
• 7:36
  sex related. Got it.
• 7:38
  OK, so one of the places I want to start is if somebody is
• 7:43
  wanting to kind of change their relationship to feel more
• 7:48
  positive, more open, more comfortable with their
• 7:51
  sexuality. To your point earlier, maybe
• 7:52
  they came from a household where this was kind of not talked
• 7:57
  about. Hello.
• 7:57
  Me, my family, you know, anyone in my family, like sex is not
• 8:02
  something you talk about. This is considered a very
• 8:04
  private thing that you do not discuss with your family, your
• 8:07
  friends, anybody. And for me, it was very new.
• 8:10
  And obviously us working together and getting exposure to
• 8:13
  your book and all the things it really the way that you talk
• 8:17
  about it, it makes it so open and so comfortable and so
• 8:20
  normalized. And I'm curious for someone who
• 8:23
  maybe comes from a culture or feels like maybe they're in a
• 8:26
  current environment right now where it's not, quote UN quote,
• 8:29
  typical or normal for these conversations to happen.
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  And maybe they're even listening to you already talking and
• 8:34
  they're already kind of uncomfortable.
• 8:37
  Yeah. Like feeling a little squirmy
• 8:39
  inside. How do we start to get
• 8:41
  comfortable with our sexuality if maybe until now it's been
• 8:45
  something that has kind of felt taboo to us or maybe in our
• 8:48
  circles? I mean, that's a huge question,
• 8:50
  right? But I think that we can kind of
• 8:52
  break this down into a few different components. 1 is
• 8:55
  understanding what those messages are that you got.
• 9:00
  Who were they coming from and the person that you got this
• 9:04
  from, have they done the thing that you're trying to do?
• 9:07
  Because I always say don't take criticism from somebody you
• 9:10
  wouldn't take advice from. So I have my clients.
• 9:13
  And also if if you end up getting my book, there's an
• 9:16
  exercise in there called the external messaging inventory.
• 9:18
  And so going through, OK, what's currently kicking around in your
• 9:22
  head about what it means to be a woman, about self pleasure, you
• 9:27
  know, where did you learn that from?
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  And so we start to really pick apart all of these things.
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  And then I encourage my clients as an additional homework
• 9:37
  assignment to write a story of their life where they make
• 9:42
  themselves the hero. And this isn't the size of a
• 9:44
  book or the length of a book. This is, you know, a small
• 9:46
  homework assignment. And it ends with where they are
• 9:50
  today. And so it's saying, yeah, you
• 9:53
  know what? Here's how I grew up.
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  Here's what I've survived. Here's what I was taught.
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  But today, today's the day I start doing things differently.
• 10:03
  And what that next step is, is going to vary woman to woman,
• 10:08
  person to person in our work together.
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  And what that shame looks like is going to vary whether you
• 10:14
  have survived sexual trauma, whether you were raised in a
• 10:18
  culturally religious environment, whether you've just
• 10:22
  come out right. There's so many different types
• 10:25
  of shame. And so although all of my
• 10:28
  clients go through a structured 8 week program, it's not a group
• 10:33
  program. I work with folks one-on-one
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  because a lot of people feel awkward enough talking to just.
• 10:40
  A young person, yeah. To get there to want to talk
• 10:44
  about it in an open forum. Right.
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  And so giving people this safe container and knowing that I'm
• 10:49
  going to meet you exactly where you're at and that I know your
• 10:52
  needs are different than a client who say is like, you
• 10:55
  know, me and my husband, we've been together 20 years and our
• 10:58
  sex life sucks. Please help us, Reena.
• 11:01
  Hey, we want to open up our relationship.
• 11:02
  So everybody's coming from different angles.
• 11:05
  And so you have to really treat everyone from a very individual
• 11:10
  standpoint. Got it.
• 11:13
  Got it. OK.
• 11:13
  And you were mentioning like what their needs are.
• 11:16
  And I know one of the things that I definitely want to
• 11:19
  clarify for anyone listening is this kind of definition between
• 11:23
  intimacy versus sex. Because obviously, as we go
• 11:26
  through today's conversation, those words are probably going
• 11:29
  to be used interchangeably. And I'm curious to you with the
• 11:33
  clients that maybe you work with and when you start a process
• 11:36
  like this of potentially releasing some of that shame,
• 11:38
  we're starting to introduce someone kind of back to
• 11:40
  themselves or to their relationship.
• 11:43
  How do you help someone to understand that differentiator
• 11:46
  between what is intimacy versus what does it mean to kind of tap
• 11:49
  into the sexual side in your opinion?
• 11:51
  Right. So I see kind of like a Venn
• 11:54
  diagram because you can have sex without intimacy and you can
• 12:00
  have intimacy without sex. So what do I mean by intimacy?
• 12:03
  And I'm so glad you brought this up, because a lot of people will
• 12:06
  use intimacy the the word as just this kind of short.
• 12:09
  We're being intimate. We're intimate often right So.
• 12:12
  Again, they're just interchanged.
• 12:13
  Yeah, right. This shorthand for sex and I, I
• 12:16
  don't use it that way. Intimacy to me is knowing who
• 12:20
  you are and showing up that way and letting people see you for
• 12:23
  who you are. So you can have sex, but if you
• 12:28
  are not speaking up for your needs, if you are faking
• 12:30
  orgasms, you're not having intimacy.
• 12:33
  That's sex. I mean anyone for the most part
• 12:36
  can go through the mechanics of sex, but to show up, to not be
• 12:41
  wearing a mask, to be your full messy self, that's different.
• 12:46
  I worked with a client, she had no issues with sex, so she
• 12:49
  wasn't faking orgasms or anything like that.
• 12:51
  She was having a ton of sex, kinky sex, enjoying herself, but
• 12:55
  she came to me because she's like, you know, the sex will
• 12:57
  end. And then I just, I want these
• 12:59
  people out of my house. Like I don't want to talk to
• 13:03
  them. I don't want.
• 13:05
  There's no other connection there.
• 13:07
  Right. And so she was scared of
• 13:09
  emotional closeness that has nothing to do with sex.
• 13:13
  And so, so much of the work that we did together had nothing to
• 13:16
  do with sex because she kind of had that part down.
• 13:19
  It was her becoming emotionally vulnerable with Co workers, with
• 13:24
  friends, with family members. This might come as no surprise
• 13:29
  to you and I Kate, but she is a high achieving, no nonsense
• 13:34
  woman. I feel like I know her.
• 13:38
  I feel. Like, I know her, right?
• 13:40
  And so we started with baby steps.
• 13:43
  I was like, I want you to reach out to five friends of yours
• 13:45
  this week and tell them why you're grateful for them.
• 13:49
  She was like, oh God, what? No, thank you.
• 13:53
  Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I, it's literally as you were saying
• 13:57
  that, I was thinking of how many girlfriends that came to mind.
• 14:00
  Because I think intimacy, if we're looking at it really as
• 14:06
  this aspect of an underlying lens of connection, there could
• 14:08
  be physical intimacy, there could be emotional intimacy.
• 14:12
  But I'm thinking really what the basis of it is based on what
• 14:14
  you're saying is vulnerability and connection.
• 14:17
  And so I'm curious, how do women avoid that?
• 14:22
  Like this client I'm thinking of, or maybe there's others that
• 14:24
  you're thinking of. What were things that you saw in
• 14:28
  her that were signs in your opinion that she wasn't
• 14:31
  comfortable being vulnerable or that maybe she wasn't
• 14:33
  comfortable being intimate? Yeah, I mean, because she said I
• 14:37
  had sex with this guy recently and he asked me if I wanted to
• 14:40
  stick around and watch The Simpsons afterwards and it made
• 14:42
  my skin crawl. What's wrong with me?
• 14:47
  Is this normal? Yeah, and she also said that so
• 14:50
  she travels for work, she works in the arts and she's constantly
• 14:53
  traveling with a with a crew of other Co workers.
• 14:56
  And she's like, I find myself just judging them all the time
• 15:01
  judging them. And so I'm putting all these
• 15:03
  pieces together like, OK, you, you don't truly know yourself
• 15:09
  and so you have a hard time opening up to other people.
• 15:12
  And why is that? So we're not going full blown
• 15:16
  therapy here because she had a therapist.
• 15:17
  She had a therapist she'd be going to for years when we
• 15:20
  started working together. But OK, where did it start that
• 15:23
  you felt like it wasn't safe for you to have needs and, you know,
• 15:26
  just kind of express who you are?
• 15:27
  So we went through that. And then by the end of our work
• 15:30
  together, she, she'd done a tremendous amount of work
• 15:34
  through action and not just sitting around talking about it,
• 15:38
  but you are going to go out and do XYZ.
• 15:40
  You're going to go send those texts, you're going to invite a
• 15:43
  few Co workers of yours out to get drinks after work.
• 15:46
  So letting her know it's safe to let her guard down, it's safe to
• 15:52
  show vulnerability, it's safe to not have your shit together all
• 15:55
  the time. And I know that's hard for for
• 15:58
  folks like, and I'm looking at you right now because we know
• 16:00
  the other two outside of the space, that can be really hard,
• 16:04
  especially in a world that has rewarded us for having our shit
• 16:07
  together all the time. Well, I think in in a way it
• 16:11
  feels as you say that kind of uplifting kind of exciting
• 16:15
  because I'm thinking if someone is not comfortable being
• 16:18
  intimate or comfortable being vulnerable, it's also kind of
• 16:21
  uplifting to know that you don't have to start that process with
• 16:24
  a partner. Like if you're somebody who is
• 16:28
  either having different sexual partners right now or you have
• 16:29
  an ongoing long term relationship, you don't
• 16:32
  necessarily if you're feeling disconnection in those partners
• 16:35
  or with that relationship, you don't have to start with them.
• 16:38
  You get to start with basically flexing the muscle in other
• 16:41
  areas before you start to bring that back to, to your point, the
• 16:44
  sexual side of things. Exactly exactly.
• 16:48
  And an exercise I give readers that I give my clients is OK.
• 16:51
  This week, ask 5 people for help like but I never ask people for
• 16:56
  help. I'm like, where are you going
• 16:57
  to? You're going to do it this week
• 17:00
  and it can be something small. Hey, a book recommendation,
• 17:03
  whatever it is, but letting people know that you're not an
• 17:06
  island. There's a whole chapter in my
• 17:10
  book called Stop playing the cool girl and I say you can, you
• 17:14
  can be the cool girl or you can have true love.
• 17:16
  Pick one. Because often times there's a
• 17:19
  particular breed of woman who will go into relationships and
• 17:22
  be like, I have no needs. You know, I'm so cool, like I'm
• 17:25
  chill. I don't cause drama.
• 17:28
  And The thing is, we can't keep that act up forever.
• 17:31
  And so once that act comes down, this poor person who's been in a
• 17:35
  relationship with you is like, wait, who is this?
• 17:39
  And that's where we see problems.
• 17:41
  So it's a matter of getting rid of that, that temptation to play
• 17:45
  the cool girl in the first place.
• 17:48
  Well, you know, I'm thinking of like everyone I coach basically
• 17:52
  and myself and I'm thinking of how we are in business to your
• 17:55
  point of like those high achieving women, because I think
• 17:57
  in business we're so I've got shit handled.
• 18:01
  I've got it taken care of. I can take care of myself.
• 18:04
  I don't need anybody else. Like you're just making things
• 18:07
  happen and you're really driving in that.
• 18:09
  And so I'm thinking to be vulnerable to your point of like
• 18:12
  asking for someone else to be let in, to be seen, to let your
• 18:16
  guard down, to be vulnerable kind of goes against the hat we
• 18:21
  wear all day, every day. And for me, it's interesting, I
• 18:26
  will say, like in, you know, being alone and starting to kind
• 18:30
  of figure all of this out for myself without it necessarily
• 18:33
  being a connection to a partner. What I realized was like, I like
• 18:37
  that side of maybe not having as much of that intense
• 18:41
  vulnerability within business, but once my business hat is off,
• 18:45
  like I don't want to be necessarily driving all the
• 18:48
  time. And I find that in connection
• 18:51
  with other people now, I really like that intimacy part in my
• 18:55
  personal life because I find without it, there was just such
• 18:58
  a disconnection. I was like completely closed off
• 19:01
  from just so many people in my life.
• 19:02
  So I'm thinking for that person who's very driven, I'm sure that
• 19:05
  that must be very common. It is.
• 19:07
  And the the exact traits that make us good inside our careers
• 19:13
  are the things that often will damage us in the bedroom if we
• 19:17
  take them home. And I don't know if we've
• 19:19
  mentioned this yet, but like I, I used to be a lawyer.
• 19:22
  I was a trial attorney for 14 years.
• 19:25
  And so I had to and I was a sex crimes prosecutor.
• 19:29
  I talked about sex all the time. I talked about sex everyday.
• 19:33
  I couldn't have done my job if I didn't know how to talk about
• 19:35
  sex. But talking about sex in terms
• 19:37
  of my wants and needs were that was a totally different story.
• 19:42
  If I could talk about it clinically the way I was doing
• 19:45
  it at work, fine, no emotion, right.
• 19:49
  And so that was, again, a lot of undoing that happened there.
• 19:54
  But yeah, there's a particular kind of client who I really love
• 19:58
  working with, and those are the real high-powered.
• 20:02
  CE OS who come in and we practice with just surrender.
• 20:07
  And I'll go off on a small tangent here and I and I swear
• 20:11
  it'll be quick, but we have shown that year after year, more
• 20:14
  and more women have been fantasizing about being sexually
• 20:18
  submissive. So we think about 50 Shades of
• 20:20
  Grey, that kind of thing. And the reason is because we are
• 20:24
  having to make more decisions in our day-to-day lives than we
• 20:27
  ever have. And so, of course, we are
• 20:30
  fantasizing about a world where, Oh my God, I can just come into
• 20:34
  the bedroom and somebody makes the decisions for me.
• 20:37
  My only job is just to be here. Oh, gosh, that sounds so nice.
• 20:41
  And so with folks who I work with who fall into this
• 20:45
  category, who are partnered, that's the way that we can start
• 20:48
  to gently incorporate that in the bedroom is giving up some of
• 20:52
  that control. And just saying, you know what,
• 20:54
  me feeling good is enough. Yeah, mission accomplished.
• 20:58
  I don't actually have to do any more than that.
• 21:01
  Well, I feel like to your point, there's a lot of performing in
• 21:04
  business and to feel like you finally have a space where you
• 21:06
  don't have to quote UN quote, perform is really just like a
• 21:09
  weighed off in a way. Because to your point, and I
• 21:11
  love what you said, you just get to be, you just get to be, to be
• 21:14
  seen, to be present. And so someone's listening to
• 21:18
  this and now they really feel like they understand what
• 21:19
  intimacy is. What is that connection between
• 21:22
  intimacy and sex? Because even to the point that
• 21:25
  you gave earlier, is there even a connection in the sense of can
• 21:29
  they be entirely separate? IE you can have such a deep
• 21:32
  connection with someone and be deeply intimate with someone,
• 21:35
  but have no sexual connection. Yeah.
• 21:38
  Or you could have a sexual connection with someone and have
• 21:40
  no intimacy. And then I'm wondering for the
• 21:43
  person who has maybe a partner that they're with that they want
• 21:46
  to have both. Like what is the kind of
• 21:48
  relationship to your point between those?
• 21:50
  Well, so I mentioned the Venn diagram earlier and that's the
• 21:54
  sweet spot really is where sex and intimacy overlap when we
• 21:59
  have both, if we're talking about sex, because I believe
• 22:02
  that for relationships to be significant, they don't need to
• 22:05
  be sexual. We have partnerships,
• 22:07
  friendships, familial relationships that are no less
• 22:10
  important, but in the confines of a romantic relationship where
• 22:16
  both of you guys want to have sex on the table, sexual
• 22:19
  intimacy is the thing, the Acme point, the thing that is going
• 22:24
  to change what sex becomes for you.
• 22:28
  I'll quote Esther Perel here because she says sex isn't a
• 22:32
  thing we do, it's a place we go. And I in seeing just my own
• 22:38
  trajectory of not really understanding that sex and
• 22:42
  intimacy were two different things and that once you put
• 22:45
  them together, Oh my gosh, it's so much more magical.
• 22:49
  Sex has become just an experience.
• 22:53
  It's become a way that we get to play as adults.
• 22:58
  It's a place of freedom. And that is what sexual intimacy
• 23:05
  to me is. It's playing, it's showing up.
• 23:08
  It's not being self-conscious. It's just, hey, this is who I
• 23:11
  am. This is what my body looks like.
• 23:13
  I'm, you know, yeah, I got rolls here.
• 23:15
  Like, yeah, my boobs are sagging.
• 23:16
  Whatever the case may be. Am I saying you can flip a
• 23:19
  switch and it's going to be great tomorrow?
• 23:21
  Absolutely. Not.
• 23:22
  Everything's done in baby steps. But what'll happen when you just
• 23:27
  kind of take your hands off the wheel, you're like, no, this is
• 23:31
  this is me and I'm showing up this way is you have freedom to
• 23:34
  explore in a way, freedom to challenge some of these scripts
• 23:37
  that you thought like, well, we have sex.
• 23:40
  And so this is how it starts. This is the position, right?
• 23:43
  This is how we change and this is how we end.
• 23:46
  So like, for example, I'm working with a couple right now.
• 23:49
  They've been together, I think about 12 years and they have a
• 23:53
  little one at home. And one thing we did during our
• 23:57
  last session was we talked about, well, what's the sexual
• 24:01
  script that you 2 normally have? What does that look like?
• 24:05
  Like? Well, normally it's some sort of
• 24:07
  like oral on me, meaning the wife.
• 24:11
  And then eventually it's him on top and then we finish with him
• 24:14
  on top. It's like, OK, so I'm going to
• 24:16
  set a timer. Each of you is going to grab a
• 24:18
  piece of paper and I'm going to give you 5 minutes and I want
• 24:21
  you to come up with five different sexual scripts that
• 24:24
  you would be good with. So then they came back and by
• 24:29
  the time our session was done, we had essentially 10 different
• 24:32
  scripts that they each agreed and we did some bargaining
• 24:36
  there. She's like, no, I don't like
• 24:37
  that position. OK, well let's try this instead.
• 24:40
  10 different scripts like, hey, instead of me finishing on top,
• 24:45
  maybe it's, you know, you're sitting on my face while I use
• 24:47
  my hand on myself. Just these things that like our
• 24:52
  brains like routine, our brains like to conserve energy.
• 24:55
  And so it's often, you know, someone like me who comes in and
• 24:59
  says, like, hey, OK, we're going to use some energy here because
• 25:02
  the whole reason you came to me is because things feel stale
• 25:05
  because you're not going to, you're not going to crave
• 25:07
  something you don't crave. You are not going to crave
• 25:09
  boring sex. Often times when folks say I'm
• 25:13
  just not in the mood anymore, it's like, well, tell me what
• 25:15
  sex is like typically in your relationship, and they tell me
• 25:19
  and I'm like, does that sound fun?
• 25:21
  I wouldn't be. Like you're not excited because
• 25:23
  you literally know play by play, screen by screen what's about to
• 25:26
  happen. So there's no, I would assume
• 25:30
  like fantasy or drive or excitement to like what's going
• 25:34
  to unfold. It's it's the rerun of the movie
• 25:36
  that you've watched 82 times. Totally, Totally.
• 25:39
  Yeah. Which means that if you've
• 25:40
  already seen the movie 82 times, your mind's probably not going
• 25:43
  to be present the 83rd time that you watch it, just like your
• 25:46
  mind's going to be wandering during the sex that follows this
• 25:49
  well worn groove in this script. And so part of what I help folks
• 25:54
  do, and I give a lot of ideas in my book too, is take a step back
• 25:57
  and kind of push the heart reset and say, let's approach this
• 26:01
  differently. Rather than an item on our To Do
• 26:05
  List, how can we view this as an escape from the To Do List?
• 26:08
  How can we make this something we look forward to rather than
• 26:13
  right? I know I have to do this to
• 26:15
  maintain my relationship. Yeah, right.
• 26:18
  Right. So make sex fun again.
• 26:21
  And for a lot of folks, especially those who've survived
• 26:24
  sexual trauma, that can feel like a really tall order.
• 26:29
  And in those cases, I mean, I could spend an hour just talking
• 26:32
  about that, reclaiming pleasure after trauma.
• 26:35
  But there are very specific ways to go about that.
• 26:37
  There's an entire chapter in my book about about trauma.
• 26:41
  So I would urge folks, if that part resonates to to check out
• 26:44
  the trauma chapter. So we're taking a little break
• 26:46
  from today's episode because I want to tell you about something
• 26:50
  really exciting. And no, this is not an ad that's
• 26:52
  going to be selling you something.
• 26:53
  This is actually something I want to give to you for free.
• 26:57
  And if you're listening to today's episode with Rena,
• 26:59
  you're going to hear us talking about her book called The Sex
• 27:03
  You Want. And so before we dive back in, I
• 27:04
  want to share something really exciting with you.
• 27:06
  As you know, we are all at, you know, Kate Perkovic as the brand
• 27:10
  and also ambitious as a brand, really all about empowering
• 27:13
  women. And obviously into honor of
• 27:15
  today's episode, it's all about embracing yourself and stepping
• 27:18
  into who you are and empowering yourself to the next level, not
• 27:21
  only in your business, but also in things like today's topic of
• 27:24
  relationships and intimacy. So we are giving away 7 copies
• 27:28
  of Rina's incredible book called The Sex You want, 7 copies
• 27:32
  completely free to give to you to give you even more of today's
• 27:35
  information in your hands at home.
• 27:37
  And so if you are wondering how to get this book, I'm going to
• 27:39
  give you a quick peek of how you're going to do that.
• 27:41
  So if you go to the show notes of today's episode, whether
• 27:44
  you're watching on YouTube or listening on an audio platform,
• 27:47
  click the link and join us inside of Ambitious Network.
• 27:50
  The Ambitious Network is a community that is designed for
• 27:52
  women just like you. It is completely free and it is
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  a resource area for you of trainings from me, exclusive
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  information from our guests just like this book and so much more
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  when it comes to hot seat coaching, feedback, anything
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  that can help you with your ambition to go to the next
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  level. So all you need to do is click
• 28:11
  the link in bio below, join us inside the Ambitious Network and
• 28:15
  there you will see that you can enter for the giveaway of the
• 28:18
  seven copies of the sex you want.
• 28:19
  So without further ado, let's get back into today's episode.
• 28:23
  You mentioned being in your body and like acknowledging the roles
• 28:27
  or I'm thinking about like acknowledging that maybe there's
• 28:31
  hair that you don't usually have there and that it's hyper aware
• 28:34
  for you because you didn't get around to it this week or
• 28:36
  whatever it may be. And I'm curious for someone who
• 28:41
  maybe feels like when they're trying to be sexual with a
• 28:44
  partner, how do we get out of our head?
• 28:48
  Because like I've read there's another book based on my 2, my 2
• 28:51
  Bibles on this topic are Rena's book, The Sex You want and also
• 28:54
  Come as You are was the other one that was really, really
• 28:57
  insightful for me. And it was it was talking in
• 29:00
  depth in the book about how many women are in their head thinking
• 29:04
  about I got to do laundry, I'm going to make sure I do
• 29:06
  groceries. I do have that e-mail to send
• 29:07
  later in the midst of being in an interaction with another
• 29:12
  person. And so I'm curious, does it
• 29:16
  start with us? Like does it start with the
• 29:19
  individual? As in, if someone's wanting to
• 29:22
  change what their sex life looks like or potentially change like
• 29:27
  that, I'm thinking of this client, you know, the way that
• 29:29
  they're able to be intimate with people.
• 29:31
  Is this a partner job or do you always feel like there's
• 29:34
  opportunity for people to start to come back to themselves
• 29:37
  before going and integrating a partner into it?
• 29:40
  I think you absolutely do not need a partner.
• 29:43
  I think even if you are partnered, you start with
• 29:46
  yourself before introducing any kind of homework to your
• 29:50
  partner. Because often times we can't
• 29:53
  remember the last time we felt sexy.
• 29:56
  So hey, when's the last time you felt sexy outside of the
• 29:58
  bedroom? What was it about that?
• 30:01
  Well, I just got my nails done. I got a new thong.
• 30:05
  I mean, whatever it is. And so it's piercing that apart.
• 30:10
  Because if you are not turned on by yourself, if you don't find
• 30:14
  yourself attractive, it's absolutely going to follow you
• 30:18
  into the bedroom. You're going to be like, well,
• 30:20
  what's wrong with this fool over here?
• 30:22
  He thinks I'm hot. Like I must have not picked
• 30:24
  well, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 30:27
  So yes, absolutely, it starts with you.
• 30:29
  But I'll give a few tips because even the most well-intentioned
• 30:33
  sexual encounters can involve our minds wandering because our
• 30:38
  our brains don't like to shut up.
• 30:40
  They like to wander all the time.
• 30:41
  They like to solve problems. Why meditation's so hard?
• 30:44
  Yes, Oh my gosh, it's so hard for me too.
• 30:47
  So, so a hack. Much like with meditation, they
• 30:50
  say if your mind wanders, come back to the breath.
• 30:53
  I tell folks, if your mind starts to wander during sex,
• 30:56
  come back to just one place on your body where you're feeling
• 30:59
  touch or sensation and just keep bringing it back.
• 31:03
  Your mind wanders 100 times, Bring it back 100 times.
• 31:07
  You can also have some music playing, light a candle,
• 31:10
  something so that if your mind starts wandering, you can say,
• 31:13
  OK, focus on a sound. OK, focus on a smell and
• 31:18
  bringing you back into the room. These are just regular grounding
• 31:22
  exercises that we use in day-to-day life.
• 31:25
  Regarding being OK with how you look naked, because some people
• 31:30
  are like, I don't want the lights on.
• 31:32
  I describe one such person in my book who'd been married for a
• 31:35
  long time. And she's like, Nope, must be
• 31:37
  pitch black in the bedroom. And so we started off with like,
• 31:40
  OK, how about you leave the light on in your closet and you
• 31:45
  leave the door just open a tiny bit.
• 31:47
  And so we started there and we worked our way up.
• 31:49
  By the time we were done, she was having daytime, daytime sex
• 31:52
  with her husband, which is right, right.
• 31:55
  The baby steps. Oh my gosh, this happened.
• 31:58
  The sky didn't fall. I still felt good and turned on.
• 32:03
  And this is kind of an aside, but I'm going to share it
• 32:06
  anyway. A client I have right now went
• 32:08
  to an all women's sex play party recently.
• 32:12
  She had no experience with women at all, but she was something
• 32:16
  she wanted to explore. So I kind of helped her figure
• 32:18
  out how to do that. And she came back and she had
• 32:21
  done a little bit of exploration, but she said, you
• 32:23
  know what? It gave me so much grace for my
• 32:25
  own body because seeing these women who their bodies, if we're
• 32:31
  on a scale of, you know, perfect or ideal body type, you know,
• 32:35
  they look not that. And how confident they were and
• 32:39
  how sexy I thought they were. It made me think like, Oh yeah,
• 32:44
  I'm viewing them for much kinder eyes than I'm viewing myself.
• 32:48
  So whether it's the accounts you follow on social media, the porn
• 32:52
  you watch, or these little hacks for mindfulness in the bedroom,
• 32:56
  don't underestimate these kinds of messages that are coming in
• 32:59
  that are telling you who is and who is not allowed to be sexy.
• 33:04
  And again, like what's like quote UN quote normal, right?
• 33:07
  And I'm, I'm curious, you know, with a partner because I know
• 33:12
  one of my peers who's a, a sex educator had talked about
• 33:15
  getting to know your own body before expecting somebody else
• 33:18
  to, to know it. And I remember this is years
• 33:21
  ago, I saw her mention this in a talk.
• 33:23
  And I know that you've talked about this as well.
• 33:26
  And I'm curious if you could explain that to someone because
• 33:28
  I think there's also kind of a little bit back to the shame
• 33:30
  piece. I think there's people who have
• 33:32
  normalized the belief of sexual interaction with a partner, but
• 33:37
  sexual interaction with yourself feels like it's not something
• 33:41
  that's quote UN quote, to your point earlier normal and
• 33:44
  therefore not something that's really openly talked about.
• 33:47
  And so I think this is a really, again, safe space and
• 33:50
  intentional place for the person listening to be able to get some
• 33:53
  insight on, you know, what is the role of, you know, self
• 33:57
  intimacy or self pleasure in bettering your ongoing intimacy
• 34:02
  with other people or your ongoing pleasure with other
• 34:04
  people. Yeah, well, if we think about
• 34:07
  just kind of taking a step back, why is it that women have a
• 34:11
  different kind of self view and societal view around self
• 34:14
  pleasure than say men do? And from a very young age, boys,
• 34:19
  boys are touching their penises every time they have to go to
• 34:21
  the bathroom. They're holding their penises,
• 34:22
  right. Their penises have various
• 34:26
  functions, ones for urination, ones, you know, intercourse
• 34:29
  reproduction. But for us little girls
• 34:31
  normally, and I'm being very CIS normative in my discussions
• 34:35
  here, I'm just going to acknowledge that.
• 34:37
  But for for little girls really, we're not making much skin to
• 34:42
  skin contact with our genitals. If we're wiping, we're using
• 34:47
  toilet paper, we're in the shower, we're using soap, we're
• 34:49
  using, you know, a loofah, whatever.
• 34:52
  But so there isn't just this kind of normal way like this,
• 34:57
  oops, like I happen to be touching this part of my body.
• 35:01
  So you have to be so much more deliberate about it.
• 35:04
  The data tells us that girls start masturbating much later
• 35:07
  than boys do. They start having orgasms much
• 35:10
  later than boys do because there isn't really an appropriate Ave.
• 35:16
  to give them permission to touch themselves in that way.
• 35:21
  So a large part of what I do with my clients, with my
• 35:24
  readers, is encouraging you to do a practice.
• 35:28
  It's called sensate focus. It was designed for couples, but
• 35:31
  I have tweaked it a bit to make it just something you do on your
• 35:34
  own. So essentially you spend 15
• 35:37
  minutes going through your body and just doing G rated touch.
• 35:42
  So like, oh, what kind of scalp rubs do I like?
• 35:46
  Do I like a firm touch on my thighs or a soft touch?
• 35:50
  And so if you are a client of mine, we're doing this during
• 35:52
  session. You are nude, your camera is
• 35:54
  off. But I'm guiding you through this
• 35:56
  because I know if I tell you just to do this on your own,
• 35:59
  you're probably not going to do it, right?
• 36:01
  So I'm like, Oh no, I'm here. We are doing this right now.
• 36:05
  Yeah, yeah. And I can count on one hand out
• 36:08
  of, you know, over 100 people, the number of folks were like,
• 36:10
  Oh yeah, I've done something like that before.
• 36:12
  Because most of us, it's like we touch ourselves when we're
• 36:14
  putting lotion on, but we're not we're not curious.
• 36:19
  And so that is the G rated version.
• 36:21
  We're not doing anything sexual. And then part of the homework is
• 36:26
  OK, now do the do the less G rated version of this and speak
• 36:32
  out loud. Practice using your words to an
• 36:36
  imaginary partner. This is going to feel silly,
• 36:39
  yes, But if you can say, yeah, you know what?
• 36:43
  I, I've used these words before, even if no one was there the
• 36:47
  first time I use them, it's going to be a lot easier to use
• 36:49
  them the next time. So like, Oh yeah, I like it when
• 36:51
  you touch me like this or a little bit faster, a little bit
• 36:54
  slower. So you are practicing on your
• 36:56
  own again. Baby steps, baby steps.
• 37:01
  Otherwise your brain will be like, uh huh, mayday.
• 37:03
  We're not doing this this. Is not something we've done
• 37:06
  before. We're not doing this.
• 37:07
  Heck no. No.
• 37:09
  Because I, I feel like what I want to dive into, which is
• 37:11
  communicating like your needs or your desires to a partner.
• 37:15
  And I think it really starts with you even understanding what
• 37:18
  those are. Because I think sometimes at
• 37:21
  least my again, general, as I'm saying this in a very general
• 37:24
  sense from just my own experience, when I've seen women
• 37:27
  who are talking about their sex lives, it's interesting because
• 37:32
  they'll note kind of to your point, the start, the middle and
• 37:35
  the end and the quote UN quote accomplishment.
• 37:38
  And I think a lot of the time it's because in their mind they
• 37:42
  have a certain specific script, to your point of what they saw
• 37:45
  as the movie. Then there's the man involved or
• 37:49
  another woman involved and they're seeing a script that
• 37:52
  that person obviously has theirs.
• 37:54
  And now the two have come together and there isn't
• 37:57
  necessarily a shared script. And so because of that, I think
• 38:01
  that sometimes people don't even because maybe they haven't taken
• 38:04
  the space with themselves, whether again, to your point in
• 38:07
  AG rated version of just literally getting comfortable
• 38:09
  with your own body or whether it is more in a sexual way.
• 38:13
  I think without doing that, in my opinion at least, could end
• 38:17
  up falling into this pattern of having a lot of expectations
• 38:20
  when we're not even really sure what we're asking for or what it
• 38:23
  is we even want. Yeah, because we don't know that
• 38:26
  there are all these other options out there, right?
• 38:29
  If you grew up in a teeny tiny town that has three restaurants
• 38:33
  there, you don't know whether you like Himalayan food, right?
• 38:39
  Italian and pizza and Chinese, that's what it is.
• 38:42
  Yeah, Yeah. What do you even mean?
• 38:45
  Yeah, and. So what do you do?
• 38:48
  Does it mean you have to go to every country on the face of the
• 38:50
  earth to figure out what kind of food you like?
• 38:52
  No, maybe you go to one place and you go to a buffet and you
• 38:55
  get to sample a bunch of different things.
• 38:56
  That's kind of, you know, my role is giving folks like,
• 39:00
  here's the buffet, here's how you sample different things,
• 39:03
  different tests and quizzes. I will give people so that I
• 39:05
  kind of know like, all right, here's the thing you're into.
• 39:08
  But I don't, I'm not, you know, putting these behind a paywall
• 39:12
  in terms of you have to work with me to know this stuff.
• 39:15
  It's that there's so many different things I use and
• 39:17
  they're all in my book. So you can go there and look at,
• 39:20
  you know, those things. But in terms of like, watch some
• 39:25
  porn, figure out what stands out to you, What are you like?
• 39:28
  Oh, no, I did not like that. Or what were you like?
• 39:31
  I was actually kind of surprised that that that.
• 39:36
  I like the Himalayan food. I like the yeah.
• 39:39
  What was that spice in there like?
• 39:41
  I've never had that before. Well, like, so say someone feels
• 39:45
  like they're realizing they like the Himalayan food and they want
• 39:48
  to share that with with a partner.
• 39:51
  Yeah, communication, because I feel like in any dynamic with a
• 39:56
  partner, there's obviously what's spoken, there's what's
• 39:59
  unspoken, all of these different, you know,
• 40:01
  expectations, as you're saying, the visions of what you want to
• 40:04
  have happen versus what does happen.
• 40:07
  Where does communication, in your opinion, play a role in
• 40:11
  connection, intimacy and then kind of leading into, you know,
• 40:15
  sex with a partner or, you know, with somebody else?
• 40:18
  I firmly believe in the data supports this, that you're going
• 40:21
  to have better sex if you can talk about sex outside of the
• 40:24
  bedroom. I encourage folks to have
• 40:26
  conversations about sex early on and not like, hey, we're going
• 40:32
  to have sex in a little bit. What are your views on XYZ?
• 40:35
  But just because that is a measure of compatibility, hey,
• 40:38
  what are you into? And unfortunately, when we're
• 40:41
  talking about cisgender heterosexual couples, the script
• 40:47
  there is always so ingrained. When we're talking about two
• 40:53
  men, two women, there really is no script.
• 40:57
  And so you kind of have to talk about things.
• 41:00
  So sis had couples have this advantage air quotes in that
• 41:05
  they have a work around cuz like, oh, we'll just do kind of
• 41:08
  how like we're supposed to do it.
• 41:10
  You don't have to have the conversations.
• 41:12
  So those conversations can be incredibly scary to have outside
• 41:17
  of the bedroom, you know. Hey, do you have any kinks?
• 41:19
  How do you define great sex? These are really fun getting to
• 41:23
  know you questions that I people might be listening like, Oh my
• 41:29
  God, there's no way or whatever. I asked those kinds of things on
• 41:32
  a first date. I understand not everyone does,
• 41:36
  but it's getting comfortable because here's what will happen
• 41:40
  is if you wait too long, for example, to gauge sexual
• 41:45
  compatibility as some people, and it's normally women who do
• 41:51
  this, say I got to make him wait, right?
• 41:53
  What happens is say you get into the bedroom and you're like, oh,
• 41:57
  this actually ain't so good. But everything else is really
• 42:00
  great. You kind of feel like a jerk for
• 42:04
  ending it there. And most women just don't.
• 42:06
  They stick around. And this, you know,
• 42:10
  compatibility. Yes, you can change some of the
• 42:12
  techniques and stuff, but if the compatibility isn't there, it
• 42:15
  can be hard to to mimic that. And so I say, even if you're not
• 42:19
  ready to have, let's take off all of our clothes, intercourse
• 42:22
  with someone or sex, however you define that, there are ways that
• 42:27
  you can gauge sexual compatibility ahead of time
• 42:30
  through conversations outside of the bedroom.
• 42:33
  There's so many games now you can play like per game.
• 42:37
  So many, so, so, so many. And if anyone's listening, if
• 42:41
  you want some recommendations like Shoot Me ADMI will tell you
• 42:43
  what some of my favorites are. Whether you're early in dating,
• 42:47
  whether you know you've been together a really long time.
• 42:50
  But for couples who have been together a long time, the data
• 42:53
  tells us that women who are able to talk comfortably with their
• 42:58
  husbands about sex outside of the bedroom, right off the bat,
• 43:01
  about half of them say, yeah, I'm very satisfied in my
• 43:04
  relationship. And for those who can't have
• 43:07
  those conversations, that number drops to under 10%.
• 43:12
  So instead of looking at these sexual conversations as oh, a
• 43:16
  nice to have a cherry on top, they can be the thing that makes
• 43:22
  or breaks your relationship, but no one's teaching us how to have
• 43:27
  them. So I'm not here shaming people
• 43:29
  like you're doing. If you only had drank your water
• 43:32
  every day, right? Like, no, no one telling you how
• 43:35
  to have these conversations. And so that's why I think it's
• 43:38
  important. Read books, listen to podcasts
• 43:42
  like this or podcasts dedicated to sex.
• 43:46
  See what it feels like to hear people talking about sex in the
• 43:49
  same way they'd talk about food or anything else in a non charge
• 43:54
  non shame based way. Well, I'm wondering for someone
• 43:57
  listening because, OK, maybe they hear this and they think
• 44:00
  I'm inspired to have a conversation.
• 44:02
  You know what they come to think of it, I haven't had really any
• 44:05
  kinds of conversations like that.
• 44:06
  And let's just call it the last six months.
• 44:09
  But maybe they feel embarrassed or they feel like it's going to
• 44:12
  feel so random for me to bring this up when I haven't talked
• 44:15
  about any of this. But or maybe if it they're
• 44:17
  especially in a long term relationship, they've been
• 44:20
  together for years. And to your point, there maybe
• 44:23
  is this pattern of how things have always been.
• 44:26
  Any recommendations for someone if they're feeling like I kind
• 44:29
  of am excited by this idea of having that conversation, that
• 44:31
  would be something I'd be interested in, but I just feel I
• 44:34
  don't even know where I would start and also kind of feel a
• 44:37
  little embarrassed to even introduce that.
• 44:39
  Yeah, I always say throw, throw Rena under the bus.
• 44:42
  Hey I I was listening to a podcast with Kate Perkovic today
• 44:48
  and she normally talks about XYZ but today it happened to be
• 44:52
  about B or S That's. True, you can throw us under the
• 44:56
  bus full permission. Full permission 100%.
• 44:59
  And, and Rena challenged everyone who was listening that
• 45:03
  if you were partnered to go to your partner and say, hey,
• 45:09
  because again, this isn't your idea.
• 45:10
  This is Reena's idea and Reena and Kate's idea.
• 45:14
  So the challenge was if you could rank what our sex life is
• 45:19
  on a scale from one to 10, how would you rank it?
• 45:24
  You guys maybe both write that down.
• 45:26
  OK, what would bring it to A10? And then you go through those
• 45:29
  things, but creating a safe space where you're like, all
• 45:34
  right, we know that we're, the goal here isn't to say
• 45:38
  everything's perfect and we're both 10s.
• 45:40
  We're saying like, OK, this is a safe space.
• 45:42
  What would we each like a little bit more of?
• 45:44
  Because it might be, I want more frequency.
• 45:47
  It might be, hey, I just want it to last longer.
• 45:49
  I want a bit more oral. I want right.
• 45:52
  And so creating this baby step kind of safe space as a starting
• 45:56
  point is something I find to be helpful.
• 45:58
  If that feels really scary, get one of the card decks.
• 46:02
  There are so many now. There's even a free, a free app
• 46:06
  by the Gottmans where they have little cards on the app totally
• 46:10
  free and taking turns asking your partner a question whether
• 46:14
  it's like, OK, we're going to do the cards at dinner.
• 46:18
  Rena has challenged us that, you know, every time we have dinner
• 46:21
  to ask each other two questions from this card deck.
• 46:23
  Again, this is a game. It's not you versus one another.
• 46:27
  It's you 2 versus the the issue, the thing, the thing here is in
• 46:33
  sex. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:35
  And I'm wondering like even on that, if someone maybe has been
• 46:38
  in a long term relationship and feels like things have felt a
• 46:43
  little routine, it has felt felt like the same script or they
• 46:47
  feel like there's kind of the stagnation and they don't really
• 46:51
  know how to like reignite things.
• 46:54
  Or to your point in that game, they realize that maybe there
• 46:58
  are things they want to communicate with their partner
• 47:00
  that they haven't. And they're like, if I say this,
• 47:03
  this is what we've always done or we've been doing this script
• 47:06
  for three years and now I'm going to throw a wrench in and
• 47:08
  say, hey, I'd rather or I would enjoy XYZ.
• 47:12
  How does somebody kind of reignite things if they feel
• 47:16
  like either Intimacy would be one question.
• 47:19
  If that's faded over time and maybe you're still going through
• 47:22
  the motions of having lots of sex, but it doesn't feel
• 47:24
  intimate and there doesn't like there's that connection.
• 47:28
  Or maybe you have great connection and you're super
• 47:32
  intimate with each other. But when it comes to sex, it
• 47:34
  just kind of is not there. Like if you're feeling that
• 47:37
  things have kind of lost their spark in a long term
• 47:39
  relationship, where do we start? Yeah, I mean, an easy hack for
• 47:45
  introducing new things is, hey, you know what might be fun to
• 47:48
  try? Because to your point, like, I,
• 47:50
  I think a lot of people do worry.
• 47:52
  Oh, my gosh, if I bring up something new, my partner's
• 47:55
  going to think that it means they don't like what I've been
• 47:56
  doing this whole time. Let's use a food analogy here.
• 48:01
  No, you're just saying I love tacos.
• 48:03
  I just don't want tacos seven nights a week.
• 48:05
  I want I want some Italian food sometimes.
• 48:09
  At the end of the day, use food. That's what I'm getting from
• 48:12
  this. I love tacos.
• 48:13
  Just not every day. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:15
  Even your favorite food in the world from your favorite
• 48:18
  restaurant in the world you don't want that you know every
• 48:21
  night for. Dinner, right?
• 48:24
  So it's a matter of, hey, you know what might be fun to try?
• 48:29
  It's a matter of taking turns, whether that's like on dates.
• 48:32
  Oh, yeah, we have date night every Friday.
• 48:34
  OK, cool. So how about every other Friday?
• 48:37
  You're going to take turns planning what that date is.
• 48:39
  You can leave it a surprise for the other person.
• 48:42
  We're making this fun again. We're we're taking something
• 48:46
  that usually takes no mental bandwidth because it's routine.
• 48:50
  It's a well worn groove and we're just flipping it a tiny
• 48:53
  bit to make it more intentional. Because there's a difference
• 48:56
  between routine and ritual. 1 is imbued with meaning.
• 49:02
  One is special, one can bring couples closer together, and the
• 49:06
  other is just something we do on autopilot to get through the day
• 49:08
  to make our lives easier. So there are, I mean, Esther
• 49:13
  Perel has written an entire book on why do couples stop wanting
• 49:17
  to have sex over long periods of time.
• 49:20
  It's called mating in captivity. That was really the whole notion
• 49:23
  that catapulted her career because she was seeing this all
• 49:27
  over the place. And what she says is that fire
• 49:31
  needs oxygen to breathe and desire needs space.
• 49:37
  So what do I mean by that? In our relationships, we need to
• 49:43
  createspace. We need to createspace that can
• 49:46
  look like stop peeing with the door open.
• 49:49
  OK, I'm not the one. Someone finally said it.
• 49:55
  Thank you, thank you. Someone finally said it.
• 49:57
  And I have no hang ups around like anything when it comes to
• 50:01
  the body or like oh it's not proper.
• 50:03
  Just stop peeing with the door open friends.
• 50:06
  Easy, easy #1 hack I can give. If you can live separately for a
• 50:13
  little bit longer, try that. If you can get ready for your
• 50:17
  date nights separately or meet at the restaurant, try that.
• 50:21
  So find ways where can I insert just a little bit of breathing
• 50:26
  room into my relationship. I often tell couples who already
• 50:30
  have date nights, you know, we do it X number of times a month
• 50:32
  to say, all right, each of you gets a solo date night once a
• 50:35
  month too. And you can use your date night
• 50:38
  however you want to. You want to get stoned and play
• 50:41
  video games in the basement? Amazing.
• 50:44
  You want to go like get wasted with your friends and like take
• 50:49
  AI don't know, like dance on a bar top or whatever.
• 50:51
  Amazing. But you both need to remember
• 50:54
  who you were before you got into this relationship, often times
• 50:59
  before you became parents. So it's reclaiming, creating a
• 51:03
  little bit of space. If you're on vacation together,
• 51:07
  plan an activity apart from one another.
• 51:10
  Give yourself something new to talk about.
• 51:14
  So there are so many ways to Createspace, but that's really
• 51:17
  the easiest way to start reinviting intimacy, desire and
• 51:22
  Eroticism back into your relationship is by injecting
• 51:25
  just a little bit of breathing room.
• 51:28
  And I'm curious on that, what if one of the partners has, say, a
• 51:33
  very high libido and is very, very feels like they're kind of
• 51:37
  on all the time and ready to go. And the other partner is not at
• 51:43
  the same pace in the sense that they don't really feel like
• 51:45
  they're on the same page. And maybe that's part of why
• 51:48
  over time, it's felt like it's kind of feeling stagnant because
• 51:51
  the stagnate from the partner, I'm thinking who has low libido,
• 51:54
  they may not even notice that there's an issue because to
• 51:57
  them, they're totally fine with the frequency or the intensity
• 52:02
  of their sex life. But maybe the other person is
• 52:05
  either asking for more or the person who's not interested is
• 52:08
  having to participate more. How do you kind of navigate two
• 52:13
  parties having totally different libido but obviously being in a
• 52:17
  long term relationship? There's so many questions I
• 52:21
  would ask there because and really teasing out like when did
• 52:28
  the low libido start? Has this always been the case
• 52:30
  that one person just has always had a low libido since you
• 52:34
  started dating? The other person's always had a
• 52:36
  high libido. OK, what if, if the answer is
• 52:39
  yes, what were you doing at the beginning to to reconcile that
• 52:43
  difference? If the answer is no, like, hey,
• 52:46
  mine has stayed the same, but my partner's has just plummeted.
• 52:51
  I would want to sit down and have a conversation with the
• 52:53
  partner with the lower libido and be like, so let's talk about
• 52:56
  the plummeting part and see what it is.
• 52:59
  But say it's a matter of like, there's just going to be a
• 53:03
  fundamental sexual incompatibility between you 2.
• 53:07
  There's got to be work around. Some couples will have service
• 53:10
  sex, you know, like, hey, I don't love tacos that much, but
• 53:14
  I know my partner loves tacos. So once a week we have tacos
• 53:16
  together, right? Or it can be opening up the
• 53:21
  relationship to an extent that maybe just involves sex.
• 53:26
  It can be, you know, partners engaging in more masturbation.
• 53:29
  I think really though, figuring out like what, what is the
• 53:34
  meaning of sex for me? Because often times when we see
• 53:38
  folks who have a high libido, who are feeling left behind by
• 53:42
  their partner who has a low libido, they feel unwanted.
• 53:47
  And not just in the sexual capacity, but like, hey, I want
• 53:50
  to have sex so that I can feel close to you.
• 53:55
  And what are some other ways that I can feel close to you?
• 54:00
  There's a great book by Sarah Hunter Marie called Not Always
• 54:03
  in the Mood. And it's about the science of
• 54:06
  men and sex and relationships and how we have so many myths
• 54:11
  that men are just raring to go all the time that like, you
• 54:15
  know, they actually like watching porn.
• 54:17
  Like they think the women in porn are hotter than they think
• 54:19
  we are. I mean, all these myths that are
• 54:21
  completely kicked to the curb in this book.
• 54:25
  And so she gives some advice in terms of, OK, how do you turn
• 54:30
  down sex, for example, since often times sex is a bid to
• 54:33
  connect. They can be, hey, not in the
• 54:36
  mood now, maybe we can try tomorrow.
• 54:39
  So you suggest a different time. And then you give something you
• 54:42
  can do in the meantime. Hey, do you want to cuddle
• 54:44
  instead? But say, one partner, I was
• 54:48
  working with a couple and one of the partners, he started taking
• 54:52
  medication that just made his libido so, so high all the time.
• 54:56
  He's like, I can't, like I just can't.
• 54:59
  And so the deal became like, OK, we're not going to expect that
• 55:04
  she can meet this like unreasonable demand.
• 55:07
  Like it, it was a lot. But maybe she can be there
• 55:11
  sometimes while he meets that demand for himself, right?
• 55:14
  So he can have some of that closeness without her having to
• 55:16
  do more of the labor. These are just me throwing out
• 55:19
  ideas here. It's so much of it's going to
• 55:21
  depend on the why and the specifics.
• 55:24
  But getting clear and asking, OK, has it always been the case
• 55:27
  here? And if it hasn't, what do we
• 55:29
  think is going on with this discrepancy?
• 55:32
  Is it something we can fix? If it's not, is this a
• 55:35
  fundamental incompatibility that might lead us to go our separate
• 55:39
  ways? Yeah, lots of, lots of
• 55:42
  questions. So much to tease out.
• 55:44
  And yeah, as you were, as you were talking, I mean, just to
• 55:46
  be, you know, a transparent share.
• 55:48
  I feel like when business was so stressful for me and I was under
• 55:54
  so much pressure, it was like the last thing on my mind.
• 55:58
  Like I didn't feel capacity to connect on an intimate level and
• 56:04
  also didn't really feel capacity to be sexual either because I
• 56:08
  was just to me, it was like on like talking about spectrum is
• 56:12
  on the total other side of the spectrum emotionally,
• 56:15
  energetically then how I was feeling.
• 56:18
  And I think at least I'll speak for myself.
• 56:20
  I felt like a lot of shame around that because it felt
• 56:23
  like, well, like I, I'm in at the time I was in a relationship
• 56:27
  and a long term relationship and like I need to get myself
• 56:30
  together here because like my stress was impacting it.
• 56:33
  But before I started to correlate to stress, I just
• 56:37
  thought there's something wrong with me.
• 56:38
  And I actually have talked to other women who've also said
• 56:41
  like theirs was not connected to stress, but just more of like an
• 56:44
  ongoing like I just have in general low libido.
• 56:47
  And I don't know what's wrong with me because I think their
• 56:50
  partner had taken it as the belief that like they weren't
• 56:54
  interested or they weren't, you know, kind of like attracted to
• 56:58
  them or all of these things. And so obviously I know libido
• 57:01
  like, which is why I said the beginning.
• 57:02
  This could be a 5 hour show. I know libido even in itself,
• 57:06
  there's so many layers as to what can be in the underbelly of
• 57:09
  low libido. But if someone maybe feels like
• 57:12
  they are that person, is there anything that you find?
• 57:16
  Or sometimes when you're saying you're teasing it out a little
• 57:18
  bit and kind of getting to the root, are there some
• 57:20
  commonalities that you see that maybe are not something say I'm
• 57:24
  thinking like the medication, like a biological that are more
• 57:27
  almost like habit or lifestyle that impact that?
• 57:31
  Yeah, I would before going into that, like definitely I'm, I'm
• 57:34
  at the age where like perimenopause is becoming a
• 57:36
  thing and you might want to get your hormones tested because
• 57:39
  that can absolutely impact libido.
• 57:41
  It makes sense that when you're stressed, you don't want to have
• 57:45
  sex. It's the last thing on your
• 57:47
  minds. But really figuring out or
• 57:51
  understanding that when it comes to desire that most women we
• 57:56
  have responsive desire and not spontaneous desire.
• 58:01
  So I'll use another food analogy because I love food analogies.
• 58:06
  Like me, Kate, I don't have a sweet tooth, OK?
• 58:09
  I'm not one of those people who just like, craves.
• 58:11
  I am that person. I'm a pan of brownies for
• 58:13
  breakfast. OK, yeah, yeah, I have a cheese
• 58:15
  tooth. OK, so I don't have a sweet
• 58:18
  tooth, but if I walk past a bakery and I smell like cookies
• 58:24
  or whatever, I see someone eating a cake on TV, I'm like,
• 58:27
  Oh yeah, I could go for something sweet right about now.
• 58:30
  That's responsive desire. You waking up and being like,
• 58:35
  ah, where's where's my brownies for breakfast?
• 58:38
  That's spontaneous desire. So when it comes to what the
• 58:43
  research tells us is it tells us that most men are like you,
• 58:47
  Kate. They want those brownies.
• 58:50
  They want that sex out of the blue.
• 58:51
  And most women are responsive. They need something to get them
• 58:56
  in the mood for brownies. They need something to activate
• 58:59
  that sweet tooth. So instead of beating yourself
• 59:03
  up and saying why am I not in the mood?
• 59:07
  The better question is what could get me in the mood?
• 59:11
  And that's going to vary person to person.
• 59:14
  For some folks, it's OK. I'm going to make sure I'm done
• 59:17
  with work by this time. I'm going to take a bath and
• 59:21
  listen to some erotica, right? It could be I'm going to watch
• 59:27
  some porn. It can be, hey, throughout the
• 59:28
  day, I'm going to start a bit of a flirty text exchange with my
• 59:32
  partner. So don't beat yourself up for
• 59:36
  something that we're actually not designed to do.
• 59:38
  It's it's like, let's work smarter understanding what what
• 59:42
  we need to do here and just figure out like, OK, what
• 59:45
  normally gets me in the mood historically and try to
• 59:49
  replicate that to the extent you can.
• 59:53
  Well, like even as you're saying with the text during the day,
• 59:55
  I'm thinking for someone who, cuz obviously 90% of the people
• 59:59
  listening to this are busy entrepreneurs.
• 1:00:01
  And so if I was to wave, you know, a magic wand and come up
• 1:00:05
  with a movie, it would be you sit down and you work all day.
• 1:00:08
  You're super stressed. You close your laptop, you eat
• 1:00:10
  dinner and by the time you're done, you're like the day's over
• 1:00:15
  tomorrow. And so that becomes this routine
• 1:00:18
  that happens. And so I'm curious if someone.
• 1:00:21
  Maybe to your point, feels like they're in that rhythm.
• 1:00:25
  Really what you're saying is you kind of need like a pattern
• 1:00:28
  interrupt. Do you find when you're
• 1:00:29
  recommending this, is it to get in your head or is it to get in
• 1:00:32
  your body? Or maybe even both?
• 1:00:34
  Well, it's really to get yourself thinking about sex
• 1:00:37
  because you're not going to accidentally start thinking
• 1:00:39
  about it when you're thinking about your business and things
• 1:00:41
  that feel more immediate. So in those situations, if you
• 1:00:45
  are a busy entrepreneur and you are in a relationship and you're
• 1:00:48
  like, Oh my gosh, I just, there aren't enough hours in the day.
• 1:00:51
  And even if there were, I don't feel like doing this anyway.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah, yeah. I'm going to tell you this.
• 1:00:58
  Scheduling sex is not boring. I think scheduled sex can be
• 1:01:01
  some of the hottest sex you can have because you can spend all
• 1:01:07
  the time preparing for it, anticipating it.
• 1:01:12
  We don't say oh this vacation wasn't fun because I had to plan
• 1:01:16
  for it, or like this party wasn't good because I had a plan
• 1:01:19
  for it. There are plenty of things we do
• 1:01:21
  all the time that we plan for, and by virtue of planning for
• 1:01:25
  them, we end up enjoying ourselves more.
• 1:01:28
  And so get rid of this idea. It's complete bullshit that
• 1:01:32
  planned or scheduled sex is boring.
• 1:01:35
  I don't care. Like, I don't know where this
• 1:01:38
  idea got kicked around, but it is not true.
• 1:01:42
  I would argue that planned and scheduled sex can be some of the
• 1:01:45
  hottest sex you will have. And this doesn't need to be.
• 1:01:48
  We're getting it on the shared Google Calendar.
• 1:01:51
  This could be, you know, tell your partner, hey, you know
• 1:01:53
  what? I want you to reach out to me
• 1:01:56
  once a week and be like, after dinner tonight, be in the
• 1:01:58
  bedroom wearing lingerie. That is planning.
• 1:02:03
  And then you're like, oh, I wonder what he's gonna do to me.
• 1:02:06
  Like right? Well, you know, as you're saying
• 1:02:08
  that I'm thinking when you're first dating, though, it is all
• 1:02:12
  planned. Like you're like, I'll pick you
• 1:02:14
  up at 7, Be ready at this time and not again, not all women,
• 1:02:18
  but many women are like, I love that this person like takes
• 1:02:21
  charge and makes a plan. And you know, like when we're
• 1:02:24
  first dating, I feel like a lot of it can sometimes be planned.
• 1:02:28
  And so it's interesting that when you think about maybe being
• 1:02:31
  in a long term relationship, how then the planning all of a
• 1:02:33
  sudden for some reason becomes a negative thing when before, to
• 1:02:36
  your point earlier, it's like this anticipation and you're
• 1:02:39
  getting ready for like 2 hours before leaving, trying to get
• 1:02:42
  ready for this date. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:45
  It's anticipation. We like anticipation.
• 1:02:48
  If I know I'm going to my favorite restaurant tonight, I'm
• 1:02:51
  like, Oh yeah, I'm already thinking about what I'm going to
• 1:02:54
  get. There.
• 1:02:55
  If I open the door and somebody has like plopped it on my
• 1:02:58
  doorstep, I'm like, whoa, where did this come from?
• 1:03:00
  Like I haven't built it up as much.
• 1:03:03
  So use that to your advantage. Do what you need to do
• 1:03:07
  throughout the day to help get you in the mood for it.
• 1:03:11
  And it gives you more time to prepare the things that you
• 1:03:15
  mentioned earlier, you know, get getting your wax appointment
• 1:03:17
  done, whatever the case may be, like things that you think, oh,
• 1:03:20
  damn, I wish I had known I might have had more time, you know,
• 1:03:23
  to, to figure out what was going to make me feel comfortable in
• 1:03:25
  the moment. You have that time if if you can
• 1:03:29
  get it on the calendar. And one thing that I also was
• 1:03:33
  wanting to expand on and go back to saying we've briefly kind of
• 1:03:36
  glazed over it was this dynamic between dominant and submissive.
• 1:03:41
  Because the thing that it's interesting, it came up actually
• 1:03:45
  weirdly enough, masculine and feminine around dominant and
• 1:03:49
  submissive came up on a group coaching call of all things.
• 1:03:52
  And what we had been talking about was feminine and sometimes
• 1:03:56
  it feminine being about surrender and this aspect of,
• 1:04:00
  you know, for some women, they had labeled it as being
• 1:04:03
  submissive. And naturally all the feminists
• 1:04:05
  in the room were like, absolutely not.
• 1:04:07
  And all of this belief, right, about what submissive meant.
• 1:04:10
  And because we touched on it, I wanted to kind of go back to
• 1:04:13
  that because I think there is a big misconception around what it
• 1:04:19
  means, what it looks like. And for some people, I feel like
• 1:04:23
  just when they hear the words submissive, there's like this
• 1:04:26
  long history movie that gets played in our head of all
• 1:04:30
  different narratives and stories and timelines and all of these
• 1:04:34
  things. And so I'm curious for the
• 1:04:36
  person who's listening and maybe is that woman you were talking
• 1:04:40
  about earlier who is feeling like she's just go, go, go
• 1:04:43
  nonstop during the day, making decisions constantly on.
• 1:04:47
  And then to your point, now is kind of OK, Like I want to tune
• 1:04:50
  into my partner and I don't want to feel like I'm just ending
• 1:04:53
  work stressed and it's taking a toll on my relationship.
• 1:04:55
  But like, how do I do that while also trying to now figure out my
• 1:05:00
  dynamic of potentially going into this and going from
• 1:05:04
  dominant all day to being say submissive in the evening.
• 1:05:08
  So I'm curious if you could just maybe you were mentioning myths,
• 1:05:11
  break some myths about the dynamic between dominant,
• 1:05:14
  submissive and and what that really means for someone
• 1:05:18
  listening. Because I know sometimes when
• 1:05:19
  people hear that word, it can kind of make them think specific
• 1:05:22
  things that I think are really rooted often times in myths or
• 1:05:26
  misconceptions. Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  So I mean, we can talk about kind of lowercase dominant and
• 1:05:32
  submissive in terms of I think in most sexual encounters like
• 1:05:38
  there it's not always like a 5050 egalitarian in terms of
• 1:05:41
  like, OK, who's normally kind of like making the moves or
• 1:05:45
  initiating, switching positions kind of thing.
• 1:05:48
  So loosely speaking, there is normally some sort of power
• 1:05:51
  differential in the bedroom. What capital D Dom versus
• 1:05:56
  lowercase D? If we're talking about DSD slash
• 1:06:00
  S, dominant slash submissive, what we're talking about is
• 1:06:03
  acknowledging these power differentials and playing with
• 1:06:07
  them. This is pretend people.
• 1:06:11
  This is play. This is cops and robbers for
• 1:06:13
  grown-ups with their pants off, as Dan Savage says.
• 1:06:17
  So I have heard so many people who are feminists who are like,
• 1:06:22
  oh, does this make me a bad feminist that I want someone to
• 1:06:26
  just come in and control me? No, actually it makes total
• 1:06:29
  sense that you are craving something so different that you
• 1:06:33
  feel that you have power and respect outside of the bedroom.
• 1:06:39
  So to drive this point home, if we look at the the research
• 1:06:43
  behind who's fantasizing about what, this will kind of give you
• 1:06:47
  an idea. So we can look at religious
• 1:06:49
  people tend to fantasize more about like wife swapping.
• 1:06:54
  Why? Because it's the most taboo
• 1:06:57
  thing that you can possibly fantasize about is like watching
• 1:06:59
  somebody with your wife. Progressive folks tend not to
• 1:07:03
  fantasize about that. They're more fantasizing about
• 1:07:07
  power differentials, about dominance and submission,
• 1:07:11
  because in their day-to-day lives, they value egalitarianism
• 1:07:16
  a lot more. So if we look at this, you can
• 1:07:20
  ask yourself, what is my sexual fantasy revealing about an
• 1:07:24
  emotional need that I'm having? And that emotional need can be,
• 1:07:30
  oh, I just don't want to have to make decisions in the bedroom.
• 1:07:35
  The emotional need can be, I want my pleasure to be like the
• 1:07:37
  priority for once. So say you're the go, go, go
• 1:07:42
  entrepreneur during the day. And, and this is resonating with
• 1:07:46
  you. Where do you go from here?
• 1:07:47
  You send your partner a text and you're like, hey, at this time
• 1:07:51
  tonight, I'm going to be waiting in the bedroom and I want you to
• 1:07:54
  come take me that way. You, you are still giving
• 1:07:57
  orders, but you're giving orders to be like, take care of me.
• 1:08:03
  I mean, we do that all the time. We make appointments to go get
• 1:08:06
  our nails done. We take our cards in to get them
• 1:08:09
  serviced. This is saying like, please, I
• 1:08:12
  just need you to, to, to come and, and do this thing.
• 1:08:16
  And it adds an interesting dynamic.
• 1:08:18
  You can add a sleep mask into this to start gently
• 1:08:22
  experimenting with surrendering control.
• 1:08:25
  You can take turns, both of you, like I'm going to be the
• 1:08:27
  dominant tonight. You're going to be the
• 1:08:29
  submissive. And just playing around with
• 1:08:31
  these power exchanges that are so they're exaggerated because
• 1:08:37
  in the real world, we do have power imbalances between men and
• 1:08:40
  women. And so we are taking these, we
• 1:08:43
  are acknowledging them, and we're playing with them in the
• 1:08:46
  same way that the term queer used to be a slur against people
• 1:08:51
  in the queer community. What the community ended up
• 1:08:54
  doing was taking the word back. And they're like, you know what?
• 1:08:57
  We're going to start calling ourselves queer.
• 1:08:59
  So that way when you say it doesn't actually bother us
• 1:09:01
  anymore. Yeah.
• 1:09:02
  So that's kind of what we're doing is saying, yeah, I, I'm
• 1:09:05
  going to choose to be submissive here.
• 1:09:08
  It's my choice. I love that, that adding, like
• 1:09:12
  you're saying, like many feminists actually are people
• 1:09:15
  who have this desire, because really what you're saying is
• 1:09:18
  this is not a matter of taking away your power in a dynamic
• 1:09:22
  like this. It's actually a matter of
• 1:09:24
  acknowledging your power when you're doing this, which is
• 1:09:27
  huge. That's the main reason I wanted
• 1:09:29
  to. I definitely wanted to hear you
• 1:09:30
  chat about that because I know for many women who are listening
• 1:09:34
  to this, they're going to be thinking, OK, but like, I'm raw,
• 1:09:36
  raw women. I'm supporting women.
• 1:09:38
  I'm about female empowerment. How can this be?
• 1:09:41
  And really, what you're saying is that the two can coexist.
• 1:09:44
  Yeah, I mean, so am I. Like I, I, I would say that the
• 1:09:48
  data tells us that it's women like us who tend to have these
• 1:09:51
  fantasies. So not always, but we gravitate
• 1:09:54
  towards them. 93% of women have fantasized about being sexually
• 1:09:58
  submissive. That's a lot, 93%. 93%, Yeah.
• 1:10:03
  Wow. Yeah, OK.
• 1:10:06
  I mean, it's the data. The data tells us.
• 1:10:09
  This is not just her opinion, you guys, it's the data.
• 1:10:11
  So you're good to go. You're good to go.
• 1:10:14
  Obviously, you know, we covered a lot today and I, I have your,
• 1:10:18
  I have multiple copies of your book actually upstairs on my
• 1:10:21
  bookshelf. The book is absolutely
• 1:10:22
  incredible, you guys. It is literally, it's a Bible.
• 1:10:28
  I don't know how to explain it. It's a manual, it's a Bible,
• 1:10:30
  It's literally, it's just got so much in it.
• 1:10:32
  And today I really feel like was just genuinely such a surface of
• 1:10:37
  how deep you can go not only in understanding yourself, but also
• 1:10:40
  this in connection to a partner. And I'm curious, Rena, for
• 1:10:44
  someone who's listening, who there's two sides to this that I
• 1:10:47
  see. This is either maybe one of the
• 1:10:48
  first conversations that they've kind of they saw the title.
• 1:10:51
  They're like, OK, I'm going to listen to this and see what it
• 1:10:53
  brings up for me. Or maybe somebody who is a
• 1:10:56
  little bit more comfortable this conversation and wanting to
• 1:10:58
  explore more. Can you kind of breakdown just
• 1:11:03
  high level what kind of are the stages of where people need to
• 1:11:06
  be or what they might be looking for if they're going to the book
• 1:11:09
  versus say coaching or the different levels of depth
• 1:11:12
  obviously that are working with you?
• 1:11:15
  Well, so with the book, in fact, a lot of the clients that come
• 1:11:19
  to me now are people who did read the book and they're like,
• 1:11:22
  all right, I think I want, I want that like individually
• 1:11:26
  tailored part of it. I want that accountability too.
• 1:11:29
  So if you know that you're bad at doing homework and you're not
• 1:11:33
  going to do the homework in this book, I'm I'm telling you, you
• 1:11:37
  will get entertainment out of it.
• 1:11:39
  But I don't know how much value you will get out of it.
• 1:11:42
  But it is entertaining because it's a book that is story based,
• 1:11:46
  stories from my life, stories from my clients lives.
• 1:11:48
  So it's a story book. It's not.
• 1:11:50
  I'm a PhD and I'm telling you as an expert how to do this stuff.
• 1:11:54
  I do cite people who are way smarter than me, but this is a
• 1:11:57
  book of stories. So I would approach that to
• 1:12:01
  understand, to normalize figuring out what it is you
• 1:12:04
  want. Some people like the book
• 1:12:06
  because you can do it at your own pace.
• 1:12:08
  Coaching is going to be a lot different than that.
• 1:12:11
  If you want to learn more about coaching and what that is, you
• 1:12:14
  can look at my website. But if you're looking to all
• 1:12:17
  right, what's a podcast I could listen to that might help me?
• 1:12:22
  I love Dan Savage's Savage Love cast because every week you hear
• 1:12:26
  from people all around the world.
• 1:12:28
  It's a call in show. So you hear not just like, you
• 1:12:31
  know, Kate and Rena as to, you know, experts on the things that
• 1:12:35
  we're experts in, but you hear from just regular people all
• 1:12:38
  around the world. And it helped me feel so much
• 1:12:42
  less alone during my own journey.
• 1:12:44
  So it's something I recommend to other folks.
• 1:12:47
  But yeah, I mean, I think don't don't feel like you are going to
• 1:12:54
  understand everything tomorrow or that you want to understand
• 1:12:57
  everything tomorrow. I'm still on my journey and I
• 1:13:01
  don't want my journey to ever end because, you know, life
• 1:13:04
  would be pretty boring if we felt like we'd done everything
• 1:13:06
  and tried everything and had it all figured out.
• 1:13:10
  So give yourself some grace and enjoy the journey and enjoy the
• 1:13:14
  process. And we always end every episode
• 1:13:19
  with a question, which is obviously and especially for you
• 1:13:22
  being like, obviously you've got an incredible book and you crush
• 1:13:26
  and speaking and coaching and all these things.
• 1:13:28
  And so we ask at the end of each episode what your advice might
• 1:13:33
  be as a 1 nugget or something for someone who is a very
• 1:13:36
  ambitious, driven woman. And if you could give her any
• 1:13:41
  advice. And I'll give you a second
• 1:13:42
  because it doesn't have to be about today's topic.
• 1:13:44
  It could be about anything. And if it happens to be with
• 1:13:46
  today's topic, even better. But just anything that you might
• 1:13:49
  recommend to her because she's someone who is going for huge
• 1:13:53
  things usually in business, in her life, in her relationship,
• 1:13:56
  which is why we're here today and is trying to really expand
• 1:13:59
  and develop in every single area.
• 1:14:01
  And I'm curious, obviously yourself, you're a very
• 1:14:03
  successful entrepreneur. Any advice that you have for the
• 1:14:07
  person listening, if you could give her a nugget or pass along
• 1:14:10
  some aspect of wisdom. All right, hear me out.
• 1:14:14
  If you were to get hit by a bus, would you have any major regrets
• 1:14:19
  with how you were living your life?
• 1:14:21
  Whether that's how much time you're putting into your
• 1:14:24
  business versus spending it with your family, with the people who
• 1:14:28
  mean something to you, whether that's staying in a relationship
• 1:14:32
  that is maybe expired, right? Will you have accomplished
• 1:14:36
  everything you want to accomplish in life?
• 1:14:38
  No. But were you living your life in
• 1:14:41
  integrity? That's the question I ask myself
• 1:14:44
  all the time because yeah, I want to keep accomplishing
• 1:14:47
  things and doing things, but today was I living the way I
• 1:14:51
  wanted to live and that would be my piece of advice.
• 1:14:56
  You're doing and you're creating and you're achieving, but are
• 1:14:59
  you living? Yeah, It's powerful.
• 1:15:01
  Yeah. It's really good.
• 1:15:03
  Rena, this was so good. I, I feel like I could
• 1:15:05
  definitely, as I said earlier, go for like 3 hours.
• 1:15:08
  I'm like, I want an intimacy episode.
• 1:15:09
  I want a tactics episode. But if obviously people want to
• 1:15:13
  learn more, where's the best place for them to really, like,
• 1:15:16
  just sink their teeth into more or like an extension of all
• 1:15:18
  things from today's conversation?
• 1:15:20
  Yeah, so Instagram is where I hang out most and then I will
• 1:15:25
  point out that my book is available wherever you buy your
• 1:15:28
  books in paperback, ebook and audiobook.
• 1:15:32
  So yeah, all those different formats.
• 1:15:34
  But come say hi to me on Instagram.
• 1:15:36
  If you want to learn more about my coaching, you can head on
• 1:15:38
  over to my website which is my name Reena martin.com.
• 1:15:41
  And I will also say guys, for Instagram feed alone is hacked
• 1:15:46
  with information like the carousels that she's got on
• 1:15:49
  there and the information she has on there is like insanely
• 1:15:51
  valuable. You'll love it.
• 1:15:52
  So Marina, thank you so, so much for today.
• 1:15:54
  It was so great. I, I feel like myself, I have so
• 1:15:58
  many things that are on my list of like takeaways.
• 1:16:00
  So thank you for everything that you shared.
• 1:16:01
  And guys, please make sure that you go reach out with her on
• 1:16:04
  Instagram. Please go grab a copy of the
• 1:16:06
  book. You will not be sorry.
• 1:16:08
  There is so much information in it.
• 1:16:10
  If you just go to Amazon or as she said, anywhere that you get
• 1:16:12
  your books, you can grab yourself a copy of that.
• 1:16:14
  But we will see you guys next week and as always, stay
• 1:16:17
  ambitious.