Latest / The Sexology Lab / Why Couples Struggle with Desire, Intimacy and Communication | Vanessa Marin | Episode 4

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Why Couples Struggle with Desire, Intimacy and Communication | Vanessa Marin | Episode 4 · The Sexology Lab

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So many of us get really overly fixated on desire where we we
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want to feel that super passionate, super intense
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desire. And undoubtedly that's fun in
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the moments that we do feel it. But I think that we put a
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pressure on desire for sex in a way that we don't put pressure
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on anything else in our lives. What if the reason your sex life
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feels frustrating, disconnected, or inconsistent isn't your
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relationship, it's the way you've been taught to think
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about desire? What if desire isn't something
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you have, but something you create?
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This is such a fun and eye opening conversation with
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Vanessa Marin. We talk about why desire
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discrepancy is completely normal, how most couples are
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having sex that isn't actually worth wanting, and what it takes
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to build a connected, fulfilling sex life.
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Vanessa Moran is a licensed psychotherapist, sex therapist,
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and globally recognized intimacy educator who has helped millions
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of people improve their relationships and sex lives
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through her courses, podcasts, and media coverage.
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As you'll hear, Vanessa combines clinical expertise with humor
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and practical tools, making conversations about sex more
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accessible, actionable, and grounded.
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If you're ready to learn how to stop having sex that feels like
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a chore and start having sex that feels like connection,
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you'll want to listen all the way through.
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Welcome to Sexology Lab. Each week we speak with the most
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compelling minds in modern sexology to ask the questions
1:36
shaping the future of desire, connection, and human Wellness.
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Let's dive in, and I just want to jump right in.
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I want to know, from your perspective, what's it like
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being part of a couple that's so public about your intimate life?
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You're so open about your bedroom and what you try
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together. So what is that like?
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OK, I'll be honest. I definitely have the occasional
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vulnerability hangover. Yeah, like you said, my husband
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and I, Xander and I, we share a lot on our social accounts.
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And there will definitely be times where I wake up the next
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morning and think, Oh my God, I really posted on Instagram.
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Also my parents follower account, my grandma, my aunts
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and uncles. So it's, it's out there.
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But you know, when it comes to sex and intimacy, I think we
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come from this place of it's such a vulnerable topic and
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we're asking our community to do really vulnerable things.
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So Xander and I want to be role models and show people, look, we
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can do this too. We will be willing to go first
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and embarrass ourselves on Instagram acting out weird
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positions, or talk about a time that we tried to have sex and it
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failed horribly, just to show you like other people can do it
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and you can do it too. So it's really that tie back to
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the mission, the work that we're trying to do that motivates me
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to keep going even when I am so very red in the face.
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Absolutely. There's one of your videos, and
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I think it's titled, like things they don't show you on TV about
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intimacy. Yeah.
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And Xander's like, I gotta go to the bathroom and then the sheet,
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like, comes off the side of the bed.
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I was laughing so hard. I'm like, that is the realist.
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That has been one of our most popular series on Instagram.
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We actually pulled our audience and we made the first few, and
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we said, tell us what other things we should do.
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And people absolutely went wild over it.
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They said, you know, these are the things that happened to all
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of us. The Lube squirting out
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everywhere, the sheets coming up, somebody farting or your
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chest making that weird squelching sound.
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But you don't see it anywhere. And so when we started making
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this series, people really saw themselves in that.
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And it helped them be able to just laugh, realize all the
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normal, silly, awkward, goofy parts of sex and all.
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That's OK. And yeah, we keep doing it
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because we just keep getting new ideas from people like, oh, do
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this one. Do this one.
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I haven't seen you guys do this yet.
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Oh. I love it, it's hilarious and
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it's just so real. Now I want to know, Vanessa,
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what's your 32nd origin story? So how did you find your way
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into this world and wanting to create this type of content?
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My parents very awkwardly trying to give me the talk.
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I think most of us can relate to that.
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They really tried. They were both coming from a lot
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of sexual trauma and shame themselves, but all that they
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could muster was if you have any questions, it was about sex.
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They couldn't even really fully say the word out loud.
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You can ask us. And that was it.
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And I knew that despite them inviting me to ask them
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questions, I knew even at 11 years old at the time that what
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they were really saying was, please, for the love of God,
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don't ask us anything about this.
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We don't want to talk about it. I had no idea that sex therapy
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existed as a career at that time, but that moment stuck with
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me. The feeling of why is this so
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embarrassing? I talked to my parents about
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everything else. We're so close, but why can't we
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talk about this? What's wrong with talking about
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this? Yeah, yeah.
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And now our partner Sexual Health Alliance trains people
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who want to work in sexology. And so what's the most important
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thing professionals need to know in this space?
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I think it really has to start from doing your own work.
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You know, so many of us are fascinated by the topic, and a
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lot of us are just natural helpers.
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You know, we want to help other people.
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But I really firmly believe that it has to start with us being
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willing to examine our own relationships with sexuality,
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with shame, our history, decision making in the past.
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We have to develop a better understanding of ourselves
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before we can really serve other people.
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I love that. Yep, you have to do the work
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first and then go out and help others.
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Sometimes I wish you didn't have to, wouldn't have to worry about
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me. I'm fine.
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But I think that's what's so cool about sex is that there's
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always another layer to get to. You know, we never arrive at
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this place where I'm a fully sexually expressed human being.
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I have tried everything I have to have the perfect sex.
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Like there's always something new to explore, to try,
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something new about ourselves to understand, to experience.
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I think that's also what makes it so cool.
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Yeah. Absolutely.
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We're always growing, we're always learning, and like you
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said, there is always something new to learn.
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Now you've been doing this work for over 20 years.
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How has your understanding of sexual problems and their
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solutions changed over time? I started getting into this
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field when I was 18 years old. I started working with
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researchers and, you know, doing projects and all of that.
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And I think over time I've learned how to get a lot more
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specific about how I serve my clients.
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When I was starting in this field, there was just so much
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generic and vague advice. And, you know, this field is
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still relatively new. We haven't been around for that
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long. And I think even just talking
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about sex was such a huge step forward, which I really
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appreciate. But at the time, there was just
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so much advice, like, just talk about it, just try new things.
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I actually really struggled with my own orgasm for a very long
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time. I could orgasm on my own, but I
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really couldn't get there with a partner.
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And even as I was becoming, you know, part of this field,
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studying, researching, I couldn't find any advice other
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than just don't think about it. Just let it happen, relax.
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Oh not relax. That's.
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Terrible. That kind of advice really drove
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me nuts. I mean, it's, it's good advice,
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but it's not enough. That's not nearly enough.
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So the ways that I have developed, you know, really
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trying to get more specific with what exactly do I say and how do
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I say it and when do I say it? And what do I, I respond if my
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partner says this or you know, with, with exploring orgasm,
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like what are the exact kinds of ways that I need to touch my
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body or my partner touch my body?
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And I think that level of specificity has just been really
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helpful and transformative for me personally and definitely for
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the people that I work with too. Oh, 100%.
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Like you have to give specific instructions.
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A lot of people don't know and you know when they don't know,
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they don't know what to do. So like we have to really be
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there with specific instructions to help them out.
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Now I want to talk a little bit about desire discrepancy.
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So. Yeah, the hot.
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Topic The hot topic. So it's one of the most common
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issues that couples face. So what do you think that
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therapists often misunderstand about desire discrepancy?
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I think we need to do a better job normalizing it.
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I like to say every couple has desire discrepancies.
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You're never gonna find a partner who wants sex at the
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exact same time you do the exact same kind of sex every single
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time. Like, if you really think about
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it, that would be super weird. Every time you initiated, your
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partner was like, Oh my God, I was literally just about to
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initiate with you. So I think helping us recognize
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like every couple has desire discrepancies.
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I think that's the good starting point.
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Lately, though, what I've been playing around a lot with that I
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haven't seen very many other therapists talk about is I think
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we're putting too much pressure on desire.
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So I want to be really clear. I'm, I'm only talking about
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emotionally and physically safe relationships where there is no
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coercion involved, you know, sort of abuse involved where a
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no is always respected no matter what.
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So that's, that's the container here.
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But I think so many of us get really overly fixated on desire
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where we we want to feel that super passionate, super intense
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desire. And undoubtedly that's fun in
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the moments that we do feel it, but I think that we put a
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pressure on desire for sex in a way that we don't put pressure
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on anything else in our lives. So tell me if you've ever had
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this experience. Last week, I had a dinner date
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with a girlfriend. I was super excited to see her.
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We hadn't seen each other in a while.
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We had a lot of catching up to do.
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You know, I'm very excited leading up to it.
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And then the day rolls around. It was raining.
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I had a new some new Bravo shows that had come out that I really
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wanted to catch up on. I didn't really want to leave my
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house. It was just that feeling of
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like, oh, I kind of like, I hope she cancels on me, right?
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But I still went and I had a great time and I was really glad
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that I did. And I didn't beat myself up for
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that. Like, what's wrong with me that
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I'm not over the moon excited? I'm not jumping off the couch to
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go with, you know, see my friend, what's wrong with me
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that I'm feeling a little bit ambivalent about it?
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We can bring that same sort of energy into sex.
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And especially because so many of us have responsive desire
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where we're not going to feel that wild passionate mental
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desire out of nowhere. But I just think what if we
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focused more on our experience of sex then how we feel after
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we've had sex rather than the feelings before?
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Yeah. Oh, I love that example so much
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because personally, my friends and I, this happens to all of us
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every single time we plan a night out and then every single
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one of us are like, we don't want to leave the house, but we
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do. We started making ourselves get
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out and like once we get there, we have so much fun.
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It's an amazing time. But it's like, you know, we
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don't like punish ourselves for feeling that way.
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So what if you did take that mentality into your
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relationship? Don't be so hard on yourself.
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Like get to the restaurant and then see how you feel.
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Don't be mad because you didn't want to go.
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Exactly. Yeah, I think in general, I
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really want people to focus more on our experience of sex rather
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than our desire for it. And this is a huge thing that I
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see so much with people. Probably the number one
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complaint is I have low desire or no desire.
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And we'll ask people, OK, we'll tell us about the sex that you
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do have. And what people will describe is
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sex that is not worth desiring. It's boring.
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It's repetitive. It's just about my partner.
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I can predict exactly how the entire evening is going to
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unfold. I get nothing out of it.
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And so we always ask, OK, Lynn, why would you desire that?
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It doesn't make any sense to desire that, right?
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I also compare it to, like, a bowl of mushy broccoli.
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Like, does anybody ever crave a bowl of overly steamed,
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unseasoned, mushy broccoli? There's probably someone out
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there who does, but the vast majority of us know, right?
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And do we beat ourselves up for not craving overly steamed,
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mushy, unseasoned broccoli? Absolutely not.
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But a lot of us are having sex that is the equivalent of some
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overly steamed mushy broccoli and beating ourselves up for not
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wanting it. Absolutely.
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That's like going back to like the girls night out at the
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restaurant. Like if you knew you were going
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there and everyone else was going to be having like
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chocolate cake, but you were just going to be sitting there
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with nothing or like a piece of lettuce, like you wouldn't be
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that excited about it. Yes, absolutely not.
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So yeah, let's let's take a lot of the pressure off of desire.
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Let's focus more on our experience of it and what the
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result of it is. I think those things matter a
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lot more. Yeah, definitely.
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I agree with you all. Right now you've transitioned
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from primarily seeing clients to reaching millions through
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digital courses and your podcasts and social media.
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So what motivated that shift for you?
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I'll be fully honest with you, I never wanted to be a therapist
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to begin with. I always wanted to do sex
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therapy. That was always the interest.
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But I wanted to become a therapist to get that clinical
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foundation, that background to do my own work.
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Going to school to become a therapist is pretty gnarly, and
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so I wanted to do that. So I started off of seeing
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people in that traditional format, but my practice filled
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up really quickly. I also realized I only have so
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much capacity for how many people I can work with, and it's
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really important to me that I bring the right amount of energy
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to my clients. So I can't see that many if I'm
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really focused on that. I also realized that a lot of my
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clients were just saying the exact same thing over and over
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and over again. And ultimately what matters the
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most to me is I wanted to be able to make the biggest impact.
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I wanted to be able to help as many people as I possibly could.
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So that's when I started thinking about online guides and
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courses. And then I had one of those
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funny life moments where the universe kind of makes a
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decision for you because you're hesitating to make it yourself.
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It was just a couple of weeks after I had actually finally
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gotten my license after all those years of, you know, doing
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hours and internships and everything, and finally gotten
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licensed. And I got rear-ended in a really
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nasty car accident. And I could not sit in a chair
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in a therapist's office without having debilitating chronic
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pain. So that ended up being the
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catalyst for me to say, OK, I've been thinking about this for a
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while now. I think it's it's time to make
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the move. Yeah, yeah, sometimes the
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universe does just push you where you need to go.
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Yeah, looking back at it now, it all makes sense.
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But in the moment, it was no. Oh no.
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But yeah, I love working with online guides and courses
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because it's it's so easy for people.
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It's accessible. It's a lot more affordable than
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seeing me one-on-one. They don't have to worry about,
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people are always telling you like, I'm worried about seeing
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my neighbor in your waiting room.
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Yeah, yeah. You know, And it's, I was, I was
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in San Francisco at the time, like, oh, parking is so
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inconvenient. So yeah, people can just be able
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to my tools and resources and the privacy and comfort of their
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own home. It just makes it much easier.
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Yeah, I love that. Did you ever expect that you
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would be reaching millions? I mean, that was probably your
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goal to reach a lot of people, but did you expect it to just
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blow up like it has? No, it's definitely been a
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really pleasant surprise. I mean, I always wanted to be
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able to serve as many people as I could.
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So I'm, I'm so thrilled and so honored.
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But I didn't expect it to reach the level that it has.
15:53
Are you curious about sexology? Do you want to further integrate
15:56
sexology into your work or your life?
15:59
Well friends, then we've got something just for you.
16:02
It's called the Sexology Practice Guide and it walks you
16:05
through the ways this shows up in your work in your life and
16:09
guides you through working within your scope, incorporating
16:13
intimacy and sexual health into your work without starting over.
16:17
Download this short practical guide at sexologylab.com/guide.
16:23
That's Sexology lab.com/guide, and while you're here, make sure
16:28
to subscribe and share. And now back to the show.
16:33
And so I think your work represents a new model for sex
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therapists. So educating at scale.
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So what were your biggest challenges in building that kind
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of platform? Well, first I was trying to
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figure out what course to create.
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I had so many different ideas, so many things that I wanted to
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experiment with. So that was the first challenge,
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and then it was really trying to help people understand an online
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course in this area. I built my first course in 2013,
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and there really weren't very many other people doing it at
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that time. So I had a lot of people saying
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like, what do you mean a course? I don't get it.
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How does it work online? What do you mean?
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So having to educate people about how it worked.
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Also a big thing which continues even to this day is helping
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people realize that it's actually legit.
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A lot of our customers think that they are gonna be scammed.
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You know, a lot of people say, oh, it's do you just have a
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payment page up? But I'm not actually gonna get
17:31
anything where occasionally there's systems fail and
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somebody doesn't get their access information and they'll
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reach out to our customer service team and say, oh gosh, I
17:39
think I've been scammed and we'll have to tell.
17:42
No, no, no. It was just a little accident
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with our, with our back end system.
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Here you go. Here's the core.
17:47
So really helping people recognize like, no, this is a
17:50
legit business. You are going to get the item
17:52
that you purchased. That's been an ongoing challenge
17:56
for us. Yeah, definitely.
17:57
I think people are hesitant when things are online.
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They're just not sure if they haven't talked to like a real
18:02
person, they're kind of iffy about it.
18:04
So that is a challenge with an online business.
18:06
Yeah. Now you and your husband Zander
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teach together, which is unique. And how does that dynamic shape
18:13
the way people engage with your work?
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I always had this idea from the very beginning of when I started
18:18
building online guides and courses that I wanted him to be
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involved. And once it started taking off,
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he came into my business to work on all the back end stuff to
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help me with some of the technical stuff, the operations.
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I really needed help and, and I wanted us to work together.
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And I started bothering him right from the very beginning,
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telling him I think that we need to make content together and I
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think that we need to talk about our own relationship.
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You know, I was, I was coming from my therapist training,
18:47
which obviously tells you, you know, not to reveal anything
18:49
about yourself. That's not right.
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But I just had this feeling like with sex, like we were talking
18:55
about at the beginning of this episode, it's so vulnerable that
18:58
I wanted to be able to go 1st and and be that model for our
19:02
community. But Xander was extremely
19:05
resistant at the beginning. He said, you know, I'm not a
19:08
therapist. I have no training in this area.
19:12
I've watched you go to school and get degrees and work so hard
19:16
in all these different areas. And I haven't done any of that.
19:19
And I told him, yeah, I think that's the point.
19:22
Like. I can get him, I can give the
19:24
experience, I can give the expertise, but I think sometimes
19:27
people also like hearing from just a regular dude.
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That's actually his official title in the business.
19:33
He's the regular dude A. Regular dude just like.
19:36
Hearing from a real couple who have been through things like
19:40
this and just hearing a regular person who doesn't have all that
19:42
training, it took about four years and eventually I just like
19:47
started shoving the camera in front of him on Instagram and
19:50
saying, babe, what do you think about this?
19:52
What do you think about that? And eventually he he realized
19:56
like, OK, this is actually kind of fun.
19:58
That was about the end of 2020 that he started becoming a lot
20:02
more involved in the content. And that was another huge
20:05
inflection point for our business.
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I think people really resonated with being able to hear both of
20:10
those perspectives, to have, you know, my experience, but also to
20:13
just hear him talk about it and regular everyday people terms,
20:18
but also having two sides of a relationship.
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You know, we try to be careful with our content.
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Not be too heteronormative, but obviously we are, you know, a
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sis, male and female couple. But just being able to hear, you
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know, my side of something and his side of something.
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Unfortunately, I do also think a lot of men feel a lot safer
20:38
seeing another man there. That can sometimes open the door
20:40
for men who might not otherwise have looked at our content to,
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you know, feel comfortable taking a look at it.
20:47
And we also just really have a lot of fun together.
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We try to show sex doesn't actually have to be so serious.
20:53
I know it feels really serious sometimes, but it doesn't have
20:57
to be. And I think people really
20:59
connect with that energy that we create together.
21:02
Yeah, it's such a fun dynamic, and watching your content now, I
21:05
would have never guessed he was hesitant like at the beginning.
21:08
I know right now he loves it. Now it's like I can't.
21:13
I can't like, do anything to embarrass him.
21:15
He's like, oh, I'll do it. Sure.
21:17
Yeah, no, I'll do that. I love it and I think it's a fun
21:21
dynamic too, like having that partner dynamic but also having
21:25
like a male perspective on things.
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I think that's valuable to the whole community.
21:29
Yeah, and we really tried to design a lot of our content to
21:31
help open up conversations within the couples who are
21:35
watching. So, you know, I'll give my take,
21:38
he'll give his take. And we'll say, well, what you
21:39
know, ask your partner this. Ask what they think about that.
21:42
Listen to our podcast episode and pause it at this point and
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talk about how you guys feel. And I so I think that seeing us
21:49
as the example and especially when we talk about our own
21:51
challenges too, because we've been through a lot of stuff,
21:54
orgasm challenges, mismatched libidos, low libido, performance
21:58
issues. Hearing us talk about it, I
22:01
think gives permission to couples to realize like we're
22:05
not the only ones dealing with this, so hey, we can talk about
22:08
it too. Yeah.
22:09
And it gives an example in a framework.
22:11
And I think that's so helpful to people to see real people doing
22:15
the real work of communication together.
22:18
It just gives them like a script sometimes to follow.
22:20
Oh. Yeah, we love giving scripts to
22:22
you. That's another thing about us
22:23
being so specific. I'm not gonna ever tell you,
22:26
like just talk to your partner about it.
22:28
Here's what to say. Yeah.
22:30
And that's extremely important because I think unless you grew
22:33
up with really excellent models of communication around you, you
22:37
know, especially talking about sex, you don't have a script in
22:41
your mind. Like all you have is like what's
22:43
you've seen in movies and on TV and you know, so having that is
22:46
super helpful. Yeah, and there's hardly ever
22:49
any communication on movies and TV either, right?
22:52
Like, we never get any examples. Oh, that's how I should say
22:56
something. And yeah, Zen and I learned a
22:58
lot of that through trial and error and doing everything the
23:02
wrong way. You know, like we wrote our book
23:03
Sex Talks, The five conversations that every couple
23:07
should have. And so many of those, the book
23:10
is very, very personal. I mean, the first page of it is
23:13
us in couples therapy and for the first time, but so many of
23:16
the examples of, you know, OK, this is how you should have the
23:19
conversation or this is the conversation you should have or
23:21
inspired by us doing the exact opposite and getting into a big
23:25
fight about it. So yeah, we learned the hard way
23:29
we had to. We had to muck through it on our
23:31
own. And that really helped us
23:33
develop more specific scripts and tools for other couples.
23:37
Yeah, but that's real life. People are mucking through it.
23:40
And when you can learn from somebody else, maybe so you
23:43
don't have to make all the same mistakes.
23:45
Yeah, very helpful. All right.
23:48
I would like to know, based on your work with thousands of
23:52
couples, what do you think is the single biggest factor that
23:55
determines whether couples stay intimate long term?
24:00
Their willingness to talk openly about their sex life.
24:04
We wrote a book about sexual communication for a reason.
24:07
Like we truly think that your willingness to talk about it.
24:10
And I'm very careful about saying willingness because most
24:13
of us suck at it. I was terrible at it.
24:15
Even with so many years being in this field, I was terrible at
24:20
talking openly about sex, but I was willing to, and Xander was
24:23
willing to. Yeah.
24:25
So you might muck through it a little bit.
24:26
You might have some disagreements.
24:28
You might not be perfect communicators, but you're
24:29
willing to talk openly about it. That's the number one thing for
24:33
me. Yeah, definitely.
24:35
Now, you've been part of normalizing sexual conversations
24:38
online. So how do you think the
24:40
conversation around sex has changed over the past decade?
24:44
OK, The first thing that came to mind for me is I was thinking
24:48
about female orgasm. You know, early in my career,
24:51
that was one of the topics that I became known for is, you know,
24:56
helping women who were high achieving women felt like I have
25:00
every other aspect of my life I'm kicking ass at, but I just
25:04
cannot figure things out in the bedroom.
25:06
And, and specifically with orgasm.
25:08
One of the really interesting things that I remember hearing
25:12
at that time was a lot of women were saying, you know, even
25:15
though sex is starting to be talked about a lot more openly,
25:19
it actually is making me feel worse hearing all these, you
25:23
know, all the different kinds of orgasms that, you know, women
25:26
are talking about. Going out to brunch with my
25:28
girlfriends and they're bragging about their sex lives.
25:31
Like, it actually makes me feel a little bit worse because I
25:33
haven't even figured out, like, one way to have an orgasm.
25:37
So that's always been really fascinating for me that, you
25:39
know, obviously I'm a huge proponent of us talking about
25:43
sex openly. And I do think in a lot of ways,
25:45
the more detail, the more nuanced we get into, the better.
25:48
But it's also interesting to notice the ways that sometimes
25:51
it can actually negatively impact people, too.
25:54
It's very interesting. That's a good point, I never
25:56
thought about that. My first thought was like
25:59
censorship. Do you feel like you're more
26:00
censored now than you were a decade ago?
26:02
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
26:05
You know, on Instagram in particular, yeah, you've
26:07
probably seen in all of our Reels, you know, we have to
26:10
bleep out all of the words. And it wasn't like that even
26:14
just a few years ago. Instagram really started
26:17
cracking down. Technically, Instagram views our
26:20
content as solicitation and as porn.
26:24
Instagram doesn't see any distinction between educational
26:28
sexual content and me, you know, posting a picture bent over
26:33
spreading my cheeks, right? Like, same thing, same thing.
26:36
And that's been really frustrating.
26:38
So we play the game on Instagram because we'd rather our content
26:43
reach people censored than not reach them at all.
26:46
But it has been interesting to see ways that we've gone
26:49
backwards in that, that we didn't used to have to do that
26:52
and now we do. Yeah, it is such a challenge.
26:55
I know lots of people in this industry are going through it.
26:58
It's just so hard. Yeah, I mean, we've gotten so
27:00
many messages from Instagram threatening to, you know, shut
27:03
down our account. We've had our account frozen for
27:06
weeks at a time. Multiple times.
27:08
We've had to takedown countless reels and it's so funny too.
27:12
Some of the ones that they tell us to pull down, I'm like,
27:15
that's not even about sex. That's like a funny relationship
27:18
reel. So there's really no rhyme or
27:20
reason to it, and it can be incredibly frustrating to
27:22
navigate. Yeah, definitely.
27:25
We feel you. We understand.
27:28
I'm really tired of the bleeping.
27:29
We actually just today my team was talking to me about a reel
27:33
that we have coming up about the different types of orgasms.
27:37
And my social media manager was like, we literally have to bleep
27:41
out every other word because you kept saying clitoris and orgasm
27:45
and clitoris and orgasm. And it's like beep, beep, beep,
27:48
beep, beep, beep, beep. So it's it's really frustrating
27:51
sometimes. I know, and that's how our
27:53
social team feels about when we do interviews like this.
27:56
It's like we have to talk about stuff.
27:58
We can't just not say it. Yeah, we also came up with we
28:02
try to have like a little separate vocabulary too, Like
28:05
we'll say socks, you know, Yeah, yeah, instead of it.
28:09
Or we'll, we'll mime something like when we're doing foreplay,
28:12
we'll hold up four fingers and then say play.
28:16
Or at the little corn emoji for porn.
28:19
It's a whole other language now. It is.
28:21
You have to get creative and even though it's a pain, you do
28:25
what you got to do to get your content to people so that they
28:27
can get that education and it's important work.
28:30
I'll give it a little tip to anybody who's struggling with
28:32
this on social media. One thing that we've found to be
28:34
really effective is getting our community pissed off about this.
28:40
So we've shared with them, hey, we don't want to be doing the
28:44
stupid censoring. We hate it.
28:46
We want to normalize saying the words that this is what
28:49
Instagram forces us to do. But when we have our account
28:52
frozen, I just screenshotted the complaints that come up.
28:55
I screenshotted our account being frozen, and I've shared it
28:57
with people. And I think that it's small, but
29:00
it's really helped build this sense of community with our
29:04
people is they feel like they get fired up for us.
29:07
I can't believe you guys have to do that.
29:09
Who can I call? Like, I wish there was someone
29:11
at Instagram that you could call.
29:12
I really appreciate it. I don't think there is, but
29:15
thank you. I think a lot of our community
29:17
feels like they're a part of something and they're part of
29:19
something bigger. And yeah, it helps us feel like
29:22
a more tight knit community. Oh yeah, definitely.
29:25
They value that transparency that you're like, hey, like this
29:28
isn't how I would love to be doing things, but this is the
29:31
world we're in, so we're gonna just do our best.
29:33
Yeah. Don't forget to subscribe on
29:36
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29:41
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