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Hi, welcome to Sex.Love.Power. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I'm a relationship and sex coach who's worked for 23 years with executives and business founders and by popular demand, I've focused on their intimate relationships for the past dozen or so years, as they sought my coaching to push the envelope on how good they could have it in life and in love and sex. My extraordinary, high-performing clients have blessed me with a wealth of knowledge about how to create relationships that are just successful, but truly great.
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This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help every listener create those same world-class results in your relationships. In this episode, we're having the conversation we need to have about the four keys to creating more of the heat and connection you want and the single practice I use to help couples expand all four things in their relationship, and in so doing, create the love and sex they really deserve.
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So if you've had a hard time initiating sex, or taking your partner up on their invitations, when they ask in the way they ask, even though you sincerely would like to have more sex, at least in the abstract, this is for you.
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Or if you aren't sure how to ask for more of what you want or you think your partner could build more skill at touching and being present sexually, but it's hard to describe what that skillfulness would look like...This is for you.
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Or if you notice that you have a hard time staying present in erotic situations: truly letting your partner in and allowing yourself to deeply receive their attention, their touch, and their care...This is for you.
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If you face those challenges, you are in very good company. Nobody taught any of us how to have great sex, and a nourishing partnership with a grown up in these changing bodies and with these adult responsibilities: aging parents and growing kids and big careers....While we're trying to build a better world. It's a lot!
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And I am determined that today's episode will help, because I would like you to get a handle on these four keys, so you can unlock the best sex of your lives. I know it's still ahead of you, whether you believe that yet or not. And in this episode, you will learn how to create it.
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There are four things that dramatically accelerate a couple's ability to go deeper in love and sex. They include clarity, capacity, communication, and container, we're going to go into all four of them. So let's dive in.
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Clarity is the first of the four keys. And what these keys unlock is our erotic intelligence. That's my phrase to describe our capacity for having and giving the kind of pleasure that we really desire inside the erotic space. So what do I mean by clarity? Wherever you are, with your erotic interactions with your partner, you are basing what you're doing now on a certain level of clarity.
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You have a definition of what sex is and what sex isn't. You know something about or you believe something about how your body works and how their body works. You know something about and there's a limitation to your understanding of what triggers you to either shut down or leave the moment if you do that... and what might trigger your partner to do the same.
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Whatever you already know, the clarity you already have helps determine the sex you have now, and expanding your clarity, understanding better how your body works, how your partner's body works, how you respond to different stimuli in the bedroom and outside the bedroom, in the erotic space and in the everyday mundane space that can help you expand the amount and quality of delicious interaction that you have.
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So how do you begin to expand your clarity? The single most important distinction that most couples get from our work together is understanding that sex isn't goal oriented. We've been given a definition of sex. When I say "have sex," what comes to mind? Quite likely you think of penetrative vaginal sex if you're a heterosexual couple. And we tend to categorize most of the other, even more preferable things that you may do erotically with your partner as "foreplay." That terminology, I think, is a huge impediment to our real clarity and to our capacity to really enjoy erotic connection with one another, because that phallocentric view puts pressure on both people and it creates this closed-ended container where sex always ends with ejaculation and if the feminine partner's experience matters, (and we hope it does, and most of my clients are really nice, attentive, male partners) it gets to be a lot of pressure to create an orgasm for her before that endpoint of his ejaculation and there's just so much performing and jostling for making sure that we're doing it right that sex isn't fun anymore! And that's a huge bummer.
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So having clarity about what sex can be, if we take that phallocentric definition off of it, if we say that sex is the act of engaging with one another's erotic energy, that sex is play time together.
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How do we know we had sex? It felt good. Whether there was female penetration or not, whether there was anyone's climax or not. That brings up another important distinction in our clarity: the distinction... I think you've heard me talk about it before, if you've listened to other podcast episodes, distinction between orgasm and climax. So climax is what you often probably usually refer to as orgasm is that place where ejaculation happens. And for either partner, there's the going over kind of sensation, it's a peak, that often leads to a dissipation of energy.
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But orgasm is not synonymous with climax. We can enter an orgasmic state and ride that out for far longer than we can maintain a climactic state. Orgasm is a place we enter and it's a ride would go on together. And when you begin to understand that, that orgasmic arc and undulation takes us somewhere, as opposed to that goal oriented definition of climax (or maybe you've thought of it as orgasm in the past) that we have to produce,that is performative, like turning out a perfect omelet. You know: it's a job and expectation. Yet another pressure. And that definition of goal-oriented sex is what has people put sex on their "to do" list and add it to their notion of the pressures they're under, which is not only a real boner-crusher, pussy dryer-upper, it's also a huge disservice to the energy source that eroticism can be in our lives. So I'm lending you some clarity here just in these definitions, and I invite you to continue to explore the clarity that you can gain yourselves.
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Where aren't you sure about how your own body works? About how your heart and mind respond, and what that does to your sex drive or to your interest level? In going into an erotic, playful, soft space with your partner? What aren't you sure about with regard to your partner? What questions do you need to ask?
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With Episode 23, I gave you the gift of my 56 favorite questions about sex to ask your partner. And you can go to the show notes for that episode by going to www.lisenbury.com/episode/023 to download that free PDF and ask your partner those questions. The whole intent of that set of questions is to expand your clarity. So wherever you are today with clarity, expanding your clarity will expand your capacity for erotic connection with yourself and your partner.
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Now let's look at the second key because I just use the word capacity. Now, we expand our capacity when we expand our clarity, as I just mentioned, but what do I mean by capacity? Capacity is your holding ability. Your capacity for sensation is what governs how far you can go in terms of erotic experience. If you are locked down, if you have to maintain control, you won't be able to experience much on the positive end. And you will be protecting yourself from experiences on the less pleasant end of the spectrum, that you know what's pleasant, what's positive, what's negative, what's pleasant, what's unpleasant, what's painful, what's pleasurable....Those are all absolutely subjective.
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So I invite you to think about your capacity right now as a container. You can imagine anything from a little eighth of a teaspoon measuring spoon, up to a measuring cup, up to a bucket, up to a bathtub...Maybe a swimming pool, maybe an ocean.
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How much holding power do you have to experience uncertainty? To experience surprise? To experience receiving? To experience inflicting sensation on your partner? How much capacity do you have to take a risk? To reveal yourself? How good are you willing to have things in all areas of your life? How much are you willing to be served to be given to? To be done by your partner? I'll sometimes say, "hey, you're really stretching my receiving muscles here!" We're out of the edge of my receiving capacity.
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And that's where we want to play is at the edge of our capacity for sensation. That's where it's most delicious: right at the edge. And that's how we expand our capacity. Another important question to ask yourself is "Which sensations around eroticism do you have great capacity for? Which do you welcome and which when they come to you are you all about? "Yeah, bring it. I've got room for this all day!" And which sensations, by contrast, do you have a lower tolerance for? Which can't you deal with? May be how you think about it, or which totally turn you off? Where do you shut down and go away? And how can you play with your edge there, in the name of welcoming sensation? It is my sense that the reason we're here on earth is to experience in human form, using these bodies and these emotions... this messy, messy experience, right? There's so many smells, and sounds and pains and aches and uncertainties, emotionally as well as physically.
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And I think that's by design. I think the creator of the universe is capable of so much exquisite design that those things would have been designed out if they weren't desirable. But in fact, what if life itself split itself up into all these little manifestations called you and me and everything else because it wanted - quite precisely desired - to experience the stubbed toe, and the razor burn, and the longing and loss?
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And yes, orgasm! Yes, tenderness, vulnerability, all of these sensations. And what if just like red, yellow, blue, it didn't have a favorite? It just loved all of them, and use them all blended together to make all the other sensations. What if the sensations themselves are where it's at in this life? And what if our capacity for them is our capacity for spirituality, for presence, for aliveness? What if rather than just seeking the ones that we are already accustomed to, already have a lot of capacity for... What if our job here is to enjoy every last dripping one of them to whatever extent we can, on any given day, and just keep growing our capacity?
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That's where I play from. And if you are devoted to growing your capacity, then engaging in practices that push the edge of it will help you do that. And that's what I'm here for: to help people who are edge-lickers... who want to play out there at the edge of their capacity and expand it.
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So let's move on to the third key. This is communication. We need to be able to convey in essence, just four things to our partners to be able to have the best sex of our lives. What are those four things?
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We have to convey what we're experiencing. What we want to offer. What we want to ask for. And whether we consent to our partner's latest offer request. That's all. Pretty much everything we need to convey. In Sex Ed for Grownups, I teach simple tools that let us convey our sensations, make offers and requests and respond to our partners offers and requests. I don't have space in this one little podcast episode to teach you all of that. But I invite you to just consider, "how do I convey what I'm experiencing to my partner?" And I encourage you to use the sensations in your body. I know that I talked about this in the episode where we talked about talking about sex. That's Episode 23 in the podcast, so you can go back and listen to that to hear a little bit more. But letting your partner know how you're experiencing them: you don't have to be really articulate. You just have to find the sensation in your body and name it.
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That will actually speak body to body from your body to theirs and let them know the impact that they're having. And it's far more effective than telling them what they're doing wrong, or trying to compliment them, trying to tell them they're doing good, they're doing well. Letting them know what it feels like for you is often the most moving, deepest way you can convey your experience and touch their heart. And then when you want something to be different, simply making a request is the best way to convey that. Not saying "don't do this, don't do that." But saying, "Would you please ____?" and asking for exactly what you want.
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Likewise, many, many problems in the erotic space can be averted if rather than just changing up what you're doing, or trying to read your partner's mind, you make an offer: "Would you like me to" can be the beginning of a very powerful sentence. "Would you like me to go faster?" "Would you like me to keep going?" "Would you like me to move to the left?" "Would you like more pressure?"
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If you make an offer, your partner knows exactly what you have in mind and they can say yes or no. And you can take their yes or no, in a very clean clear way. Yes, they want that or Nope, what I'm doing right now is just great.
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That brings us to the fourth key of communication: it's just our yes or no. Yes to your offer, or Yes to your request. And if you're free to say either yes or no, then we can always keep the game going. No one has to fake anything, shut down, do anything they don't really believe in. It's all consent based, and then we're actually free to play. So that's communication in a nutshell.
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Now let's look at the fourth key: container. What's a container, when we're talking about the erotic space? A container is a specific space in which you can engage in expanding the other three skills safely with privacy and with an assurance that you're not going to wade in over your head in any way. The simplicity and clear boundaries of your container are what make room for the clarity and the capacity and the communication to grow. The Couples' Stroking Practice is a clear, well-defined 20 minute exercise that members of my Legacy Love program learn and they're supported to practice it week after week, and expands their clarity, their communication and their capacity every time they practice it. The Couples' Stroking Practice is the single best way that I've found to turn up the heat and deepen the connection and grow your capacity for pleasure in yourself and your relationship. But even without learning the Couple's Stroking Practice, the two of you can create a container that works well. Just talk together about an invitation that either of you can make that lets the other accept or decline to enter an erotic space for a given period of time. You might also set 20 minutes, even 15 minutes is great. If you can make that space goalless... If you can make it non-penetrative - Nobody's going for any climax or orgasm here - And without an ambition for any particular outcome, you can create a space to experiment with the other three skills. And if you'll create a space to experiment with clarity, capacity and communication, they cannot not grow. And if they grow, the heat and the sweetness between you will also grow. Guarantee it. So you don't need new outfits or lingerie. You don't need to go away for the weekend or for a month together. You don't need a workshop that teaches you mind blowing techniques from porn stars.
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Really, you have everything you need right there between the two of you already. You just need to create space to experiment with these skills. If you're eager to learn more, in the show notes, I'm going to link to resources including several of my own and some of the best books by other people that can help you expand on these skills. So please go use these tips now. Check out those resources and enjoy.
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I wish for you the best love and erotic connection that you can imagine. And I would love to hear about it as you create it. My wish for you and for our community is that you'll join the conversation over on the Conscious Couples' Circle at society.lisenbury.com. It's a great place to ask your questions, share your experiences, and join the conversation about creating the love and sex that you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. That's all happening at Conscious Couples’ Circle. The link is in the show notes at lisenbury.com/episode/024. Now if you've enjoyed this or other episodes, it would help me in the podcasts immensely if you would leave a review, particularly in Apple podcasts because reviews are a huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please go leave a review right now with just a couple words about what the show gives you. I would so appreciate it.
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And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're gonna want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen and hit the subscribe button so you always get notifications of new episodes each week.
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Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenbury Christensen and this has been sex love power. I'll be back here next week with another hot fresh episode. Until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.