Conscious Couples : Let’s Talk About Sex

All right. Hello, Kadrosphere. How are we doing? It's Saturday. It's a beautiful day. So much to be grateful for. I just watched a video interviewing the comedian Jimmy Carr, I think it is. He's British, but he was just, he was just, he was doing that thing that probably a lot of us have seen, in talking about it, but he did it very well. Hi Speedwander. And, he was just talking about like, just over 50 years ago, people couldn't have a hot shower. And then he just talked about, he just went on this thing about all the things that we have to be grateful for, that we can be grateful for, the things that we take for granted that people never had.

Now that's not what I'm going to talk about, but I just was kind of still feeling some of that gratitude and just some of that perspective. And maybe it is connected to what I'm going to talk about. You know, raining, it's raining cats and dogs over there. I have to say, it is absolutely beautiful. In fact, it's a little hot. It's a little hot. I'm feeling the heat as I do this. And I'm sure I'm gonna get no sympathy from anyone. And that's okay, right? It's all good, it's all good. But today is conscious couples, right?

and I love talking about this one because I'm so imperfect. I'm just I'm so flawed in this area but I've learned a lot, you know, and and I always try to relate it about things that are like happening in my life, right? And so today is really kind of exploring how to couples like how do we talk about sex in a healthy way and there's a couple of sayings from graduate school that I remember, right? Sex is a very dirty thing. You should only do it with someone you love, right? So these contradictory messages we get about sex in our society.

Then there's the saying of if you can't talk about sex, you probably shouldn't be having it. And so there's that as well. But the truth is, what occurred to me as I was thinking about this is when we talk about sex, we're not just talking about sex. We're talking about love. We're talking about desire. We're talking about attraction. We're talking about acceptance. We're talking about rejection. We're talking about So many things kind of come into play. I mean, they certainly have come into play for me over the years.

I, you know, if I approached my partner for sex and I got rejected, then like it hurt. Now it doesn't anymore, but it did because I connected it to love. I connected it to, it can, absolutely it can be an expression of love. Absolutely it can be an expression of love. It is connected to love and in different ways for different people, I think. And of course it depends on if you're in a committed relationship or you got, you know, whatever else you may have going on. So people, get to explore what that looks like for them, but how do you talk about it?

And how you talk about it when you're single and you're going out and you're wanting to explore things sexually with other people, that's probably a little different. It's in fact, it's easier, right, than when the vulnerability of like someone I love has now the ability to reject me. And that's what we think. And we're not consciously necessarily thinking that. And men can think it and women can think it. You know, there's that other saying as well that says men feel loved when they have sex and women have sex when they feel loved.

Now, do I think that's a truth? No, actually, I think that is kind of almost identifying part of the problem, right? Because I think there is some truth to that, but I don't personally want to relate to it as the truth. But it's like an indicator, right? Men feel loved when they have sex. Okay, so if I'm not careful, I'm going to be seeking all of the things that I'm looking for in my relationship through sex. That's probably not a great idea. And for women, right, the idea that they feel they have sex when they feel loved.

Well, I've talked to many women about this and they're kind of like, Yeah, I feel that and I feel like that connection, but there are times when I just want to have sex and I just want to feel like really, what's the word? Just like really out there, right? Out there and just like going for it the way I want to, right? And I don't think, you know, because this can get connected to religion this can get connected to trauma trauma bonding to attachment I mean there's so much that can get triggered just through sex right body image how we view ourselves and then we start to get older and our bodies change and then there's that the key to me is that we talk about it, is that we find ways to talk about it.

I have not been the best at talking about it with my partner and my partner has not been the best at talking about it with me. Over 23 years, we've found a way, right? We've found a way to talk openly about it, to even become more playful and laugh and just kind of wear it with a little bit more of a a loose garment. Because if you're uptight about it, it can be tough. It's been my experience, right? And I see there's some comments, but I can't quite read them. So I think the challenge, the danger, is one, not having conversations about it.

Two, not being able to unpack everything that we put into sex and what we make sex mean without being able to look at some of the other stuff. Like I felt rejection so many times and it wasn't You know, it was much more connected to past stuff than to, you know, anything else like directly going on with my partner. And so to be able to verbalize it and not make it about her, that's been really important, you know, and vice versa for her to be able to share things with me. I'm sometimes really, really admire and inspired by younger folks that I've talked to about Like how open of a conversation they have about sex and part of it is because they didn't grow up with that and they just wanted to make sure that they did something differently and The good thing is I mean it really doesn't matter when you start you can always start You can always start having a conversation.

You can always start kind of exploring it. You can always start saying, Hey, what do we like? What feels good, what doesn't feel good? However you want to do it. But I have found that there's real, real value in talking about it. And I've also found there's real value in talking about it with people other than my partner to help me sort through these things and give me a sense of solution and give me a sense of perspective. And that has been absolutely wonderful to have that gift of support, that gift of perspective, that gift of lessening the burden of trying to figure this out.

by myself. My parents didn't talk to me at all about sex. And then I took a human sexuality course in graduate school at the University of Kansas and it changed my life and it was wonderful. And that instructor made it super, super clear, right, that sex can't be separated from so many other things because it's just so intricately connected, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, to all of these other things. And so he was like, yeah, of course we gotta talk about this, we do have to talk about body image, we do have to talk about sexual assault, we do have to talk about trauma, we do have to talk about romance, we do have to talk about love, we do have to talk about attraction, we do have to talk about all these things.

because it's all part of what it means to have a healthy sense of sex and sexuality. And so if you go into a relationship and you don't have that experience and your partner doesn't have experience or at least one of you doesn't have that experience, it can really be tough not to just have the really open and honest conversations. And so you just start somewhere and you work up to it and you get a little more comfortable and a little more comfortable. And it can become a pretty beautiful thing. I have no idea where my partner and I are at in the grand scheme of healthy conversations of sex and sexuality, but I know we've come a long way and I know that we are doing the best we can, having some fun while we're doing it.

Thanks.