Exposed

This is a great and very balanced article on sex surrogacy recently published by CBS News. We have found that a very small subset of our clients need sex surrogates, but that most of our client are able to benefit greatly from the level of practical, experiential sex coaching we provide. Both women and men can overcome sexual dysfunction and expand their sexual horizons through the Somatica Method  and we have also helped folks evaluate if a surrogate is the right way to go for them!

In this latest except of our book “Cockfidence – The Extraordinary Lover’s Guide to Being the Man You Want to Be and Driving Women Wild”, we explore Empathy, the 6th quality necessary to being an extraordinary lover.

— Quality 6 – Empathy —

Emotional connection, also known as “intimacy,” is one of the most common desires that women have in relationship. And, while both men and women are deeply emotional creatures, men get very strong cultural messages about repressing their emotions. Women are generally given more permission for expression.

Because men are taught to repress their emotions, they have less experience dealing with outward displays of emotion and are often overwhelmed in the face of a partner’s tears or anger – particularly if they feel like they are responsible for the upset.

Women are much less likely to separate emotions into “positive” and “negative” the way that men do, which is why women might talk about having a “good cry,” a phrase which may sound to you like an oxymoron. Women generally have a feeling of release or being cleaned out and opened up when they are able to express their emotions, especially when they feel seen, heard and understood. Emotions are not a problem to be fixed and the fact that a woman you are with has emotions does not mean that she is broken nor does it mean that you did something wrong.

Emotions are a doorway to deeper intimacy and trust. When emotions do bubble up, it is often a sign that a woman’s feelings for you are deepening. The fact that she feels safe enough to let them out is a sign that she trusts that you can handle her. Each time your partner is upset it is actually an opportunity for you to feel confident, for her to feel listened to and for the two of you to get closer.

The payoff is that a woman who has released her feelings of frustration or resentment and who has been listened to often moves to a space of softness and receptivity in her body. When she lets out the emotional blocks in her body, she is more able to fully let you in and to allow her sexual energy to move freely in her own body and between the two of you.

In this section, we explain how to be with a woman when she is expressing her emotions. This is one of the most important skills you need to increase your ability to have better sex and close relationships with women.

Women (and men too) – your body is beautiful, right now, just as it is. So many women spend so much of their lives hating their body, struggling against it and punishing it for having curves or wrinkles or spots. Women feel like they don’t deserve to have sexual pleasure until their bodies are perfect (and there is no such thing as a perfect body, even the magazines airbrush supermodels). The media, the dieting industry, the fashion industry and so many of our cultural outlets tell women that they have to change themselves to be beautiful. In this way, they can keep making money off of women’s insecurities. And, women’s insecurities about their bodies are yet another cause of low libido.

When women diet in unhealthy ways, starve themselves or overexercise, their sex drive goes down – if you think about it in biological terms, it doesn’t make sense to make a baby if you won’t be able to feed it or yourself. Also, many women feel ashamed about being naked in front of their partners and, instead of feeling the pleasure of sexual arousal, experience sex as though they are outside of themselves watching to make sure their stomach or thighs aren’t too fat. If there is one thing that we know about body image, it is that body image DOES NOT CHANGE from changing your body, it changes when you start loving your body just the way it is and stop monitoring every bit you eat or every pound you have and then beating yourself up about it.

Sometimes just the act of loving your body in this way inspires you to take good care of yourself, eat healthy and exercise. When you look at your body with love and picture others doing the same, you begin to walk in the world in a way that is more open and alive, you believe that you deserve pleasure and people begin to respond to this aliveness and this belief. The freedom from diet-brain and self-hatred is a personal freedom, it is about claiming your own right to pleasure and self-love. To improve your body image towards better libido follow the three steps in our previous post on loving yourself in 3 steps.

Also, an this might sound surprising, libido is also about having power out in the world, about claiming your voice, connecting with other women and changing the world in positive ways so that women’s sexuality is celebrated and cherished instead of denigrated and denied. One example of this might be attending a Slut Walk, a walk organized to respond to a comment by Toronto police offer who said that to remain safe, “women should avoid dressing like sluts.” At events like this, women speak out about ways that they have triumphed in the face of adversity and about issues that still need to be addressed around women and women’s sexual freedom. Another option would be starting a women’s group, or a mother/daughter group, with your friends or acquaintances and educating yourselves and each other about women’s issues and women’s sexuality (or girls’ sexual development). We love to come in and speak to women’s groups, so please invite us if you do! When you begin to see how all women have been denied the full expression of their sexual desire, you will become motivated and inspired to change the world and when you make positive changes in the world, you feel more alive and sexual as well!

We would love to have your comments and experiences, so please write them below.

Since we’ve been on the topic of women’s libido, we thought we’d offer Jenny Block’s list of 7 reasons why sex isn’t on women’s radar. It’s a great list though her conclusion that people just need to talk about it may not be enough. Unfortunately sex is a language that we, as a culture, don’t have a huge vocabulary for. Sometimes you need the help of a book (such as Cockfidence or one of the many books we have on our resource list), a video, a coach or a therapist. Get yourself informed, get some support, communicate your needs and start practicing!

We have heard of a lot of talk lately about the big “T” – testosterone, and more specifically, testosterone replacement therapy. (TRT, which is a nice way to say “injecting yourself with a highly volatile anabolic steroid, possibly for the rest of your life.”) If you decide to start TRT, after a while, you may not be able to stop, in part because the mechanism that creates testosterone naturally in your body is on a negative feedback loop – meaning the more your body senses that it has, the less it makes. And while hypogonadism (the condition that causes low testosterone) is a serious issue and is not to be discounted, it is much more rare than the numbers of men being diagnosed as having low testosterone. If you think you might have hypogonadism, you should get yourself tested. It is much more likely that many men (and women) have low testosterone for many different reasons, and we wanted to point out some alarming facts in the big T conundrum. We also then give you five real ways to naturally boost (in some cases quite high ) your free testosterone. Maybe you or someone you know has been diagnosed, or you suspect you might have low testosterone – or are just curious about it all – read on…

Most doctors measure total testosterone to make a diagnosis of low testosterone, despite the American Association for Clinical Chemistry and many other world-wide organizations asking for standardized testing and a type of testing for what is known as “Free Testosterone”, which is the amount of testosterone in your body that is available (“free”) for use and not bound to a larger molecule that makes it essentially inert. Free testosterone is less than two percent of your total testosterone, and because it exists in such small amounts, the testing gets less accurate and therefore more expensive to do correctly. What makes this even worse is that total testosterone varies a great deal among men, and it does not accurately predict free testosterone, which varies much less. If your doctor only tests total testosterone, you can have low total, but high free testosterone and be put on a lifelong treatment plan incorrectly.

We really hope this helps in your quest for “T” knowledge. While we are not physicians, we really care about your health, and ultimately, your sex lives. Low testosterone can be a very serious issue, but it can also be a symptom – not necessarily the cause – of a lager emotional or psychological issue. Stress, rest, sex – they are all interconnected, and taking a drug to balance out what your body really needs (as opposed to when there is an actual illness) is never a good idea.

These days, finding balance between work and partnership is the tip of the iceberg, there are also friends, family (kids if you have them), personal errand and responsibilities, etc. Being over-busy is the scourge of our time, and relationships, and especially relaxed, spacious time to savor intimacy, connection and sex seems to be the biggest loser across the board. We find that many people (especially with our protestant work ethic), think of pleasure as something extraneous that rarely makes the to-do list or the calendar.

We believe that, even if you love your work, taking downtime, and sharing intimacy and sex (and all the lovely hormones that are released when we do so), is essential to our overall health and well-being, as well as the health of our relationships. Much research is now showing that stress is the root of our body losing it’s ability to do the things it needs to in order to maintain our health and is thus the root cause of many of the illnesses we face. Relaxed connection, savoring, loving and sensual touch – all of these are the prevention and essential to the cure! We wish, instead of work ethic, we had an ethic of pleasure in this culture, where everyone was encouraged to create as much pleasure and joy in their lives and in the lives of others as possible. It would be a better world, full of healthier, happier people and relationships. Here’s a tip – put pleasure at the top of your to do list and set aside at least one hour a day for things that make you feel relaxed, happy and connected!

I an earlier blog entry we talked about the importance of hormones, rest and the just-right-seduction in your libido. Here we will talk about the social messages and how they shape and play a role in your sexuality, desire and turn on. How you feel about yourself as a sexual person has a huge impact on your libido and, unfortunately, in our culture and many others, women’s sexuality is repressed and stigmatized. From the time we are girls all the way through the phases of womanhood, we are given messages that sex is not for women – sexual women are still called “sluts” or “whores” and we are told from early on to fear and feel responsible for preventing pregnancy and STD’s. We are also given the responsibility of gatekeeping boy’s and men’s desire in order to protect our virginity or our reputation as women are generally separated into two categories – marriagable mothers or whores who you sleep with.

In the midst of these kinds of negative messages, however, to get in a relationship and keep our relationships happy, we also are supposed to look and act sexy and want sex even though so much of what we hear is that we are not supposed to want it or do it. Have you ever noticed that most highly sexual women in movies and television shows are usually villains, who often end up being punished or killed, while the less sexual women get rescued, loved and married? In the face of a constant bombardment of these messages, some of it inevitably sinks in, leaving women shameful of their sexuality, distanced from their own sexual desires, and denied the freedom to pursue these desires openly and honestly. We distance from our desire to protect ourselves from being labeled “slut”, and end up not being able to reconnect with it when we want it. We often lose our natural abilities to walk in the world comfortably connected with our sexuality, which inhibits not only our libido but many other things including our ability to flirt, attract partners, seduce, enjoy pleasure, touch and move our bodies in sensual ways, make sexual sounds and reach orgasms. Unfortunately, because of all of this, women often don’t even think about the need for sexual compatibility when choosing a long-term partner. So take a moment to think about your own comfort with your sexuality and ask yourself a few questions:

To often we come across articles that talk about women faking orgasm. Our hope is that women will stop faking it and start learning how to give themselves orgasm to then teach their partners how to give them orgasms. Yes, it can be a bit complicated and it can take some time and extra stimulation, but if we continue to let men think that just jumping to intercourse after a few kisses and squeezes is going to work, we all miss out, even men, who actually really want to please their partners! Stop faking and start exploring. Got some tips on how you’ve trained a partner into getting you off? We would love to hear it in the comments.

Women – your libido is tied to shifts in hormones and energy throughout your day, throughout your monthly cycle and throughout your lifetime. In contrast to men, who generally experience a build-up of sexual energy when they have not had sex for a while, and a lowering when they do have sex, your libido is likely to fluctuate more based on your hormonal changes and changes in your energy level throughout your day. Libido is also heightened when sexual experiences have been recent (as opposed to a distant and fading memory). To put your hormonal changes simply, overall your libido-supporting hormones go down throughout your lifetime – in the big picture women in their 40s are less hormonally horny than women in their 20s. That being said, each month, as long as your are not on a hormonal form of birth control, your hormones experience a peak during ovulation and menstruation and these are often when your libido will be at its highest. You can begin noticing when you have peaks in your desire and track these throughout the month. If you have children, you will likely (or likely did), have an experience of heightened libido during your pregnancy and then lowered libido afterward due to hormonal fluctuations. Since rest has a huge impact on libido, getting enough sleep and choosing to have sex in the morning, afternoon or early evening (whenever your energy level is the highest), can do miracles to your sexual desire and response (and also partially explains why women have lowered libido after childbirth – very little rest, and keeping sex to the end of the day when the kids are in bed!). Finally, in menopause, your sexual hormones drop and stay quite low throughout the month.

As we mentioned above, when you go long stretches of time without sex, your body tends to “forget” what you liked about sex in the first place, and often, once you have sex more regularly, you end up wanting it more. There is one caveat to this, it has to be GOOD SEX or else, as your hormonal desire for sex drops, you will be less and less interested. We have this myth in our culture, that our partners are just supposed to know what we want and be able to provide it without us having to ask, however, since your body, your hormones , your orgasms and your needs to be touched change throughout time, it is essential to teach your partner and continue to communicate with your partner what you need in order to feel turned on. As we have lower and lower hormonal support for our arousal, seduction, fantasy, creativity and communication become more and more essential to keep us interested in sex.

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of seduction and how questions from our partners like, “are you horny,” or “do you want to have sex now” are NOT SEDUCTIONS. Research has shown that women often not interested in sex until they are already somewhat aroused, this means that your partner needs to know how to arouse your body instead of asking you if you want sex because you won’t want it until you are already somewhat aroused.

Here are some important tips to take away:

1) Get as much rest as possible – naps can be hugely rejuvenating

2) Look for times to have sex when you feel the most physiologically aroused – this may mean you will have to initiate sex, which many women are not used to doing (we will talk more about this in our next segment on social messages and libido)

3) When thinking about how your partner can seduce you better, don’t only tell them how to touch you, teach them how to look at you, how to talk to you, what kinds of fantasies most turn you on (so they can tell them to you or you can act them out), and how they can help make sure you get enough rest. If you need more ideas about what is on the menu, check out the second half of our book, COCKFIDENCE.

4) Try to find a birth control method with the least hormonal impact

5) If you are one of those SUPER BUSY WOMEN, make sex dates with your partner or yourself, where you set aside time for intimacy and sexual connection. To those who complain that this will not be spontaneous, we say, there is plenty of time for spontaneity once you get to the date and making the time doesn’t mean you have to have sex – just that you do something that helps you connect to your own body and your partner in a sensual or intimate way.

6) Start tracking your menstrual cycle, keeping an eye on when you have peaks in your arousal and initiate sex during these times or any time you think you might be in the mood

In the next couple of blogs, we will tell you more of the reasons why you may have low libido and how you can change it! Also, we would love to hear your experiences and welcome comments and questions – so feel free to leave comments bellow.

“Disaster Recovery in the Bedroom: Staying sexy through ED and vaginal dryness” is a Psychology Today article that recently caught our attention. There are a few good suggestions in this article but what we REALLY liked about it was that it normalizes the fact that our bodies change throughout our life, and that sex can’t always just be “spontaneous” or work “the way it used to.”

There are ways to learn how to be connected and sexual with each other that focus on learning what is pleasurable for your body NOW and what your body is capable of NOW instead of wishing it could all be like it used to be. The acceptance of this is what creates the possibility for a long-term, satisfying sex life!

Read full article here.