Kink Conference Confidential
My partner and I ventured out to a vaccinated, tested and masked, indoor (and outdoor) kink conference last weekend at a San Francisco Bay Area Hotel. Allow me to introduce you to some of that experience.
7 Most Commonly Asked Questions about Sex Coaching
It’s pretty easy these days to find out what’s going on people’s minds when it comes to sex coaching. Type it into a search engine and voila, you get back 7 questions about sex coaching, most commonly asked on the internet. I decided to answer those 7 questions here, because my bet is that you might have some of these questions yourself.
You Could Die Tomorrow
When we commit to live with an open heart, we do whatever it takes to keep it open. That looks different for every couple, but every couple has their unique path that leads them to an open-hearted love.
It’s Not You, It’s Me
Most couples who come to me for intimacy and relationship coaching have one thing in common; they want to know how to get their partner to change. They’ve gotten so used to paying attention to their partner’s shortcomings, that they’ve forgotten, or chosen to ignore their own 50% of the relationship equation.
Finding the Gifts in Conflict
No matter who you are or how happy you are in your relationship you’re going to experience conflict. Experiencing conflict in your relationship is not sign of weakness, nor a lack of wisdom. It’s simply a polarized dialogue between two people holding opposing positions. How we navigate this dialogue is determined by how skillful we are at moving through conflict as a couple.
SLOW DOWN, Couples at Play
Play is a reset button for our over-stressed, news-saturated, time-pressured adult minds. Most couples I work with will readily admit that play is not something they experience on a regular basis. Life has gotten too busy. There’s barely enough time to be alone to talk, much less play.
Putting the Sexy into Consent
One of my couples came to me feeling the fallout of a non-consensual incident that resulted in one of them feeling angry and the other confused. The man made the mistake of not asking his partner’s consent to try out something new in the bedroom. Rather than talking about it with his partner beforehand, he showed up in the bedroom with handcuffs, and proceeded to lock his partners arms behind her back. There was no conversation about using restraints and no mutual exploration on the subject of bondage beforehand. In effect, consent was not given, and because of that it didn’t go well, at all.
The Curse of Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias. We all have it. We experience it every day in the news, in our politics, in our workplace, and most directly in our relationships, where partners can suffer the consequences of confirmation bias on a daily basis. When it comes to our relationship it makes sense then that our brains are far more skilled at noticing what’s wrong with our partner, than what’s right.
Ethical Porn
Watching other people have sex is tucked deep into our DNA. We’re drawn to it out of curiosity, the thrill of voyeurism, the excitement of arousal, and the all time big driver in our human bodies, the desire to procreate. Watching others have sex signals our desire to have sex ourselves, since time immemorial. As a sex and relationship coach, I see how porn tends to pit partners against each other and leads a couple down the road of sexual shame, secrecy and mistrust. It doesn’t have to be this way.
4 Stepping Stones to Effective Communication
Where does sex fit into grief? The myth we tell ourselves is that these two very basic human experiences are mutually exclusive. We believe that we shouldn’t want sex until we’re feeling sexy and receptive, and we can’t be grieving if our bodies are turned-on and orgasmic.