Get REAL Pleasure & Stop Faking It with Vanessa Marin
July 4, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Hello, love bugs. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we have a sweet, sexy episode for you with our fave, Vanessa Marin, who makes sex feel doable.
Abby Wambach:
She’s gotten you talking. This is now the fourth episode that we’ve done here.
Glennon Doyle:
I know-
Abby Wambach:
With Vanessa.
Glennon Doyle:
I just like the way-
Abby Wambach:
You’re magic.
Glennon Doyle:
I like Vanessa’s approach very much. Vanessa Marin is a sex therapist and New York Times bestselling author of Sex Talks: The Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life, co-written with her husband, Xander Marin. Vanessa is here to help you kick shame out of the bedroom so you can start feeling the connection, pleasure, and joy you deserve. Thank you for coming back again. We just wanted to ask you a bunch of questions today.
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah, I’m ready.
Glennon Doyle:
Is that okay? And I want to ask you also to tell us what people ask you the most often. First I want to ask you this. We’ve done three episodes together already, and one of the most frequently asked questions to me after people listen to those episodes are, “If I’ve been faking orgasm with my partner,” I have heard this 20 times. “If I have been faking orgasms with my partner, how do I come clean? I want to stop it now. I want to get real. I want to start over. I want to explore how to have an actual orgasm, but I’m in so much shame and fear because I’ve been faking it this whole time. Where do I start?” We’ll just start with an easy one like that.
Vanessa Marin:
Yes. Okay, you have two options here. I’m going to give you two choices, but first, what I want you to start with is forgiving yourself. Nobody sets out faking orgasms to be a jerk to their partner. Let me figure out how I can really mess with my partner. I’m going to fake this for 10 years, and then once we get down there, then I’m really going to throw them for a loop. No, we fake orgasm because we’re taught so much crap about how our bodies work, we’re taught that it’s not okay for us to ask for what we want. We are taught that we’re supposed to be more focused on our partner’s experience than our own. It’s a whole lot of BS that a lot of us have been taught. And faking feels like the easiest way to get around all of that. I say that as somebody who faked every single orgasm with every partner for years, so I get this. Going forward, what do we do? Two options. The first one is the harder one. That’s to come clean to your partner and tell them that you have been faking.
Vanessa Marin:
And so if you want to do that, what I would do is share with your partner the reasons why you started faking and talk about all those things that I mentioned. “I was taught it wasn’t okay for me to ask for what I want. I never knew what my body needed. I was ashamed.” Share it with your partner so you’re helping give them the context of, “I never meant this to hurt you, and I completely understand that it does.” And then you have to leave the space for your partner to have their feelings about it because they’re going to have feelings and it’s going to be tricky. They’re going to feel sad, they might feel upset, they might feel like their trust has really been shaken so you’re going to have to sit with that, and that is going to be challenging, but it’s also can be a huge relief to finally just get everything out there in the open and be able to regroup after that of, “Okay, how do we need to approach our sex life differently to make sure that this is happening for you?”
Vanessa Marin:
Because I can almost guarantee you that your partner wants you to be having real orgasms. If that option just has you sweating from head-to-toe, then the other option is to tell a little bit of a white lie around this and to tell your partner, “I’ve been noticing lately that the things that my body is responding to feel really different from what it used to respond to. And so I want to be able to give you more feedback for us to try some new things out. I’m not really sure why I’m not responding the same way that I used to, but things are just different.” And you can even say, “When I’m masturbating, touching myself, I’m noticing things feel different.” This is a white lie. It’s not really the truth of what happened, but it is something that’s told-
Amanda Doyle:
Well, it’s sort of true. Things are feeling different because you’ve decided you’re not going to lie about it anymore.
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah. In general, my advice is always the more open and honest we are, the better, even though it is very hard to do sometimes. But I do think this option can be okay in some circumstances. Where you’re still giving your partner the ability to reset of like, “Okay, we’ve got to try some different things. Let’s find what’s working. Let’s see what you like.” And there also is a reality of what we like does change throughout our lives. Couples get into trouble if they get locked into a pattern of, “Well, this is what works. This is what we always do.” We talked about that before. You’re introducing this idea of just trying a slightly different approach. That’ll spare your partner’s feelings, it won’t feel as hard on you, but it’ll still give you that opportunity to reset your sex life.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s nice to give. And everyone has different levels of safety in their relationship, so that’s-
Vanessa Marin:
Exactly, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
… great. But I do think if it’s possible, in terms of sex being about everything, it’s kind of a beautiful thing for your partner to know that you are a person that doesn’t always say what you want. Here’s an example. I just learned in therapy that I never really say what I want to watch on TV. I just make a decision based on what I think the family, most of the people will want, and then I say that thing. Anyway, the point being that a lot of women don’t say what they need or want because they’d rather just keep the peace than introduce themselves. Wouldn’t it be a beautiful exercise in a relationship just to use that one thing to then begin to explain that you’re going to start figuring out what you like and want and need in a lot of different areas?
Vanessa Marin:
Absolutely.
Glennon Doyle:
And make it even absolutely bigger than about that one thing. It could become a revolution.
Amanda Doyle:
And that’s the first person that you can trust to… with that information.
Glennon Doyle:
Just tell the truth about that.
Amanda Doyle:
I didn’t tell these other people because I knew it wouldn’t be relevant to them, and you’re the first person that I trust-
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
… wants to do this the real way with me.
Abby Wambach:
I want to circle back just really quick, what do you want to be watching on TV?
Glennon Doyle:
Honestly, I want to watch Vanderpump Rules. It’s really what I want to watch.
Abby Wambach:
Really?
Glennon Doyle:
I want to watch trash TV.
Abby Wambach:
And this is what’s interesting is even though she’s not saying what she wants, she’s still very opinionated about what we end up watching.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s what we talked about with my therapist.
Abby Wambach:
Because she’s fighting for the energy of the room and to control what the thing is that we’re all watching in a way, and it’s hilarious that it’s not even what you wanted to watch.
Glennon Doyle:
No, it’s a thing. It’s a-
Amanda Doyle:
That goes into the what do women want? Because the scariest thing, what I want desperately is for the energy in this room to be correct. What I want desperately is for what should happen to happen.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
But that’s a different question than what do I want, in terms of I-I?
Glennon Doyle:
Do I want? I think this is what we’re exploring. This is what we’re exploring. I think that in my family, in work, wherever, I can be perceived as a bit of a tyrant. As a, “No, I want my…” But I’m never getting what I want. I’m just trying to control the thing to make everybody happy. But nobody’s happy because nobody’s getting what they want. This is another thing, Vanessa. This is with a different therapist, okay?
Vanessa Marin:
Episode five.
Abby Wambach:
But I think that this is also related, my God!
Glennon Doyle:
What’s related?
Vanessa Marin:
It’s all related. And this is what I think is so interesting about sex is it’s very easy for us to compartmentalize sex and think, “Oh, it’s just that thing that happens in our bedroom with the doors close and the lights off.” But how we show up in sex is how we show up in life. And so even if you’re feeling really nervous to read Sex Talks, to have these conversations, to start working on your sex life, to remind yourself this is going to have impacts wildly, wildly beyond the bedroom.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Vanessa Marin:
This is going to affect every relationship in my life, every area of my life.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes!
Vanessa Marin:
There’s so much growth to be had here.
Glennon Doyle:
It is so true. It is so true.
Abby Wambach:
This is so cool.
Glennon Doyle:
It feels like you’ve got to nail it all before you can get to the sex part of your life, but actually, if you can just explore through sex, it can go the other way. It can start affecting every other part of your life. You can start with sex. Can you talk to us about masturbating? Because you just said it like it’s the easiest thing to talk about, or like it’s just nothing. But actually lots of us have been taught to be ashamed of masturbating. Just talk to us about how to undo the shame. What’s the skinny on masturbating, Vanessa?
Vanessa Marin:
Okay, I’ll loop us back to the last episode. We’ll really start talking about some hard things here. We were talking about Amanda’s experience with her daughter, of the back scratches at night, and this way that kids are so tuned into their own bodies, their own needs and their own desires. Kids masturbate.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, they do.
Vanessa Marin:
There is evidence of fetuses in the womb masturbating. Now, it’s not masturbation in the way that we think of it as adults. A lot of us think of masturbation as very sexual, but for kids it’s just an exploration of their bodies. Oh, that feels good, just like my little back scratches feel good. And a lot of us have had experiences as children of being caught masturbating. That was one of the earliest experiences that we got of learning pleasure is not okay. “That’s shameful. Don’t do that. Don’t touch yourself there.”
Amanda Doyle:
Something is weird about you that you were inclined to do that. You’re a big weirdo.
Vanessa Marin:
Absolutely. And in particular, women get a lot of negative socialization about masturbating as well. With boys, there’s a boys will be boys kind of thing about it. Like, oh yeah-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s kind of a cute celebration.
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I remember the baby boys in the bathtub, and they’re playing with their penises and it’s like, “Ha ha, isn’t this hilarious?” We expect it. That is an appropriate exploration. But a girl doing it is like, “Oh, Jesus.”
Vanessa Marin:
Exactly. It’s so much more shameful. And so as women, most of us feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of masturbating. A huge percentage of women have never masturbated before. This is one of those areas where, for me, the best thing to do is just get really fired up about this. Masturbation is a deeply spiritual act. Being connected with your own body, understanding what your body needs to feel good, to feel pleasure to have orgasms. What more powerful experience can you have with your own body? And yet so many of us have been robbed of the opportunity to have that kind of relationship. We’ve been taught so much shame that we just never access that part of ourselves.
Vanessa Marin:
For me, masturbation is a reclamation. IT’s a, “This is my body. I deserve to touch it with love and curiosity and openness and excitement. I deserve to explore what brings me pleasure, to explore what brings me to orgasm. I deserve that intimate knowledge of myself, that intimate relationship with myself.” For me, that energy of getting fired up about what we’ve been robbed of, that’s such a great way to overcome the shame that might come up for you in the moment. Now, let me take a deep breath and dial that back a little bit.
Glennon Doyle:
That was so beautiful.
Vanessa Marin:
Super, like practically, I always want to give practical tips too, if you just feel so much shame about this, we can break it down into baby steps. A first one would be just visualize yourself touching yourself. You don’t actually have to touch yourself, just visualize it and practice getting comfortable just with that image. And then maybe the next step could be you just place your hand on the outside of your vulva and you don’t move it. You’re not touching anything. You’re not trying to make yourself feel good. You’re literally just holding your hand over yourself and practicing breathing deeply and connecting to yourself.
Abby Wambach:
That’s sweet.
Vanessa Marin:
Even just that can be such a beautiful experience for so many women, but take it slow and ease your way into it.
Glennon Doyle:
And you are a fan of vibrators, I imagine? Are we all fans of vibrators here?
Vanessa Marin:
I think vibrators can be great. They can deliver an intensity of stimulation that the human body just cannot. And for a lot of people with ability issues, people on medications where they might not be feeling as sensitive, they can be absolute life changers. Also, for people who have never really explored their genitals before and don’t really know, a vibrator is going to be a lot more intense so it can be a shortcut to, “Oh, okay, that feels good. I know what that sensation is like.” I always like to be clear, sometimes people think, oh, well, if you’re using a vibrator, it’s not the same or it’s not the real thing. There’s no orgasm hierarchy here.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Vanessa Marin:
It’s just whatever brings your body pleasure.
Amanda Doyle:
Does stimulation, specifically clitoral stimulation by a vibrator, does that desensitize or make less likely manual-
Abby Wambach:
Stimulation to orgasm.
Amanda Doyle:
… with a partner orgasm?
Abby Wambach:
That’s what I was going to ask.
Vanessa Marin:
It can, but it’s not just about the vibrator. I think when we are masturbating, we have to be… And this is for people of all genders, all genitals, we have to be thoughtful about the patterns that we’re creating on our own. There’s this saying, the nerves that fire together, wire together. We’re just very good at making patterns. And so if you are masturbating in the same way every single time, and so that could be with a vibrator, it could be a specific technique you’re using. For people with penises, it could be using a certain level of pressure or a certain level of speed, it could be watching porn, anything.
That’s what I was going to ask.
If you are only doing that thing, your body just gets accustomed to it and it can be harder to experience that with a partner. I think an easy rule of thumb is just mix it up with yourself. We talked about keeping it spicy with your partner, keep it spicy with yourself. Maybe half the time that you masturbate, try something different, and then half the time you can use your old standby method. And then with vibrators in particular, one thing that I find happens is vibrators can turn us into very lazy masturbators. For a lot of us it’s like, you turn it on, you hold it in place.
Amanda Doyle:
Exactly. That was good 45 seconds.
Vanessa Marin:
You kick back, and yeah, exactly. Yeah, for a lot of people you can have an orgasm like that. It’s so fast.
Glennon Doyle:
You can have an orgasm while you’re planning your groceries. You don’t even have to think about what you’re doing.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s a quick commercial break, people.
Abby Wambach:
Have you seen the people who wear… They put an egg or some sort of vibrational device inside their partner and then they go out, and their partner actually has the on and off button. They’re walking down the aisles-
Glennon Doyle:
Is this in Berlin?
Abby Wambach:
No, they’re grocery shopping and they’re walking down the aisles and she goes and grabs the Oreos from the aisle and she falls to the ground because she’s-
Glennon Doyle:
Where are you seeing this?
Amanda Doyle:
What kind of Kroger are you at?
Abby Wambach:
These are on my reels on IG.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, for shit’s sake.
Vanessa Marin:
Oh, okay. There are a lot of great, Bluetooth enabled toys, but yes, and lazy masturbation is delightful sometimes. I’m not knocking it, but if you are then with a partner, there can be this mental impatience that kicks in of, “Oh, this is taking so long and now I have to focus and I have to give feedback.” That’s just something to be aware of. It’s okay to have your lazy masturbation, but sometimes practice being in the moment, moving the vibrator around, taking little breaks from the vibrator and just recognize it’s going to be different when you’re with a partner.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
I just real quick want to tell you, just because I just thought of it, when I was in elementary school, this is the only time that I’ve ever had a major athletic side, is that we had this… It was called the Tough 20 Club, and it was a rope that hung from the ceiling of the gym.
Abby Wambach:
Oh yeah, I know where you’re going with this.
Glennon Doyle:
I fucking could clear that rope. I was the least athletic, but I was the first in line for that rope. I remember not knowing what the hell was happening, but by the time I got to the top of the rope, I was like, “Climbing ropes is the most amazing feeling.” And just hanging onto the top of the rope looking out like, oh my God, it’s heaven at the top of a rope.
Vanessa Marin:
Wait, this is actually a huge gift that you’re giving to your audience because this is one of the top three female masturbation techniques. It’s some sort of grinding sensation. Most girls discover this on the playground. I was with you, exactly the same. I loved PE, but some people will do it with… It could be a balled up towel, clothes, against the side of a desk. Grinding is one of the top three techniques, but it’s not something that ever gets talked about, so so many women feel like something is super wrong with me if that’s the way that I use to get off, if that was the thing that worked for me. But it’s not. It’s incredibly, incredibly common and it makes perfect sense.
Glennon Doyle:
Great. I feel better about it already. Vanessa, a lot of people after some of our episodes have asked, all of this stuff is hard enough to enter into, to talk to, to try to try new ways. What about people who are survivors of sexual abuse, of sexual assault are people for whom this is triggering in very, very real ways. I just really would love to offer those people any help in terms of the very difficult climb out of trying to find your safest place in a place that has been the least safe for you.
Vanessa Marin:
Absolutely. In sex talks, we do have a section of it where we talk about the experience of abuse. We also have, at our website, it’s VMtherapy.com, my initials. If you go to the website, we have a free course that we give away to anybody who’s been a survivor of sexual abuse. It’s not meant to be a replacement for therapy. I want to be really clear about that. I think anybody who’s experienced sexual abuse deserves to have the container of therapy. But it is a very practical guide for understanding the specific impacts that abuse can have on your sex life and for rediscovering how to make sex feel safe and pleasurable again. It’s called A Survivors Guide. It’s at vmtherapy.com. And so the main thing is it’s really important to recognize that it does have impacts. I’m going to just speak to women for now. I do want to acknowledge people of all genders have experienced sexual abuse, but a lot of women, when I work with them around this, have the tendency to downplay it.
Vanessa Marin:
“That happened so long ago. I’m over it by now. A lot of women have had it way worse than I had it.” And they don’t recognize what happened to you was not okay. It doesn’t matter how long ago it was, it doesn’t matter how bad or not bad it was. You never, ever deserve to have your boundaries violated. It’s very important to recognize that it is going to impact your sex life. That can be one of the hardest things. You endured something you shouldn’t ever have had to endure and you also have to deal with the lasting impacts. But a lot of women say it felt really validating to acknowledge that it is getting in the way. Some common things that can come up is you might feel yourself dissociating during sex. It feels like your body is there in the moment, but your brain, your spirit, your soul is miles and miles away.
Vanessa Marin:
You can even feel a sense of watching yourself. A lot of women will say, “I feel like I’m up on the ceiling looking down at my body.” You might have a hard time feeling a lot of hypervigilance. If your partner touches you, you feel yourself tense up a lot or you’re always on guard for when they’re going to initiate. You might have low sex drive. This goes back to that enjoyment, desire, connection that we talked about in the earlier episodes. If your body has learned that sex is an unsafe, scary, painful, unwanted experience, why are you going to have a wild desire for that? Those are just some of the many things that can come up and there’s more detail in that course that I mentioned. But just being able to recognize, these things make sense. There’s nothing wrong with me. It makes sense that I have these experiences.
Glennon Doyle:
Why is missionary sex, missionary style called missionary style? Because suddenly I was reading your book and I kept reading missionary and I was like, “Whoa, why are we calling this missionary?” Do you know why?
Vanessa Marin:
I actually don’t know the history behind that. Yeah, where did the name come from? Did it trace back to the missionaries and we decided to give some name to it? But yeah, no, it’s just been called-
Glennon Doyle:
It feels very suspicious.
Vanessa Marin:
… missionary sex.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
I wouldn’t be surprised at that because in the last episode where, Glennon, you were talking about, “But what is the origin of our fantasies? What is it saying about us?” We are always trying to connect to the higher level of us. “What does it mean from my brain? What does it mean from who I am?” As opposed to, we are wild-ass animals. We were born that way and unless it’s beaten out of us, we will remain that way. But the world has civilized the shit out of us so that anytime there’s anything that feels odd, we’re like, “Well, that’s wrong.” And so it wouldn’t surprise me at all that if it was the missionaries, they went over and saw people being luscious, joyful, wild animals and they’re like, “Well, we need to just reign this joy in a little bit.”
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
We’ll give them one way to do it and it’ll be the least interesting way.
Glennon Doyle:
We’ll do to their sexuality what we’re about to do to their faith.
Amanda Doyle:
And their economies and their bodily autonomy.
Vanessa Marin:
I’m going to have to look that up now, go look up the history, how it got named that way.
Glennon Doyle:
You don’t have to. I have feelings-checked it. Lauren, our producer, just sent us something and it says that according to Wikipedia, it is said that the name missionary position arose because this sex position was supposed to have been taught by Christian missionaries as the only ‘proper sex position’.
Vanessa Marin:
Yep, not shocked.
Amanda Doyle:
Makes total sense.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh my God. Okay.
Amanda Doyle:
We should start calling the gender binary, the missionary binary.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Everything, we should just start calling it the missionary.
Vanessa Marin:
Missionary. And of course it’s one of the positions that’s the least pleasurable for women too.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, exactly.
Vanessa Marin:
Of course that’s the only proper way to have it-
Glennon Doyle:
Unrelated.
Amanda Doyle:
Unrelated, Vanessa. I’m sure they didn’t calculate that.
Abby Wambach:
I have a question around times in our lives that are more sex filled and less sex filled. This idea of quantity, and how I think it’s pervasive in our culture and it gets really ugly, I think, in relationships, is there a period of time during a person’s life that is less-
Amanda Doyle:
Sexy?
Abby Wambach:
… sexed around than others? Because I think that there’s this period at midlife that there’s this lull because there’s so fucking much going on. Your kids are still at home or they’re about to go to school and your parents are getting older and you’re dealing with that. There’s just this 30 to 50 year old period.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, I thought you were going to say 30 to 50 year period.
Abby Wambach:
No, but this time of life, is there a time of life that there are just some ebbs and flows and lows and when are they? And am I in one now?
Vanessa Marin:
Studies have shown that one of the biggest ebbs in a couple’s sex life happens after kids.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Vanessa Marin:
Just the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the sleepless nights, and even the physical discomfort of it can be a really difficult time. But in terms of overall patterns, I’ve really found that every couple has their own unique ebbs and flows. It is important for us to normalize this too. We’ve talked so much in our other episodes about this belief that we all have that more is better. We just need to be having all the sex and then everything is okay. But the reality is we all have seasons of life where we’re more focused on physical intimacy and we’re less focused on physical intimacy and that’s okay. We did a study, I can’t remember if I mentioned this in one of our previous episodes, but we did a frequency survey. It’s not a proper scientific survey, but we have had 70,000 people answer it, which is quite a lot.
Abby Wambach:
It’s a lot.
Vanessa Marin:
And we found that there weren’t huge, noticeable differences in how much people are having sex across different age groups, which I found quite fascinating. There was a slight decline as people got older, but we had plenty of respondents in their seventies, eighties who were still quite active. It’s not that once you hit a certain age, it’s just a fast downhill slide from there. It’s really more individual. It does always come back to us being able to ask ourselves, in the season of life that we’re in right now, are we feeling satisfied with the amount of connection that we’re having? Again, it’s really easy for us to go to, “We should be having more sex. I feel like our friends are having more sex. Everybody seems to be talking about having more sex.” Great. I don’t care. What is it that you feel for yourself? Are you satisfied with the amount of sex that you’re having?
Vanessa Marin:
And I will also say, I challenge every couple to push yourselves to make a little bit more space for physical intimacy than you might think. Not force yourself to have sex if you don’t want to. I would never in a million years say that, but create the space for that. Because the reality is we all lead really busy lives. It’s very easy for sex to fall to the bottom of the to-do list. We’re tired, we’ve got other stuff going on, we just don’t make the space for it. And I’m sure you guys have noticed in our lives, unless we make the space for things, life just fills up with lots of other stuff. Challenge yourself to say, “Maybe we’re going to carve out time for date nights.” And it doesn’t mean that we need to have sex on those times. Maybe we’re just going to make out. Maybe we’re just going to hold hands. Maybe we’re just going to have an intimate conversation with each other, but make the space for that.
Glennon Doyle:
Vanessa, don’t you have a make out rule that just went viral? I feel like… Did I see this?
Vanessa Marin:
Oh my gosh, yes.
Glennon Doyle:
No, but tell us about the make out rule, ’cause this was really helpful to millions of people.
Vanessa Marin:
Yes. It was a TikTok that I made that, I think at this point there’ve been eight or nine million people that have watched it, so it really took off. This is a rule, a guideline. Some people got a little triggered by the rule. It’s a guideline, a fun thing that Xander and I decided to start doing because I realized that we had really stopped making out. I think a lot of couples in long-term relationships stop making out. And for Xander and I, it was one of the most fun things about our relationship in the early stages. We would make out all the time and it was so fun and we would enjoy making out just for the sake of making out. As the year went-
Glennon Doyle:
Can you define making out? Define making out.
Vanessa Marin:
Tongue contact.
Glennon Doyle:
Tongue contact? Okay.
Vanessa Marin:
Some tongue contact, yeah. And not everybody loves tongue contact, so if you like pecks, if you just like interlocking each other’s lips, that can count as well. It doesn’t have to be a strict definition of it. But we decided to start making out. We made this little guideline that we’re just going to make out every night before bed. And we’ve done that now for years and it’s been really, really fun to just have the space to carve out this little routine and to have it be a daily thing. For me, if I’m doing something daily, it’s so much easier for me to build a routine out of it than every once in a while.
Amanda Doyle:
Did you just say every night for years you’ve been doing this?
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah. For years we’ve been doing this.
Amanda Doyle:
Holy shit.
Vanessa Marin:
Okay. Most nights, it’s 10 to 30 seconds. If we’re really tired, it’s a little bit of tongue contact, okay, we’re done. We have fun with it. Some nights it might be a little bit longer, but on average it’s 10 to 30 seconds. And one other thing that I think is really important about this is a lot of couples in long-term relationships, you start only making out as an initiation to sex or during sex.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Vanessa Marin:
And we make this connection that, oh, if my partner’s making out with me, that means they want sex. And so we shut ourselves down like, “No, no, no. Don’t come in for me. Don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me. I don’t want it to lead to more.” And so I wanted to break that connection. I think that can be really powerful for so many couples. Break the connection that any sort of touch or any sort of kissing is supposed to lead to sex. ‘Cause a lot of couples in long-term relationships say, “Yeah, we don’t kiss, we don’t touch. We only have physical contact when we’re right about to have sex or in the middle of having sex.” And we all miss it so much. This is just a nice way to bring some of that back into our relationship. Now it just feels like this sweet, special thing that we do every night and it feels really intimate and bonding. The vast majority of times it does not lead to sex. We just get to enjoy the make out for the make out’s sake.
Glennon Doyle:
What if you’re in an argument? Do we never go to bed mad at the Marin house? Or do we-
Vanessa Marin:
No, we go to bed mad and we take a break.
Amanda Doyle:
We’re so pissed, but we’re definitely making out. We’re definitely making out, even though we’re pissed.
Vanessa Marin:
Some people took the rule part of it a little bit too strongly. I’m like, “No, if I’m pissed at him, I’m not making out with him.” If he’s sick or I’m sick, get out of here.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. Okay, great.
Vanessa Marin:
I’m not kissing you.
Abby Wambach:
We’re just using our logic here?
Vanessa Marin:
Yes. I’m not a believer in don’t go to bed angry. There are lots of times where I need to go to bed angry, and if I’ve had some time and some space and a good night of sleep, I can come back to an argument and be in such a better place. We can resolve it so much faster versus… We’ve definitely had plenty of experiences where we were trying to solve something at night and hours will go by and you’re exhausted and crankier and just wanting to go to sleep. I think that’s some of the worst advice about conflict.
Glennon Doyle:
Wonderful.
Amanda Doyle:
I wouldn’t have slept in years if I didn’t go to bed angry.
Vanessa Marin:
Can you imagine?
Amanda Doyle:
Last time I went to bed was three-and-a-half years ago. I have a question, since one unrepresented population on this podcast is heterosexual men. Other than what you’ve told us in prior episodes about men really do, in the majority, want to please their partners and want their partners to be having a really great experience, what is another thing that you hear very frequently from heterosexual men about what their fear is or what their unspoken truth is that we don’t know about them?
Vanessa Marin:
Oh, there’s so many. A big one that comes to mind is this idea that men always want sex and they always should want it more. We’ve polled our Instagram audience and in male-female relationships, in 45%, the woman was the one who wants sex more. But it’s another thing that doesn’t get talked about and so there are a lot of men who feel very ashamed about not wanting sex more often than they do, or having a female partner who wants sex more often than they do, even though it’s incredibly normal and common.
Amanda Doyle:
And may I add that women in those relationships feel very ashamed too?
Vanessa Marin:
Oh, deeply ashamed.
Amanda Doyle:
I had a relationship like that where I was the rejected party and no women talk about that and it’s a really, really hard place to be. You feel broken and then doubly broken because literally no one admits to this.
Vanessa Marin:
Absolutely.
Amanda Doyle:
But okay, so that is a really good one.
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah, that’s one. Another good one is that men want to experience emotional connection during sex too. We talked about this a little bit in our third episode, about men don’t want to just let you have sex with them. They want to have an emotional, connected, intimate experience. Again, it’s this idea of, “Oh, men will just take whatever they can get. They just want the orgasm. They’re just horny.” But men want to feel close and vulnerable and intimate as well. And a lot of men tell me it feels tiring to have my partner treat me like all I want is just this physical release when I’m trying to feel this closeness with them.
Abby Wambach:
What are some things that we can do in our everyday life to increase or get us into good sex bodies? Are there foods we can eat that will make us more excited?
Glennon Doyle:
Do oysters work?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Does exercise increase libido? What are things that can help us increase our sex drives?
Vanessa Marin:
The most important things that will increase your sex drive are the trickier things. The making sure you’re having enjoyable sex, making sure you’re feeling emotionally connected to your partner, and the top three one is also making sure you’re not in pain. There’s so many, women in particular, who experience pain. Those are the three biggies. Of course, people are always more curious about the things that are a little more straightforward like, “Can I just eat the oysters?”
Amanda Doyle:
Is there a Vanessa supplement-
Abby Wambach:
Is there a pill?
Amanda Doyle:
… is what I’m looking for.
Abby Wambach:
Give me the fucking pill.
Vanessa Marin:
No. Maybe you might get the little teeniest, tiniest hit of desire from an aphrodisiac, but it’s really going to be more the placebo effect of you thinking, “Oh yeah, I’m just going to get this oyster and get turned on and in the mood.” Foods, supplements, those things just… If you want to eat oysters, go for it, but it’s not going to have this huge effect on your sex drive. In general though, treating your body with care and respect is going to increase your sex drive. If that means there are certain foods that make you feel more connected to yourself or a certain way of eating that feels good for you, then that’s going to be great.
Vanessa Marin:
If there’s a certain way of moving your body that makes you feel connected to yourself, makes you feel sexy, it feels good to move that way, that’s amazing. And I always want to say the idea of exercising or needing your body to look a certain way in order to have great sex or to have a high sex drive is just not accurate. People of any body shapes and sizes can experience pleasure and deserve to experience pleasure.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s so interesting that concept, because what diet culture and porn culture has taught us that, oh, no, no, if there’s a body we can build from the outside that will make us sexier. I’m doing a lot of work right now on embodiment because of my eating disorder recovery, and I don’t know how exactly to say this other than I’m working more on my sex life when I am in a conversation and I’m saying… A conversation with somebody I barely know and I’m saying, “Oh, hold on a second. What you just said feels weird to me. Hold on a second. I’m feeling uncomfortable right now.” Speaking something from the inside to the outside to a stranger is me working on my sex life.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s becoming embodied enough to speak my insides on the outside or to be aligned that way, that is what helps in the bedroom a million times more than a lifetime spent trying to shape my body into something that looks like it could be in a movie. It’s the inner work. What is your take on porn and erotica? Because I feel like erotica for women is an untapped… Women should be reading erotica more. I don’t even know what I’m saying. Does it feel like that is something that should be trending? Is it trending?
Vanessa Marin:
Okay, first, I have-
Amanda Doyle:
Put it on TikTok, Vanessa.
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
If Vanessa puts it on TikTok, it will trend.
Vanessa Marin:
We’ll have Abby narrate it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes. Oh my God. Gold mine.
Vanessa Marin:
I do get a lot of DMs from people that I think would be interested in that, I’m just saying, little business idea.
Abby Wambach:
No.
Vanessa Marin:
But I want to go back to what you were saying about body and diet culture. I do think sex is also a way for us to overcome diet culture and all this crap that we’ve been taught to believe about our bodies. When we can reclaim the pleasure that we can experience, and the great thing about pleasure is it doesn’t matter what your body looks like. You are capable of experiencing the same amount of pleasure with your body exactly how it looks right now. Your weight has no bearing on the amount of pleasure that you’re capable of feeling. Being able to claim, “This is my body, it’s deserving of pleasure.” And exploring, what are all the ways that I can feel pleasure in this body, that can help move us beyond these ideas of my body needs to look exactly like this. When it comes to erotica, I like to think of this as it’s just a different kind of stimulation.
Vanessa Marin:
Erotica, if you’re reading something, if you’re listening to something, if you’re watching something, it’s just a different way of getting stimulation. And a lot of women will tell me, in particular with erotica, there’s something about written erotica, reading, that feels like it opens up space in their brain. One of the biggest concerns that women have is I can’t be present in the moment. I’m thinking about my to-do list, I’m thinking about all this other stuff I have to do. I can’t shut my brain off and just be present with my partner. Erotica can be a nice transition time where we are reading something, it’s giving our brain something to do, but it’s a sexy thing to do. We’re getting that stimulation and we’re helping our brain wind down and get more into the moment so it’s not this abrupt, I’m running around all day constantly thinking of all the things, and then I’m supposed to get into sex and all of a sudden shut my brain off and not think about any of the things? It’s this nice little wind-down moment.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s more all encompassing than… To some people, to me. That’s why I like listening… Abby loves listening to a book and lots of people do. For me, I like reading because it’s all my sense. I can listen to something, I’m still doing a million other things, but when I’m reading, I have to be right there and that is the presence that sex requires, so it makes sense that that would be write a bridge-
Abby Wambach:
Write a book. Write an erotica book.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to write a sexy romance lesbian novel.
Abby Wambach:
Why don’t you?
Vanessa Marin:
I think that’s a great idea.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay.
Abby Wambach:
I’ll read it.
Glennon Doyle:
You can read the audio book. Can you imagine me trying to read it?
Vanessa Marin:
And erotica can also give you ideas too. You can read with your partner, “Let me read you this scene.” Or, “Ooh, I really like what they did here. It was very interesting.” Or, “Oh, I’ve never thought about doing this before. What do you think of this scene right here?” It gives you some inspiration too.
Abby Wambach:
Do you have any good recommendations on erotica books?
Vanessa Marin:
I have just finished reading the A Court of Thorn and Roses series. I was having so many people ask me for my professional opinion on it. It got super popular. It was really big on BookTok. I finished reading that series and I definitely found it to be really interesting. It’s a lot of fantasy, almost a much more simplified version of Game of Thrones thing, but some just more sexy elements mixed in. I thought that was interesting and a lot of people have told me they really enjoyed it, so it could be worth reading.
Glennon Doyle:
In closing, what would you say is the question that people ask you the most, as a very trusted voice in this world, that when you answer it can do the most good for them in their lives? What’s the question that you can free people the most quickly by answering?
Vanessa Marin:
I love that question. It’s really the simplest one. Am I normal? So many of us just feel so alone in whatever it is that we’re going through. And even the most simple things like am I alone in wishing sex is a little bit slower? Am I alone in being turned on by my partner kissing all over my neck? That question is just… It’s one that gives us so much shame, so much anxiety, this fear comes up so strongly for us. Just being able to share with people whatever it is that you’re going through, I promise you, you are not alone. And even if it’s something that you don’t love or you wish was different about your sex life, there are ways to address it, to talk about it, to transform it. I think just starting with that basic reality of you’re not alone and it’s okay.
Abby Wambach:
Beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
Beautiful. Vanessa Marin, thank you so much. We adore you. Everybody go pick up Sex Talks. You won’t regret it. And Pod Squad, you are normal and we love you.
Abby Wambach:
That means you are too, honey.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, we’ll see.
Abby Wambach:
You are.
Amanda Doyle:
Just don’t be out here letting the Christian missionaries dictate what you do in your bedroom. All right? Don’t let them win.
Glennon Doyle:
That was never about God and it was never about sex. Okay, catch you next time. Bye Pod Squad.
Glennon Doyle:
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