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What would you write in a letter to your own body?
And today's guest gives her clients a unique exercise to help them improve the way that they talk to themselves and others.
It sounds unusual, but it's actually a powerful way to build gratitude and clear out the negative thoughts that hold us back in our personal lives.
Caitlin V is a well-known sexologist, researcher and the author of Harder Better Longer, Stronger.
She spent over a decade helping men overcome anxiety and build better relationships.
In this episode, we're having a real conversation about how to communicate better with your partners.
We talk about a simple model for consent, the pressure many men feel to perform, and why feeling connected is a basic human need.
If you have ever struggled to talk about your needs in intimate relationships or felt like your communication has hit a wall, Caitlin is here to help you find your voice.
Is there one story or person that comes to mind that really encapsulates what you hope, that your message, the impact that your message has on the world?
Well, I could start by telling you I recently wrote a piece for the Daily Mail on an assignment that I give in the book that I didn't think twice about.
I give it to all my clients and I didn't think it was a particularly spicy or salacious assignment.
But the Daily Mail picked up on it right away and asked me if I would write an article on it.
And that assignment is to write a letter to your penis.
And the reason that I give this assignment is twofold.
Number one.
It teaches a great communication tactic of being accountable responsible, making amends and apologies.
It also allows for an expression of gratitude and appreciation in an area where most people have only expectations and very, very little expression of appreciation.
And I gave this assignment.
I developed this assignment sort of like in a moment of coaching where I was talking to this man.
He was a widower.
He had just finished raising his like last child, had just left the nest and he was ready to start dating again.
And when he would talk about his body as a whole and his genitals, it was always in this like very negative shameful, doubtful way.
Like his body was just never, ever meeting his expectations.
And I thought to myself, my guy, you have two daughters that you're so proud of.
You've had an incredible life.
You know, you were very much in love with your wife and had a great sex life before she passed.
Like you have so much to be thankful for.
So how do we clear out the negative self-talk?
How do we clear out and make amends for the ways that you've spoken to yourselves and spoken to your body for years now and get back into gratitude?
And so I had him write a letter and at first he resisted, and then he came back to a session and he was absolutely, he was just in tears.
I didn't have him read the letter.
There was no need to have him read the letter.
But in that he got so clear on the language that he used to speak to himself and how he had related to his body as a tool that should be useful for him and not a part of him that could be an expression of himself.
Wow.
Wow.
That's incredible.
There's so much depth there.
There's so much depth there.
And It's funny.
This is one of those moments where for me as an interviewer, I'm supposed to be here going into it.
I'm just now I'm thinking like, man, what would I say to my penis?
I don't know.
Yeah.
That's a worthwhile question.
I know that you speak a lot about communication, right?
Again, communication is so centered to negotiation.
It's also centered to relationships.
And I think we often jump to communication with other people.
And it makes sense to go there, especially if we're trying to come to some kind of resolution or agreement between folks, right?
But I think that excellent communication starts with you.
And the way that you communicate to yourself is what's going to lay the foundation and create the blueprint for all of the other communication that you're going to have in your life.
And intimate communication.
Practicing that with you is a great way to learn about how you communicate with other people and where that communication could be improved.
Right.
Yeah.
You're, you're absolutely right.
And I think, when you give somebody that type of exercise just in general cause I'm thinking about it even just generally apply it to ourselves.
We recognize that the way that we talk to ourselves is often very different from the way that we talk to other people.
Um, and, uh, one, one thing I, I used to play tennis a lot competitively growing up.
And one of the things that I developed from psychology was um talk to yourself like you would your doubles partner.
Because when you're playing singles, watch a really competitive player play singles tennis by themselves.
It's one of the loneliest sports because you can't even talk to your coach at different levels.
I think now they changed the rules, but in the past you couldn't.
And tennis players look like lunatics when they're playing.
I remember when I was because I was president of the club team at Ohio State, because I wasn't good enough to play varsity
But when I started dating my wife, I said listen, I need you to give me at least six months before you see me play tennis, because I'm a different person.
Right.
Right.
But when I'm talking to my my doubles partner, I'm so compassionate and loving.
Hey, it's OK.
It's all right.
And I think a lot of times when we talk to ourselves, we can be almost abusive in the way that we communicate with ourselves.
So it would be incredibly.
It will generate a lot of self-awareness to be able to actually take that time to talk.
And that's actually a beautiful analogy, because if we think about our romantic relationships as both of us playing singles tennis against each other instead of us playing doubles on the same team, that's going to also change the spirit and the texture of the communication that we have.
Yes.
Oh, that's brilliant.
That's fascinating.
And for the gentleman that you're referring to, did that exercise along with, of course, the exceptional coaching that you and your team do did that have a meaningful change beyond the self-awareness?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because it spills out from there.
You know, in many ways we could think about all the things that he needed to say were stories and narratives that had been compiling stories for 50 years.
At that point,
They were all things that maybe, you know, you had had a thought or a negative experience.
Could be decades ago.
But because you never really took a moment to acknowledge it, feel the feelings that it brought up and get it sort of complete and put it to rest.
There's a ton of energy and availability that we get by finally tying up all those loose ends by acknowledging.
You know what someone said to me in high school that my body looked funny or that I was unattractive.
Or, you know, I got an email in my inbox yesterday from a man who, the first time a woman saw him naked as an adult, she said he looked like a monkey because he had a lot of chest hair.
And, you know, who knows if that was an offhanded comment or if she really meant to sting him.
But either way, for him, it had been stinging for over a decade at that point.
And those things sort of live on inside of us.
And sure, one comment or two comments doesn't a lifetime make, but they do add up.
And men especially, are highly incentivized to just put those aside, throw them in a box in your mind, compartmentalize and don't let it get to you.
Don't let it affect you.
But it does affect you.
And a lifetime of little comments like that especially affects you.
And a lifetime of the comments that you make to yourself. has an additive effect.
And so the letter is a nice way to just sort of put those things to rest, to acknowledge that they happened.
And in doing so, allow yourself to put them behind you.
And so for that gentleman it brought up other things as well, like some guilt that he had around dating again, even though his wife had passed many years prior, the feelings that he had around sharing himself with another person, the blockages that he had, the concerns that he even had about what his daughters would think.
All of that can start to bubble up once some of these other sort of threads are tied together.
So it's a great way for us to make sense of these things.
The other nice thing about it is that, because it's just for you, in my time giving this assignment, I don't think I've read more than one or two of these letters.
And it was only because of the request of my client.
For the most part, I've said, it's for you.
You can burn it at the end.
Some people choose to bury their letter.
Some people write it on paper that dissolves in water, and they'll literally flush it down the toilet.
You don't have to keep it.
The purpose of doing this assignment is just to get it out of your head and off of your spirit.
So that it exists outside of you.
And then you can move on from there.
And you know if anyone's listening.
And that feels like a little extreme because, trust me, the comments on the Daily Mail article were fascinating, to say the least.
And I understand that this might seem very far out of left field.
This might seem like a very extreme.
You don't even have to physically write the letter.
Even the work that you do of reflecting on what you might include in the letter is beneficial for you.
Yes, 100%.
This is fascinating.
Well, I wanted to start off with a bang and we certainly did.
This is great.
Strong start.
Strong start.
Now, because one of the things I'm recognizing here is that, especially as it relates to this topic, there's so much shame, stigma around the concept of sex and sexuality that it often prevents people from doing the type of self-exploration that often occurs in other areas of their life.
And when we, even before we get to the point where we can have that conversation with the other person, I'm recognizing we are having all these internal blockages where we don't even fully understand ourselves and what we believe or why we believe it.
And if we don't fully understand ourselves, how can we have an effective conversation with our partner?
A thousand percent.
I think a lot of us fall under the impression that that our sexuality is something that is only brought forward or only truly exists in the presence of another person or in relationship.
And that's not true.
Our sexuality is something that develops early on in our life.
It's something that we have forever from, you know, even before we truly understand what it is.
We still have a relationship with our body and with our sexuality.
It is uniquely our own and we will have it until the day that we pass.
And When we put the pressure on another person to make our sexuality real or relevant or important, then we're adding pressure to a relationship and we're externalizing something that is really our own responsibility.
And to your point, all of us that grew up in this Western world and beyond have a relationship with sexuality that is, at least partially based inside of shame, right.
It's partially based inside of cultural, maybe even religious ideals that we were brought up within.
And even if we didn't grow up in a religious household, it's still very much a part of our culture.
So it's sort of the air we breathe is that this is a very private, very personal and very shame-filled subject and that we ought not to think about it or bring it up or that, you know, any amount of actual attention given to it is somehow self-indulgent.
But I like to say that your sexuality is as much of a need as the air that you breathe, the water you drink, the shelter over your head.
And that's because, on a strictly biological level, all of our DNA came here through sexuality and it has an imperative to reproduce.
Whether you choose to reproduce, whether you identify as sexual asexual, it is still very much a part of the human experience.
It's part of the animal experience, part of the mammal experience.
Even ferns, the plants, have sexual reproduction.
So it is doing us a great disservice to say essentially that that's not for me or I don't want to address that, or I don't want to waste my time or my energy thinking about that, or waste her time or his time or energy.
Thinking about that is just very much a natural part of being alive.
And so spending a little bit of time reflecting on it, engaging in an internal conversation about it, engaging in an external conversation about it.
Actually, I think most people find it ends up being a lot easier than they expect that it's going to, because it is so much a natural part of our experience.
Yes.
I really appreciate the normalization of this, of sex as it relates to everybody.
It's so funny.
I'm teetering between Kwame the person and Kwame the negotiation guy.
Did you hear that hesitation where I said of this, of sex?
Even me, I'm the difficult conversation person, and I'm having trouble saying it in this context.
It's so fascinating.
It is a different category of difficult conversation.
But I think even more to your point if you can have a difficult conversation about this, you can have a difficult conversation about anything.
You're so right.
You're so right.
It's fascinating.
It is fascinating.
And I think really tying this down to just an essential part of the human experience is really empowering too, because it can loom large in our heads.
And then I think there's another subset of the population that might just trivialize it as something that's kind of like dessert.
You don't eat it all the time, right?
It's something that's kind of frivolous or unnecessary, a pleasure, right?
And I think a lot of that could be tied to religion too.
When you think about the folks who might trivialize sex or make it seem like it's something that is not foundational.
How do you address that?
I think it's very vulnerable actually to be willing to prioritize sex and sexuality and eroticism as a whole.
And that's I think in some ways that's a protective mechanism.
If someone doesn't really want to peel back the layer, and so they trivialize it or make it seem like it's not that big of a deal.
I would say likely, as a coach.
From my experience it actually means that it's a very big deal.
And they're perhaps afraid that if they start opening this thing, that it will never stop.
If they even peek around the corner, then they're going to discover things that they'll have to deal with.
And maybe they don't know how to deal with.
They'll have to have conversations they don't feel like they're capable of having.
But one of the issues with keeping sexuality in the dark like that and not being willing to sort of turn on the light and just examine it is that it looms way scarier and way bigger and way more threatening than it actually is.
And one of the things that happens is we sort of lump all of these things together.
And with anything else it could be, you know, learning about law or facing your taxes.
You know, it doesn't even have to be a very personal thing.
But when we're dealing with this, like you know, black box of information, or it feels opaque to us or we're not able to actually pull it apart, differentiate it, add some distinctions, add some definitions, understand the difference between this and that and the third, even when they were lumped together before then yeah, of course, it's going to feel pretty scary and pretty big and pretty ominous.
But when you start to really examine it, then you're able to peel it back and add a degree of specificity to it.
And shame hates specificity, hates it.
In fact, when you're having a conversation with, like a partner or a loved one or a spouse about this stuff, one of the ways that people get tripped up the most is they're using language and they think that they have a shared definition for that language.
But we don't fully understand what the other person means by that.
Take a concept as like foreplay, right?
When I say foreplay, every single person who hears that word is going to have a very different definition of what it means exactly for them.
For some folks, that definition might include the way that we like wink or nudge each other or even play footsie under the table on a date.
And for other people, they may have a really narrow definition of what that means.
But if we're only using this one word and we're describing this whole spectrum of experience, then we're not able to really have a specific and nuanced conversation with a lover or spouse about that thing.
My mind is blown right now.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Because if you are limited in language, then you're going to be limited in your ability to communicate.
So let's dig down into this so we can give the listeners something a bit tangible when it comes to language.
Because when you talk about distinctions categories specificity, I think people, some people's minds were just expanded in that moment, because they lump everything together.
It might be like foreplay and sex and that is it.
So what are some of the concepts that we should keep in mind as we are communicating with ourselves internally about the topic of sex, but also with our partners too?
I think we should expand our definition beyond sex and into eroticism.
Because sex describes a small subsect of eroticism, but it doesn't describe all of it.
And I think one of the things that we do is we collapse those two.
So let me offer a definition of eroticism.
Eroticism is our experience of pleasure in our senses, in the world around us, in our relationships and in the very unique and temporary thing that happens when two things come together right.
And if we could think about it like through that lens, then we could see that we actually have access to things that are erotic, that are far more than just sex or things that we could do with another person or even with ourself. if I'm looking at my relationship to pleasure in all of its various forms, if I'm looking at my relationship to the unique pleasure that comes from mixing two things together, even if it's just me and my spouse, and it doesn't necessarily mean our physical bodies, then we have an expanded playground and then sex doesn't have to hold all of that weight.
Because for a lot of folks and I specialize in working with men, so men especially They can combine sex with love.
And if they're having sex, that means they are loved.
And if they're not having sex, then they can make that mean that they're not loved.
They can see sex as their only source of pleasure and they can limit their capacity to experience pleasure, even if it's just the pleasure of a great meal.
You know, one of my coach friends said to me one time, men are not allowed to have pleasure.
Men are allowed to enjoy things.
But they're not allowed to take pleasure in things, right?
Like you can enjoy a piece of tiramisu, but can you have pleasure from the tiramisu, right?
When we start popping these definitions and making them broader, suddenly it's not quite such a limited and narrow band that we have to play with.
This is so good.
And it's funny because when you said we can enjoy things, but we can't get pleasure from things, that made no sense.
But I saw Simone laughing because at the same time for us as guys it made all the sense in the world.
I don't know how that makes sense either.
It doesn't make sense and also makes sense.
So I guess as a guy, I can say this.
What's wrong with us when it comes to this?
Why are we so off?
There's nothing wrong with any individual, man.
I think that we have our expectations of masculinity have really been.
I'm going to say like commercialized actually is the way that I think about it, in that masculinity has become more about like a performance in many ways than a true sort of like natural state of being.
And let me be a little bit more specific as to what I mean by that.
Most men, all men, are tasked with having to do the performance of being a man like from puberty and beyond, even when they're younger, right.
And what it means to be a man means having a stiff upper lip, not showing too much emotion, not showing when you're in pain, not having needs, not being vulnerable, not being needy or extractive.
It means a need to provide and be stable and be calm in all circumstances.
And beyond that.
It means that anything that is sort of coded as feminine needs It works against that performance.
It's very interesting.
Like women, I'm speaking really broadly here, but cisgender women know that they're women.
One day you get your period and you are a woman.
Boom.
There's no other.
And everyone agrees that you're a woman.
There's nothing beyond that.
And whether you have short hair like me, you're tall, you're thin, no matter how you present in the world, you can be even a very masculine presenting woman.
And no one challenges that you are a woman, right?
On the other hand, masculinity is like bread.
It has to be baked fresh every single day.
Just because you were a man yesterday doesn't mean that you're a man tomorrow.
And so you have to be in constant action.
That like shows that you are a man.
Until you break through that, until you decide that you're going to define manhood and masculinity for yourself and not make it based on what other people expect of you.
And I think when men hit that place, it's a very freeing place.
To use Alison Armstrong's language.
I think that's when they go from being a prince to a king, is when they no longer are looking at other people to affirm that they are indeed a man and instead they start finding it from within.
That is powerful.
That is powerful.
And it's so...
It's accurate.
It's incredibly accurate because that experience of performing masculinity is a weight that so many people carry.
And then when you carry that into the bedroom, it can lead to issues when it comes to performance.
And I want to make a slight pivot here.
Let's focus on the person who is in partnership with a man in a sexual experience, right?
How...
How can you make somebody who is feeling that level of weight?
Well, I guess you can't make them feel anything.
But how can you create an environment where they feel vulnerable enough to open themselves up and be present without having to perform?
Right.
And to no longer feel like that's the expectation that you have as a woman.
And I'll be perfectly clear here.
There is plenty of work for women to do on this as well.
You know, like the last 50 years has sort of been about as on a cultural, societal level, has been about deconstructing the performance of femininity.
Right.
And women having permission to say, you know, I'm no longer going to perform femininity.
I'm going to cut my hair short.
I'm going to I don't I'm going to wear dresses.
I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to go into a career in STEM.
Right.
We no longer have to abide by these rules, but we haven't made the same sort of progress on the side of men.
And as a woman, a part of what you can do because it always starts with you.
It always starts with you is to examine in what ways you expect your male partner to show up as a man.
In what ways are you actually expecting him to perform?
In what ways are you actually a co-creator of the performance that he feels that he needs to keep up on your behalf?
It is one thing to say that we want men to be emotionally available to us.
But many women and myself included, I've had this experience.
I'm not pointing fingers here.
When a man actually opens up, actually gets tearful, actually exposes himself to us and is vulnerable with us, some of us are like oh whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa.
I need you to button that back up.
I need you to be the strong, solid, stable one.
Like you can't be bringing all of that emotionality to me.
I get to be the emotional one, right?
So we have our own work to do in terms of like how we expect our male partners to function a bit like machines and not so much like people.
And when we actually see that we can allow for our partner's shared humanity, we can actually celebrate their shared humanity.
We can actually hold space for all of it inside of our relationship because we have ourselves.
We have ourselves to the degree that we can hold another person.
And this is advanced work.
And I know it sounds maybe like a little bit vague and You may be thinking like well, how do I know?
You'll know when you can be with anyone, especially with any kind of communication that they share with you about you, about what they're going through, and you don't get rocked by it.
And what that looks like inside of the bedroom might actually be on a woman's side, saying like you know what.
I want to slow things down.
I want to explore different ways that we can be together.
I want to explore different conversations that we've never had, touch that we've never explored.
But I want it to be less about some kind of end goal.
I want it to be less about succeeding.
And I want to redefine what success looks like as intimacy, as connection, as novelty.
And once we open those doors and we give both partners a lot more permission to move away from orgasm as goal and towards pleasure as goal, then often what we see and what I see in the couples that I coach is that all of these possibilities begin to open up.
And, as a woman, you can be the person that says you know, what would please me the most is if actually we took sex off of the table tonight and we just found other ways to explore each other's bodies.
Most men, you know, the men that I coach are there.
I think they're the most incredible men I've ever met.
I'm so honored to get to coach them because they're thinking all day about how to be a better spouse, a better partner, a better lover.
Most men, even if they're not thinking about that all day, every day, are really eager to please their partner.
And so she comes in and she's like, I want to slow things down and I want to try something new.
Most men are like, all right, I got you.
Lead the ways.
Let's try it.
When I started this podcast and built the American Negotiation Institute, I quickly realized something.
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We talk a lot on this show about the importance of learning and staying sharp.
But let's be honest between work and life.
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Yes.
Oh, this is fascinating.
This is really helpful.
Really helpful.
And it's really intriguing too, because it seems like and you tell me based on your experience it seems like in a lot of cases it would I don't want to say have to.
There's no like burden on this, but in most cases it would be the woman who opens up that conversation, because the man would be performing masculinity, assuming that they're not being coached by you.
Yeah.
And that's one of the reasons that I want men to get my book, right?
Because the book is a is a guide for men who want to take responsibility for sexuality in their relationship, current relationship or future relationship.
Often we say that women are sort of the emotional holders of the relationship, right?
And women have a lot of roles in in sort of what we would consider like a traditional uh relationship, right.
Uh, And often women are looking out for the romantic partnership.
I know that this is the case in my relationship and I'm happy to do it.
I'm constantly thinking about what's the emotional health of our relationship?
What's the energy, the connection that we have?
What's the texture of the conversations?
Are we having intimacy and being vulnerable with each other?
I'm tracking those things all of the time.
And I'm fortunate to have a partner who is also on the lookout for those.
But I'm happy to be the accountable person for the emotional health of the relationship.
When a man can step in and say thank you so much for carrying that torch.
I'm going to be responsible for the sexual health of our relationship, for the intimate part of our relationship.
I'm going to make sure that that part of our relationship truly is exceptional for both of us.
That's taking something off of her plate.
And I think it's right.
I think it's absolutely right.
I think men have the capacity and the interest to do that.
I think often shame gets in the way.
Often a feeling that they don't know where to begin gets in the way.
A story that they should just know.
We should just turn off the lights and magic is going to happen.
Gets in the way.
But when Amanda's willing to say you know what?
I don't know exactly where to begin, but I'm willing to find out.
That's exactly who I wrote the book for.
It's someone who just wants to have a process to figure out how to show up for himself first and for himself girlfriend, his spouse, his partner.
And I tried to just make it completely transparent and take all of the mystery out of it so that he feels confident in every step of that process.
And so that his partner receives him at his absolute best.
And they both feel really, really, really optimistic about where they can go.
Yes.
That's powerful.
I I want to revisit one of the things that we talked about before when it comes to men and vulnerability, and how that vulnerability is received.
Because it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable.
But vulnerability also is a skill that we can develop and practice with time.
And it takes a lot of courage to be able to receive somebody's vulnerability and the ability to receive that is a skill.
Now, let's say hypothetically, there's a relationship where the man in the relationship was at one point vulnerable and the partner had a kind of spooked response.
Wow, that is a lot.
It makes me feel unsafe that you don't feel good.
What's happening?
And then he has learned, maybe it might just be one experience that he revisits frequently.
So it looms larger in his mind where he says, you know what?
That's a mistake that I won't make.
I can recognize that there are consequences to a lack of vulnerability, but I would rather take those consequences because those are more predictable.
So how can the woman who finds herself in that situation rebuild the trust to get the man to feel comfortable being vulnerable again?
This is such a good question.
On this question and on how do we ask for things that we want to, right?
The way that I think about communication that exists between partners really is that it always starts with some degree of cleanup and clearing.
And actually, to be fair, the very first step is to work with ourself In order to understand where we are coming from inside of the conversation.
So to prepare for communication.
So if we're preparing to make amends, then we're doing some work.
Maybe it's just talking to a supportive friend.
Maybe it's talking to a coach or a therapist.
Maybe it's writing a letter or several letters to ourselves, to our partner.
We're not going to ever send them, but we've clarified our own internal process.
And maybe we've also done a little bit of additional research to prepare, just like you were preparing for a negotiation right.
One of your guests recently was talking about how important research is.
And I was like, yes, this is exactly it.
We come into the conversation grounded, steady, stable.
We're not looking at our partner to solve anything for us.
Then we get clear.
We clean up what happened in the past.
We name it.
We take responsibility.
We don't make excuses.
We don't defend our previous experiences.
We say, hey, look, I remember that you did the courageous act and you said the vulnerable thing.
And I realized that that was hard for you.
I realized that you were doing that for the best of our entire relationship.
And because you needed to do that, you actually were looking out for our relationship when you did that.
And I had a response that I'm not proud of.
I responded in such a way that it shut you down.
And I want you to know that I'm really sorry that I did that.
I want you to know that I saw the impact of shutting you down and I have felt the impact of that ever since.
And I want to be totally responsible for that.
I also want to hear any other impact or anything else that you need me to say to you so that we can have that feel like it is behind us, so that we can have a clean slate for where we're headed next and getting that complete.
And then moving forward to here's what I want to create and here's the commitments that I'm willing to make that are going to allow that.
So what I want to create with you is a safe environment where you feel that you can come to me with anything.
And in order to do that, I'm going to make sure that I leave space once a week or once a month where we've set aside time to both be vulnerable with each other and share with anything that needs to come up.
We'll set up cleanup time.
I'm going to look up structures for conversation that allow us to remain inside of a dialogue.
And each of us can feel like we have the space to speak our truth and share with each other.
And each of us has an opportunity to digest that and respond in time.
I'm going to make sure that I arrive to that conversation grounded, having eaten, having slept, having moved my body, whatever it is that I need in order to feel like I can handle that conversation.
I'm going to hold a specific and sacred environment.
The root of the term sacred is to divide, to hold apart, to put in a different place, in a different category.
So I'm going to put that time aside for us.
I'm going to hold it as sacred, as separate.
And is there anything else that you need from me That I can commit to?
That would make it feel good for you to do that.
And maybe, you know, maybe maybe his response is like, I got to start slowly.
We got to rebuild trust because that really hurt.
And maybe that was a decade ago.
Maybe it was three decades ago.
There's a lot of cobwebs that have grown over that that, that scar healed, all that twisted, and it's going to take a little bit of time to massage that muscle, massage that tissue to feel smooth again.
So you know, for me, i i want to get, i want to start small, i want, i want you to show me that i can trust you to to hear this, this little vulnerability that feels safe to share with you.
You know it.
And and then committing to carrying that out into the future.
Now, I mentioned that this is a very similar format that I use, because a lot of people ask me how to make a request of a partner, whether that's changing something up, trying something new, stopping doing something that we're not really.
We've been just habitual.
We don't want to do it anymore.
Right.
I don't like the way that we're making out anymore.
We're not making out enough.
Same thing.
Get it clear with yourself.
If you're proposing something new, do your research on it so that you can answer their questions, because they're going to have questions.
Get clear on what it is that you want and why it is that you want it.
Clear the space between you, which might include hey, I haven't said this before because it felt kind of scary.
Or I was sure that you would say no, but I'm willing to let that go.
And you might still say no, but it's important for me, so I'm going to name it.
And then have the conversation, hold your own center, you know, be a space where that partner can respond any which way, even if that includes them being like oh, I don't think I could ever get into that.
Keep calm, keep your ground, keep centered and just make the request that you need to make.
Like, but can we continue to have a conversation about it?
Is that a no, not ever?
Or is that a yes, if we put these other things in place and then make a commitment towards each other to continue to explore in a way that moves at a pace that everyone feels good about?
This is so brilliant.
I don't know if you do this, but you should probably create about 14 digital courses or coach people.
It's funny that you should say that.
I actually have created 14 digital courses.
But the digital courses range from the subjects that we've covered here today to like more technique oriented stuff, because a lot of people really just need to learn or want to learn something the actual skills for touching another person's body, or the actual skills for even touching their own body in a way that feels safe and smart and empowering.
And I have had the privilege of downloading as much of my knowledge as I have been humanly possible to get out of my head into these digital courses.
And then I've also trained seven coaches who work for me as well.
Brilliant.
Incredible.
But don't think we're ending this episode, Caitlin.
I got more questions for you.
This is great.
So I need to advocate for my audience now, because they're like, if this negotiation expert doesn't tell me how to negotiate this, I am going to lose my mind.
So let's talk about this.
So if somebody is they have a desire and they have been holding back.
And they want to ask.
And you've touched on this in the previous answers.
But I want to get really specific, because with this it's a very it's, it's can be, not can be.
It's a very touchy, sensitive type of topic, because you might have somebody who's listening, who is a negotiator.
Closing this deal is very different.
We have to respect boundaries and sometimes pushing too hard goes beyond the line, even if we're respecting the legal lines of consent.
Right.
Because there's a difference between consent and compliance.
So how can we be persuasive and advocate for ourselves while at the same time, respecting the boundaries that are stated and unstated?
Call me.
I've been waiting for this question.
I told you before we started recording, I've been binging your content because there's so much.
There's so much nuance to this.
And I think that's what makes you so good at what you do is you add so much nuance to something that that it's so humane in nature?
And therefore, because it is part of being a human, negotiating in all different ways, just like all the other things that really make us human, there's so much to play with and explore and look at inside of it.
And I think when we think about negotiation and sex, it can be really intimidating for someone, right?
Because If we think about someone winning and losing, if we think about the vulnerability that goes into not getting what we want as much as the vulnerability that goes into getting what we want, how do you even prepare for this?
It's a nuanced conversation as much as probably any other area of your life, perhaps the most sensitive area of your life you may ever enter into a negotiation into.
And to your point, When it comes to negotiating in sex and relationships, we have to be really, really clear about What is an absolute no and is a boundary and is a hard stop or a hard limit?
And we also need to be really, really clear on where there's flexibility, where there's possibility, where adding creativity and thinking outside of what we both already know could make something feel not just good but amazing.
So let me reel it all the way back and say that this is where your prep work is so vital for men, especially because a lot of men they they, they have this feeling of like whatever it is that they want is um, is shameful in some way.
Right.
Or like maybe they have a.
They're like Oh, they already feel like they're kind of asking their wife or their partner for too much anyways.
And she maybe, maybe the.
The story that they have between them is sort of like he wants sex and she puts up with it.
And It's not that she's violating her own consent.
She's doing it.
She wants to do it, but she's not like her favorite thing to do.
She'd rather be watching Netflix, you know?
So, if all of that exists in the background, even more important for you to get clear on what your story is, what you've been thinking to yourself about your spouse and the context that your relationship already exists within.
So I'll give you an example from a client of mine.
He had this story that his wife really didn't want him.
They'd been together for decades.
They're in their 60s.
And for him he was just a given that his wife wasn't really interested and didn't really want him because she didn't initiate sex.
And that was it.
Because she didn't initiate, therefore, unloved, unwanted.
And I encouraged him over the course of many sessions actually to question the story that he had and take that communication directly to his wife and check that story with her.
And when he did, and he went to her and he said, you know, you don't initiate sex.
And I think maybe that's because you don't want it.
And by extension, you don't want me.
She said, oh, I never initiate sex because you always do.
She said, it has nothing to do with me.
She said, I love having sex with you.
It's just I just wait until you initiate it because that's how our relationship is.
That's how it's been.
And he said, oh, well, OK, that's good to know.
I realize that my story about you is inaccurate.
Sorry, I've been holding on to that for 20 years.
Here's what I'd like to do instead.
And he proposed that they schedule intimate time once a week with a backup time scheduled.
So every Saturday afternoon, that's intimate time.
Now notice I didn't say sex time.
That's intimate time.
That could look like sharing foot massages and then going out to dinner.
It might look like exploring a new kinky thing they've been dying to try.
It could go any which direction that both of them feel like going in that time, but they always have it on the calendar.
Now no one has to initiate because it's in the calendar.
There's no need to initiate.
It's initiated by the schedule itself.
And they both know that come Saturday evening, they both need to arrive having already taken care of themselves, grounded and ready to be with their spouse.
Now, it's not a perfect world.
Something upsetting happens on Saturday morning.
That time's going to pivot right to the person who maybe needs a little support or needs a little space held to them.
But they know that that's okay because they have it on the calendar again next week.
So first of all, checking assumptions, checking the stories that you have.
And then naming the desire that you have and what it would do for you.
When we feel like our desires are sort of a Pandora's box and they're very scary to open and examine and even look at.
It's sort of like the mystery box that's sort of shoved into the back of our storage unit where we're like pretty sure that we know what's in there.
And it might be kind of scary, so we're not going to look.
We'll just move that from house to house to house to house and let it take up space in our lives and we never actually examine it.
But when we have the courage to open it up and look inside, what we may find is that we think we want something that you know maybe registers as like super duper spicy.
But actually what we want is the feeling of novelty, of something new in our life.
That sort of like breaks up the monotony.
And suddenly that like super duper spicy, far out there kind of thing that we had in mind actually feels a little bit too far out there.
And we realized that we could get novelty by checking into a hotel in town this weekend and just getting in a different environment, that we could get novelty by taking a class at a local shop, a couple hours spent with a sex educator.
We could get it met in a lot of different ways.
But if we're not willing to open the box, then we won't really know what's behind the desire and then we won't have creativity around how to get it met.
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That's powerful.
I love how you've made this accessible.
This is something that now we can initiate not just the act, the activity, but also the conversation.
And I think it's so interesting.
I feel like for a lot of people they're more comfortable just turning off the lights and having the activity rather than having a conversation about the activity.
And Simone, I see that you unmuted, my friend.
I hear from you.
I want to talk about understanding, because when I was growing up, my mom always would talk to me about women's hormones.
So you have to understand what happens.
And if she's mad, maybe you have to give some space and time.
But we have hormones too.
So to what extent women understand our hormones?
Hmm.
That's a great question.
It's funny that you should bring that up today, because I felt my own estrogen levels dropping as I'm entering the luteal phase of my cycle this week.
And I woke up prickly.
I am like, I woke up like a little cactus.
And my partner was being so kind and gentle to me.
And I just was like, bleh.
And I finally said oh, you know, I track my cycle very closely and I should have let you know, like this is what I'm going through today.
And what I learned recently is that sort of the equivalent for men in the drop of hormones that women experience in this single day would be the equivalent of aging 125 years.
It's that significant of a drop because men lose testosterone a little bit every year.
Obviously, it's not comparable, but that sort of gives you a little bit of an idea.
Now, On the other hand, men not only have hormonal cycles, they have the same cycle that runs every day for the most part again with a sort of linear decline close to linear decline in testosterone over time.
There are a lot of things that men can do in order to support that, both naturally and through exogenous testosterone, but that's a different conversation.
Men also have seasons.
And one of the things that I have worked with with many of my clients is helping them to understand that they are allowed to have seasons.
They are allowed to have ups and downs.
They are allowed to have peak moments and off moments.
And those moments may last for hours, days, weeks, months, even years.
That just because they wake up with testosterone spiking and go to bed with it lower every single day doesn't mean that they should expect the same from themselves day in and day out, week over week, for their entire life, from puberty until death.
They are allowed to also fluctuate and have change as well.
Sometimes they say men only think about sex, right?
But maybe that comes from hormones or some changing hormones.
So what would be a piece of advice for them to be more understandable with us?
Yeah, that's a phenomenal way of looking at it too.
Like this conversation of like, all you think about is sex.
A couple notes on that.
One.
Sometimes, for all the reasons that I mentioned earlier, men can over focus on sex as their access to love and their access to pleasure.
I had a friend of mine whose partner wanted to have sex every single day because that is what made him feel connected.
So, no matter what her day was like, or if she'd had a good day, a bad day, a stressful day, if she was tired, if she worked out, he wanted sex every single day, or else he felt that he could really connect to her.
And she and this is, you know, an age old trope.
They're definitely not the only couple I know that's dealt with this felt like she needed to feel connected in order to have sex.
So now they're at a standstill, right?
Because one says I need A before B and the other needs B before A.
We also could look at the ways in which men are sort of like funneling those things through sex because sex is an appropriate and acceptable place for them to get those needs met right.
Instead of like, you know, calling a friend, right?
If he needed to feel connected, one of the ways that we feel connected is through community, right?
We can feel connected through our relationships that are not just sexual or romantic in nature.
And if he just wanted release, he could always give himself release, right?
So they had to get really clear on what it was that he was actually looking for and ways that he could get that need met in ways that spread out.
Relying on any one thing, putting your eggs in any one basket, saying that this is the only place where I can get love or where I can get connection is dangerous for anyone, right?
It's like you're just invested in a single stock and you could be like one injury away from not having access to that thing.
And if that's the case, then where will you go to feel connected and where will you go to feel release?
So on the other hand, to get more to what you were saying, I like to think of this as a positive.
Men are willing to think about sex Men are willing to hold, to carry the torch of sex.
This is amazing.
Sex has all kinds of benefits for both men and women that are physical in nature, mental in nature emotional, spiritual.
In fact those are sort of the chapters of the book are the physical engine, the mental engine, the emotional engine, the relational engine, the cultural engine and the spiritual engine.
And that sex works on all of these levels.
And if it's not working, then one of your engines has got gunk in it.
The issue is that when men are only thinking about sex in a very narrow and limited way, especially if that is sex that feels great for him and mediocre or even painful for her right,
If men are willing to think about sex in all of those levels physical mental emotional spiritual cultural, relational if they're willing to think about sex as not just what we typically think of as sex but instead eroticism, if they're willing to say you know what honey, I'm going to carry this for our relationship, but I'm going to make it amazing for you, then hell yeah, I do hope you think about sex all the time.
I want you to think about sex all the time, but I want you to think about it in a way that supports both of you and your partnerships.
This is incredible.
I think one of the most fascinating things about talking to you about this subject is that it is an activity that we've engaged in, but you can engage in it and still not fully understand it.
And I mean even going back to the distinction between the like, enjoyment and pleasure, eroticism versus sexuality.
Those types of things, being able to decouple some of these concepts can be really mind boggling, because I think it can be really liberating honestly for, let's say, that person, that man who says okay, the way I feel connected is through sex.
And now they realize, wait a second, I just want to feel connected in general.
Now I have so many more options.
And to sound like a negotiation nerd.
If you only have one option, then you don't have very much power.
And the other person has all the power over your well-being.
Don't give up your leverage, men.
So now my mind is blown.
Yes.
And by the way, sex becomes a lot more of an appealing option when it's not the only option.
And not just that, but it's one of the.
One of the quickest ways to introduce novelty that I'll give to one of my couple clients is well, what if we just took sex completely off of the table, but we still made time for intimacy and eroticism?
It's almost like necessity is the mother of invention, right?
And when you put a boundary in place, when you actually take something away, then all of a sudden all of these other options occur.
And this doesn't have to be for a very long time.
We could just do it on a Saturday night.
We're going to do everything, but that thing is specifically off the table.
There was a time where, because I thought I had had exposure to COVID, my partner and I had to wear masks.
But we were freshly dating and we really wanted to be intimate with each other, but we had to do so with our masks on and with like, the windows in my apartment open and making sure that we were not in view of any windows and, like you know, that we have the fan on and we can't kiss and we can't even really see each other at the bottom half of our faces.
It's like one of the most fun and memorable experiences that I have of being intimate, because we took away our mouths, our ability to kiss.
I mean, just restricting one thing and saying, okay, now go connect.
Now go be creative.
Now go have pleasure.
Now go experience each other. it can add this element of fun and playfulness.
And we think that the boundary is going to be restrictive, but actually it ends up being the most freeing thing that we experience.
Yes.
Ooh, this is good.
This is great.
And now, before we end, it would be irresponsible for us to not discuss consent and And also compliance versus consent, because they are similar but not the same.
And I think when you don't understand that, then we can blow past lines that exist, that are very important, that might not cross the boundary into illegality, but still cross boundaries that cause harm.
So, when it comes to these conversations around sex, but also the act itself, tell us what we need to know about those topics.
Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought us back to that.
It's extremely important that we sort of land those concepts very powerfully for people.
So there's a great model for consent that is called FRIES, F-R-I-E-S.
And this is sort of the gold standard for consent.
Consent is freely given.
In order to freely give consent, you have to be free of any sense of coercion.
So it can't be like I am consenting to something because I'm afraid I'm going to lose you or lose the relationship, or lose your love, or lose your respect, or have you be mad at me, or have us feel like Valentine's Day or date night has been ruined.
Then it's not really giving consent, right?
So it has to be freely given.
R means they can be retracted.
Consent can be taken back.
This is a brilliant tool.
We remind ourselves and each other that we can go down this road and if, at any time, you change your mind, we'll stop immediately.
This is actually really, really phenomenal for couples who are looking to sort of like reinvigorate their sex life.
Because one thing that happens, especially for women, is what's known as a bristle response, which is your husband or your partner touches you in a specific way.
And because of the habituation of your relationship, you go immediately to oh, he wants to have sex with me.
Right.
And so you are not saying yes to the shoulder massage because you think that the shoulder massage ends in penetration.
So if you know that, you can retract your consent and say that you know I was a yes to the shoulder massage.
I was even a yes to some other genital touch, but I'm actually a no to going any further.
And you know that that no is going to be respected and your partner is going to go okay, no problem.
Like, thanks so much for letting me know.
Thanks for taking care of yourself.
Do you need anything from me as aftercare before I run to the bathroom and we call it a night?
Like if you know that you're safe to retract the consent at any moment, you can go a lot further towards being intimate and feel safe and feel like you're going to be respected in them.
So that's F, freely given, R, retractable.
I is informed.
What am I giving consent to?
So I have been in a lot of like dungeons and sort of like kinkier spaces as an educator and as a participant.
And at one time I gave consent to being a demo for a spanking demonstration.
And I consented to that, but I didn't give specific and informed consent as to how hard I was willing to be spanked in that demonstration.
And the person who was doing the education.
The demo really wailed me like as hard like a 10 on my scale of pain.
Absolutely for me beyond anything I would have consented to.
But we didn't have a conversation so that I could be informed of how intensely they were going to begin that demo.
And if I had been given that information, I wouldn't have consented.
So I wasn't able to give informed consent.
And therefore, I ended up in a lot of pain.
And there was a trust breakdown between me and that educator.
And I don't volunteer for those things so much anymore, which is sad because it could have been fun.
But because my consent was violated in that way by not getting information.
E is enthusiastic.
So to your point, I think that if someone is like, OK, that's not an enthusiastic guess.
If someone's like, sure, that's not really an enthusiastic yes.
Now, to be specific on this, whenever you're with a new partner, that needs to be a hell yes.
Hell yes.
I think in longer term relationships we can find a little bit more grace around the like.
OK, I'll try it.
Right.
As long as it's retractable, it's informed and it's freely given, then we can always say you know, actually I don't like it.
So I'm a hell yes, in the sense that I love you and I want to try this thing, even if I have sort of like mixed emotions about it.
I just want to be clear that you could have mixed emotions about it and still enthusiastically say yes to doing it right.
It does need to be enthusiastic.
It can be nuanced.
That's okay.
Especially when we're with someone who we love and we're trust and we're trying something new that is outside of our comfort zone.
We might not be a full hell yes, because we might feel nervous.
We might have some concerns about, you know, am I going to like this?
What does it mean if I don't?
And then finally, specific.
So I am consenting to doing this right now, tonight, on this date night.
I am not consenting to doing it next week.
I'm not consenting necessarily to ever doing it again.
I'm specifically offering my consent on this thing right now with you.
And it If you take nothing else and you have no other model for consent.
I think the FRIES model is a phenomenal model.
And it is something that we uphold for another person.
It's also something that we need to check in for ourself as well.
Because it is entirely possible like me in that example that I gave that we jump into something and we quickly learn that it wasn't for us.
And as much as I will say that that person should have given me information about how hard they intended to spank me, I also should have asked, right?
I also could have been in a position where I had given an empowered and informed yes instead of a yeah.
Sure, this sounds fun.
I'm happy to do it.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Oh, that's so good.
So we have freely given, retractable, informed, enthusiastic, and specific, right?
And I think one of the things that I love that you touched on is the fact that you can be in a situation where you are in a loving, long-term relationship with somebody and you may still not have consent in that moment.
And I think there are these stories I don't even know what to say myths, misconceptions that are very problematic, where if we're in a relationship, then consent is just like green light all day.
And that can be very harmful.
Yeah, and that is part of what leads to that.
That, that pullback, that contraction is.
If we don't have enough safety and an established record in our relationship where I can say yes now and change my mind later, then when we say yes to one thing, it can feel like we're saying yes to everything.
And it doesn't feel good to say yes to everything.
We just, you know, we got home from a day of work and we're pretty tired and the kids just went to bed and it's easy for me to say yes now to a snuggle, to a makeout session, to a shoulder massage, but it's not easy for me to say yes to an hour or 30 minutes, or penetration or any of those things.
Like that is the key to success there is making it really safe to say yes and really safe to say no.
And I'm sure that this is true in negotiation and in work environments as well.
When you're with someone who doesn't or feels that they cannot say no, then their yes doesn't really mean anything.
Oh, that's so good.
So good.
Simone, I see you.
I know we're coming up on time, but I have a question that I want to ask out of curiosity.
Throughout the whole interview I was thinking like how is it possible that a woman knows so many things about men?
So it's like, how did you do it?
How did you get to know all these things?
I, never expected that I was going to work with men.
When I left my doctoral program, I had been studying bisexual and pansexual women like myself.
I was featured on someone else's YouTube video on squirting on female ejaculation very popular subject on the internet.
This is back in 2015.
That video went viral.
And suddenly I had men emailing me from like all corners of the earth, asking me to coach them and asking me if I could help them.
And It turned out that it was mostly men who were dealing with some degree of performance anxiety and they wanted to learn this sort of technique as almost like a parlor trick really.
They wanted to impress their partners in an area where they felt deficient.
And I really believe in sort of answering the call that's in front of you, even if it feels like you're not prepared, even if you don't feel ready, even if you're not sure what you're doing.
People were showing up, and they were courageously and vulnerably asking for my help.
And so I committed to myself then that I was just going to figure out a way to help them.
And you know, fortunately I had a background as a sex educator, had been a professional researcher, and I started saying yes to the men who were asking me for their support.
And that was now 11 years ago.
So I've spent the last 11 years focused every single day on supporting men at having better relationships, enjoying sex more and being better in bed.
And I am nothing if not a constant student.
And so I've used every single client to teach me.
I have run my own little miniature research studies, my little A-B tests between this client and that client.
And what if we put this intervention first and then that technique after?
And does this work for all men or does it just work for the kind of men that I'm working with?
So I've taken all of those research skills and all of my enthusiasm and my sex nerdiness, which I started learning about this when I was like 14 years old because I just had this insatiable curiosity.
And I have just applied that to men over and over and over again.
And as a result of doing that, I have gotten to see yeah, some of the worst parts of men, for sure, but also all of the best parts of men.
And every single day, I get to work with a population that needs and deserves and desires this work and for whom it makes a huge difference.
And it's just the greatest privilege of my life.
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Incredible.
Incredible.
That was by far the most modern day answer I've ever heard.
Because Simone, you said, how did you get into studying men?
And Caitlin, you said, the algorithm.
The algorithm controls us all.
I would say it's God and the algorithm.
God and the algorithm.
Oh, man.
That's great.
This is great.
Caitlin, this was delightful.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for the work that you do in general.
And thank you for coming on the podcast.
You were incredible.
And before you go, just remind the listeners about the courses, the coaching and the book and how they can get in touch.
Thank you.
Well, my first book. just came out.
It's called Harder, Better, Longer, Stronger.
You can actually find it at harderbook.com and wherever books are sold.
I also recorded the audio, so if you liked my voice here, you could have me read the whole book to you.
As you mentioned, I have 14 courses on all of these subjects and more way spicier stuff that I didn't feel I should mention on the CaitlinVNealcom, or you can find me on YouTube.
Search for Caitlin V. You can spell that any which way.
I'll still come up on YouTube, especially if you add any sort of spicy word to the end of that.
And it will link you to my website as well.
Amazing.
Caitlin, thank you so much for joining us.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
