137: The Freedom Wound: Why You Say Yes When You Want to Say No
Picture someone who says yes to almost everything. They're helpful, they're loyal, they always show up. And yet there's always some reluctance. A headache. A tiredness. They take forever to get out the door. Underneath all that yes is a wagon load of resentment about being asked in the first place. This shows up in […]
136: Penis Size, Performance Anxiety, and What Women Really Want
A man came to me because his marriage was close enough to over that they'd both used the word divorce. Underneath the resentment and the withdrawal and the fights about everything else was this: his erections came and went. Sometimes they softened partway through. Sometimes they didn't show up. That is normal. It happens to […]
135: The Trust Wound: Why Being Vulnerable Feels So Dangerous
I used to chase accomplishment hard, and I dismissed soft skills and people skills entirely — mostly because I had no idea how to do them. I'd put on this dissociated charm self when I met new people, which wasn't connection at all. It was a disarming move. If I could charm you first, you […]
134: Is My Vagina Normal? Undoing Vulva and Labia Shame
Around 40, I realized I felt disgust about my own genitals. I'd been carrying middle school bullies' words about female bodies in my head for more than thirty years without ever once questioning them, and it wasn't until I started trying to reclaim my own sexuality that it smacked me in the face. It's very […]
132: Body Shame and Your Sex Life: It’s Not Your Fault, and Only You Can Fix It
Send us Fan Mail Body shame is pervasive, especially for women but increasingly for everyone, and it gets in the way of much more than how we feel in a swimsuit. It gets in the way of presence, pleasure, and our capacity for real connection. This is the first episode in a series I'm doing […]
133: The Dependency Wound: When Care Was Never Something You Could Count On
Send us Fan Mail Most of us learned early on whether care was something we could count on. And when the answer was unreliable, we did what smart, adaptive human children do: we picked a coping strategy and got very good at it. There are two main choices children make: pursue harder, or stop needing. […]
131: The Safety Wound: When Your Body Was Never Home
Send us Fan Mail Part 2 of the Attachment Wounds & Erotic Emotions Series Maybe you have a tendency to intellectualize or spiritualize your experience, but not always fully feel it. Or maybe you can only really arrive in your body when something intense is happening. This episode is about how that happens, how it […]
130: Beyond Anxious and Avoidant: Here’s What’s Actually Driving Your Desires
Send us Fan Mail That thing that turns you on but you've never quite been able to explain? Or the relationship dynamic you keep recreating? Those aren't random. And they aren't fully explained by your attachment style. This is the introduction episode for a series on attachment wounds and erotic desires. Before we get into […]
129: What Makes a Great Lover? Research Shows It’s These 8 Traits
Send us Fan Mail If you're searching for how to be a better lover, chances are you're encountering a lot of opinions that aren't rooted in fact. Most of us absorbed a version of what makes a great lover without ever being taught it — from movies, porn, romance novels, and a culture that never […]
128: When Parenting Your Partner is Killing Your Desire
Send us Fan Mail You love your partner. You're pretty sure you're still attracted to them. So why does your body say no — and why does it feel so connected to the fact that you've reminded them three times this week to do one thing? It is connected. The slow creep of feeling like […]