The Biggest Thing You Can Do To Feel More Sexual Empowerment This Year (and it's FREE)

This episode will explain the best, biggest thing you can do to improve your relationship with your own sexuality this year AND your intimacy with a partner.  This is the one thing most people are NOT doing – and it is FREE. 

That’s right, people will spend loads of money this year trying to spice things up by buying stuff: lingerie, sex toys, vacations, and even sex rooms. But most people will fail to do this one, totally FREE thing that is the biggest game changer of them all, and the most empowering thing you can do to change your sex life. Tune in to discover this secret and how to get started today.  

Get a FREE GUIDE to FINDING YOUR DEEPEST TURN-ONS and learn how to get help with relationships and intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com.

Get a transcript of this episode by going to https://sexhelpforsmartpeople.buzzsprout.com/ Click on the episode, then choose the transcript tab.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Sex Help for Smart People podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Laura Jurgens, self liberated former science professor, sexologist, and dual certified master intimacy coach. I specialize in helping you transform your relationships to get the kinds of sex, intimacy, and connection you crave using research backed practice and play.

[00:00:22] So let's get at it. Hello, welcome to episode 51, my friends. So today, we're going to talk about the one biggest thing you can do to improve your intimacy this year. in my experience. And this is the one thing most people are not doing, even though it's free. And I didn't used to do it either. Because you know, most of us, when we think about wanting to improve our intimacy, our sex life, whether it's with ourselves or with our partner, we decide to to usually go look for stuff to buy.

[00:01:05] We live in a consumer culture, so of course we do. That is what we're trained to do every day by advertisers. all over the place inundating us with the idea that we are supposed to buy our way out of problems, right? And we're supposed to buy stuff usually. So we look for things like sex toys, lingerie, sometimes even things like vacations or sex rooms or whatever, you know, you got the like cruise pamphlet and it has all these like sexy couples on it and bathing suits and you're thinking somehow I get to be, you know, the message is you will be one of those.

[00:01:39] sexy couples in bathing suits who are like laughing in tan and whatever if you go on this cruise. But the idea really is to sell you stuff, of course, not to actually help you necessarily. There are some people out there who are selling you stuff to help you, but I think they are very much the exception.

[00:01:59] I like to put myself in that category. Of course, I have a business, so I have something to sell, right? But my values are such that I am not trying to sell stuff to people who don't need it, don't want it, or who it's not going to help. So, yes, there are some things you can buy, and I am a proponent of some toys and some fun things to include in your life.

[00:02:26] But when we really want to change our sex lives and our intimacy, there is one thing that we can do above them all. It's like the one thing to rule them all. If you forgive my fantasy nerd reference there. The biggest game changer of them all, the most empowering thing you can do. Drumroll, right? It is slowing the fuck down.

[00:02:52] Okay, I'm going to explain why this is such a hot take, why it's really important, and why a lot of people resist doing it, and why it will actually work. be the biggest thing to change your relationship with yourself and your partner this year. And why I think it's so important for Americans in particular, but for any productivity and hustle focused culture.

[00:03:20] Okay. Slowing the fuck down. A lot. Like, toss out your standard timeline. Toss out your standard procedures and spend, you know, a good 45 minutes masturbating or like two hours plus in partner play. Seriously, luxurious amounts of time. And if you are a little bit or a lot scared of that idea or resistant to that idea, I totally understand.

[00:03:51] I see that a lot. I've been there myself. It is very normal to feel resistant to that idea. One is just because we have busy lives, right? So there's like, part of your brain is just going to be like, Laura, what the fuck are you talking about? I don't have time to slow down. I barely have time to like sit down and shove some food in my face, right?

[00:04:11] So finding time is a real challenge. And I'm not going to tell you that that's not a problem. It absolutely is a challenge, and it is a challenge for a lot of people. And if you're like the parents of a newborn or something, you know, come back to this episode at some later date when your life is a little bit more in your control, right?

[00:04:35] But unless you are in a situation in which you literally can't, and there isn't really a situation where you can't, right? It's all about priority. Finding time and where we put our time is really about how we have decided to prioritize how we use the time we have in our life, which is really the most, the most finite resource we have.

[00:04:56] But for many people, if we were to do a time inventory, and I always recommend you do that for yourself at least once every couple years, it's really powerful to actually look at how you spend all your time. But for many people, the bulk of the time. Work and actually TV. And maybe, or like, you know, socials or something, like being on a screen.

[00:05:19] Work and being on a screen. Maybe cleaning the house, maybe driving the kids around to soccer and what all, band camp or whatever the hell they have to do. Totally fair enough, right? You do have a life you need to take care of. But maybe some of that time. There might be some there might be more than you think.

[00:05:38] That you are not using intentionally in alignment with your priorities. And if one of your priorities is to fill your own cup a little bit better. To connect with yourself and your person better. To feel more confident and energized and embodied. If that is at all in your list of priorities, then carving out some time to really luxuriate in pleasure and connection is a really good idea.

[00:06:05] to align with those priorities, right? So the other reason a lot of times people just they haven't even thought of slowing down that much with their intimacy is because movies and porn show us sex as this like quick wham bam activity. They don't want it. So in movies and TV, they don't want to take up a lot of time.

[00:06:28] with the sex because they know they can't show you all the details. So they're just going to give you this like really quick vignette. It's like five seconds. Somebody's tearing each other's clothes off. They, they use that as a cheap, quick way to show passion, even though it is not, it's not actually what passion looks like.

[00:06:45] Passion can be incredibly slow and it's much more delicious when it is. But they're going to show wham bam activity because that makes sense to them. But remember, That's entertainment, that's not real life. It's just as real as, you know, flying Quidditch matches. That is the level of reality that they're showing us.

[00:07:05] And because the real thing about bodies is that the body's pace is not hurried. It is not fast. And it doesn't really respond that well too fast, no matter who you are, whether you're born as a male, born as a female. Most of the sort of estrogenic based bodies whether that is how you were born or whether that's a transition that you've made.

[00:07:32] Once you start being sort of estrogenic dominant, there will be a longer arousal time. That is just really typical biologically for people's bodies who have estrogen in them. But whether you are a man or a woman, you will have a body that prefers a slower pace. Oftentimes, we've just run over that pace with the expectations we have in our mind.

[00:08:00] But most people are just going way too fast. And sometimes it's actually because they are scared of what they might find out And I know I have been there before, so I really relate to this if you feel like this at all, where you think about the idea of slowing down to have a two hour long intimacy session with your partner.

[00:08:24] Feels terrifying? That is okay. I've been there. You will be okay. I've got you. But it's usually because we're scared of what we might find if we do it. We know there are truths like lurking in the slow. And I just want to tell you that those truths are worth you knowing. And it's okay if things are awkward.

[00:08:50] Sex is kind of inherently awkward and that's okay. Even masturbating is kind of inherently awkward sometimes. Oh gosh, am I going to tell you this story? Maybe I just will really quick. I had a fun conversation with a good friend of mine where we were trying to figure out what was the maximum number of sex toys we'd ever used at once while masturbating.

[00:09:11] I want to invite you to tell me your answers. If you have a really good answer that's more than four, please send me an email and explain to me because I find this question really fun. But anyway, the point being, you know, it's awkward when you have four different sex toys that you're trying to use at the same time.

[00:09:28] But you may be scared of those truths that are lurking in the but I promise you that one, you are brave enough to know what's true for you. I absolutely believe in you. And two, Those truths will help you get better connected to yourself and your partners and have more joy in this life. I promise you.

[00:09:50] When we are lying to ourselves or rushing past what's true for ourselves, we don't give ourselves the opportunity to really understand who we are. what we need, what we want, what we desire, and really celebrate that with compassion and care and work through any fears or shames or challenges that are coming up.

[00:10:09] So you can slow down if you are having sex for one, sex for two, or sex for more than two. Slowing down is going to give you so much more chance for pleasure and for understanding what is true for you. So if you think about it, the most delicious meal you've ever eaten, did you want it to be like something you just shoved in your face and ran out the door?

[00:10:34] My guess is that the most delicious meal you've ever eaten, you actually enjoyed enough to savor. And you savored it enough to enjoy it. It's not. It's like both and, right? We have to slow down enough to notice that something's delicious. If some amaze, if the world's best chef made you a meal and you just shoved it in your face and ran out the door, you wouldn't even notice how amazing it was.

[00:11:02] You might be like, Oh, that was kind of nice, but you would not have the pleasure in it that you would if you sat down and really took your time to chew each bite and to breathe and to notice your surroundings and to notice the flavors and to notice your enjoyment, right? Savoring, luxuriating, taking your time will always provide you with more pleasure, even if it's the same thing.

[00:11:30] than if we rush past it. Even if you don't masturbate or have sex with anyone or want to have sex with anyone, slowing down to sip your coffee this year more, slowing down when you put on lotion on your body, slowing down to notice before you jump out of bed when the alarm clock goes off that you feel cozy and comfortable and safe.

[00:11:52] Taking those moments to slow down and really appreciate the pleasure that you have is going to give you more pleasure in your life. Yay! You deserve that. So much of the time we're running around seeking pleasure, but then not actually enjoying and luxuriating in it when we have it. So I really want you to consider what I'm saying here.

[00:12:13] This is, yeah, my big pitch, my TED Talk about if you do nothing else this year to focus on your own pleasure, consider just giving yourself more moments of slowness. And I want to tell you that you can actually slow down to make faster progress, right? So what, there's like a fable about that, I think, about the turtle and the hare.

[00:12:35] I don't really remember how it goes at all, so I'm not going to tell that story. You can look it up. But I do have a different story about slowing down to make faster progress and why it works. So I had a client, Let's call her Kate. She was about 50. She had gotten out of a shitty marriage and she'd spent some time single and she was now back in the dating world.

[00:13:00] She had a new boyfriend and she wanted to learn how to enjoy sex better with him than she had with her former husband. This is a wonderful goal. I love this for her. I have worked very successfully with many people with this goal and It makes me so happy that they have, like, a new lease on their life and a new chance to have different relationships than they had in the past.

[00:13:23] And different people. enjoyment of their own bodies and their sex life for the rest of their life. So I love, I love working with people in this situation. So great goal. She really wanted to get more turned on and have orgasms with her new partner, but she didn't know what her sexual needs were really.

[00:13:41] She hadn't spent the time to figure it out and she really needed help navigating how to figure that out, which is very normal and why people come to me. all the time. In fact, everything about this story is super common. So the new boyfriend I mean, she's obviously a unique individual, but this story is very common.

[00:14:00] The new boyfriend, he was also just a type to rush. He was the kind that does like a few kisses, then the clothes start coming off, and then he goes straight for inserting penis in her vagina, right? This didn't work for her, but she wasn't too bad. Sure, what else to do? And even when she would masturbate on her own, she was the kind who would just sort of grab the vibrator and rub one out in just a couple minutes to get to climax.

[00:14:24] She was really focused on the end result or the stress relief. She was also a busy professional. So she spent all day trying to solve problems quickly, sound familiar to anybody, and was inadvertently looking at herself and her sexual response as a problem that needed to be solved quickly, because that's what she had.

[00:14:42] She does all day, so her brain was sort of in that, like, okay, we need to solve this, right? It was very uncomfortable for her to hear from me that she needed to slow everything way down. It was so hard for her to hear from me, and I had to tell her multiple times, I had to walk her through why, and she really didn't want to do it first, and that's okay, and I told her it was fine if she didn't want to do it at all, but She certainly didn't have to.

[00:15:09] But I did encourage her to give it a try. And I encourage her pretty hard because I am not here to sit and let people just stew in their problems for years by avoiding telling them hard truths. And the hard truth in this situation is that she really did need to slow down with herself and help her partner slow down.

[00:15:29] in their joint play times so that she could even figure out what it was that she needed. So yeah, I'm just not, I'm not here to like not tell people the truth. Unfortunately, that's a lot of my experience with therapists, but we'll leave that for another day. It is not my thing. I'm here to tell people honestly what they need to hear in order to get where they want to go.

[00:15:52] And just so you know, if you ever decide you want to work with me. That is what you will get, so be prepared. But she really needed to hear that slowing down was the way forward, and we needed to work through all her fears about it. And that's, that's okay. That's what we did. We worked really slowly to help get her through the fear so that she was eventually willing to start giving slowing down a whirl.

[00:16:18] And what did we learn when she let herself slow down? When she let herself slow down, we learned so many things. We learned that she had erogenous zones she didn't even know about, especially, I think I recall for her, yes, it was the backs of her knees and her underarms, which were so wonderful and powerful for her to discover.

[00:16:41] We learned that she really wanted to feel. actually in control and powerful, which were the, which were her core desires and they were the opposite of what she thought she wanted. She thought she wanted somebody else to take control and like throw her up against the wall and all that stuff. That's what she thought in her head she was supposed to want, but when we slowed down enough to actually start learning about her body responses and start kind of hearing more from her erotic mind, then we figured out that what she really wanted was to feel powerful and in control herself.

[00:17:18] And so we were able to help her. her and her partner, figure out how to do that. We learned she was afraid of using toys in the bedroom because she thought it would harm her boyfriend's ego, even though he was totally okay with it. She was holding herself back because she was projecting those fears onto him.

[00:17:38] And she couldn't even tell this was her fear when she was going fast because it was all happening too fast. She couldn't catch the underlying emotions. And another thing we learned when she slowed down when they slowed down together. was that it turned out her partner was rushing because he was really afraid of losing his erection and her looking down on him for it.

[00:17:58] So he was rushing, and he had also learned, you know, whatever he learned about sex from porn, and he didn't know that women almost always, like 99. 9999 percent of the time, need way more time in foreplay. At least 30 to 45 minutes before our bodies are ready for, you know, Something inserted, dicks or dildos.

[00:18:18] So he just didn't know that, and then he was worried about her judgment if his erection came and went. But when we slowed them down, he actually learned that it was totally okay with her if his erection came and went during their foreplay time, and that she was still really turned on by him and didn't think badly of him at all.

[00:18:40] And that actually meant he got to release so much anxiety, he just got to stop having all this performance pressure. And so they started having really playful, fun, sexy times, and he didn't have to worry about his erection, and would always come back because he wasn't stressed out anymore. So it really freed them up to have all this play.

[00:19:01] And when she graduated with me, The two of them were having all this fun play in these much longer sessions, and they could still go back to quickies every now and then, but now they knew kind of the way into the turn on in the quickie because they had slowed down so much. So that's why going slow can actually get you faster results.

[00:19:24] And all the resistance that she had to going slow actually delayed her finding out all those things. It wasn't a problem. We got there eventually. I just want to invite you to think, if you have resistance to going slow, one, it's totally understandable and you might just be afraid of what you might find.

[00:19:42] Or you just might be conditioned by our society to think you have to go fast with everything and be like hyper efficient or whatever. But that doesn't work for bodies in sensuality and sexuality. So, whatever the issue that you might have, or whatever the desires you might have, And if you have any sexual challenges like premature ejaculation, or ED, vaginismus, or other kinds of vaginal pain, libido challenges, arousal challenges, anxiety, shame, repression, fears, any of those challenges, but also just desires.

[00:20:18] Going more slowly will enable you to notice what's happening for you, and in many cases actually will solve the issue on its own. But at the very least, it will bring to the surface what's happening for you so that you have more information. which means you're empowered to figure out what you need to do to fix it.

[00:20:37] If you're by yourself, it can help you start noticing when you get bored, when you might need to give your mind something sexy like fantasies to play with, what your body really likes, any shames you need to be aware of, any sort of numb spots or pain, any discomfort. Or, if you're sort of like rushing through, It might also, slowing down might also start bringing up some emotions for you, which are really connected to your sexuality and that you might need to deal with in order to feel more free and safe and able to connect to your partner.

[00:21:12] If you're playing with somebody else, slowing down can really help you attune better to yourself and your partner. help you open up communication, become more playful, notice the touches you like and the ones that you'd like to be different, notice any tension in your body or your pelvic floor, or if you tend to be kind of like the wet noodle that you, and are having a hard time orgasming, this often happens for women, you might need a little more tension in your body sometimes, but you will notice those things if you slow down.

[00:21:42] So I want to encourage you to let sex not be you know, a big mac most of the time, not something you just shove in your face and in the car or whatever. Let it be a delicious Michelin starred multi course dinner, at least most of the time, and at least to help you understand how to have, like, the best cookies that, that you want when you're, wanting to sprinkle those in.

[00:22:08] But not as a general rule. You don't want sex to be quick and hurried as a general rule. So this year, as we start this year, we're starting 2025, I want to just invite you to try out slowing down a lot. If you come up against fears, shames, problems, that is actually a good thing. They were there anyway, but now you've just slowed down enough to see them so that you know what you need to work on.

[00:22:32] And if you're ready to get help with those things, so that they never block you again, and you can go through the entire rest of your life with sexual confidence and freedom, then reach out to me for a free 30 minute consult. And you can just go to my website, www.laurajurgens.com and click the book a consult tab if you're ready for that.

[00:22:51] But regardless of whether you are ready to take me up on that offer or not, if you slow down, you will be empowered with more information for you. And I want to invite you to give that gift to yourself. This year. All right, my friends, I will see you here next week. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide, Find Your Secret Turn Ons.

[00:23:13] It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.