899. Men tell us what they want in BED: Better sex with Vanessa + Xander Marin

23:46Xander Marin:There's no complaint attached to it. There's no problem you're trying to solve. It's just a way that you can feel closer to each other. So if you start asking each other questions like that, you make sex a safer topic to talk about so that eventually, you know, when there are trickier things, you have this experience with it and you're not terrified of saying the words out loud. It's interesting because when I think about my favorite sexual moments, it's like there's such flickers. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, of course, there's like you know i can really expand it in my mind but it's like a flicker of like a touch of you know what i mean a touch of laundry just like these little things and memories that you can think um okay so you are kind of feeling like you are not doing enough now and you're like kind of how do i have sex with her to like please her and i'm feeling disconnected from my sex what are you feeling during this time and this is just such a great example because so many people have felt this i'm feeling like something is horribly wrong with me like he's not attracted to me anymore.

24:44Xander Marin:He doesn't want to have sex with me anymore. Sex had taken on so much meaning. And he could feel that. Now sex was not, hey, we love each other and we want to connect and have a pleasurable experience together. Now it's sex has to prove something. You have to prove to me that I'm attractive. You have to prove to me that I'm desirable. You have to prove to me that our relationship is okay. And that's not fun sex to have when you're feeling like you have to prove something.

25:15Vanessa Marin:And I mean, yeah, that was the situation that we were in. But I think, you know, if you kind of flip, if you go back to the more stereotypical gender dynamic, I think this comes up so often in so many long term relationships to where, you know, it's not, you know, where, you know, it might be like, he has the higher sex drive, and she's saying, Oh, well, I need to do it just enough to keep him happy. And, you know, it takes on that same meaning of, I'm trying to prove to you that, like, you know, we still can do it sometimes, but it's not really very good. You know, we're not really paying attention to that.

25:47Vanessa Marin:So I think that, yeah, and, you know, like Vanessa was saying, like she could tell. Her experience was, you know, oh, he's having sex to prove something with me, not to have sex with me. And I think, you know, it's that same feeling is there in, you know, whatever the situation is between whether it's one partner or the other partner. When sex takes on some other meaning, it sucks for both of you. Of course. I think it's also, I'm curious if this was your experience. When I've been in this, in my experience, I hyper fixated on the looks. I was like, you don't find me attractive. I'm not whatever the looks are.

26:24And it's like the sex and sex connection. And I think what I was so grateful for a relationship I was in that was so helpful. and this sounds so dumb but breaking my preconceived notion of men being always wanting sex it's only physical it's all these things and i was like oh it's actually so much more emotional so much more relational so much more for them about the intimacy and the connection and our closeness and our yeah you know being okay in normal life leads to better sex and it it sounds so dumb but i had to break that down because i think when i was younger you have this belief it's just physical they find you hot they won't have sex and you see men more as like humans and less as like you're a man i'm a woman this is how we go yeah yeah maybe you can speak to this a

27:12Xander Marin:bit i think this is one of the biggest disservices that we as women do to men is we turn their desire into just this purely physical thing you're just horny you just want to release you just want to get off it's not anything about me i'm just the warm vesicle that happens to like be here right Yeah.

27:30Vanessa Marin:And meanwhile, most men in this country, in most countries in the world are raised and socialized to not express much emotion. And when we do, we tend to get punished, castigated, whatever, you know, like, it's, oh, this isn't this is what you're supposed to do as a man, you're supposed to keep it together, stay rational, stay logical, right. And so I think, interestingly, men end up having permission to express emotion in two main ways. It's via sports and via sex. Your team wins the Super Bowl, loses the Super Bowl, you're allowed to cry, you're allowed to be ecstatic. You're allowed to express whatever the hell you want.

28:10Vanessa Marin:And sex is the other one. You've just had that release, that closeness, whether it's during sex or right afterwards. I look back to every single one of my serious relationships, and I have so many great, warm, fuzzy memories of early on lying in bed for an hour afterwards, just never feeling closer to that person. That's honestly when I think back to what the feeling of being in love feels like. It's those moments. and I think that you know we do such a disservice to men who desperately want to be able to have emotional connection they don't know how to ask for it they do know how to ask for sex but they have we haven't been able to you know most men don't feel comfortable saying hey this is how I feel close to you and so when he's asking for sex especially in a committed relationship he is asking for connection.

29:10Vanessa Marin:He's desperate for connection. And it feels so hard when you get a no, especially a no that is tied to, oh God, you just want that. You just want that thing. You feel so, then you feel so unwanted and so unseen.

29:23Xander Marin:So practically speaking, I tell women to imagine that that's what he's actually saying. Like when he initiates with you, and even if it's in a dumb way, he's making some gross joke about vitamin D or like trying to honk your boobs or something. Even the really unskillful ways, which we can work with him on to get better at that. But when he's initiating with you, imagine that what he's actually saying to you is, I want to feel close to you right now. It just changes the whole vibe of everything. Even if you don't want to have sex in that moment, that's okay. But it really changes the emotional tone of that moment.

29:59Yeah, I remember, I think it was just from being in in this work in this space like i committed i was married we were together for a long time and i committed in that relationship and their relationships after to this sounds weird and like this is i don't know if this is off but i like never say no and it's not in a way of crossing a boundary for me or like you know there's not anything it's not me being like oh but it was just like something that i was like i'm gonna always accept the bid for connection and accept the bid to connect and accept this desire even if in this moment i'm like a little bit like because usually for me that part of me that's like the productivity part the producing part the doing part like she could always take a break yeah and that part has so much time online um and just really honoring the fact that men do connect in that way and that really is a lot of how they regulate how they feel softness and tenderness to you so um i really love that i think one of the things that women I think struggle a lot with and I think we were speaking to this a little bit is that when you were talking about the honking of the boobs and kind of those silly ways of doing there is something that I felt notice happened in my relationships and I see with some of the women that I work with it's almost like there's a point period where the men then becomes childish yeah then it becomes like silly like I used to have like people I'd be like all right it's time to touch and i'm like is this the foreplay like you know where it becomes embarrassing or silly

31:31Vanessa Marin:or what is that oh i can tell you exactly what's going on okay so it is fear of rejection and so what you do is you go okay god i've been rejected x number of times or maybe you just have some traumatic experiences of being rejected in the past and fear of it yeah you have fear of it and so what you do you don't think this like you're not thinking this in your head this is under you know subconsciously but you're like okay how can i have some plausible deniability when i initiate if i make it a joke and she says no and then i then i can you know gaslight her yeah yeah yeah you think i was trying to initiate that's what she said yeah i was just kidding I was just joking.

32:16Vanessa Marin:I was just joking. Yeah. So, you know, yeah. But it's not malicious. Yeah, no. It's not malicious unless you're aware of it. Most of us were not aware of it. Once I saw that, I'm like, oh, I can't ever do that again. Now that I know it's actually going on.

32:31Xander Marin:And it creates this horrible spiral. Because, of course, if your partner is saying stuff like, the peddings is open, like, that's not something that feels really exciting. We need a whole podcast of all your guys' little phrases that people have said. Like, you know, as a woman, that does nothing for me. That doesn't make me like, oh, yes, let's go rub each other's clothes off in the bedroom. So we're more likely to say no to that and to say no in meaner ways to like, oh, leave me alone. And so that feels like more of a rejection for him. So next time he's going to be even more jokey about it to make it even more plausible deniability.

33:08Xander Marin:And it just gets this horrible cycle.

33:11Vanessa Marin:Though interestingly, it may also be a sign that that is a way that he might enjoy you initiating with him. Because often when we're not aware, because like, so one of the things that we talk about a lot, there's actually a number of different initiation styles. Five of them, right? Six. Six of them. We came up with this model. Yeah, so yeah, there are actually six different initiation styles, which are basically like the energy with which you like to have sex initiated. And often when you have no idea that there's a whole range of ways that people might like something, we tend to just see the world through our own eyes.

33:46Vanessa Marin:And so we go, oh, well, yeah, it would be actually super hot if she made just a dirty joke and then that led to sex. So I'm going to try that. There's a combination of those two things. So, yeah, if you find your partner doing that all the time, it's actually an interesting conversation to have around, oh, so like what are the ways that you would love sex to be initiated with you? And what are the ways I would love it to be initiated with me? And how interesting. we have totally different vibes here so it's not like you know if you want to have sex with me then you should initiate in a way that it's going to land with you not the way that i would like the

34:19Xander Marin:love languages you know we all like to give and receive love in different ways so actually the type that he's talking about is caught we call it play with me okay you like sex to be more light-hearted and silly and funny so you might actually laugh at something like that like yeah let's go so that's one type but then you can contrast that with something like another type is called the take care of me where you like your partner to really like just feel like they have things handled like i'm gonna clean the dishes up you go draw a bath take 30 minutes to yourself and then i'll meet you in the bedroom afterwards or i'm gonna handle bedtime with the kids why don't you go read your little sexy fairy book and we'll meet in the bedroom later so you like that that feeling of your partner just like handling things and giving you some space.

35:05Xander Marin:So if yeah, if you're not initiating in your partner's style in their language, then it's not likely to land with them. So we love coming up with little frameworks like this, just to help open up conversations. It's obviously it's not a scientific thing. Of course, we don't all fit neatly into, you know, exactly six little perfect boxes. But it just provides a nice way for couples to start talking to each other like, Oh, yeah, would you like it if I initiated in this way? Would you like it if I issued it like that.

35:32Vanessa Marin:And it also takes some of the gender stereotype away, which is nice, because we do have gender stereotypes when it comes to sex, you know, like, oh, men want it more than women, or, you know, he wants, he wants sex to feel connection, and she wants connection to feel open to sex. And they're stereotypes, because more often than not, they are true, but they are not hard and fast rules. And so yeah, when we kind of have these frameworks or these types, it helps you see, oh, okay, yeah, I might in this aspect, I might be a little more stereotypical. In this aspect, I might not be. There's a lot of our women, like I was on a client call yesterday with a woman who she's the breadwinner.

36:10She has a child. And I think a lot of women, when they're breadwinners, they're mothers, they're holding and caring a lot within the family and the household. And this is kind of like a more modern phenomenon. phenomenon they're finding it hard to then connect with their partner in sex because they're feeling burnt out maybe a little resentful and it's almost like you know in spiritual you call it the polarity is lost but like what would you say to a woman who's struggling with that where she's holding it down breadwinner doing the most and not feeling like she wants to connect or not feeling connected to her partner?

36:53Xander Marin:You know, I'll be totally honest with you. This is something that we've struggled with in our own relationship, too. This is a big part of our story as well. You know, Xander mentioned that when I was I went to grad school, we made this arrangement where he was going to cover us financially to allow me to fully focus on grad school, which was an incredible gift. Then a few years later, I was done with grad school, I was licensed, I was starting to set up my practice, you know finally bringing income in and xander had finally hit the point of burnout where he just didn't want to do the climb in the corporate ladder anymore he was sick of being in tech and we made this decision to move to berlin we had visited a few times and fall in love with the city we were also deciding around that time that we were not going to have children and we thought let's do something totally different let's go live there and so i told Xander, you know, you're going to quit your job.

37:46Xander Marin:I'll handle us financially for a while. You did it for me. It's logical. It seems only fair. And both Xander and I were raised by parents who didn't have traditional gender roles. Both of us, like our moms were the more dominant ones in the family. And we had had a lot of conversations in our own relationship about we don't want to have traditional gender roles. We want to forge our own path. And so even with all of that, with all of that belief in this with the fairness of it, the consciousness of making these decisions. Rationally, it all made sense. Yeah, of course. So real. Xander really struggled with not being the provider anymore.

38:26Xander Marin:And I can let you share your part of it. But it was so interesting to me to realize how deep that socialization gets in. Even in our circumstance, where we'd fought actively against that so hard.

38:43Vanessa Marin:Yeah, it was tough. And it was, yeah, in my head, we had talked it through so many times, you know, and I was like, yeah, that, yes, I totally covered you. I deserve to take a year or two off and give myself some space to figure things out. We had everything set, like, it wasn't, yeah. It's funny looking back, it was like, I still even was contributing financially in a way, like. So your girl's at the farmer's market on Saturdays, every once in a while with my friends. I'm shopping at the local spots. When I was in Europe, I was shopping at these local markets. And one of the things I was noticing is I was so exceptionally, eternally grateful that I could just buy with a tap of my phone from these local vendors and these local markets.

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41:56Vanessa Marin:You know, we were renting out the the you're like just so you guys know i still want let's just make these clear it's crazy looking back though because in my mind i couldn't even see the ways that i still was contributing but yeah it was wild and it was like the moment that we actually moved and my paycheck stopped coming in i was like oh my god what have i what have i done like what am i doing and yeah i was trying to do everything else that i could like i basically was like running our household you were super wife hey at least you were doing that yeah yeah and and it was like and i was like this

42:33Xander Marin:doesn't feel like enough um there's not enough yeah it doesn't feel like enough and yeah i mean

42:40Vanessa Marin:the wild thing is at that point we had you know we had gone to some couples therapy we which was somewhat but somewhat not helpful in figuring out the sex stuff that we were talking about earlier we had kind of muddled our way through and I think we're like kind of getting back to into a really good groove and then that hit me like a ton of bricks and I think that that you know kind of like caused a bit of a slowdown because I didn't feel yeah I didn't feel very desirable yeah of course yeah and yeah and that was tough and I mean interestingly interestingly you know about a year into that um that that move i started working with vanessa her business was growing she was transitioning from seeing clients one-on-one into building an online business and so she you know was kind of throwing me a couple projects to do and pretty soon i worked my way into kind of being like the coo of her growing business and yeah but yeah i mean i think that honestly it was you know at that point it was hard to quantify what my financial contribution was but i think that it was having a purpose yeah having a purpose and then you know fast forwarding a bit i think when things really clicked for me was when she finally convinced me to start being like on camera with her doing like being like the face of our business rather than being in the background and yeah just feeling like oh like yeah we're we're in this together we have a shared purpose on and so yeah i think that you know for us obviously that was intertwining our our work lives but i think that you know figuring out yeah what your shared purpose is as a couple can be so

44:24Xander Marin:meaningful will you share your your ideas that you've been playing around with about what masculinity really means and what where men can actually find a sense of real masculinity from

44:36Vanessa Marin:Yeah, yeah, for sure.

44:38Xander Marin:Thank you, Vanessa.

44:40Vanessa Marin:She's incredible, honestly.

44:42Xander Marin:I'm the co-host now. Thank you. Thank you.

44:45Vanessa Marin:That's such an interesting question, Vanessa.

44:47Xander Marin:Honestly, wow, girl, killing it. No, he's been kind of playing with this. I'm excited to talk about this. We have a lot of conversations in our own relationship about, yeah, how do we navigate? What does it mean to be masculine? And what does it mean to be feminine? And the ways that it gets in the way of our sex life and the ways that it contributes to our sex life. And so he's been playing around with something lately that I'm like, oh, I think you're I think you're onto something there.

45:08Vanessa Marin:Yeah. So I think I feel like I'm in a really good place. I'm in a better place I've ever been in terms of being comfortable with myself, happy in my own body. I feel very masculine and happy and settled. And I think for me, yeah, it's my sense of purpose. My sense of masculinity doesn't come out of having like success in our business. it's it's from three different areas so adventure wonder and service so adventure is like having scratching that itch to do something exciting freedom and i think that yeah freedom whatever it is and i think that you know with all of these you can you can kind of like misplace your efforts in those areas and that can kind of maybe contribute towards what people talk about as toxic masculinity you know like a shadow side yeah like the shadow side of adventure can be you know i don't know like you know yeah peter pan syndrome um you know like you know like partying hard trying to you know blow off steam in that way like where it's like that's your only set that's only your only outlet yeah for getting that sense of adventure like you know that's where things can get problematic um you know for wonder i think that's realizing that you're a part of something bigger so whether that is you know for for many that might be god spirituality for others that might be like being one with nature but i think that you know in a healthy way that gives you a sense of humility right like there there are forces that are much larger than me in the world because when you don't have that then i think it's easy to fall into that trap of like it's just all about me and my brain and what i think and that's a hard way to exist on and then service is you you know, giving back, you know, being there for other people.

46:58Vanessa Marin:And, you know, I think that one can also, you know, the shadow side of that one can be falling into that provider role, where my only purpose is, I'm just the provider. I make the money, I provide the house. And that can kind of be, you know, your misplaced sense of, oh, well, that's just I put all my eggs in that basket. So I think you got to have a balance of all three of those. And I feel like I actually I do have a really good balance of those and that's the reason why i'm fulfilled it's not because it's not because you know our business is successful or it's not because you know i have a certain amount of money in the bank or a certain house or car whatever so maybe we need we need to find the three for

47:35Xander Marin:femininity i was thinking about that yeah what do you what would you put in because i was i was noodling a little on that and i was almost thinking of femininity i guess in a one way sometimes is I wouldn't say service because men almost need to be called and need to consciously think about service to the family I don't think it comes to them naturally I think the desire for freedom and the desire for um to create to hunt is not necessarily it's service-based but in a different way I think women naturally live in service and it's almost like that idea of a woman having that as service would not even be necessary because it's a part of the fabric of what it is so it's kind of exploring like what it would be the three aspects of what it would be to be feminine um what do you think one that's coming to mind for me is maybe a sense of play love that play or like the other word that was coming up for me was flow but i don't know how to yeah how to it's almost like i'm thinking what is natural and what is needing to be cultivated yeah because like it's almost like i think those are all natural but i think when men cultivate them more they become better men yeah so women what are the natural elements of the feminine that when cultivated make them an even better better woman receiving that's a good one that's a really good one comes up for me too we struggle with that so much to receive and oh my god does that come up during sex too oh no struggle to receive i know i yeah i mean to go down that rabbit hole a little bit a lot of women yeah i didn't realize this till later in my life as well that i really was in the entire experience of my partner for all of my sex life until my 30s yeah and having the opportunity to rewire and rewrite that with the work that i did with my teachers and whatever i was doing has been instrumental and I did not know that life could exist in the way that it does when you actually can receive and be in your own energy and experience.

49:34Talk a little bit about that for women because, and I'm keeping this tab open of the masculine feminine, but all so many women right now cannot receive. What are you seeing and why do you think they can't receive?

49:45Xander Marin:It's been socialized out of us since the day we were born. You know, we're taught to be self-sacrificers, caregivers, caregivers, caretakers, we're taught that we could always be doing something else for someone else. And we're taught that focus on ourself feels selfish. It's not worthwhile. And I think in particular, pleasure feels selfless. There's better thing. We hear this from women all the time. There's so many better things I could be doing with my time. I don't need that. I don't need anything for myself. I'll let him have his thing, whatever, but I don't need anything for myself. We're taught that the more that we deny ourselves, the better we are, like the holier we are, the more we deny.

50:30Xander Marin:And yeah, obviously, that really shows up during sex. Most women, I would, yeah, I would venture to say most women are having sex done to them, rather than actively participating in it. And yeah, I appreciate that you shared that that was your experience. It was my experience for so long, too. It was, it was so much about, how's he doing? What's he thinking? is he having fun does this feel good to him am I making him feel good do I need to moan harder do I need to like make my face look more you know expressive it was all about how do I make sure he likes this he thinks this is working he thinks we're clicking and it was so even being so fascinated in this field even starting to study in this field it was so much about what is what do I need to do for my partner not what do I need to do for myself and I think that's something that we can we can learn from men how to allow ourselves to like receive that experience and i think vulnerability has a lot to do with it too you know xander talked so much about what it's like for men to really be in those moments during sex like feeling so connected and so like cracked open in a way and i think a lot of us women are just counting down the seconds until it can be done and then it's you know he finishes and it's like okay jump up grab my phone you know i mean when you said earlier like lying in bed for like an hour afterwards it's like how many people actually do that now i know i know an hour is a long time it doesn't have to be a whole hour but like 10 minutes thing i'm just like what are we continually optimizing for and what are we spending so much time on where there's like no time for things it's like what like ai avatars like what are we doing you know what i mean i'm like i think in so many conversations i hear the creep of we don't have time we don't have time we don't have energy we don't have it's like what are we have time for yeah if there's no time but there is time what is everyone doing all day that's causing them to continue to negotiate the very aspects of what it means to be human and it should be a priority for people to connect and to feel connected to their partner and to feel these moments and have these moments.

52:49And I think the acceptance of this continued negotiated time, I think we should really look at because, and I'm not saying anything to you, you know what I mean? But I'm just like thinking about it now for myself. I'm like, why do we just be like, there's not enough time? And again, I don't have kids. So kids conversation, probably another game. But yeah, it's just really sad because that connection time is just like essential. And I think that's what people remember most in their lives is those moments of feeling connected.

53:16Vanessa Marin:You were just saying, what's the best part of your day?

53:18Xander Marin:Yeah. And I had a podcast interview right before this. And we were talking about like, what's the ideal number of sex? You know, how many times should you be having sex per week? And I think so many of us approach it from this, like very logical, like, what's that number that I just need to check the box? And I was thinking to myself, sex with Xander is the best part of my day. It's the best part of my day. It feels good. It's so connecting. It's so intimate, the way that we feel about each other afterwards. It's playful. It's creative. It's all those things. So why would I not want to create more space for the best part of my day?

53:58Xander Marin:Like you're saying, those are the things I'm going to remember, not the i wrote five extra emails today yeah you know i did my claude boot camp we do have to do the claude we are working on that um so in this point you know thinking about this destination that you're out of enjoying sex every day with your partner and feeling so good i do want to kind of go back to you guys the point where you felt disconnected you felt disempowered you were in grad school you had just quit your job and you were feeling emasculated like what was your sex life in that process like how did you guys kind of come out of that well it wasn't

54:39Vanessa Marin:you know we described the type of sex it felt very charged right right like i was trying to prove something to her we muddled along for a couple of months you know i kept like i said moving the goalposts or like oh yeah just wait just you know it's gonna it's gonna get better I think it's getting better. I was trying to initiate with her more to prove something. I also started suffering from some performance issues because when you're trying to prove something, it's hard. God, and the way when I was, this is so horrible. The way when I was young, I used to shame the men. No, I mean, I did the same.

55:15I did the same Xander. I am obsessed with lately. I always, whenever there's, in my life, one thing about my brain is if I have a thought, I always think about the other thought. So if I'm like, oh, men are really failing us right now. I'm like, okay, Krista, how are women failing us? I always am trying to balance. I never want to be thinking in one way. And so I was thinking about recently how women are failing men. And I think a lot of it is like the judgment and like that cruelty that you can have of that type of thing.

55:41Xander Marin:Yeah. I mean, we were talking earlier about taking it personally. Like, what do we take more personally than our partner not being able to get hard or stay hard? Like it just, it cuts right to your core and you automatically think the darkest thoughts. Like he thinks I've gained weight. He saw the cellulite. He thinks I'm ugly. And, you know, and then they can feel that. Now they have to prove to you, I think you're beautiful and sexy and I don't see the cellulite, I swear. It's a lot. And then of course, yeah, then you get anxious and nervous about that, which leads to more performance issues, which leads to more bad reactions.

56:16Xander Marin:You know, it's just these horrible cycles that we all put ourselves down.

56:19Vanessa Marin:Yeah, so that kept going for a while. I think that there were a couple more tough conversations between us because it didn't, you know, that's a good tell. We weren't really making any real progress. And I think after one of those conversations, probably a very emotionally charged one, I came to the realization that I had a decision to make, that I was working too hard. I was not in a place where I was able to be home enough to even have the kind of relationship or sex that I wanted and that she wanted. And I, Vanessa swears that this was that she was not about to leave me. But I had this idea that I was like, I was like, well.

57:06Vanessa Marin:Men have to like up the stakes. I did. I did. They're like, he's gonna leave, bro. I was like, well, yeah.

57:11Xander Marin:How could she be? I literally never thought about leaving you not once.

57:14Vanessa Marin:Well, my thought was, if I actually do play this out, if this goes on for a couple more years, how is she going to want to stay with me? Right? Like, we weren't married yet. And I was like, I don't want to lose this relationship. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm not willing to lose this. So I'm open to seeing if I can find a way to change. and the thing that i focused on we did go to couples therapy and vanessa can tell you about that but at the same time i started individual therapy which was scary because i could barely afford it um but i started working on how could i say no more at work because i was struggling to say no good for you to work and i and i started putting the pieces together okay yeah i i get home at 10pm.

58:08Vanessa Marin:I'm exhausted. Vanessa's like already in bed. Like, how are we even gonna have time for sex? Okay, the issue is clearly that there's not enough time in the day, right? And how is that happening? I go to work. I have grand ambitions every day. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna get everything done by five and go home in a normal hour. And I'm telling her that until it's like 445. And I'm like, Oh, God, I got like three more things I need to do there due tomorrow. There's no way I'm gonna be here for you know, then it's like, I'll be here for another hour. Now I'll be here for another Okay, now I'm gonna have dinner here.

58:37Vanessa Marin:And it's just gonna be an all nighter. Right? And I was like, this just isn't sustainable. And I'm miserable with it. And so I started working on how could I reasonably push back in a respectful way. And at work. Yeah, at work. Yeah, at work. And I completely changed that completely changed my relationship with work. I realized that there was a way to respectfully say no. in the context of I can actually do better work if I'm not totally overloaded, not balancing a million different competing priorities. And it's like, yes, I can do that. And what would need to be deprioritized is XYZ. What would you prefer, you know, to the manager?

59:17Vanessa Marin:And the crazy thing was, is I started working, you know, I started going from probably working like 60 hour weeks on average to working like, you know, 40 hours to 45 maybe on busy weeks. And I started doing better at work and i started getting i think i got two promotions like in that's so within like a two year period it's like knowing your after that and all it was it was wild it was like the moment i started putting my foot down people started respecting me more yeah um and that completely changed my relationship with work and all of a sudden i had time and i had space to be home and you felt more empowered i'm sure you felt more in your masculine you felt more in your worth That is the thing, too.

59:56I think men can find a lot of power in themselves in having better boundaries with work, communicating. I think everyone can. You know what I mean? Actually, women and men. The more in your life you are asserting yourself, being clear, all of that, I think can be helpful probably in both areas of the bedroom.

1:00:17Xander Marin:And I think it also takes recognizing that sex and our relationships are worth creating time for. I mean, everybody's busy these days. And I don't want to discount that. Like most people have a lot of stuff on their plate. And we also, sorry, my phone's on.

1:00:40It's okay.

1:00:41Xander Marin:It just pissed me off. But I didn't hear it.

1:00:47Xander Marin:And we also spend an awful lot of time scrolling on our phones. That's the frickin' right. And watching Netflix. Preach. Preach. Come on. If you really. People need to be serious. Yeah. If we put a camera on the wall and watch how we spend our day, there's time there. Sex probably takes 20 minutes. Yeah. you can hey we could get we got it down to like we could do 10 minutes yeah exactly yeah we can

1:01:12Vanessa Marin:teach you how to get that time down it might take a little while but there we everyone can learn if we were to be spacious but and we want to warm up you can take 20 minutes from scrolling but it's

1:01:22Xander Marin:like it's that mindset of recognizing pleasure is valuable pleasure is worthwhile connection is worthwhile like i want to prioritize that we've actually discovered that sex bends time when we prioritize sex we create more time we had this the first time that this happened we were had a super busy day we have family dinner nights on mondays so we knew we had to leave exactly at 5 30 we had a million things on our plate it was to the point where i was like there's no way we can even get this done and xander says do you want to have sex and i laughed early in the morning we better help this episode is sponsored by better help you guys have heard us talk about better help for a long time but one thing we don't want to talk about is just how many people genuinely love the experience so if you're curious about therapy and you want to support yourself in your life i highly suggest using better help it just kind of breaks down the barrier of cost of time of availability you can chat with your therapist on text you can get in sessions super easily like it really makes it easy for you to take care of yourself and i think therapy has been one of the things that has changed my life more than anything.

1:02:37I would say meditation therapy, stopping drinking have been my things. The reviews of BetterHelp are updated every day. And it's great to hear from the people that say they love it and have actually used the service. So you can look at the reviews if it's going to be helpful for you. And the average live therapy session actually has a 4.9 out of five based on 1.7 million client session reviews. and more than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally. So if you're thinking about starting therapy, you answer a few questions, you get matched with a therapist based on your needs, and if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time.

1:03:10You can see the reviews, what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is a right fit for you. Use betterhelp.com slash almost 30. That's betterhelp.com slash almost 30. That's betterhelp.com slash almost 30. So Upwork. I talk about Upwork with my clients all the freaking time. I was on the phone with one of my clients last night and I said, girl, you are no longer going to edit your podcast yourself. You are going to outsource with Upwork. This was her budget. She wanted to stay under a certain amount. So we had to find someone that would be a perfect fit for her. Upwork is really the one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across everything from marketing and business operations to web development design data and so much more.

1:03:52So you can basically browse their profiles, look through their work, and even get help scoping for a role i was needing to hire someone for kajabi within our business to help us do kajabi and so i saw this little profile said oh she seems like a great fit we got on a call she was incredible with kajabi she was so incredible whether you're a smaller business or if you're growing really quickly their business plus gives you an access to the top one percent talent on upwork with ai powered short listing that can match you with the right freelancer in under six hours so this saves a lot of time this is actually what i've been doing because it does take time to find people.

1:04:25It does take time to vet people. And it's kind of a thing, but I want you guys to be outsourcing more so you can enjoy your life. You can do what you need to do and you can grow your business and still have time for freedom. And Upwork is that place to have that. At Upwork.com right now, you can post your job for free, what you're looking for, who you need to support you. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent, ready to grow your business. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com.

1:04:50Vanessa Marin:We had time to be like, oh, like it would be you. Like, we'd love to have sex later. Of course, yeah. Right? And so we had kind of like set the goal. Yeah.

1:04:59Xander Marin:And I was like, are you kidding? There is no time for sex. We don't even have the time to finish all the things we need to finish by 530. And he said, I think that we, no, what you said to me, you said, sex with you is the most important thing to me.

1:05:15Vanessa Marin:Well, no, first I said, first I was like, I was like, God, yeah, I think you're right. I don't think, I don't, I just don't think that there's time for it. And I heard myself say that. Interesting. It was like I was out of my body hearing it as a third person in the room. And what I heard was, yeah, it's not, I guess it's not really that important compared to these like work tasks and like a couple random, like how, you know, cleaning the kitchen or, you know, some kind of random house task. And so, and then it was like, boom, right back in my body. I was like, I did not. Hold on. I didn't like the way that sounded.

1:05:53Vanessa Marin:Sex with you is way more important than all these things on this to-do list. So knowing that it's the highest priority, why don't we just do it right now? And then see what happens with the rest of it.

1:06:05Xander Marin:Yeah, he was so earnest when he said that. I was like, this might be crazy. But I was like, okay, fine. So we went and we had sex. We just had a quickie. You know, we were being reasonable. but then afterwards we felt so connected to each other and we were a freaking dream team it's like you to handle this i'm gonna get that then we'll go that then we'll do that and we finished everything that we needed to get done and we had time to spare and that was the first indicator for me of like there's some magic here that when we prioritize us when we prioritize our connection and intimacy somehow the universe provides and like opens up for us.

1:06:44Vanessa Marin:Yeah, because when you got that to-do list, it's all stuff that you're not excited about. Yes. But you want it to be able to check it off. Yeah. But you're not excited about it. So you find little ways to, oh, I'll like scroll while I'm walking from this room to that room or I'll put the YouTube video on while I'm doing whatever. So real. So we're like doing these like micro procrastinations the whole time and it stretches out versus flipping that on its head and being like, let's do the thing that actually brings us pleasure and joy. And then you get that done. And then you're like, okay, hell yeah, I want to just power through this stuff.

1:07:21Vanessa Marin:Then you feel good about doing it rather than like dreading, oh God, I just have all these annoying things I have to do.

1:07:27Xander Marin:Also, we seem to have made this association that sex is this thing that happens at the end of the night. Like you brush your teeth, you wash your face, you're crawling into bed together. and like that's the time that you're supposed to have it. But that is the worst time to have sex. You are exhausted. You're already doing that math in your head of, okay, if I fall asleep in the next 10 minutes, this is how many hours of sleep I get. Like that is an impossible time to get excited about having sex. So I think the earlier that we try to prioritize sex in the day, and obviously every schedules are different.

1:08:04Xander Marin:Maybe the morning works best for you. Maybe you can have a little afternoon delight. Maybe all that you can do is, okay, we'll have sex and then we'll spend the 20 minutes watching Netflix or we'll fold that last load of laundry. Like even if there's just one thing that you can prioritize sex ahead of, you will benefit from. I know I loved your perspective on scheduling sex. Because I think there's so many old ideas that we have around sex. And I think one of them is that if you schedule it, it's not sexy. Can you talk a little bit about your perspective on that? Okay, so first of all, we've been scheduling sex from the very beginning of our relationships.

1:08:40Xander Marin:What did you do when you were dating your partner? You were scheduling dates. You were literally putting it in your calendar. And when you start being intimate with your partner, you're scheduling sex. You know, oh, we're going out to dinner on Friday night. Guess what we're doing after. We're having sex. We got plans. And you were excited about that, right? And you viewed it as a positive thing. Like this person that I'm dating or in a relationship, they're busy. They have a million things they could be doing with their time, but they're choosing to spend time with me. They're carving that time out for me.

1:09:16Xander Marin:That was a good thing, right? So why does it need to be any different now that we're in a relationship? I mean, the reality is we lead lives where we schedule the things that are important to us. and scheduling something is a sign of how much we value it. If it's my best friend's birthday and she's going to have a dinner party, I'm not going to like, well, I don't want to have to schedule it. Oh, we must not really be real friends if I have to put that in my calendar. Ew.

1:09:47Vanessa Marin:Maybe I'll happen to walk by the restaurant that she's got at the time that she's there.

1:09:51Xander Marin:If it happens spontaneously, then that's okay. But I don't want to have to plan for it. No, like I'm going to be there. I'm putting it on my calendar. I'm making sure nothing else gets put on that time. I am showing up for my friend. We view scheduling in a positive way. So why can't we do it the same with sex? And I think it really comes down to how we schedule it. Like if you say, okay, we're, you know, every Wednesday at 945, we solemnly swear that we're going to have intercourse with each other. Like, of course that can make it feel cold and clinical. But if you treat it like a date, like something to look forward to, to build some anticipation around.

1:10:30Xander Marin:And there are different ways to schedule. Don't call it scheduling sex. Say it's a date night or call it some like funny little inside joke between the two of you. And you don't even have to guarantee that you're gonna have sex. It could be we're just promising, we're committing to show up for each other. And this is our quality time where we're gonna get in bed together and we're gonna actually talk about how we're really doing. And if we end up feeling like having sex, we have the space for it. If we don't, we still had some really intimate time together. So there are a lot of little tweaks that you can make to it to make it work for you.

1:11:03Xander Marin:But I think that overall, it's just getting into that mindset of scheduling is a sign that you care. If you have a couple that is disconnected from each other, do you think focusing first on having sex again or focusing first on communication, what would you suggest? So the therapist in me would have, until about a week ago, would have said, fix the relationship first. Because the relationship's the foundation and there's communication and trust and all that. But just last week, we saw this study that came out that showed that fixing your sex life positively impacted the overall relationship. But fixing your relationship did not positively impact your sex life.

1:11:51Xander Marin:Oh my gosh.

1:11:52Vanessa Marin:And this was a study that was done. It was a longitudinal study done over a number of years. So it was like looking at couples over the years, rating like how, what their relationship satisfaction is at various points in time. So it's, yeah, it's not just like, oh, are you happier with your relationship after you just had sex? It's like measuring the amount of sex that people are having and their relationship satisfaction and seeing how those numbers change over time.

1:12:19Xander Marin:That's a shocking and fascinating study. I would, I wonder what your, I'm curious what your, what your belief on is this, but I would think that you heal the relationship relationally and it's almost like you become friends and it almost becomes more platonic where you understand each other more. You have more, you have deeper understanding and love, but you don't have that chemistry or connection that sort of you want. What would you think it's about? I think it could be that. I also think that sex, it requires so much of us because it's not just this physical act. It's not just putting body parts and other body parts.

1:12:52Xander Marin:It requires us to be vulnerable. It requires us to be present in the moment. It requires us to get better at our communication. So all of those skills can trickle out into the rest of the relationship. And I think the study is also an indicator that sex is not just a nice to have. It's not just the little sprinkles on top of the sundae. It's a crucial, essential part of a relationship. It's the glue.

1:13:18Vanessa Marin:It really is the glue. And that shouldn't be a surprise because what is the difference between a really close friendship and a relationship? It's the sex, right? Like, unless you're having sex with all of your friends, which most people are not. In LA. Hey, in LA. It's something I've learned about this place. No judgment. But the vast majority of people, that is really, truly the differentiating factor. Like you were saying, I think that when you just invest in the relationship, you go, you know what, we're in a dry spell. It's tough. Let's just roll with that and work on the other stuff. Yeah, you are developing a friendship.

1:13:56Vanessa Marin:You're developing or you're developing a really solid roommate relationship. You have all the tasks, everything on lock around the house. Okay, cool. I do this. You do that. We're great. We coexist together really well. Yeah. And then, you know, there's like the inertia element too with sex. Like, have you ever been, like, if you've been in a situation where you start having a lot of sex with someone, you tend to keep having a lot of sex with them. Once you get into a dry spell, it's so much easier to stay doing what you're doing. And so when you kind of train yourself into a dry spell, it's so much harder to get out of it.

1:14:30Vanessa Marin:You gotta, you gotta get that inertia. It becomes like a thing. Like it just becomes its own, its own thing. Every day that goes by. Yeah. It gets harder and harder. I want to ask about so you were having the experience of feeling sort of emasculated out of your masculine in in your process of transitioning to working within the business, etc. What what has it been like for you as like breadwinner? Like, do you feel I'm in my masculine? Do you feel in your feminine? Like, what has been your journey with that? Because there's a lot of women listening that feel like they're in their masculine all the time are the breadwinners, etc.

1:15:04So what have you felt?

1:15:06Xander Marin:for me because my work feels so creative i think it keeps me feeling in touch with my feminine um and it and because we've really like built this together like we did have that period of time where i was primarily the breadwinner but it was so short that i never really fully talk on took on that identity and also i saw you working your ass off to provide in other ways even though you felt like you weren't doing anything. I felt very supported. But I think for women who feel like they're stuck in that breadwinner role, I think a lot of it still has to come to does come down to receiving. We get so stuck in that role of, you know, I'm the one doing everything.

1:15:47Xander Marin:And I think that there's a way like a perverse kind of way that we start we feel really good about that like say underline double click like i'm doing everything oh my gosh very you know synchdemonious no one's asking no one's asking for anything but i'm doing everything yeah like i remember i remember being young and i remember my mom was like doing some stuff for everyone at the house i was like we didn't ask her to do this and she's mad at us because she did it and now it's like it was some weird thing i was like why do we keep yeah so i think we have to allow ourselves to receive in other ways and maybe you know financially that's not going to be the thing right now but can you allow to be cared for allowed to be taken care of in other ways yes and that would be just sorry i want to make sure on this because how much of it is the woman's responsibility to speak to slow down to ask for to receive how much would you say it's the man's responsibility because sometimes in these conversations, it does get tricky.

1:16:47And I noticed my women are so willing to take it on, learn the things, do the things, communicate. And I'm like, how much of it is on them and how much of it is on the partner?

1:16:56Xander Marin:That's a great question. And I would say it's on both. I think all of us need to ask for what we want, what we need. We need to ask our partner to do things to take care of us. And I think it's part of being a good partner to notice. not that it's your job to mind read or to know your partner better than they know themselves but to pay attention and to ask questions like is this something you need more of could I do this for you I think it's both how are you guys feeling like to kind of take a turn how are you guys feeling like AI is impacting sex because we are a generation where less people are having sex right there's statistics that people are having less sex but yet it feels more sexualized online or on the internet or in the world in a way?

1:17:46Or how are you guys sort of understanding that? Couples need to start talking about AI now.

1:17:52Xander Marin:We're entering a really interesting period of time. And AI is just going to take over so many aspects of life. Honestly, as a therapist, I'm worried about how it's going to impact relationships. And not enough couples are talking about it now. So you need to start defining your boundaries in your relationship things like are you comfortable with your partner venting about you to ai i i just saw an article a viral article did you see this it was like a viral sub stack of this woman's like i broke up with my boyfriend because i saw his chat gpt and basically had seen that he had been processing and talking to chat gpt and it was almost like a journal and chat gpt was like you should break up with her if you feel this way and so she got access to seeing all of his internal thoughts and external dialogue and it is like chat chabiti is a part of the relationship if you're processing the chat chabiti or with any chat yeah like are you comfortable with that are you comfortable with your partner developing a specific persona with their ai what if they're flirting with it what if they full-on have an ai companion are you comfortable with that there are just so many new aspects that i mean ways that we can relate to ai that most couples are not prepared for.

1:19:11Xander Marin:So I want couples to start talking about that now, figuring out their boundaries. But yeah, I mean, the wild thing about where we are at is that there are opportunities to get what

1:19:24Vanessa Marin:could feel like emotional connection or validation from a non-human, which I think is going to have a really big impact. And I think, you know, you talk about younger people are generally having way less sex. I mean, I think that there's so many aspects of that, but technology is playing such a huge part in that. Like, you know, the generation that grew up with Instagram and always being online, you know, there's so much fear. There's so much fear of being called out online. And I think, you know, when it comes to sex, people are super scared that someone is going to say, oh, this person was bad in bed.

1:20:04Vanessa Marin:This person did this, they did that. Isn't that weird? and it almost feels safer to just avoid the situation. And I think so many people in that kind of always online, Instagram, TikTok type of world, you can feel really starved for real emotional connection. Yeah, I agree. And then boom, you can get it from a chat bot that's there just to make you happy, to validate you. And I think that can definitely mess with your head and that can make it hard to want to get into a relationship or know how to kind of coexist with. Or even just being in an actual relationship with a human where the human has like feedback for you.

1:20:47And the human has emotions and are messy. And you have like, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. Just like, it's crazy to think about that, that we could now be approaching humans and all their complexities and being like, this is a problem for me because I have this AI that agrees with everything that I say. Like, and I think that's happening without us being aware of it, where it's the ease of this connection, the ease of this conversation. It's like, ChatGPT understands me or Claude understands me or they get me, but there's, you know, I'm noticing subconsciously that this person doesn't get me.

1:21:20It's becoming challenging. It's like all of these things.

1:21:23Xander Marin:Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I'm excited about AI in a lot of different ways. I think it's really cool. And we, you know, the cat's out of the bag at this point. We can't put it back in. Cat's awful. Yeah, the cats off the lap. But there also are some potentially really serious implications for relationships. I think rationally, we all know, okay, the AI is here to make me happy, and it says the things I want to say, and it's trying to make me feel good about myself. But when you're having that interaction over and over and over again, day after day, of course it's going to kind of sink into you and start to feel more real.

1:22:01There was a really fascinating Reddit thread a couple of months ago from a woman who she said she and her husband had a really happy, beautiful relationship.

1:22:10Xander Marin:They had a daughter. And he came to her one day completely out of the blue and said, I want to open up our relationship to a third. And she said, who is this? And he said, my AI girlfriend. And she said, I had no clue. clue like no clue that you know my husband's one of the last people i would ever imagine doing something like this and he's dead serious that he wants his ai girlfriend to be the third person in our relationship this is where honestly i was talking about my therapist with this right like lately i'm like how do what do i how do i work with this really savage part of me that i'm like if that was my husband i'd be like what the fuck are you talking about yeah like i think i have a very i'm very compassionate and very loving but there's also a part of me that gets kind of like a little savage where i'm just like what what kind of person what are you talking about yeah and i know it's like their brains are like making this connection but i'm like you have to have a p brain this is judgmental this is not correct this is not your opinion this is mine you have to have some sort of p brain if you're just like this is an actual connection person I'm going to bring this into my human marriage relationship.

1:23:23Sacred. What?

1:23:27Xander Marin:It's pretty wild. It's so wild. For the porn thing, do you guys feel like people should be having conversations about how they're using porn? Absolutely. Yeah.

1:23:37Vanessa Marin:I think not enough people even bring that topic up as one of the bounds of a relationship. Oh, that's my first date conversation. Oh, really? What do you ask? I've never seen it in my whole life. I will never watch it in my whole life. wow i'm a very weirdo and i think people can do whatever they want with it but i think i don't know what positive you could get from it personally and i find it to be overall

1:24:03Xander Marin:not helpful yeah what do you ask on a first date no i'm just kidding i would never ask that okay no on the first day i'm on the first day i'm literally winning them over i'm playing the roll of vixen to win them over. So your girl's at the farmer's market on Saturdays, every once in a while with my friends, I'm shopping at the local spots. When I was in Europe, I was shopping at these local markets. And one of the things I was noticing is I was so exceptionally eternally grateful that I could just buy with the tap of my phone from these local vendors in these local markets. I got this crystal necklace that I needed and I got to just do a little tap tap on square and make it super easy for myself.

1:24:45So Square is the support for today's episode. It's the business platform that helps sellers become neighborhood favorites. I always just notice that everything flows when people use Square. The checkout with Square is seamless, the staff isn't stressed, and they're actually able to connect with you because they're not fumbling with different systems. And I just love that it brings payments, point of sales, online orders, inventory, staffing, and more together in one place. So these local business owners can spend less time managing technology and more time doing what they love. And whether you're just getting started with growing your business, Square truly grows with you.

1:25:19It helps you run your business more smoothly, bringing payments, operations, and insights in together in one place. So you're ready for whatever's next. And right now, listeners can get up to$200 off Square hardware when you sign up for square.com slash go slash almost 30. that's sq u a r e.com slash go slash almost 30 to get started with square and build a setup that works the way you do so upwork i talk about upwork with my clients all the freaking time i was on the phone with one of my clients last night and i said girl you are no longer going to edit your podcast yourself you are going to outsource with upwork this was her budget she wanted to stay under a certain amount so we had to find someone that would be a perfect fit for her upwork is really the one-stop platform where you can find hire and pay expert freelancers across everything from marketing and business operations to web development design data and so much more so you can basically browse their profiles look through their work and even get help scoping for a role i was needing to hire someone for kajabi within our business to help us do kajabi and so i saw this little profile said oh she seems like a great fit we got on a call she was incredible with kajabi she was so incredible Whether you're a smaller business or if you're growing really quickly, their Business Plus gives you an access to the top 1 % talent on Upwork with AI-powered shortlisting that can match you with the right freelancer in under six hours.

1:26:39So this saves a lot of time. This is actually what I've been doing because it does take time to find people. It does take time to vet people. And it's kind of a thing. But I want you guys to be outsourcing more so you can enjoy your life. You can do what you need to do. And you can grow your business and still have time for freedom. And Upwork is that place. to have that. At Upwork.com right now, you can post your job for free, what you're looking for, who you need to support you. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to grow your business. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com.

1:27:09Xander Marin:Welcome to the restaurant. Tell me about your porn usage. I would never, but I would. I do talk about that with people that I'm dating and I'm not saying you can't watch it, but I'm having a conversation where I'm making them aware of my thoughts in my opinions and how insidious I think it can be in relationships and I how I think most women lose I think women's are the one really losing in it obviously you know there can be some benefit but the dopamine hit is 21 times more than it is with actual human connection I think it's making men have this like sliding really like really kind of like gross view of women and what they are looking for and what they want.

1:27:49I think it's siphoning so much energy and life force from men in a way that's just kind of making them numb to life.

1:27:57Xander Marin:Porn is something that I've really been changing my opinion about over the years. I think the basic idea of watching people have sex and be turned on by that, I think that's human nature, totally normal. It's been happening from the beginning of time. And so I used to think that being sex positive was also being porn positive. And as time has gone by and more research has come out about it, I just find so many problems with the porn industry. I mean, the kinds of porn that are being made, the way porn is being made, the way women are being depicted in it, the way that people watch porn, like how much they watch, the connection that they lose to their own body when they're watching, the performance issues that it's inducing.

1:28:49Xander Marin:I mean, performance issues are an enormous problem in young men right now, and it's almost entirely porn-induced. So I watched this documentary on it, and the porn stars making porns have to watch porn on their phones while they're having sex with a woman because their body only knows how to get aroused by looking at a screen, not with a physical body. Yeah. I mean, you're training your body to need that stimulation. So I find it really complicated. I mean, there are, and then I used to, for a while, I was saying, well, there's ethical porn producers that are trying to make better porn that's diverse and more realistic.

1:29:28Xander Marin:And then it would come out that the ethical porn producer is actually horribly mistreating their actors. So now at this point, I don't have any other resources and I'm starting to really consider. yeah what i mean there really isn't a benefit that we're getting from it yeah sure it can be hot to watch but there are plenty of other ways that you can get turned on and feel good i thought

1:29:49Vanessa Marin:of it actually really interesting parallel when you were saying you know like watching people have sex has been something that humans have been doing forever it's like a weird parallel is like okay well we agree that social connection is a good thing and it's something that we've been doing forever and when social media first came out i was like oh great like ways to be more socially connected with people right and but then it's advanced to a point now where it's literally an addictive process scrolling through reels or tiktoks right and so it's like it's not it's not that oh god like social media is horrible it's the way that it is the way that it is embodied right now and what we do is is problematic it's also this free things social media is free Porn is free in a lot of ways.

1:30:41Now AI is free. I was reading this article on AI and it was talking about kind of like the, it was like more fear around the future of AI, but it was talking about like, why is AI free? And it's free to get us addicted and using and all of that. So then it can charge in the future or can kind of like do these things, but it's getting something from it being free. And now we're becoming completely reliant on it. And yeah, I think for me, like I've been in that process where we've had you know sex workers on and we've talked about that stuff and they were they were so helpful actually expanding my mindset about about the space but i think there was a part of me that was like am i not being sex positive or women positive if i'm not liking porn or something like that but i feel like i've just sort of come into my own i just my own confidence of like this is really how i feel and i've just seen it be so harmful to so many people's relationships and especially with children and like younger people watching like do you know the average age

1:31:38Xander Marin:that a kid sees porn eight yeah it's horrifying like i just that's horrifying i can't fathom that being eight years old and being exposed and watching like a woman get beat or watching this like this is the whole thing about my whole thing is i think it's one of those what is this type of argument um where where it's almost like the type of argument they take the highest expression of and they're like, well, what of this? Or they take the lowest expression of it. But it's like, if you are like a child watching porn, you have the opportunity to see horrible things happening to women. And of course there is porn that could be healing.

1:32:13But it's like, wow, how that must be impacting their psyches and, you know, things.

1:32:20Xander Marin:And especially because we don't talk about sex that openly. I mean, most kids, if you're lucky, you get the talk when you're like 16 and you're like, mom, dad, I already know. Don't talk to me about it. Most people get nothing at all. So if the only education that you're getting about sex is seeing porn and you're thinking that's how it works, that's what it's supposed to be like, that's a really big problem. Yeah. So what would you say couples then with the porn conversation there, just having an open dialogue? Obviously, if the partner's using it, it's not, you know, it may seem like I have, I would be inducing shame, but it's like you would want to just be open about where you're at, what your desires are.

1:32:59how this is impacting you and sort of having the conversation about something like this because it's impacting both of you.

1:33:05Xander Marin:Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's some simple guidelines that people can follow too, like not watching porn every single time you masturbate, like having certain times where you're not watching it. Also not getting fixated on when you orgasm. A lot of people, they'll start scrolling through for that like perfect clip to orgasm too. So just watching something all the way through and, you know, letting yourself have an orgasm whenever you have an orgasm and also really trying to actually pay attention to your body while you're watching it instead of getting lost and what's in front of you. So even a couple tweaks like that could be better.

1:33:40That's powerful. What is the one thing that you've learned in the past year that you've just been – has really shifted the way that you're teaching and approaching what you do?

1:33:53Xander Marin:Having more fun with sex. that has been one of the biggest um like journeys for us i think we you know we both had the tendency to take sex very seriously i think most of us do you know we want to be sexy and seductive but one of the greatest joys of xander starting to do content with me is that we have been able to be a lot more playful about it like we have on our instagram account we do this series where we try out really weird sex positions that we've found on the internet and like see can they actually work i don't know this looks very strange and so they usually don't yeah they usually don't spoiler alert they're usually just for show what's been the craziest genitals are nowhere near each other

1:34:39Vanessa Marin:yeah no i mean that's honestly is most of them are like you're at an angle where there would be a like 90 degree mismatch between genitals and it's like yeah this ain't happening

1:34:49Xander Marin:so that's another thing when you're a kid like you see stuff and you're like whoa and then you're like wait what yeah my penis hasn't been that way honestly but yeah the like the sillier that we've gotten in our own sex life the like the more fun we've had i think realizing that we don't have to take it so seriously has been so freeing i actually just last week i saw this really great reel from this creator who came up with something that she called fuck it fridays and for her it was she took 15 minutes every Friday to like shoot her shot. So pitch herself to something, apply for a job, like things she thought she had no chance at.

1:35:28Xander Marin:It was just like, fuck it, I'm going to do it. And it got me thinking, I mean, obviously the name is perfect for sex too, but if we could have that same sort of attitude towards sex and just say, okay, we're going to have a sex, it's going to be our fuck it Friday sex date. We're just going to pretend we don't know anything about each other and the ways that we've been having sex. Like, fuck it, let's just try. what would it be like to try this position what would it be like to role play this silly fantasy what would it be like to try to caress the backs of your knees and you know see if I can make you feel good there but I think you know in long-term relationships it often feels like the like the window of what defines sex gets super narrow yeah I mean there hasn't been in a relationship where you're like yeah it's 30 seconds of making out 20 seconds of like some boob groping maybe we do a little hand stuff yeah for like 30 seconds and then we're on to the intercourse so you can predict exactly the layout of what's going to happen and so being able to bring that like beginner's mind back to sex and say like yeah what would it be like to try this thing that we haven't done i mean it could be really fun this is crazy yeah she's really loving you guys.

1:36:42Oh, she's so cute. I love that you guys have your cards.

1:36:45Xander Marin:Yeah. The sex cards. So tell me about how can our audience who are now excited about stepping into their relationship with more communication, more of an understanding of their partner, ways in which they can connect more deeply with sex. What are some of the tools that you guys have for people? So you can find all of our stuff on our website at vmtherapy.com. I think the best starting point is our ultimate foreplay guides. So we love teaching people sexual technique. It's like we all want to be amazing in bed. But where did we ever learn other than porn, which is not a good place to learn.

1:37:23Vanessa Marin:Definitely not during the talk.

1:37:24Xander Marin:Yeah. So true. So we love. I'm from Ohio. We never got the talk. We just got the chlamydia. This is herpes. The no. Yeah. We just got the images of herpes on the screen. Oh, fun. Yeah. We were like, okay. My version of it was my parents said, if you have any questions, you can ask us. that's classic but it was very clear that it was like don't ask us anything of course you got a

1:37:45Vanessa Marin:porn talk right yeah i got a yeah i got a i got a porn talk i got some other talk that i completely tuned out and all i all i came away from that with was a fear of like small penises and i'm like i'm sure that's not what my dad was trying to share like you better have a But it was like, I think that he was trying to share something about how like, how maybe how like, you know, he used to be anxious about size, but then he realized it's all about enjoyment. And I was like, all I took away from that was, wait, I should be, wait, you're my dad. So if you were worried about that, should I be worried about that?

1:38:28Vanessa Marin:Totally. He's just checking. He's like, if you have a small dick son, you don't need to be worried. You're like, what? It's the motion of the ocean.

1:38:35Xander Marin:Totally. So yeah, we have our ultimate foreplay guides that walk you through specific techniques. And we have this really fun framework for being able to try new stuff with each other and without it feeling like awkward or embarrassing or uncomfortable.

1:38:50Vanessa Marin:Yeah, we got crazy feedback on those from people where it's like, oh, I thought I knew everything about like blowjobs and handjobs and, you know, going down on a woman. But like that took it up a notch.

1:39:02Xander Marin:Wow. Yeah, my partner was speechless afterwards. words wow eyes rolled back in the head yeah so those are really really fun to explore and we also have a sex positions guide that with positions that actually work where your penis actually can very well researched by us and then we wrote a book called sex talks the five conversations that will transform your love life because everybody knows you should be talking about your sex life but just like we just totally struggled like well what what do you say and how do you say it and when do you say it we wanted to figure out like exactly what people should do so we broke it down into these five conversations we walk you through exactly what to do we're very practical there's no like just just think about it just talk about it like here's what to do

1:39:49Vanessa Marin:yeah and there's a card deck that goes along with the book so yeah the book is broken down into these five categories types of conversations so we made a card deck that dives into each of those categories with conversation starters or prompts or there's some would you rathers type you know stuff to get the conversation going in each of those five categories so that it you know that can be a fun way to just randomly pick a card we did a lot of we looked at a lot of card decks relationship card decks doing our research on this it is wild what is out there half the cards in a lot of these decks are like this is gonna start a fight like you know like what don't

1:40:26Xander Marin:yeah it was like what's your least favorite thing about my parents i was like that is gonna start a huge fight don't do that that's diabolical yeah so we so no diabolical questions we took great

1:40:39Vanessa Marin:pains to have you know really nice positive neutral to positive questions you could have

1:40:45Xander Marin:sex with one of my friends who oh my god we actually should make that that should be like our april fool joke next year like diabolical sex questions funny where you're like guys we have a new deck guaranteed to start a fight guaranteed you want to do you want to break up with your

1:41:01Vanessa Marin:partner honestly 24 hours with this card deck and it's over world war that's actually really fun

1:41:08Xander Marin:and we might have to do that you should take that idea where can people connect with you both they can find us at vmtherapy.com or we are on instagram and tiktok at vanessa and zander at Xander with an X. And yeah, we love, we're mostly on Instagram. So we'd love to connect with your community. You can just shoot us a DM. Let us know you found out about us on the podcast. And we'd love to say hi. Amazing. You guys crushed. Thank you so much for coming. This was so much fun. Thanks for having us. So excited for audience probably knows you, but if they don't know you, I'm glad for this connection.

1:41:42So thank you guys so much. We'll see you on the next one. Love you. Bye. Thank you so much, Vanessa and Xander for coming on Almost 30. Again, they have a great book you guys can find called Sex Talks. And if you want more sex and almost 30 search sex almost 30 on Apple or Spotify or YouTube, wherever you listen to things, hopefully nothing crazy comes up. But you know, we got a tons of conversations on that. You can find me on Instagram at it's Krista and it's Krista.com for coaching retreat information. And I will see you on the next episode. I love you.