Can You Love One Person and Still Want Someone Else? | Sex With Emily

0:00Emily Morse: One question I'm asked all the time is, Emily, what products do you actually recommend? And that's exactly why we created Shop Sex with Emily. Every product in the shop is something my team and I have personally researched and tested or recommended because we genuinely believe it can help you have better sex, stronger intimacy, and just more confidence in the bedroom. Whether you're shopping for yourself, your partner, or both of you, we've made it easy to find products that actually work. head to shopsexwithemily.com and discover your next favorite bedroom essential. So instead of like arguing like porn is normal and porn is cheating, ask what does my porn use bring up for you or what does porn in general bring up to you?

0:44Emily Morse: And if you're the person who's upset, instead of saying like you're disgusting, stop watching porn, try when I found out you're watching porn, I felt rejected because you haven't been initiating lately.

0:59You're listening to Sex with Emily. Thank you everyone for joining me. We are back with part two of the Best Sex Ever Tour, question and answer. Because listen, apparently you guys have a lot of questions about sex, which obviously I love. So since kicking off the tour in Chicago, Rosemont, Illinois, we've also been to Philly. And at every show, you guys submitted anonymous questions for me to answer live. And then there were so many people live answering questions that I couldn't get to all of them on stage. So I brought them home with me. And so what I love is that when I start going through all the questions from these last two stops on my tour, I started noticing some themes.

1:39You're asking about desire and relationships and how to talk about what you actually want, how to keep sex interesting when you've been together forever. And a surprising number of you, though, are asking about non-monogamy and opening up your relationships.

1:53Emily Morse: And these aren't just questions from the people who happen to be at the shows. These are the same things I hear from you literally every day, which is why I wanted to bring them here. Because one of my favorite things about doing the Best Sex Ever Tour is getting out from behind the microphone and actually being in a room with all of you. You know, after 20 years of doing this work, I'm getting this incredible, like, real-time snapshot of what people are struggling with, what you're curious about, what you're fantasizing about, and what we really, really still need to talk about when it comes to our sex lives.

2:24so today we're getting into more of the questions we couldn't answer on the stage and if you missed part one we released that last week and I just want to tell you that these conversations have been incredible I haven't stopped thinking about the shows and trust me you don't need to have been to any of these shows or even have heard part one these are just some really great questions I was like these are such good questions and join me on tour sexwithemily.com slash events. We'll also have that link in the show notes. The next stop is September 29th in Nashville. We're going to be in Detroit and some other shows in between.

2:59Find me everywhere. On all social, it's at sexwithemily, Instagram, TikTok, all the places. And make sure you're just subscribed to the newsletter. You can find that at sexwithemily.com. And if you want to watch the full video of this episode, head over to YouTube. Okay, let's get into your questions.

3:16Emily Morse: All right. I noticed something kind of wild going through all your questions from the Philly show. There was a lot of them. It was 11 pages, but eight of you asked about non-monogamy. That was the common theme. You asked about open marriages, polyamory, swapping, threesomes, lifestyle clubs. And I thought, okay, Philly, what's going on? But I actually think this has something bigger about where we are right now as a culture and society. People aren't just saying like, can I have security and novelty? Can I deeply love my partner and still desire other people? Can we change the rules of our relationship without completely destroying it?

3:53Emily Morse: And I don't think everyone suddenly needs to be non-monogamous, but I do think we're questioning the relationship rules we inherited. And we're realizing, hmm, wait, I actually get to talk about this? So I pulled a few of your questions because I think they get to the biggest thing you want to know about non-monogamy. So the first question was, how normal is non-monogamy? Well, it's way more visible and openly discussed than it's ever been because we now have language for all kinds of relationships. So it's ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, open relationships, monogamish, swinging. But here's what I find more interesting than asking, how many people are actually doing it?

4:34Why are so many people talking about it? That's what's so interesting. Because we're questioning this idea that there's one correct way to have a relationship. Does commitment have to mean sexual exclusivity?

4:46Emily Morse: Can you love one person and desire other people? Does one person have to fulfill every sexual and romantic need you have for the rest of your life? And I think that's why non-monogamy is so in the zeitgeist right now. And my position has not changed. I'm not pro-monogamy. I'm not pro-non-monogamy. I'm pro-conscious relationships, intentional relationships. having conversations in your relationship about what you're getting into before you even commit, walk down the aisle, all the things. Know what you've agreed to, know why you agreed to it, and make sure it's actually working for both of you.

5:26Here's a question that I got in the bucket. They said, I have great sex with my wife once or twice a week, and I crave having sex with other women when I travel alone or for work. Is that wrong? She would never approve. What do I do? first let me do this being attracted to other people doesn't mean there's something wrong with your marriage monogamy doesn't magically turn off your attraction to everyone else i think we all

5:51Emily Morse: know that right we can be deeply in love with our partner and then still notice this attractive person walking across the street right that just shut it off you can love your wife have amazing sex with her and want to have sex with somebody else both can be true here's the distinction Desire isn't an agreement. You're allowed to want it, but you're not automatically entitled to act on it. And the most important sentence in this question is this. She would never approve. Well, if that's how she truly feels, the question isn't, how do I convince my wife to let me sleep with other women? Because it sounds like you've already tried that.

6:32Emily Morse: The question is, can I consciously choose monogamy, knowing that choosing this relationship means I'm also choosing not to have certain other sexual experiences because every relationship structure gives you something and asks you to give something up. So sit with that one. The other question that came up was, hey, Emily, my spouse and I've been together for almost 20 years. We've been talking about and fantasizing about opening up our marriage? What conversations and actions should we take prior to advancing to the next stage of our relationship? We had another couple ask almost the exact same thing.

7:11Emily Morse: This is also from the show. They said they've been together for 16 years and they're already talking about boundaries. Here's some of the boundaries. No friends, no acquaintances, always use protection. They talk about which sex acts are on the table or off the table. Like some people say penetration's okay, but kissing is not, right? You get to decide. And how often they're allowed to meet people. That's great. But here's what I want couples to know. Don't only make rules about sex. Talk about feelings. Like what happens if one of you develops feelings for someone? Which, listen, you open it up, that could happen.

7:49What are you going to do about it? How are you going to handle it? How are you're going to openly talk about it? Because the people who are successfully navigate ethical non-monogamy practice rigorous honesty. So you can ask, can you have sleepovers? Can you text someone every day? Can you go away for a weekend? Can someone come into your home or do you only

8:09Emily Morse: meet them out at a hotel? How much do you want to know about what happens afterward? You know, some couples are like, I want to know everything that happened. I think it's super hot. I get turned on by hearing about your sexy night out. And some couples are like, if I hear anything, I'm going to be jealous. So we're all different and that's all okay, but you got to find out what works for them. Some couples do have something like we call compersion. And compersion is when we actually get joy and pleasure from hearing or seeing our partner have pleasure. That's like a real thing. Not everybody can access compersion or feel compersion and that's okay too.

8:47you. I'm just saying that's available. And here's a huge one. What happens when one of you says, I thought I could handle this, but now I'm really struggling.

8:56Emily Morse: Because newsflash, you can make every rule imaginal and still get jealous. You can still feel insecure. You can get scared. You can still fall in love. You cannot boundary and rule your way out of having human emotions. Like you cannot set this up so you don't have real emotions. So the safeguard here isn't like, we have this 47-page rulebook. The safeguard is knowing that when things get messy, you can tell each other the truth. So know that the people I know successfully, the couples I've worked with who have successfully navigated these relationships spend a lot of time talking and processing.

9:36In fact, I always joke they probably spend more time processing and talking than actually having sex.

9:41Emily Morse: Are you prepared for that? Okay, this is from Zach. He's 43. three. He was also in Philadelphia and he said, my wife and I recently opened up our marriage. She is a boyfriend and they are happy deepening their relationship. On the other hand, I've had trouble finding something truly exciting. When I make a connection, I realize sex has all this pressure and other meanings I've attached to it. The marriage opened up a little traumatically for me and along with my past shame around sex, it just carries too much weight. How can I break free of this and find my joy in polyamory? Zach, I love this question because this is something people don't necessarily put into the fantasy of opening up a relationship.

10:22Opening a relationship doesn't mean you're going to have equal experiences. Your wife may meet somebody immediately

10:28Emily Morse: while you're kind of struggling to get a date. One person might make casual sex and the other develops a relationship. So Zach, I want to tell you this. Stop trying to win at polyamory. Your wife's boyfriend doesn't mean you need to go out and find the equivalent. Like if every date has to prove that opening your marriage was worth it, of course sex is going to feel loaded. And it sounds to me like you have some past shame and you've struggled with this stuff in the past. So it would make sense that opening up wouldn't automatically make it a lot easier for you to connect sexually with somebody.

11:01Emily Morse: So my goal for you is to just take sex off the table for a minute. Your journey, your exercise, your homework is to meet people, flirt, date, get curious, like figure out what you actually want, not what you think you're supposed to have because your wife has it. Get comfortable meeting people, feeling safe with them. And then you might feel the pressure melts away once you find someone that you actually like and want to maybe escalate to sex. So it sounds like, you know, because when you feel pressure and it sounds like you have pressure and shame, desire can't live in the same space. So we got to work with your anxiety around it.

11:44And it sounds to me like just getting out there and meeting people is really going to help you settle into it. So here's the big takeaway from all these questions and what around the non-monogamy is I want everyone who's curious about non-monogamy to think about this. you don't necessarily have to act on the fantasy to learn from it. Like maybe you're fantasizing about a threesome or you want to watch your partner with someone else or you're turned on by swapping. But before you do anything, any of these things, ask each other, what about this fantasy is actually turning us on? Like why is it a turn on?

12:20Is it because it's a novelty? Is it really hot for you to watch your partner be desired? Is it about being desired by someone new? You know, is it that you have the permission but maybe you don't really want to act on it?

12:31Emily Morse: Is it that you miss the freedom of being sexually free again? Because maybe you decide you generally want to explore non-monogamy, but you also might decide, you know what? The fantasy about it is just giving me information that something's actually missing from our monogamous sex life that can't be fulfilled by opening it up. So one more message that I got from Regina, she said, your podcast gave me the courage to propose an open marriage to my husband. And now we're learning and loving and growing together. So thank you. And I love that. Thank you, Regina. It was so great to meet you in person.

13:04I do these little meet and greets after the show, which was amazing to meet you all. Because ultimately, non-monogamy isn't more evolved than monogamy. And monogamy isn't more committed than non-monogamy. They're just relationship structures. They're just saying, we've decided to structure it this way. And some people are open. Like, think about everything in our life. You might be a 1099 employee, or you might be a W-2 employee.

13:27Emily Morse: You might rent, you might buy, you might like, we structure relationships all the time in our life. But when it comes to relationships, marriage comes to committed relationships, monogamy forever since it has been the only structure. And so every time we venture from there, we think we're doing something wrong. So again, the goal isn't an open relationship. It's an honest relationship where you choose a structure together. All right, this is from Jess in the audience, and she's 34. And she said, I'm a woman in my 30s, and I'm recently out as queer and bi, and I really want to pleasure women, but I'm super intimidated.

14:06Do you have any advice or tips? Okay, well, first, Jess, love this for you. Because listen, first off, you do not need to show up already knowing how to have sex with women. You're not like auditioning for the Lesbian Olympics. but honestly if there were lesbian olympics i think that would be really really highly watched program you're allowed to be new at this honestly we're allowed to be new at everything we all think like we have to be experts all the time we are so afraid of just like the curiosity and beauty that comes with being a beginner but i think one of the hottest things you can do is be honest truly tell her hey i'm newly out i'm really attracted to you and i really want to explore this and i

14:47Emily Morse: I haven't had a lot of experience with women yet. Be honest, just like that. You don't have to pretend you know what you're doing. And in fact, curiosity and communication are gonna make you much better, a much better lover than coming and thinking, I know what women want. And it's funny because I'm reading this. It's like, I feel like I get this from men a lot too. We're like, I wanna blow our mind. I wanna be the best lover. Tell me everything to do. It's like sex just doesn't work like that. We get to learn in every relationship. We notice, we listen. we're curious. So most of being a great lover has to do with those things than just like checking off all these amazing techniques off the list.

15:24So now Jess, you're a woman.

15:26Emily Morse: So yes, you definitely have some embodied information. Like you know how sensitive a clitoris can be. You know that sometimes something feels amazing and then suddenly it's too much, right? You know that feeling of like, oh, that's great. And then you're like, stop. You understand that arousal takes time, but your body's information and it's important information, but it's not an instruction manual for hers. So even if you have the same parts, every woman's body is different. So your job isn't to know what women like because not every woman like the same thing. Your job is to learn what this woman likes.

15:59Emily Morse: So some simple tips are like go slowly, kiss, make out, touch her whole body. You don't have to be like, okay, now I got to go down on her and prove that I'm good at this. No, there's not a checklist. There's not something you got to like prove to show that like this is queer sex and communicate while you're doing it. You can be like, do you like this? Do you want more pressure? Do you want less pressure? You know, should I keep going? And one of my favorites is just like, show me how you like it. Like let her guide your hand. And most importantly, this goes for everybody. Whoever you're having sex with, pay attention to her breathing.

16:37Emily Morse: Pay attention to her sounds, her hips. Is she moving towards you? Is she moving You might not like this, but take orgasm off the table as the goal. The goal is exploration. So finally, like what happens if you reframe about this, like worry about being good at sex with women and get curious about this person's body? The last thing you asked was finding a partner. And I think it could be lovely for you to be with a woman who has maybe more experience than you and knows that you're new. But you don't need this experienced woman to teach you. because what you're really looking for is someone who's generous, who you can trust, who communicates and makes you feel safe enough to say like, I've never done this before.

17:20Emily Morse: Show me what you like. That's it. It's all you need. And just one more thing is like, you don't have to prove you're queer by sleeping with women. There's no number of women that you got to sleep with. There's no sexual act you have to perform and no experience you need to like be in the queer or bi club. So again, don't worry about perfect technique. The hottest thing you can bring is to your first experience with anyone is curiosity. So just go slow, pay attention, stay curious, and let her teach you about her body. So then we got one. Oh, this is a good one. Why do women get mad when men watch porn?

17:59This was another question. First, women don't automatically get mad when men watch porn. Plenty of women watch porn themselves, watch it with their partners or genuinely do not care. A lot of women are like, good, go on with your bad self. Go watch the porn you want. But when a woman does get upset about her partner watching porn, I usually want to know what does the porn watching represent to her? Now, sometimes it brings up comparison. Does he want someone that looks like that? Like, am I not attractive enough? Is he wishing my body looks like hers? And I can tell you about my experience when I was in my 20s and found my partner's porn, I lost my mind.

18:36I was so upset because I was like, I'm having the best sex of my life. We are madly in love. And clearly he wants someone who is six foot two, blonde, or whatever she was taller than me. I'm five foot two. So she seemed a lot taller than me. She's blonde and had large boobs. And I'm like, okay, well, we have to break up because he doesn't want me. I didn't understand anything about porn watching habits. I made the assumption that I wasn't enough. And that can't be further from, for some people, maybe, but for the majority

19:03Emily Morse: of people watching porn, they develop their porn habits early on. They use it as release. They use it to help with stress. They just have certain things that they like to watch in porn and it doesn't have anything to do with you. Now, sometimes when you find the partner watches porn, it does feel like rejection because, listen, maybe you've been trying to have sex with your partner and he keeps saying he's tired and he's not in the mood. But then she discovers he's masturbating to porn and that's not really a porn problem anymore. That's a relationship problem. She's thinking like, you have sexual energy.

19:37Emily Morse: You are getting an erection, just not with me. Or sometimes it's secrecy. It's like they never discussed porn. They never even talked about it. He said he wasn't watching it and then she discovers that he is and then she's pissed and now this issue isn't about what he watched. It's that she feels lied to. Or it's about the way someone's using it. Like the porn is interfering with partnered sex. Like maybe you can't get aroused without it. Maybe you're like, I cannot get turned on unless there's porn playing in the background. And you're choosing it over being with your partner. Then we might have something to look at.

20:07Then it's affecting your relationship. And that's worth paying attention to. The bottom line here is that I don't think that every woman can't stand their partner watching porn.

20:16Emily Morse: It's usually not just about the porn. But what I ask couples to do is couples have to talk about what does sexual exclusivity mean to them? Does it mean porn? Can your partner have an OnlyFans account? Can they like other people's posts or follow other people on Instagram? Is it sexting? Like everyone draws a line somewhere different. Like this can also be a values issue because some people genuinely don't want porn in their relationship and that's allowed too. But you can't assume that your partner shares your same definition of cheating. So instead of like arguing like porn is normal, porn is cheating, ask what does my porn use bring up for you?

20:56Emily Morse: Or what does porn in general bring up to you? And if you're the person who's upset, instead of saying like, you're disgusting, stop watching porn, try when I found out you're watching porn, I felt rejected because you haven't been initiating lately. Or I felt insecure because these people didn't look like my body. Or I felt deceived because you told me no. right and here's why like Brit you have to explain it to your partner because usually the fight's happening yeah it's it seems like it's about the porn but the real conversation is about what's happening beneath it it's about trust and desire and insecurities or your intimate relationship and the agreements you made to each other so the bottom line is that porn doesn't automatically threaten a relationship not being able to talk about it honestly about your sex lives can impact the relationship.

21:46So we just got to keep talking about all of this and don't make assumptions. So in fact, this entire block of questions

21:55Emily Morse: in this episode is really about communicating and making sure that if you made a commitment that you are in the same type of relationship. Have we agreed to the same kind of commitment? What are our values and our boundaries? Whether it's open, ethical non-monogamy, whether it's porn. So that's what I hope you all take away from today's episode is to go have that conversation that you've been wanting to have, that you've been meaning to have. And that's what I want for all of you. As always, you can find me on all social media. You can subscribe to the podcast, sign up for our newsletters. People love that.

22:29Emily Morse: And I just appreciate you all. Thank you so much for listening and let me know, was it good for you? Find me, DM me, wherever you get your information. All right, everyone, have a great day. Thanks for listening.