“We sort of get into this, you know, relational model. And look, when it's working, when sex is a form of intimacy and merging and lovemaking and a really dissolution of self boundaries, I mean, it's fantastic. It's such a relationship boost and expression of love that only sex can provide. But very often, you know, relational sex can become really rote. It can become really predictable. It can stop serving our need for kind of sexual expansiveness, which is what recreational sex can do, right? Embracing the aspects of sex, embracing variety, embracing that psychological stimuli. Right? I think that's where, especially for heterosexual couples, we don't know how to integrate the relational with the recreational…,” so says Dr. Ian Kerner, my guest today and a licensed psychotherapist and nationally recognized sexuality counselor who specializes in sex therapy, couples therapy and relational issues. Ian is a New York Times best selling author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman and the co-founder and co-director of the Sex Therapy program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychology.

Today we discuss his newest book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex: Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives as Ian shares the unique methodology he has used in his sex therapy practice to help countless couples rewrite their sex script in order to actualize their sexual potential. We don’t know how to talk about sex, Ian tells us, we have erotic minds but encounter shame around communicating what is in them, leaving us open to impersonal, predictable sex that stops serving our need for sexual expansiveness.

To avoid falling victim to the plague of rote sex, we must rediscover touch, desire, and fantasy, he tells us. By reimagining and rewriting our sex scripts to include both the physical and psychological components of arousal, the promised land of mutual pleasure is within reach. Ian gives us the tools to get comfortable with the discourse around intercourse, and leaves us with the stepping stones to bridge the gap between the sex we are having and the sex we want to be having.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

Putting language around sex…(8:15)
Integrating the importance of touch…(13:34)
Fantasy, psychological arousal and the key to good sex…(25:07)
The plague of ill-cliteracy...(40:57)

MORE FROM IAN KERNER:

So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex: Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives

She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman

Passionista: The Empowered Woman's Guide to Pleasuring a Man

Love in the Time of Colic: The New Parents' Guide to Getting It on Again

Follow Ian on Twitter

DIG DEEPER:

Come as You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life - Emily Nagoski

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449: Testing for De-escalation