 Hello, Psych2Go viewers. Our guest for today's stream is Sex and Relationship Coach, Kaitlyn B. Kaitlyn is the host of her own amazing YouTube channel, which has garnered half a million views and 65 million, sorry, half a million subscribers and 65 million views in just three years. Kaitlyn is also the host of her own show, Good Sex, which is on Discovery Plus, where she helps people achieve their best sex life with her expert knowledge, scientific approach, and fun and bubbly personality. Welcome, Kaitlyn. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. Of course, we're so happy to have you here. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself in your background, Kaitlyn? Yeah. So I actually started as a researcher. I knew, let me go all the way back, I knew from being like as early as being a teenager that I was going to help people enjoy sex and have better sex. I knew before I had sex, I like, I just knew this is what I was going to do. And a part of that has to do with me discovering self-pleasure and orgasm like earlier on in life before I knew what they were. When I was like really, really young and innocent and naive and just exploring my body. And then when I got older and I got to like sex head and I learned that these things were supposedly bad. But my personal experience was like, those are good. It feels good. I sleep better and like it's enjoyable for me. So I came into this like sex ed and I grew up in the United States in the Midwest. And what I knew from my own personal experience just didn't mesh with what we were being taught in school. This is bad and it's dirty and it just didn't make sense for me. And so I knew then that I was going to dedicate my life to helping people to enjoy their sexuality and enjoy their eroticness and enjoy their bodies. And I had no idea how I was going to do it. I became a professional researcher. So I worked in a Chlamydia lab. I did testing. I ran studies. I focused a lot on bisexual and queer women. And then I realized that I was going to be chained to a desk my whole life. If I continued to go down this research route, the best case scenario was I was going to like teach and people would read the articles that I published and the research that I created. But it would be shared among people that were already in my field. Right. Like other researchers. And I couldn't deal with that. I really wanted to have an impact on people directly. And so I dropped out of my PhD program. I started my coaching career. I started my YouTube channel and I have been working in one-on-one and in small groups and directly to the people who are having sex ever since. I love that. I love that you turned something that you were interested into something that you wanted to use to help others. It's empowering and amazing. So thank you for that. And I do watch your show and it's amazing and just hilarious and interesting and fun. Thank you. Yeah. And now it's on Max too. So if you don't have to stream it on Max, just so you know, guys, Discovery plus is like the TLC network, right? So you can just find it on there. It's an amazing show. So okay. So first question. So for starters, in what ways do you believe sex is good for a person's mental health and well-being? Yeah. This is such a phenomenal question because on one hand, we've all, I hope we've all had an experience, whether it was solo or with a partner of feeling so much more alive, relaxed, happy, joyful, after an erotic encounter, you know? And I'm not going to say like after an orgasm because it's not just this one piece of it, right? It's the entire experience. And so I think that on a really like individual personal level, we hopefully have all had an experience of our life being made better, our ability to think clearly or like lift a brain fog or feel like deeply connected. And I think one of the things that we're going to talk a lot about in our conversation today is like acceptance and vulnerability because sex is so deeply connected to feeling that we are acceptable as we are and that it's safe to be vulnerable because we're going to be accepted. So zooming out for a second, I think that sex and feeling like we're sexually interesting to other people or giving an immense amount of pleasure to ourself is going to naturally be very good for our mental state, our emotional state, our spiritual health. You know, one thing we don't talk about enough is the way that sex is tied to spirituality. Absolutely. Yeah, right. People like talk about sex like it's just like an urge and definitely talk about it like it's something almost like deviant, but you're right. It's something that's beautiful and it's actually very spiritual and emotional. One thing I like to compare sex to is like sleeping or eating because if you're really thinking about it, our DNA, our DNA, it replicates itself through sex. And so if you think about it from a DNA perspective, our DNA really truly exists only to replicate itself. So it creates us fully as the fully formed humans that we are just to get us to combine our genes with other humans and keep our species going. And so sex is one of the primary directives of your DNA and therefore it's one of the reasons that you're like, you know, one of the core needs that you have as a human right along with like sleeping, eating, feeling connected to other people, but we don't elevate sex to sleeping or eating because it won't kill you, right? If you don't have sex with yourself or others, you're not going to die. We're not going to really die like your heart won't stop. Like you might die a small death or you emotional death. You know, you might feel like you're going to die, but your heart won't stop eating. So we don't treat it the same way that we treat food or sleep or clean water or air debris. But actually it is just as important to a quality of life and to living a joyful life as any of those other things. And so it makes, of course, it's going to be tied to our wellbeing and our self-esteem. Like it has to be. Like it's tied to the ego in a lot of ways too, negative and positive ways, right? Yeah, I mean, well, I think that's actually a great question. Like thinking about our ego as like our sense of self and what lets us know that we're different from other people and protects us from, you know, being taken advantage of. Like our ego as our self definition and our relationship to sex and sexuality and vitality. Because, you know, again, our ability as a being as like an animal to pass on its genes gives us a lot of information about our worthiness and our value. Now, our mind and our psychology is different than that, right? Like we can overcome those, those messages that we're getting on a biological level. But you know, in my work as a coach, I work with a lot of men. And a lot of men that come to receive coaching from me are maybe experiencing sexlessness or unwanted celibacy, or they're maybe in a sexless marriage. And one of the things that I am constantly saying to them is look, when you're not participating in sex and sexuality, even if it's just solo doesn't have to include another person. But when you're not participating in your life erotically, your body starts to shut down in other ways. Because it doesn't feel so alive anymore, because it's not in a position where it's going to pass on its DNA, right? And it's vital that you have a erotic relationship with yourself for your ego, for your own well being. And then yeah, how you are, how other people see you and reflect your sexuality and your eroticism back to you also has huge impact on your ego. Absolutely. And there's no reason to feel guilty about it. Because I think that often, maybe people feel guilty about being like so sexual, they shut in. No, it's it's you shouldn't you should say you shouldn't feel guilty about eating. Now, if you feel guilty about what you're eating, you know, if like you every night you see you consume like a sleeve of cookies and you feel enter I've been there. Right. That's food that's the at issue, right? It's your relationship to food. Sex is not the issue. It's the relationship that we have to sex. And I want to say, first of all, your relationship to sex is influenced by your culture, by the family that you grew up with, by your early childhood experiences, by your adult early sexual experiences, like no one exists in a vacuum. And so your relationship to sex is influenced by all of these different things. And most of us received our relationship to sex, we were sort of like told what it's going to be. Right. Yeah. This is this is how sex is going to be for you. This is how you should think about it, how you should relate to it and you should do it and with who and it really takes something it takes it takes a really conscientious and vulnerable self reflection to say what do I want my relationship to sex to be in the comments. I keep seeing I see a lot of people talking about virginity in the comments. I'm not following that that closely, but that word keeps kind of hanging. And even the concept of virginity is very culturally based. Right. I mean, if we didn't have we have we have a whole specific word to describe someone who's like pre partnered sex. Right. And what that even means in a different culture and different families could be very, very different. And so so it's really important for us to ask like do I want to feel the way that I feel or is this a feeling and a thought and a belief system that maybe isn't working for me and I could do the internal work to ask what thoughts and beliefs would serve me better. Absolutely. Thank you for that. It was an amazing explanation. And so then how does sex help people connect and bond on an emotional level? Yeah. So the physical level is so obvious. Right. Like we combine body parts in one way or another. But what we what lives inside of our body both emotionally and energetically and spiritually also combines and connects when we're being intimate, when we're having sex with another person. Trust me, I have, you know, I have tried in many years during college in my 20s to like divide those two and be like, my body can do one thing while my emotions are doing another. And there's like a little bit of truth to that, you know, but anytime that you're like really like intimate with another person, even if your clothes are completely on, there is an emotional piece because you're an emotional being. You don't get to just like leave that stuff at the door. You know, not in a healthy, sustainable way anyways. Right. And so I don't want to put the idea out there that you can't have sex without being emotionally connected to another person. That's, you can do a lot of things without being emotionally connected to them. But when you're really intimate and really vulnerable with another person, naturally your emotions are going to be a part of that. And our emotions are one of the things that we've been taught to restrain the most. We've been taught that like showing our emotions is inappropriate that we shouldn't have emotional outbursts because those scare other people or we might make other people feel responsible for our emotions. And therefore we often are in a place where we're trying to like keep those completely separate. But when we are open to sharing them and like really exposing ourselves and our emotionality and another person is safe to do that with, the level of depth that you can reach in your intimacy far exceeds just what your physical bodies are capable of doing when they're mixing and remixing against each other. Oh, that's perfect. And I totally agree. And just going off of that, I want to know since you have the show on Discovery Plus, Good Sex where you help couples improve their sex life, a research study published by the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that a lack of communication with, you know, about sex is strongly correlated with sexual dysfunction. How does communication help improve one's sex life? Yeah, we're coaches, therapists, professionals, we're so guilty of falling back on this word like communication, communication, communication. And it's so true that communication is the heart of everything. But I want to back up and even just describe what we mean when we say communication. Because, you know, here we are, we're on this live stream and we're speaking in the English language back and forth to each other, right? But each of the words that we're using to describe a thing, we're describing an intangible, like sex is not a tangible thing. Like, you know, you can point to it, you can know when you see it, but like, what's your definition of sex and mine and his and that we're going to have a slightly different mental image. And we're using the same word to describe this very complicated thing. And so when we're communicating, we're doing our best to use our words in combination with our body language and the non physical ways that we communicate with one another to describe something that is intensely complicated, tremendously nuanced, and you know, quite frankly, a little bit emotionally fraught and taboo a lot of the time. And so our ability to actually put meaning to words, and then hear what our partner means when they're using those words. So much of our pleasure and our ability to create what we want to create in the world rests on our ability to do that. So when we're communicating, what we're actually doing is we're mostly describing, right? And we're trying to describe what it's like for me, it's I'm trying to describe how I feel when you say that what I want to create, even though I have this fantasy and I'm a little afraid to share it, how do I describe it? And our ability to create a great sex life relies almost wholly on our ability to speak, to understand and to be understood about what it is that we want to create, what it is that we really desire. And because it is so fraught and because it is such a such a difficult skill and so few of us are taught anything about how to communicate about sex and our desires at any point by anyone who we love or our schools or anything. And that's true no matter where you grew up, no matter what, and even the families that are best at communicating, it's still it's such a it's such an important piece of our ability to relate to other people. It's something that like I've been a sex and really I've been teaching since I was a peer sex educator in high school. I have 20 years of experience in high school in high school. Yeah, I've taught like I said, and I was a peer like leader in college as well. And then obviously did my graduate school, I've worked for LGBT organizations and homelessness organizations. And I've been teaching people how to communicate teaching myself how to communicate about sex for 20 years. And I am still learning it's it's something that you'll never really be done with. And the same is true, I hope for your erotic life for your sexuality, you'll always need to communicate to yourself, and to other partners. And the reason I want to just pinpoint that communicating to yourself is because again, we're in the live stream, I'm keeping an eye on the chat. And I've seen a lot of people saying things like, Ew gross, my eyes are bleeding. And I know there's like a little bit of like naïve day, there's a little bit of like immaturity and like there's some there's a little bit of humor in that. Let's keep it, let's keep it polite. It's like, be aware to the degree that is possible for you of the way that you communicate even to yourself about sex. Because when you see something, what goes through here is going to be very important in creating what's going to come out here, when it comes to a partner, or a lover, spouse. So this communication matters. And this has to actually come first before you even speak and communicate with another person. Absolutely, I agree. And this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to like dismantle that stigma, or that awkwardness around sex, because it should just be something that's normalized, right? Yeah. Yeah, and we like a little taboo, you know, we like American, a group in the US said like, Americans love that sex like is, we love it, we pretend to hate it, but we love that it's taboo, like we love that sex is a little secretive. Yeah, because it makes us feel like there's a there's an excitement to that. Yeah, actually, I teach a system called the erotic blueprints from my mentor Chaya. And one of the erotic blueprints is the kinky blueprint. And this is a blueprint for this is someone people, folks like me, who like to feel like we're getting away with something like to feel like maybe we're getting in trouble, like to feel like, oh, I'm not supposed to be in the oh, I'm not supposed to think about this wrong. I'm so dirty. And so it's really good to be conscious of the and by the way, I want to say that that's not just a sexual thing. Okay. Before I was a sexually mature adult, I was like trying to get in trouble at school or trying to sneak out right like it's not just a sexual thing to like want to feel like we're a little bad and we're making the limits of breaking the rules. You know, there's a part of deviance that stigmatized, but there's also a part of it that people find attractive and sexy and mysterious. And oh my God, I got away with that. I jumped into the club. You didn't even see my idea. Like we do this. Yeah, we do this in life. And that's perfectly, it's perfectly okay. It's just a matter of being conscious of it and choosing to do it in a way that doesn't hurt other people. Because when we can really integrate the part of us that's kinky and wants to like break the rules, and we can do it in a way that's like fun and conscious and thoughtful, then we're not putting other people on ourselves at risk. It's like the difference between kinky and drive, you know, a hundred miles an hour down the freeway with, you know, people and families driving on it as well versus like, I want to be kinky and break the rules and like take my car to a racetrack or somewhere where I'm completely alone and I can feel like I'm going really fast and get the speed and the excitement without endangering other people. Yeah, it takes a little bit of work, but the payoff is that you don't put other people at risk. Such as like educating people on the importance of consent and of practicing safe sex and all of, you know, all of that. Right. I think one of the reasons that consent is difficult for us to talk about is that we actually want to maintain mystery. And people have this thinking that if I ask for consent at every step of the way, then there's not going to be any surprise, spontaneity, mystery and joy. And what I invite is that don't limit yourself to, you're a very creative person, every single person who's watching this live or recorded, you have an immense amount of creativity inside of you available to you. You do not have to worry about diminishing, you don't have to risk or feel like you're risking the fun and the spontaneity by getting consent, get consent and then interject fun and spontaneity and surprises after you have a baseline of consent in your partnership, in your relationship, in this moment that gives you a foundation of safety. You know, another teaching that I have is that great sex really requires a combination of safety and thrill. Yeah. Right. And so, but they have to come in that order. You have to have safety or else thrill feels scary. Thrill feels like a threat if there's no foundation of safety. Absolutely. And so, as for a fun question, what are the benefits of a healthy sex life? Okay. So, they're immense. There's physical benefits, right? Like your actual physical body and your physical health and wellness, your immune system is tied to your sex and sexuality, the way that you even like present yourself physically. You know, if you've ever felt like you were walking a little taller or your posture, you were just kind of ready to face the world because you were feeling really good erotically. There's not to mention also that moving and getting our heart rate up and having cardio can be a part of partner and sex especially. And so, there are all kinds of physical benefits because like, I don't know about you, but if it's like between a walk and like having some like really active intimacy with another person, like the active intimacy sounds pretty good. Like I would love a good walk, but like that sounds really, really fun, right? It's a fun way for us to move our bodies. There is also emotional well-being and it supports our emotional health. Sex can be a huge mover of emotions that is not uncommon for people to laugh or to cry or to feel like deeply loved and connected during a intimate encounter. It's also good for our mental health. I think many of us will have an experience of maybe having some, you know, some light anxiety, some fears rolling around our head, feeling sort of disconnected, feeling like we're spiraling even on a subject that we have no control over or something that, you know, maybe isn't related to us, but we can't stop thinking about it and our mind's focusing on it. Then we take a moment or an hour, we have an intimate encounter again with ourself or with a lover and suddenly our mind is a lot more quiet. We're back into our body. So I think it helps us to create a relationship between like our actual embodied experience and again that mental piece that that can sometimes pull us away from our body. And then finally spiritually and energetically, you know, sex has been described in many different cultures and contexts as a spiritual activity that has us feel deeply connected to a sense of oneness and sometimes especially being with another person and sort of becoming one with them for a period of time and then returning back to our individual selves can be a highly spiritual experience that can really give us a lift and return us to what I think is our natural state of being joyful. So the benefits and we could talk about the benefits around you know, the actual neurotransmitters and our oxytocin and our bonding hormones, but I think that we don't really need to get deeply into the science to know intuitively that sex is really good for us. Yeah, absolutely. Sex is good for us and there should be no stigma around it, right? And so now we're going to switch over to our audience segment where we answer your viewer question. I'm so excited. I'm a little terrified, but let's just begin. Okay, so Julia asks, Caitlin, how do I satisfy my partner sexually when I don't feel attractive? That's a good question. A lot of people struggle with this. Yeah, that is a great question. And you know, I think there's actually two different questions built into that, right? Because how do I satisfy my partner sexually is about communication, understanding what it is that they want, what they desire, what feels good for them. And then the obstacle there is not feeling attractive. And I would ask you to think what is it about not feeling attractive that gets in the way of the requests or the desires that they have? Is it that they want you to do something that's highly visible? They want you to do like a sexy dance for them with the lights on and you're like, absolutely not. I don't feel really attractive enough to do something like that, right? Or is it just in general that you're maybe holding yourself back because you feel like you need to get to a place where you feel attractive before you can allow yourself to enjoy sex and to receive and to give pleasure to another person. And if that's the case, then the work that you like, it's not so much about compromising with that other person, right? Whereas in the case of the sexy dance, how do I compromise and do something that works for both of us? But if it's really like, I don't feel worthwhile and I don't feel like I'm attractive enough to participate in sex and eroticism, I would say then start with yourself. Start with your erotic and sexual relationship with yourself, develop a practice of loving the parts of your body that you find enjoyable, like start with the easy stuff, the low-hanging fruit. Can you look at yourself in the mirror and love your eyes, your hair, your hips, the way that you have little dimples on your knees? Can you love the way that it feels when you touch the inside of your arm with your nails? Find the things that you do love, focus on those, build on those. And eventually you get to come to a place where you are more accepting and more loving and more gentle to yourself, develop your own erotic relationship with yourself. And then it's so much easier to bring that to your partner. Perfect. I agree with that. Absolutely. And then Nightchamp asked, you could see it in the I think another question I have is how can I have a good sex life when I don't have a partner? Yeah. I'm so glad that you asked this because this is not just relevant for people who don't have partners, but people who have partners who won't have sex with them. Yeah. I've been in a sexless relationship before where I've had a partner who just was not available to have sex for an extended period of time. And whether you're with a partner and they're not available or open or you're single, this is a great question. And I just want to say that you absolutely can have a great, not just a good sex life, a great sex life without any other people present. And in fact, all great sex lives, I will wager, all great sex lives rely on you having a good one with yourself first, whether or not you have another partner. So one of the ways that we can reconceptualize this sort of reframe it is your self-pleasure practice, which can include masturbation, which can include orgasm, but let me use the term self-pleasure to really create a big umbrella here. Your self-pleasure practice has got to be as delightful, as thoughtful, as energized as your partnered practice. So all of the energy that you would probably, I'm assuming Night Champ that you're a man, just based on your name. If you are going to bring all of that to a female partner, bring it to yourself first. So often we treat self-pleasure as if it's like a silver medal. As if it's something that just because we can't have partnered sex, we can't. It's not available to us. Our partner won't do it. I guess I'll masturbate. It's like a sandwich when you wanted a steak or it's like you're settling. It's like day old pizza when I wanted to make spaghetti. If we can treat it differently than that, if you can treat it like part of your self-care routine, if you can really treat yourself like you deserve that pleasure and that creativity and you can take your time. A lot of the men that I work with when they first come to me for coaching, the practice that they have of self-pleasure is quick, fast, get it over with before my wife comes home or whatever. I like sneak into the bathroom and watch adult films on my cell phone and it's very low energy, a little bit shame-based. It's not a erotic celebration of themselves and their body. So my invitation to you is to make it a celebration of you, indulge in it, make it great, make it wonderful, and you have all the power to do that. No, I totally agree. That's absolutely. And then Jordan asked, I want to get my girlfriend out of her comfort zone. I want to take her to a strip club and I want to watch porn with her, but I'm afraid that she's going to think I'm a weirdo. Should I suggest these things, Caitlin? Great question. I'm curious what your girlfriend wants. You know, these things, they sound like things that you really want and that's great. I love that you have clarity that this would be hot for you. You want to take her to the strip club, you want to porn with her. I'm curious though, is that just a little bit outside of her comfort zone or is that really far outside of her comfort zone? Because if it's really far outside of her comfort zone, then taking her into those situations is going to probably backfire and cause a lot of pain in her and in your relationship and it's not going to be fun for you either. So what is outside of her comfort zone that she's interested in trying? Is it that she maybe wants to try food play and she wants you to turn her into human dessert? And that was really fun for her. Is it that she wants to, you know, maybe like have her hands tied together, ask her what's outside of her comfort zone and then when it's time to discover new things, you can say, Hey, I've been wanting to take you into this environment. Are you open or interested and make sure it's like a big yes? Even if she's fearful, even if she's like, I'm really uncomfortable. It's still a big yes. Karina's asked you have to be hot to be in psych to go. Yes, I'm just kidding. Okay. Then you're hot. I can guarantee it. Let's see. Okay. You said that you, and I've seen your videos, you specialize in men's sexual health. So I do want to ask this question because you're the expert at this is what you do. So Elizabeth asked, let me show it. Sorry. I'm trying to scroll. Do you have, sorry, I can't see it. Do you have any tips for lasting longer in bed for men? Yes, yes. Premature ejaculation or not being able to last as long as you want affects up to one a third of men. It is the most common sexual challenge that men have. And honestly, the majority of men that come to me for coaching are dealing with not being able to last. They don't have the stamina that they want in bed. And so I teach a three part system. Number one is changing the way that you actually touch yourself and change your body. You're going to see, you're probably sensing a theme here. Number one is how you masturbate, how you actually come into contact with yourself and your body. Number two is the mental and emotional things that you tell yourself about sex, right? Like I have to be able to perform the way that we put pressure, especially men that are like very high performers or they're really oriented to doing a good job. They'll put a ton of pressure on them. Men deal with it. Like men feel like they have to be perfect in bed, right? Yeah. And unfortunately, like us as a society really tells them that like, you better have it all figured out. You know, you got to know exactly what you're doing from, from the jump and figure out how to give her an orgasm and less as long and, you know, get hard every time and like, you know, and all the problems of the thing that are, those are for women, right? Like you just have to have it all sorted out and be perfect at it. So, so my system is really about changing the way that you relate to your physical body and then changing the way that you relate to sex and then adjusting the way that you relate to the pressure that you experience inside of relationships and to perform. I actually have a entire video course on that. It's called Come When You Want and there's links to it all over my YouTube channel. I also have a ton of free YouTube content on lasting longer in bed. So if that's something that you're experiencing or your partner's experiencing, like just search Caitlin V last longer, so much content. You know, her, your channel's in the link in the description and your website and her guys, her videos on YouTube and her show are amazing. Like you're the expert girl. Thank you. And then Desh, I'll just say, Desh, I don't want to butcher your name. Does sex relieve stress and depression? I think this is a great question. It is a great question. And it's sort of sex and depression and stress and anxiety are all sort of this like virtuous cycle in a sense that like sometimes you can, so one of the side effects of feeling depressed is losing your libido and your desire for sex. Right. And losing your libido and desire for sex can also lead to depression. Right. So we can get people often get trapped in this sort of cycle and the same is true for anxiety. And sometimes the treatments for anxiety can cause us to lose our libido or ability to orgasm. And then suddenly this thing that we really loved and felt good and brought us a lot of pleasure and joy is gone and that increases our anxiety or makes it difficult for us to cope with. So in the short answer is yes, the longer answer is that because these things exist in a cycle, we need to actually address both of them in order to see relief in both of them. Absolutely. Brandon asked, do sexual fantasies play a role in a person's sexuality? I really find the way that this question is phrased is very interesting. Do they play a role? Yes, I think they do play a role in a person's sexuality. Do they play a role in their identity and how they express themselves sexually with another partner? Not necessarily. We can have sexual fantasies that we never share. You know, we have, we can have sexual fantasies that we never speak out loud, that we don't even want to create in reality. Right. There are those fantasies where like I want to do that. I want to actually try that. Right. Then there are those fantasies where like if no one ever heard me say that out loud, I could still die happy. You know, it's just for me. It's just, it's something that I enjoy. So of course they play a role, but how big of a role they play when it comes to other people or your actual behaviors is totally up to you. Absolutely. And then Diana asks, my husband won't have sex with me when I'm on my period and it really hurts me. How do I communicate this with him effectively because it's hurting my self-esteem? I totally hear you on that Diana. You know, one thing that is difficult about this question is like your husband is allowed to have preferences. You know, I've certainly worked with men and had male partners who felt the same as your husband does. They like, didn't want to come into contact with menstrual blood. They found it to be a turnoff. And you know, of course for me, I'm like, but I have cramps. I feel bloated. Like I want to have a say that would feel so good. So it's been a matter for me anyways of just accepting my partner's preferences and understanding that like I'm allowed to have preferences too. And maybe there are areas where I haven't been actually honoring my own preferences. And I've been making myself do stuff that like I don't really want to do. And then I want him to do stuff that he doesn't really want to do because I'm like, dang it, I went first. You know, and that's not really fair. Right. We have to defend our own preferences and we got to get with our partner's preferences, even if they make us sad and feel and feel rejected or undesirable. My invitation to you is to get that his preferences don't have any relationship to your desirability, your worthiness, your attractiveness. His preferences are his own and they have really nothing to do with you. And for the most part. And then again, have great sex with yourself on your period. That's my, you know, girl, like get out the soaker sheet and just do whatever makes you feel good and then like eat some ice cream at the end. Like that's what I would do. And so like, don't take it personally, right? It's just his preference. It's just his preference. And you know, we, we in our culture, we often talk about like that men don't have preferences. Like men are just supposed to be down for sex all the time, any time, ready, and they know exactly what they're doing and how to last and all that. And it's like, ah, no, they, they, they're actually women and men are very similar when it comes to sex and sexuality. We can't really divide them so clearly. They're like this. They're like this. Absolutely. And then stranger asked, any tips on how to talk with our partner about our sexual fantasies? Oh yeah. So many tips on that. But just to condense it into one is really coming back to this idea of communication, picking a great time where they're going to be open to hearing about things, asking for their consent, like, Hey, are you available to have a conversation about sexual fantasies? If not now, maybe when bringing it forward in a way that you've already really thought about it for yourself and you've done your research, something that I really advise against is people will come forward and say like, I have this fantasy. I want to make it real. I want to have a threesome. Like let's go, let's, let's go find a person at the bar tonight. And it's like, well, if your partner is more than likely, unless that's their same fantasy, going to like recoil and be like, Whoa, that's too much. That's a lot of pressure. What about this? What about this? So do your research before you bring it up so that you can answer all of their questions and so that you can again, coming back to communication, accurately describe what it is that you want to create. Do you want to have a threesome without your best friend? Or do you want to have a threesome with a stranger? Are you going to find this person on the app? Are they going to sleep over? Are you going to talk to them ever again? There's so many questions and nuance details that are going to need to come up. And it's probably not a single conversation. It may be many conversations, but you, the person with the fantasy, if you can come to that conversation, grounded, educated, centered so that anything that they say is not going to throw you off your course, you have your best chance of actually having a really good communication and then actually having your fantasy be made into reality. Thank you for that, Caitlin. And a lot of people have been talking about virginity in the chat. So I just wanted to just touch on this. Alex asked me and my partner, both virgins, any advice? Go extremely slow, slower than you think you need to go. And I'm not talking about in any individual moment. I'm talking about over the course of your entire relationship. So one of the things that I hear from people who maybe have recently had their first sexual experience, or they're just like, maybe, maybe their first sexual experience was 30 years ago, but they're just processing it now and thinking, okay, which way did, you know, how did it impact my entire adult life? It doesn't always impact everything, but I think the more time that you can take and really not feel rushed and really like, sit with any decisions that you're going to make, like, does it feel good to make out with this person in the car or outside of your parents' house or not? Does that not feel good? Like, go slow and remember, and I know this is such a like adult thing to say to a youth, but like, remember, you really do have the rest of your life. And I would recommend that you are really thoughtful about how you engage in your first experiences, because those are going to be core memories. And hopefully they're really, really positive memories later. And you don't come to coaching your therapy because, you know, you had a negative first experience because you felt rushed or pressured, and then you have to unpack that and do the healing later. And if that happened to you, also it's okay. Like, I didn't have a great first time and I am still, like, able to have a very healthy, intimate life as an adult. It was fine. Yeah, absolutely. And like, there's this expectation that the first time needs to be fireworks and, oh my gosh, and it's like, it's often not. And let those expectations go. I would say, like, it took me three attempts to really have sex for the first time. And I thought it was going to be easy and fun. And, you know, and it was really like, it was super painful and it sucked. And we got interrupted and like, let go of the ideal and the fantasy and just accept the reality and be willing to, like, be with what's actually happening. And then, and I agree 100%. And Scuzzy Cubs asked, is there a recommended amount of times people should engage in sexual activities? Love this question. So actually, the best science that we have today, specifically men and people with prostates, is that they should be ejaculating at least around once a day, minimum of 21 times per month, especially in their 20s and their 40s. So there's a lot of different opinions on this for many different experts. But, you know, essentially the thought is that if you want to prevent or prolong the health of your prostate and prevent prostate cancer, that you should be ejaculating regularly because it releases the fluids that build up in the prostate and recycles them and refreshes them. So from a health perspective, you should be ejaculating frequently. Now, 21 times a month, that's, you know, 10 days short of every day. I'd say that's a great number for you to aim for. That doesn't mean you need to have sex with another person 21 times a month, right? That just means that you ejaculate 21 times a month. And that's especially true once you, you know, reach your 20s. After that, so just, you know, when it comes to women and non-binary folks and people in relationships, there's no right or wrong number of times to engage in sexual activity or to have orgasms. You know, my general rule of thumb is like, have as much sex as feels good without it getting in the way of anything else in your life, your emotional health, your physical health, your mental health, if all you're doing is jacking off and you lose your job and you drop out of school and like, then you have this unhealthy relationship with sex, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then Alexandra asked, me and my partner usually have sex with our clothes on, we'll having sex naked be more enjoyable. And will it help my self-esteem because I don't like having sex naked? Okay. Well, first of all, Bravo for the creativity, that you're not a way that works for you, you know? I would say maybe take it slow, maybe try with like one less item of clothing at first, you know, maybe try with like half of your clothes on, but the lights off and some music playing and some candles and some incense or, you know, like some other things to kind of like help create a really great sensual experience for you. Take it really slow, maybe, you know, invite your partner to like really gently and slowly touch the parts of your skin that are exposed until they feel really safe and grounded. Like, you know, if I could, if I could give you any piece of advice, it is go at 20% spent of the speed that you think you should only go 20% outside of your comfort zone at any one time. If you try to go the full edge of your comfort zone or blow away past it, for the most part, you're going to experience a retraction, a contraction rather, a blowback. So just go a little bit at a time and be gentle on yourself. And so I like this question, and I think it's really interesting because do you think that someone not wanting to be naked during sex is tied to maybe like lower self-esteem or just feeling uncomfortable with themselves? Do you think that has any correlation? And I think also, you know, it's reducing sex to a genital to genital activity, right? Yeah. Your body's not the whole thing, but it is your whole body is a sexual organ. Yeah. Your brain, your emotions, your energy is all erotic and it can all be a part of a sexual experience. So I would say like inviting your whole body, even like just having someone like gently caress your neck can be such an erotic experience. So like don't, you know, miss out on the rest of the body because it's about more than just your genitals. Great explanation. And then pocket tots asked, how does watching porn affect the relationship with your partner? And what is a healthy amount of porn consumption? Yeah. Wow. What a great question. So for the men that come to me for coaching, typically during the time that we're working together, I request that they don't watch porn at all because they're dealing with something in their sex life and they need to focus on that. And porn's often a sort of distraction from what's going on in here, right? So how does porn affect the relationship with your partner? In short, porn acts on our body and our brain in kind of a similar way as a drug does. And the reason for that, going back again to our DNA, is that our bodies and our brains and our eyes are so hardwired for mating that when we're watching porn, we're engaging all different sorts of our brain, even our reptilian brain, like the deepest parts of our brain, and they all are getting the message that they're mating because we're watching people mate and we think reptilian brain doesn't know the difference between porn and what's actually happening. So we're getting all of this stimulus and all of this information. Our brains really are not built to handle it, just the same way that our brains are not really built to handle like an endless supply of cookies in our downstairs cupboard like me. Our brains also not really built to have porn. We just didn't evolve with porn. You maybe saw some boobs at like a ritual with your tribe. You just didn't see people doing the stuff that we do and porn today is like really outrageous too. In the instant for free, you can see very extreme sexual acts. So we didn't evolve to have a relationship with it, just like we didn't evolve to have a relationship with pure sugar. So it can affect your sex and your sexuality in a bunch of different ways. It can lead to unrealistic expectations. It can lead you to not be able to really connect with your partner. It can lead you to not really feel connected to your own erotic experience. So for some people, some porn is okay. For other people, if you've got something else that you're working on or rupture in your relationships and sexual dysfunction that you're looking to heal, maybe a break from porn 90 days minimum is best for you. It's really an individual relationship thing. Absolutely. And then T. Cope asked, do individuals who exercise regularly have better sex than those who don't actually did write a lot of articles about sex? So I know that exercise does boost your sex life. I know that, but you're the expert, so I want you to answer the question. I agree 100%, but what I would also say is movement as well as exercise. So sometimes we think of exercise, or at least for me, I think of running, weightlifting. Yes, absolutely. Those can have a positive increase in your sex life, but they also can. I've had many bodybuilder clients on the show on Good Sex. We have bodybuilder clients. So it's not just a one-to-one relationship where if you exercise more, you have better sex, but I do think that when you're moving your body, whether that's dancing or yoga or Pilates or just going on walks and just taking care and relating to your body, and if that includes an intense exercise regimen, that's great. But moving your body and having a great relationship with your body is actually what leads to great sex. It just happens that most people do that through exercise. Yeah, confidence is a big aspect of healthy sex, right? Yeah, and exercise certainly can lead to enhanced confidence, and then more sex can lead to enhanced confidence, which can lead to more sex, which can lead to more exercise. It's a virtuous cycle. And sleep deprivation does, and this is a question that I have, sleep deprivation does impact your sex life, right? Yeah, very much so. And interestingly, slightly different in testosterone dominant bodies and estrogen dominant bodies, when a man or someone who has a testosterone dominant body isn't sleeping enough, then his body can actually suffer, and it's struggled to replenish his testosterone, because testosterone is mostly produced during sleep. And for a woman or someone who lives in an estrogen dominant body, one of the ways that chronic sleep deprivation can impact our sex life is by the relationship between our stress hormones and cortisol, and our libido can become very fraught when we're not giving time and rest, and it's not just sleep, it's like down time, it's safe time to replenish our, or to deplete our cortisol from our body and sort of go back to baseline and feel like very deeply replenished and safe. And that is where a lot of our desire stems from. Absolutely. I just wanted to show you this comment. Thanks, Caitlin. God bless you. Stay woke. Thank you, lunacy. Let me find another really good question. So there were some questions on feeling numb too. Okay. Let me see. Okay. So this is a good one. Joe asked, due to childhood trauma, my partner is afraid of physical intimacy. Do you have any tips on how to help this? Yeah. So let's speak to that. And then also, if you have a partner who feels very numb or if you yourself feel very numb during physical intimacy, or if you yourself have trauma, there's sort of like an all, all under the same umbrella, which is coming back again to what I said earlier, never forcing, never pushing, never exceeding our comfort zone to a point where we cause collapse, right? Because it's not moving us forward. It's not heading where we actually want to go. I have found that a combination of talk therapy and somatic experiencing are the best ways to move our body through healing from traumatic events. So what I mean by that is that often, especially early childhood trauma gets trapped and stored inside of the body, because we couldn't run away. We couldn't speak. We couldn't defend ourselves. We were physically held in a position that we couldn't get out of. And so essentially to move through those traumas, we have to go back, re-engage them and let them complete themselves. So actually kick or scream or yell or cry when we weren't able to 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Encouraging your partner to do that work while also being a stand for your own intimacy and your own needs, right? And understanding that you're with someone who's going to need, or you are someone who's going to need special considerations and pacing and purposeful and thoughtful, intentional and communicative intimacy, right? And developing the little like nuanced ability to say, okay, this is too much. This is just right. We can take this a step further and figuring out again what the lowest hanging fruits are. What's the easiest thing for you and your partner to address? Is it like a hug? Is it a long hug? Is it a cuddle? Is it just like touching the back of their hand? And that feels good for them and it can feel good for you and it can have you both feeling connected. And then building safety in their nervous system by honoring their boundaries, respecting, doing your absolute best to understand what their experience is while they're doing that work with a professional at the same time. Absolutely. And then Matthew asked, Caitlin, our fetish is bad. Fetishes are not bad. I'll say that people struggle sometimes with fetishes. Because they can get in the way of the sex life that they're trying to have. So for example, if you have a fetish that you can't reach orgasm or maybe even feel aroused without having that fetish be met or present, and you have some shame or difficulty around doing that with partners, then it can get in the way of your sexual experience, right? Like someone who I worked with a very long time ago who needed to have like a hairbrush inserted into their body during a sex act. And this was like a really strong, and when we say fetish, I'm not saying preference, I'm saying fetish, like classically fetish is something that you need, not want, need in order to feel aroused or to reach orgasm. So it's not like, oh, I prefer when I can see your feet. It's like, I can't enjoy this unless I can see your feet. And sometimes that gets in the way and creates a big obstacle. And so if you're experiencing that, there is hope because you can work with a professional, you can address the fetish, you can figure out ways to communicate with partners so that you can have that need be met. And then of course, if your fetish involves something that's not consensual, something with someone who cannot consent, something that involves a class or a party or a group of people or animals or something that like cannot be engaged, then please go see a professional, not from a place of shame or that there's anything wrong with you or broken, but from a place of we want you to be able to have a healthy sex life that doesn't have any negative impact. And we fully believe that you deserve to have a great sex life without doing any harm to anyone or anything. Perfect. And then Cleo asked, how about having sex all of the time in a relationship? Is there such thing as too much? Again, it's convex to right relationship. So is it getting in the way of your ability to have a healthy partnership? Is it getting in the way? Are you having sex so much that you're not like eating well, exercising, taking care of yourself, you're not talking to your friends or your family? Instead of talking, you're having sex. That could be a red flag for your relationship that maybe you don't have an emotionally mature and connected relationship, and it's just a sexual relationship. And you know what? That's okay. If you have just a relationship that's like primarily sexual, enjoy it and understand that it has an expiration date. It's not going to last forever. This isn't the person that maybe you want to plan to get married to have children with the rest of your life with. Maybe you just have some great sex every day for six months. And then you part ways and that's okay. Know what you're getting out of the relationship, what you're in it for. And if it gets in the way of you're taking care of yourself, then cut back and get back into a better relationship with sex. And so that was the end of our audience segment. That was amazing. Caitlyn, you're such a pro. Thank you to our amazing viewers at Psych2Go for asking such amazing questions. So I have one more question for you. So this is what I wanted to know. How do we normalize conversations around sex so that it's not stigmatized anymore? And we can just talk about it open and freely because I think it's just something that's important. It's 2023 and we shouldn't be stigmatizing sex. You're here. Well, Michelle, I'm happy to say you're doing it. Thank you for having me on the show and elevating this conversation. One thing I have found, and as I've trained other coaches, you know, for me, it wasn't hard for, I knew I was going to do this for a living. So when I came out as a coach, I was like, I'm here, I'm a coach. Let's go. When I talk to other coaches and people who want to be sex and relationship coaches, sometimes they're afraid to come out and say I'm here to help, right? And I think that the more clear that you are that sex is a birthright, that it's just part of a normal human mature adult life, that you are, you're clear on that for yourself. When you bring that conversation up to others, you become a safe space for them, right? So one of the things that makes me good at what I do is that I'm a super safe space for anyone. I got two text messages this morning from friends that are like, I have a sex question. I am a safe space for people to have those conversations with. And that's because I'm a safe space for myself to have those conversations internally, personally. And the reason you're able to do that feeling is because you're confident in yourself and you've like, you know, you're not, you're sure of yourself. So you're able to help other people because of that self confidence and empowerment, right? I think that's part of it. But I also think even in my darkest moments, even when I don't feel very confident, I'm still a safe space for other people because they know that they're not going to get judged by me. They know that I'm, if I don't know an answer, I'm going to say, Hey, I don't know, let's look that up together. If I, if I again, enter into a conversation and I feel some like shame or discomfort around it, that's going to come out. And I do have my areas where I feel shame and discomfort, you know, I don't like dancing in front of other people. I'm very uncomfortable singing. I only do karaoke on birthdays. And, you know, I have areas where I'm like, Oh, I can't talk about that without feeling a little squirmy, right? Right. You can do the internal reflection. Is that that difficult to work? If I'm totally honest, you, you, you spend the time with yourself asking how do I become a safe space for myself to talk about this conversation? Then when I bring it to someone else, I'm grounded, I'm centered and they know they're safe with me. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Caitlin. And thank you for creating a safe space here today where we could talk about all of these things. And just thank you for the work you do. It's amazing. I love your show. And I'm a huge fan. Thank you to our viewers. You guys are amazing. We love you. And until the next one, bye.