So for our second Quickie, Birna and I broke it down.

The numbers are bleak:

• 15% of American men now say they have zero close friends, up from 3% in 1990.

• 64% of married men name their wife as their best friend. Fewer than half of wives say the same about them.

• We lose half of our close friends every seven years, and many of us aren’t forming new ones nearly as quickly as we transition through our 30s and beyond.

• While most adults were satisfied with the amount of friends they had, 40% of them wish they felt closer to their friends.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development—the longest study on human happiness—found that the number one predictor of wellbeing is the strength of our relationships.

Think about the last time you spent an afternoon catching up with a close friend. You probably walked away thinking, “Why don’t we do this more often?” Good friends feed the soul. They tether us to meaning.

As my friend wrote in her substack:

“When we have strong friendships, we release the unrealistic expectation that one person should be our everything. Our therapist, lover, best friend, cheerleader, co-parent, spiritual companion, and roommate. That’s too much weight for any one relationship to hold.

Friendship gives us a web of care. It allows us to spread out our needs…This doesn’t diminish the importance of a romantic relationship, it strengthens it. It allows that partnership to be what it is, rather than forcing it to be what it’s not.”

So as we discussed this article, we thought of the impact this has on desire. Turns out, a big one.

Here are the main takeaways:

He had friends when you met him

Almost every woman in the article tells the same story. When she started dating her husband, he had people. He was fun. Then came the routine of married life, the kids, and he let it all go.

Birna’s read is that men never learned friendship requires maintenance. Women are socialized to tend to their friendships; men are socialized to assume theirs will survive neglect.

Three years later, reaching out feels so awkward that most of them don’t.

For a lot of men, marriage is the first truly intimate relationship they’ve ever had. They finally feel seen, and they conclude that one person is enough.

Men don’t know they’re lonely

Julie Menanno, who wrote Secure Love, makes the case that men are so disconnected from their emotional needs that loneliness doesn’t register as loneliness. It shows up as irritation. Aggression. Working harder. Pulling away from the wife who is, by then, his only friend.

If you’re reading this and thinking of a man who has gotten shorter with you over the years, this is worth questioning before you assume the problem is you.

Asking why something happened is not gossip

When a friend opens up, men have a hard time with the follow-up questions. Like, well, why did they divorce?

Men can treat it as prying. But whether your friend was cheated on, or drained a joint account, or simply drifted changes how you show up for him.

Curiosity is how you earn the right to be close to someone. Calling it gossip is how men keep each other at arm’s length while complaining they’re lonely.

As Birna said, everybody wants the village. No one wants to be the villager.

The three types of wives

In this scenario, there’s the wing wife, who talks him up at parties because he won’t engage.

The take-flight wife, who physically steers him toward other men.

And the “not now” wife, ten-plus years in, who has given up on his social life altogether and built one of her own.

What I question about the “not now” wife is if she does everything alone, what is holding the marriage together besides tolerance?

A partner with no friends is hard to desire

Fire needs air, as Esther Perel has been saying it for twenty years. Desire requires a little distance, a little mystery, a self that exists outside the relationship.

A man whose entire world is you is not mysterious. He’s dependent. And the moment you start managing him, you are mothering him, and there is nothing less sexy than that.

Joy is an aphrodisiac

Hanging out with friends reminds you of who you are, and like I mentioned earlier, it feeds the soul. I personally come back home more excited, fulfilled and inspired.

These small pleasures are not separate from our sexual selves—they replenish them.

Are you experiencing this in your relationship? How does it feel? If you’re a man with no friends, what would it take for you to put yourself out there again? Let us know in the comments!

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They talked about being fully present, about deep erotic intimacy, about extraordinary communication, about the freedom to be authentic and vulnerable with each other.

Great lovers, she concluded, are made, not born.

Kleinplatz’s findings describe two people who know what they each need to feel secure, and who trust that the other will meet them there.

What we need to feel secure is determined by our attachment style.

It asks: what does my nervous system need to feel safe enough to want, what does my partner’s nervous system need, and what do we need to do to meet each other’s needs?

Which is the case I want to make this week: understanding your attachment style builds a map to a relationship where both of you feel secure enough to have the kind of sex Kleinplatz’s couples described.

That’s why I invited Gaby Balsells to the podcast.

Gaby is a clinical psychologist, a relationship coach at Modern Intimacy, trained in Emotionally Focused Therapy, and the author of Dating 101, a book she wrote while walking through her own divorce after a ten-year relationship. Don’t let the title fool you, it’s a great resource for those of us in long-term relationships to understand our attachment styles and how to work better with them in relation to those we love.

Below we have the episode highlights, and links to tune in:

Watch it on Youtube:

Watch it on Spotify:

Tell me how you were loved, and I’ll tell you how you love.

Attachment styles are a pattern of relating, but really they’re an explanation: this is why I love the way I love.

The template gets set early, by whether the people who raised us showed up when we cried.

If they came consistently, we learned that our needs matter and that expressing them brings people closer. That’s secure attachment.

If we had to cry loudly to be heard, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, we learned to make the signal big. That’s anxious attachment, and its deepest fear is I will be alone.

If crying didn’t work at all, we learned to go quiet and handle it ourselves. That’s avoidant, and its deepest fear is if you find out who I really am, you won’t like me.

Anxious and avoidant are rooted in the same energy, though they manifest themselves differently. The former reaches out, the latter goes within.

Most of us didn’t get a secure childhood, and the good news is that secure attachment is something we can build in adulthood.

Your attachment style isn’t fixed. It changes with who you’re with.

Attachment styles exist in relation to each other. Someone who feels anxious in one relationship can feel steady in the next, and a partner who is more anxious than you can pull out a version of you that’s more grounded than you knew you had. The reverse is also true.

That’s a hopeful thing and a responsible thing. The brain is always looking for opportunities to rewire toward security, but it needs the right conditions. The person you choose is one of those conditions.

Dating is an energy game, not a numbers game.

Dating is inherently ambivalent: this could be your love story, or you could never see each other again. There is no relationship yet, so there is nothing to be secure in. Of course it brings out anxiety or protection. Those are your factory settings.

Which is why she doesn’t think dating is a numbers game. It’s an energy game.

Optimizing your odds, stacking dates, quantity over quality…all of it runs on urgency, and urgency is why we easily burn out in dating.

What works is the opposite: being intentional about who you go on a date with, what are you doing before a date to ground yourself, how do you want to feel on it, how are you coming back to yourself after.

Your attachment style shows up in bed.

The same way we have attachment styles that shape how we relate, they shape how we have sex. Dr. Sue Johnson–founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)–names three kinds.

Sealed-off sex is emotionally disengaged. It’s about pleasure, performance, getting off. Nothing wrong with this type of sex, it just isn’t nurturing the bond.

Solace sex is sex for reassurance. Makeup sex. Situationship sex. The kind you reach for when you feel far away from someone and want to feel close. Gaby describes it as a deep breath after drowning, which is exactly why it can feel so heightened, and why sex with the wrong person can feel better than sex with someone secure and consistent. It isn’t that they’re a better lover. It’s that you’re starving.

Synchrony sex is when the emotional feeds the physical and the physical feeds the emotional. The deeper in love, the hotter the sex, and the hotter the sex, the deeper in love. The word for what makes it possible is attunement, which I believe is the single most important quality of great sex. You can’t have it without it.

Aftercare isn’t just for kink.

A friend of mine played the Wonderlust Intimacy Card Deck with her husband and landed on the prompt about aftercare. They had been married for ten years and had never once talked about it. She told him he usually got up, took a shower, and got on with his day, and that what she wanted was to stay in bed and cuddle afterward. He had no idea. She had never asked herself what she wanted either.

Now they practice the aftercare she enjoys. Sometimes he still takes the shower first, and then he comes back to bed to meet her.

Sex is a cocktail of hormones, and after the high there’s a drop. The kink community built a whole practice around it to ensure that you are taken care of as you experience that drop. So if you feel empty after sex, it could be a lack of aftercare. That can look like twenty minutes in bed, a glass of water, cooking dinner together, or coffee the next morning before heading to the subway. It’s whatever tells your body that experience was held.

If you want to go deeper with Gaby, read Dating 101, book a free 30-minute consultation with her at Modern Intimacy, and follow her on Instagram.

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you more of the content you love.

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I get it. I study and talk about sex for a living. But ever since launching this podcast, I’ve been overworked learning a new skill I’m passionate about.

At the end of the day my brain is fried and my body is exhausted. This could be a strain in my marriage, but my husband and I talk about this enough for both of us to respect that this is a season, and desire fluctuates with the life it lives inside. When it passes (I’m almost there!), we’ll put in the effort to reconnect like we used to.

Why am I telling you this?

Because people often ask me, “Is the amount of sex we’re having normal?”

And it drives me crazy. Not because the question is shameful, but because it’s the wrong question entirely.

This week’s guest has built a career on asking better ones.

Birna Gustafsson is a sex educator and public health advocate who lives at an intersection many people don’t know exists: she teaches at Harvard Sex Week, has led over 50 pleasure-centered workshops, and instructs nurses and midwives in sexuality in clinical practice at the University of Iceland.

As she put it in our conversation, she teaches blow jobs, and she teaches consent for patients with Alzheimer’s.

Somehow, it’s all the same work: helping people talk about sex like it matters, because it does.

Besides Substack, you can tune in to the episode on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple.

Here are the highlights:

It’s not what you’re doing—it’s how you feel about it

A couple having sex twice a month—where both times are hourlong, deeply intentional sessions they look forward to—is thriving. Someone having sex almost every day who, when you ask about it, is quietly enduring it, is not.

You may assume the frequency tells you something, but it’s the feeling that tells you everything.

So instead of “How often do you have sex?”, try “Tell me about the last time you had sex. Did you enjoy it?” It’s a different question, and it opens a different conversation.

It’s also a great question to ask yourself.

When your mind goes blank

Have you ever been asked “so, what are you into?” and nothing came up?

It’s the same reason “what’s your favorite movie?” erases every film you’ve ever seen.

Direct interrogation shuts memory down; specific, low-stakes questions open it up.

“What was the last movie that made you laugh really hard?” works. So does “what’s something we did in bed that makes you smile when it crosses your mind?”

Building desire literacy is a skill, and it starts with better prompts. It’s actually the entire reason I created our Wonderlust Intimacy Card Deck, because most of us were never handed the questions. (Readers get 10% off with code LUST)

The class men are embarrassed to take

At the sex shop where Birna taught in Iceland, the blow job class packed an auditorium, like standing room only. The class on going down on a vulva? Not so much.

A couple browsing the store summed up why: she cheerfully signed up for the first, suggested he take the second, and he recoiled.

“That’s crazy. Like, why would I do that? That’s so embarrassing. I don’t wanna be sitting in a room with a bunch of dudes, talking about going down on a woman,” he said.

Birna explained that that’s not how the class goes. You’re not sitting there talking about how poorly you do the job.

And his response was, “I don’t want to be aroused around a bunch of dudes.”

Which blew me and Birna away.

The gendered script underneath it—her pleasure is optional homework, his is core curriculum—is a great example of what keeps couples stuck.

Enthusiasm beats technique (and “real eaters” prove it)

If you’re over 30 or blissfully off TikTok: a “real eater” is the internet’s term for a man who genuinely loves going down on a woman—not as a favor, not as a warm-up, but as the main event.

Playboy interviewed Birna about the trend, and her read is what separates the real ones from the performers isn’t skill. It’s attraction to the moment.

They’re patient. They switch things up. They’re not narrating, not coaching, not checking the clock, and there is no “magic button” technique that substitutes for that presence.

Enthusiasm can’t exactly be taught, Birna says, but the pressure blocking it can be removed.

You can build up a partner’s confidence so they feel like they can and want to do this.

Sex is not a scarce resource

We’ve been handed a story where sex is a woman’s bargaining chip. A currency to be withheld, spent, traded.

Birna dismantles this: “Sexuality, love, affection, intimacy…these are abundant. They’re infinite. You cannot run out of love to give.”

You can sleep twelve hours and still sleep tomorrow. Desire works the same way.

Treating it as scarce is a disservice to everyone, and where so much resentment in long-term relationships begins.

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to Birna’s new substack Explicit Studies!

In case you missed it, tune in to last week’s episode or read the highlights here:

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

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Therapists are trained to help you heal, but there’s an element to what comes next that is often missed: how to have a passionate relationship again. How to feel pleasure in your body without bracing. How to want.

This week’s guest built her entire career inside that gap.

Dr. Holly Richmond is a somatic psychotherapist, sex therapist, and the author of Reclaiming Pleasure, a book I often refer to and recommend. She is also my dear clinical supervisor.

Holly is the person I bring my toughest client cases to, so getting to sit across from her and having this honest conversation was a personal highlight of this season.

Holly spent her 20s and early 30s as a journalist—celebrity profiles, health, beauty—and in a sexless marriage. Rigid, shut down, somaticizing everything (”it would be my knees one week, then my stomach, then my shoulder—and there was never anything wrong”).

She describes herself as worse than the most disconnected clients who now walk through her door, the ones who say they don’t care if they ever have sex again.

And then, through a creative writing class of all things, everything changed. For years she credited the man she met there, now her husband of 18 years.

But as she puts it in the episode: it wasn’t Danny who saved her life. Sex saved her life. Eros. Vitality. The choice of possibility over the comfortable, safe, dead life she had built.

We go deep into how she—and the hundreds of survivors she’s worked with since—rebuilt from there.

You can tune in on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Here are the highlights:

Control, pleasure, connection

Holly’s framework for reclaiming your sex life after trauma came out of her doctoral research, and it moves in a specific sequence.

Control comes first, but not the way you’d think.

Most survivors arrive already hyper-controlled: vigilant, rigid, excellent at keeping themselves safe. The work isn’t building control, nor losing it or giving it up. It’s learning to relinquish it, gradually, on your own terms.

Pleasure comes second, and it starts with discovering your sexual template: what do you actually like?

Desire (the psychological process of wanting) and arousal (the physiological one) get mapped slowly, and not just sexually—through food, movement, music, anything that brings you back to aliveness. You cannot access sexual pleasure if you aren’t experiencing pleasure anywhere else in your life.

Connection comes last, and it’s the phase where you “have to go out into the world and do this.” If you’re partnered this can look like exercises you’ll apply together, but it’s also an exercise in integrating into the community, whether that’s volunteer work or a sports hobby, for example.

If you’re interested in reading her book Reclaiming Pleasure, you can purchase it here.

The body doesn’t keep the score

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score brought somatic trauma work into the mainstream, and recent research—the Friston paper—has challenged parts of it.

Holly agrees that the body does not store trauma. It’s not sitting in your tissues.

What the body does is express trauma. It has a story to tell.

And that distinction isn’t semantic—it’s the difference between “you are stuck with this” and “your body is trying to communicate something we can work with.”

It goes back to something Esther Perel said that Holly carries with her: words inform our experience. Victim versus survivor. Existing versus living. Stored versus expressed.

The language we use about our own healing changes what feels possible.

Safety is a process, not a place

Couples get the safety-risk balance wrong when they conflate safety with comfort.

Safety is not a state you arrive at and stay in. No one moves through the world with a permanently regulated nervous system. What we’re actually after is flexibility: that middle territory between rigidity and chaos where play, risk, and desire live.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth for long-term couples: when everything becomes familiar, familial, and frictionless, you haven’t built safety. You’ve built comfort. And comfort, left unexamined, is where desire goes quiet.

To that I’d add my own observation from my practice: couples also conflate safety with a lack of communication.

“We talk about everything” often means “we’ve agreed not to say the things that would hurt.”

Holly shared a Ram Dass line I loved:

Most couples make a contract I won’t hurt your ego if you don’t hurt mine. Healthy couples make a contract to tell the truth.

Your “forbidden” fantasies make sense

Many survivors of sexual trauma—overwhelmingly women—have forced seduction fantasies. And nearly every one of them believes they are the only one, and that something is deeply wrong with them.

Holly has heard this fear so often in her practice. Her answer is always the same: it makes complete psychological sense. These fantasies are about control: you are the author, the architect, the one deciding everything inside the safety of your own mind. Far from being evidence of damage, they’re often the psyche playing with the very thing it’s healing.

Nothing is wrong with you. You are not broken. And your fantasies are information, not indictments.

Additional practical advice

If you lose the moment during sex, like a stray thought, a noise, your to-do list, reframe it as not having lost it, but rather paused it.

Go back through sensation: your partner’s hands, your breath, how touch feels on your own skin. Ask for what brings you back (”stroke my hair,” “grab my hips tighter”). Presence is the doorway, and pleasure follows.

Say yes to something. Holly shared a practice from her own marriage: when her husband initiates, she tries never to reject him outright, but she doesn’t say yes to sex every time either.

She checks in: what can I say yes to? A long hug. A kiss. Sometimes more.

It keeps the channel of touch open without obligating anything, and it protects both partners from the corrosion of constant rejection.

Reintroduce touch without expectation. For so many long-term couples, touch only happens when sex is being initiated, which teaches the lower-desire partner to flinch at a hug in the kitchen. Affectionate touch with no agenda is, in Holly’s words, a female libido healer.

Go for day sex. Estrogen is higher in the morning through mid-afternoon. If you’re waiting until 9:30pm—after work, after kids, after everything—you’re not initiating sex, you’re pushing a boulder. Stop having leftover sex.

And for the touched-out mother: 20 minutes a week. A self-pleasure protocol that starts with nothing more than your own hands moving from your toes to the top of your head, in a way that feels good to you. That’s different from masturbation. It’s a slow reclaiming of your body as yours, so that touch with your kids, your partner, and yourself can live in different containers.

We dive into so much more, including my own past with sexual trauma and how that manifested later in my life, so I hope you enjoy this episode. It’s deep, and uplifting.

Last year, I published a recap of my event with Holly. You can read it here:

Holly's self-pleasure protocol starts with your own hands, and when you're ready to expand from there, what you reach for matters.

My own nightstand staples are from LBDO. Melt, their massage candle that melts into a warm oil (this is exactly the kind of slow, no-agenda touch Holly prescribes), and Rush, their air-pulse stimulator that took three years to design and lives in a glass base so beautiful I've never once thought about hiding it in a drawer.

If reclaiming pleasure is your work right now, they're a gorgeous place to start and you can explore more at lbdo.com — use code LUST15 for 15% off.

Shop LBDO

In case you missed it, tune in to the last episode or read the highlights here:

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

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And then we go to bed with the person we actually love, and nothing flips on, and we lie there thinking the most quietly devastating thought there is: what is wrong with me?

This week, I sat down with Rachel Baker, the founder of LBDO, the Australian-born sexual wellness brand that has been making some of the most beautiful pleasure products I’ve seen — the kind you’d actually leave out on your nightstand instead of burying at the bottom of a drawer.

Rachel’s story starts the way a lot of ours do: a fluorescent-lit sex shop, an old man watching her browse, walls of bright pink products designed, as she puts it, “by men for the male gaze.” She walked out thinking there has to be a better way.

Years later — after losing her mother and leaving a career at L’Oréal — she launched LBDO in the middle of lockdown.

Our conversation weaved in pleasure and product education, so that you can better understand your options and what works for you.

You can also tune in on Spotify, Youtube and Apple Podcasts.

Here are the highlights:

1. Your desire is responsive — not broken

One of the most freeing ideas in sexuality research is this: desire doesn’t only work one way. For some people (and yes, this often tracks with higher testosterone), desire is spontaneous — it shows up first, and then you go looking for sex.

But for so many of us, desire is responsive. The touch comes first. The connection comes first. The warmth, the safety, the right ambience — and then the wanting arrives.

Rachel said it perfectly: she used to wonder if something was wrong with her because she wasn’t “constantly or instantly aroused like I’ve seen in porn and movies and TV.” Nothing was wrong with her. She just had a body that needed a runway.

This is exactly why I tell people to focus on building the on-ramp, and to make that on-ramp something you genuinely look forward to rather than a box to tick.

Touch is one of the most reliable ways back into your body, which is why I’m a believer in starting with a massage before anything else is even on the table. LBDO’s Melt is a candle that melts into a warm massage oil, and their Mood oil is a lightweight, multi-use blend made for exactly this kind of slow, hands-on, no-agenda touch.

For a responsive desire style, that warm-up isn’t foreplay to rush through — it’s how arousal builds.

2. Pleasure is contextual, and your libido is allowed to change.

Desire lives “in a constant state of flux throughout our lifespan,” shares Rachel.

Right now she’s pregnant, and her libido has, in her words, gone quiet.

For me, for clients, for her, the things that move desire are rarely about attraction at all. They’re about stress. Grief. Hormones. How safe you feel in your body. How seen you feel by your partner.

Dr. Emily Nagoski calls these your brakes (what turns you off) and your accelerators (what turns you on), and the work isn’t forcing yourself to want more—it’s learning how to gently take the feet off the brakes.

It’s asking each other: What contexts make it easier for us to feel close, playful, and turned on—and how can we create more of those on purpose?

For most, stress is the number one brake. So we find ways to release the stress and feel more at home in our bodies, whether that’s through dance, movement, music, breathwork, meditation or another outlet we religiously tap into to make space for comfort.

Your libido is not a fixed trait. It’s a conversation between you and your life.

3. The “I’m addicted to my vibrator” myth

This is the fear I often hear: if I use a toy, I’ll get desensitized, it’ll be harder to orgasm and I won’t be able to enjoy sex with my partner as much. Rachel hears it too. And the research is clear: desensitization is a myth. What happens is that temporary dip in sensitivity comes back within the hour.

What’s actually happening when someone feels “addicted to their vibrator” is much simpler: they’ve only ever practiced one road to orgasm. The fix isn’t fewer toys; it’s variety.

This is why I love that LBDO’s two flagship devices do genuinely different things. The Essensual Vibe delivers classic, targeted vibration; Rush, their air-pulse stimulator, creates a suction-like sensation that builds slower and, somehow, more intensely —

Rachel and her team spent three years designing it, and you can feel that obsession in your hand (it also lives in a glass base so gorgeous you’ll forget to hide it).

So, alternate. Diversify. Use your fingers some nights. Let oral take a little longer.

Sexual health is like physical health: you don’t only ever do one kind of movement, and you shouldn’t only ever take one road home.

4. Communication is lubrication

“It’s more detrimental to not talk about sex than to not have sex,” says Rachel.

The data backs her up. Couples who actually talk about sex report more desire, more arousal, more orgasms, less pain, better function across the board. And yet it’s the conversation almost no one was taught how to have.

That’s the entire reason a tool like LBDO’s Journey Deeper: Intimacy Edition exists — 100 prompt cards, built with sexologist Kassandra Mourikis, that move from light and playful into the genuinely deep.

Think of it as training wheels for the conversation: no one’s being put on the spot, you’re just answering the card in front of you. Some of the most connected couples I know didn’t begin with a Big Serious Talk.

They began with a single question neither of them knew the answer to — and let it open everything else.

5. Shame dies when pleasure becomes beautiful

A woman in her seventies wrote to LBDO after her husband died. Their product, she said, had made her feel like herself again. Their customers are teenagers buying a first vibrator without shame, mothers reconnecting with their bodies, women in their sixties and seventies discovering there was never an expiration date on any of this.

That’s what happens when we stop treating pleasure like something seedy to be smuggled home and start treating it like what it is: a form of wellness as ordinary and as worthy of beauty as your skincare or your fragrance.

If you want to explore any of the products above, you can find them at lbdo.com — use code LUST15 for 15% off.

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

Share

Subscribe now

That question sits at the heart of this week’s episode, and there’s almost no one better to answer it than my guest, Amanda Dames—better known as The Kink Consultant.

Amanda is a sexologist and Somatica-certified sex and relationship coach. But before all of that, she lived one of the more fascinating double lives I’ve come across: by day, she worked at the Wall Street Journal. By night, she was a professional dominatrix in a New York City dungeon.

For years, she was the person powerful men trusted with the desires they’d never spoken aloud to anyone. And what she learned in that dungeon completely reshapes how most of us think about kink, shame, and desire.

“These were powerful men—men with high-income jobs. If you looked at them, you’d think they had everything. But they were missing one thing.”

Here’s the through-line of our whole conversation: your desires aren’t proof that something is wrong with you. They’re information about a deeper emotional need.

Or, as Esther Perel says, they reflect a problem and a solution: what you want and how to get it.

The work was never about fixing what you want. It’s about understanding the feeling underneath it, releasing the shame around it, and learning to ask for it.

We talk about her journey from the dungeon to The Kink Consultant, the psychology of what powerful people really crave, and—most importantly for so many of you—how to actually bring kink into a long-term relationship without it blowing up in your face.

Besides Substack, you can tune in on Youtube, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Below are 6 key insights from our episode.

1. First, what’s the difference between a kink and a fetish?

We tend to use these words interchangeably, but a kink is a nice-to-have—something that turns up the heat. A fetish is something you need to think about in order to orgasm; it compels you.

And here’s the part that surprises people: “kinky” is defined almost entirely by the status quo, which is constantly moving.

As Amanda points out, blow jobs were once considered kinky. What counts as “normal” is just a target that shifts by culture and by decade—and anything outside the current default reads as kinky.

2. No one is broken.

One of the most common fears Amanda hears is, is my kink tied to some trauma? It can be—but the research shows it usually isn’t.

Sometimes a desire imprints from something as innocent as a childhood moment that had nothing to do with sex. Sometimes there’s no clear origin at all. Her point, and mine: the hunt for “why am I like this” often matters far less than simply accepting that you are.

As long as it’s consensual and pleasurable (some derive pleasure from pain), then it’s all good.

3. What powerful men are really looking for.

The clients who filled Amanda’s calendar were often high-powered decision-makers—the people who run things all day, every day. What they came looking for wasn’t sex (in the dungeon, there is no sex and no kissing). It was the chance to surrender.

But underneath even that was something far more human: they wanted to be seen.

That need—to be witnessed without judgment—is the real engine underneath most desire.

4. To bring kink into your relationship, start outside the bedroom.

This is the question so many of you wrote in about. When one partner is kinky and the other is hesitant (or doesn’t even know yet), Amanda’s framework is to build a bridge to each other—and, crucially, she begins that work outside the bedroom.

Her unforgettable example: do you know that when you take out the garbage, you have to replace the garbage bag? You cannot fully surrender to a partner in the bedroom if you don’t trust them to show up for you outside of it. The mental load, the division of labor, whether each person feels supported—all of it shapes what’s even possible erotically.

A few of her principles:

• Both partners’ desires matter. If a couple comes to her about his kink, she won’t move forward until she knows what she wants, too. You can’t build a bridge for one person.

• The stressed partner’s desire tends to come last. Often the wife (and mother) is carrying so much that her own wants land dead last. Sometimes the real work is simply uncovering that her desire exists at all.

• Trust outside the bedroom is the foundation for surrender inside it.

5. How to actually bring it up to your partner.

If there’s one section to screenshot, it’s this. Amanda’s guidance on starting the conversation:

• Pick the right moment. Not in bed, not right before sex, not when they’re busy or distracted. Choose a calm, connected time—morning coffee, a quiet evening.

• Lead with curiosity, not a confession. Don’t dump your fantasy on them. Open the door instead: “Have you ever had a fantasy you’ve wanted to explore?” And if they share something, listen. If they don’t, you can share a part of the fantasy you’re wanting to explore, and see how they react to that fraction of it.

• Share the feeling, not just the act. This is the key. Don’t only present the what—present the why. Instead of “I want to be tied up,” try: “I want to try bondage because I think it’ll make me feel safe and held.” Feelings are relatable, even when a specific kink isn’t.

• Give them a next step. End with an invitation: “Would you be willing to explore this with me?”

If the hardest part is starting the conversation, that’s precisely why I created the Wonderlust Intimacy Card Deck. It lets the card ask the question, so you don’t have to—turning these tender, vulnerable conversations into something closer to an intimate game night. You warm up on the lighter prompts and work your way toward the seriously spicy ones, at your own pace.

Shop Intimacy Card Deck

6. If you’re brand new, go from zero to one—not zero to ten.

Curious but intimidated? Amanda’s rule is to try the entry-level version of anything before you dive in.

• Impact play? Start with a hand, not a heavy implement.

• Bondage? Skip the metal handcuffs. Reach for silk ties or even Velcro cuffs—something that comes off easily.

• Want the gentlest on-ramp of all? A blindfold. It builds anticipation, quiets a busy mind, and lets you practice surrender. (It’s one of my personal favorites—and if you’re someone who can’t stop thinking during sex, it’s a gift.)

• Curious about something more advanced, like Shibari? Learn from a practitioner. Ropes are stunning, but they can get dangerous.

If this episode speaks to you and you want to go deeper, you can work with Amanda or explore her courses at amandadames.com, and find her on Instagram at @the_kinkconsultant.

In case you missed it, tune in to last week’s episode or read the highlights here:

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

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It’s a script so pervasive that most of us absorb it before we ever get there. The dominant cultural narrative treats midlife as a problem to be solved: manage the symptoms, age gracefully, accept the dimming.

I’m here to tell you that narrative is not just incomplete. It’s wrong.

Because the women I know who are most attuned to their sensuality—the ones radiating that magnetic, self-possessed energy—are often the ones who came into it later. Not despite midlife, but because of it. Because they finally had the courage (and frankly, the fed-up-ness) to stop performing and start feeling.

No one embodies this more than this week’s guest, Juliette LaMontagne.

is the writer and creator of , a serial memoir about her midlife erotic awakening that is now being adapted for television. I came across her work exactly a year ago, on a flight to Napa of all places (she’s based in Sonoma County—kismet), and I was so moved that I interviewed her for this newsletter last year. This week, I finally got to sit down with her for the podcast.

On paper, Juliette had done everything “right.” Raised Catholic, she followed all the rules: marriage, kids, a successful career in New York City.

But behind the scenes, her marriage was unraveling under the weight of her husband’s addiction relapses—until a night in the E.R. became her breaking point. They separated for nine months, on opposite coasts. She was certain it was over.

Then the pandemic brought them back under one roof, and what happened next is one of the most extraordinary stories of erotic rebuilding I’ve ever heard: 12-step recovery, psychedelic-assisted therapy, sexological bodywork, the Wheel of Consent—and ultimately, the best sex of her life, decades into her marriage.

This conversation is for anyone who has ever wondered if it’s too late. It isn’t.

Besides Substack, you can tune in on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple.

Below are 5 key insights from our episode.

1. There’s a difference between remission and recovery—and it applies to marriages, too.

Juliette’s husband had been sober for most of their marriage, but he’d never done the deeper work of recovery. He was white-knuckling it—channeling that addictive intensity into adrenaline, work, and blame.

Meanwhile, Juliette was living in a state of constant vigilance, never knowing when the next relapse would come. Her nervous system was locked in fight or flight for years.

Through Al-Anon, she learned what she calls radical accountability: the practice of saying this didn’t happen to me—this is an opportunity for me to learn, and I have to take responsibility for my part. It wasn’t until both of them took that accountability—him in recovery, her in Al-Anon—that anything could actually change between them.

If your relationship feels stuck, this is the question worth sitting with: are you in remission, or are you in recovery?

2. Desire can’t come back online until your nervous system calms down.

This is a key part of Juliette’s story. Her eros didn’t return because of a new technique or a lingerie purchase. It returned when her body finally felt safe.

For Juliette, psychedelic-assisted therapy (alongside hormone replacement therapy) is what allowed her nervous system to finally rev down. And when it did, everything came back online—not just erotically, but sensually. Colors brighter. Sensation amplified. Alive.

She’s careful to say psychedelics aren’t the only path. But the principle is universal: you cannot access desire from survival mode. Whatever helps your body exhale—that’s where the work begins.

3. Your body keeps the score, and a skilled practitioner can help you release it.

When Juliette’s sensuality started stirring again, she sought out a sexological bodyworker—a practitioner who uses one-way touch to help clients cultivate their erotic well-being.

She describes a practice called vulva mapping: slow, intentional, exploratory touch (not aimed at arousal) that locates the places where the body holds tension, history, and—for many women—trauma. Spots that were once almost unbearably sensitive would release under patient, breathing presence, and suddenly fill with sensation and pleasure.

Her practitioner put it beautifully: going into the vulva is like opening a box of old photographs.

We also talk about orgasmic meditation—a partnered, time-bound practice that uses gentle clitoral stroking as a form of mindfulness, cultivating present-moment awareness, embodied pleasure, and emotional connection rather than chasing orgasm.

Juliette describes learning to breathe the building sensation outward through the whole body, until she was tingling to her fingertips—a completely different relationship to climaxing than the peak-and-done model we tend to experience.

And as Juliette points out, having a partner do this for you is its own practice: you’re not driving the car. For those of us socialized to monitor everyone else’s experience, learning to let go and simply receive—with no responsibility for the other person—is where the real work (and the real medicine) lives.

4. The Wheel of Consent will make you see your partner—and yourself—anew.

This is where Juliette and her husband rebuilt their erotic connection, and it started smaller than you can imagine: his hands resting on her feet, over her socks, for three minutes.

The Wheel of Consent, developed by Dr. Betty Martin, breaks touch into four quadrants—serve, accept, take, allow—and asks you to get crystal clear about who the touch is for and which direction the energy is moving.

It sounds contrived. It is anything but. Through this slow, negotiated practice, Juliette watched her husband ask for what he wanted from strength and integrity rather than neediness—and she found herself, for the first time in years, able to receive.

And then there was the moment he told her “wait.” One word. So hot. Because there is nothing sexier than presence—and for women who are used to driving every part of their lives (raising my hand here), surrendering control to a partner who can hold it is its own profound eroticism.

You don’t need whips, chains, or a play party to rebuild your sex life. You need exploration through touch, negotiation, and consent.

5. Surrender is the whole game.

The thread running through Juliette’s entire journey—the psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions, the bodywork, the sex retreat—is surrender. The turning over of control to something, or someone, you trust.

I got emotional in this part of the conversation, because surrender is exactly what I’ve been struggling to access in my own life. I work with sex, I preach this daily, and yet building this business has kept me gripping the wheel so tightly that letting go—truly letting go—has felt almost impossible.

My own recent shibari experience cracked something open in me, and Juliette’s story reminded me why this work matters: it’s one thing to tell your mind to let go. It’s another to let your whole body be held.

Sometimes the bedroom alone can’t give us that container. And it’s brave to seek out the practices and practitioners that can.

If Juliette’s story resonates, do yourself a favor and read . It is phenomenal—intimate, literary, and wildly hopeful.

In this episode, Juliette mentions a previous episode with . Tune in below:

If you’re bracing for irritation, infections, or yet another post‑sex UTI, it’s almost impossible to stay present in the bedroom.

Momotaro Apotheca offers organic solutions that I use everyday to take care of my intimate health—from their soothing balm, Salve, to their UTI supplement, probiotic, and yeast infection suppository.

Curious to learn more? Build your own ritual at https://momotaroapotheca.com/discount/lust and get 20% off with code LUST.

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

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“All the men I know are nice guys. I wish I had a panel of fuckboys to consult about this issue and really get to the meat of it. Like, why did he do this to me?”

Val, her close friend and a comedian, heard that and said: that would make a great comedy show.

And she was right. Two years and 3,000 tickets later, Ask a Fuckboy always sells out and tours nationwide. It’s one of my favorite shows and a guaranteed night of laughing.

Andie and Val are now in serious relationships, and have learned a ton watching dating horror story after story unfold on stage.

Side note: I presented at Ask a Fuckboy! My husband was one when I met him (sigh). Fresh out of a divorce at the age of 43, he didn’t want anything serious with 30-year-old me. Until one day, we sealed the deal.

Six years later and married, I offer a ton of self-deprecating humor on this topic, mostly because women are told they should be chased and chosen–and I certainly did the opposite, and have zero regrets. Of course, there’s a fine line between overstaying and knowing when to walk away, and we talk about that in this episode.

This conversation is about desire in dating: what we’re drawn to, what we settle for and what we finally stop putting up with. It’s also hilarious.

Tune in on Youtube, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Here are a few ideas that stuck with me!

Anxious vs. avoidant: your attachment style is your dating instruction manual

Andie and Val represent opposite ends of the spectrum, and both approaches worked, because they played to their own wiring rather than performing someone else’s.

Andie is anxiously attached. She gets invested quickly, needs communication, and wants to know early if someone can meet her where she is. So she asks the big questions upfront, communicates her needs clearly, and moves on fast when someone can’t meet them. Her fiancé loved that about her and in less than one year, they were engaged.

Val is avoidant. She doesn’t get swept up easily, treats early dating like a low-stakes game, and lets people prove themselves over time before she extends emotional investment. Brad passed the test, and they just moved in together.

The problem arises when you pretend to be the other one: if you’re anxious and you try to play it cool, you’ll just suffer. If you’re avoidant and you force yourself to open up before you’re ready, you’ll panic and pull away.

Not all fuckboys are created equal

Andie and Val draw a useful distinction between two of the most common archetypes.

The breadcrumber keeps you just fed enough to stay. He texts sporadically, shows up when it’s convenient, offers just enough warmth to sustain your hope — and never enough to build anything real.

The love bomber does the opposite: he floods you early with intensity, future-talk, grand gestures, the whole romantic movie arc compressed into three weeks.

What makes love bombing particularly insidious is that it doesn’t feel like a red flag; it feels like finally being seen. But the crash, when it comes, is proportional to the height of the high. You’ve already built a future in your head.

The breadcrumber lowers your bar slowly. The love bomber raises your hopes catastrophically and then lets them fall.

What really changes a fuckboy’s behavior?

There’s the myth of a woman who comes along and changes him.

But according to a guy they interviewed for their own pod, your friend group sets the tone:

He stopped being a fuckboy once most of his friends were in relationships. Suddenly, fuckboy behavior looked juvenile.

You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person

So much modern dating culture is about calibrating your behavior: how long to wait before texting back, whether to seem too eager, what the “right” amount of vulnerability is on a first date.

What Val and Andie say: that math doesn’t work. If someone is right for you, your natural self is not a liability.

Choosing from fullness, not fear

There’s a difference between choosing a relationship because your life is already good and you want to share it, versus staying in one because you’re afraid of what happens if you leave. Or stepping into one for fear of being alone.

I experienced both sides of this personally. The first time, I came from a place of scarcity: expecting a partner to fill a void I found unbearable on my own. It turned out to be six years of a controlling relationship that left me unrecognizable to myself.

Two years after that ended, after taking real time to heal and actually enjoy my own company, I met my husband. The beginning wasn’t perfect, but my positioning was different. I had clear boundaries and communication, and today it’s an incredibly fulfilling relationship.

The desire you feel in a relationship, the aliveness, feels stronger when the ground under your own feet is solid.

Curious about Ask a Fuckboy? Check out their website for upcoming shows and follow along on Instagram.

One thing nobody talks about in dating advice: it's hard to show up as your confident self and be present if you're bracing for irritation, infections, or yet another post-sex UTI.

Momotaro Apotheca offers organic solutions I use every day to take care of my intimate health — from their soothing balm, Salve, to their UTI supplement, probiotic, and yeast infection suppository. Get 20% off with code LUST.

build your intimate health ritual

In case you missed it, tune in to last week’s episode or read the highlights here:

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

Share

Subscribe now

I started waking up at 2 or 3 AM for no reason, my energy dipped, my skin looked tired.

Nothing in my regimen had changed: I was working out consistently and eating reasonably well.

Because I often work with women in perimenopause and menopause, I started suspecting that the former was knocking at my door. It felt early, but age 35 is when it can begin.

I asked my doctor for a full hormone panel and the results were “within normal range.”

Women unfortunately hear this all the time, along with a slew of other dismissals like “It’s a natural part of aging” or “Let’s get you on Xanax or an SSRI so these symptoms bother you less.”

Medical gaslighting is real, and it’s the reason why I always tell my clients to find a practitioner who is certified by the Menopause Society, and to get more than one opinion.

These changes we feel in our disposition significantly affect our quality of life, and have everything to do with desire and libido.

They also impact our partners who are left scratching their heads, trying to understand what’s going on and how to best support us during this unstable period.

That’s why I invited Jackie Giannelli to the podcast. Jackie is a board-certified family nurse practitioner specializing in women’s health, longevity, and sexual medicine. She has a private practice serving women in New York and Connecticut, and is also a clinical strategist for the new Carolyn Rowan Center at Mount Sinai. She is one of the most rigorous, nuanced, and genuinely funny people I’ve talked to on this subject.

This episode is essentially a masterclass in what’s actually happening inside your body in your late 30s, 40s, and beyond — and what you can do about it. We cover everything from hormone replacement therapy to GLP-1 to peptides.

You can tune in on Youtube, Spotify and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Here are the highlights:

“Normal” and “optimal” lab results are not the same thing

When your doctor tells you you’re “within normal range,” they’re telling you that you don’t have a diagnosable condition. There is no clinical billing code for brain fog. There is no standard of care built around “I feel flat.”

And because conventional medicine is structured around diagnosis and treatment rather than optimization, millions of women are told to just live with symptoms that are actually addressable.

That’s why Jackie uses a symptom-first approach, asking where you are in your cycle, what’s changing, what’s getting worse. Hormonal lab tests are the third guardrail to her practice.

If you want to find out the essential lab markers every woman ages 35+ should know, I found Jackie’s free guide to be very helpful.

Your ovaries age twice as fast as your biological age

By age 35, women have lost 90% of their ovarian hormonal reserve and function. Ovaries are the primary production site for testosterone, estrogen and progesterone.

More specifically, ovaries produce testosterone, and much of that testosterone is then converted into estradiol, which is the most biologically active form of estrogen.

Progesterone is what helps you sleep through the night, keeps your PMS in check, and supports mood stability. So as it starts to decline, those 2 or 3 AM night wakes I started having begin to make a lot more sense.

The Women’s Health Initiative study did a lot of damage

You may have heard that hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer. This is one of the most consequential pieces of medical misinformation of the last few decades, and it’s still shaping how women are treated today.

Here’s what actually happened:

In the 1990s, the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) studied whether estrogen could protect women from heart disease. They enrolled women in their 60s and 70s—many hadn’t taken estrogen for 20+ years since menopause—and put them on it. The study ended early after finding small increased risks of stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer.

The media panicked. Headlines screamed that estrogen was dangerous. Seventy percent of prescriptions were dropped overnight. Doctors stopped learning how to prescribe it, pushing women into cash-based hormone clinics with riskier compounded treatments.

But what the study actually showed was timing matters. Estrogen is heart protective—it helps prevent plaque buildup in arteries, which is one theory for why women get heart disease later than men. But once estrogen disappears and plaque accumulates, reintroducing it can destabilize existing plaques, causing the strokes seen in the WHI.

The breast cancer findings were equally misleading. The study wasn’t properly randomized for cancer risk, and some participants had previously been on estrogen. Women who developed breast cancer while on hormone therapy actually lived longer than breast cancer patients not on hormones. Breast cancer is common regardless of hormone use.

Here’s what we now know:

Estrogen when taken early protects against heart disease, anxiety, depression, breast cancer, colon cancer, cognitive decline, insulin resistance, and osteoporosis. It increases longevity—women on hormone therapy live on average three years longer than those who don’t.

What about GLP-1s?

GLP-1s blunt reward-seeking pathways, which includes food and even libido. So if you’re taking it and you’ve noticed a drop in desire or difficulty reaching orgasm, this may be why.

Jackie takes a microdosing approach in her female patients for this reason.

It’s great to manage inflammation and metabolic changes we tend to experience after age 35, but you should also closely monitor other side effects: libido, hair loss and muscle loss.

That’s why Jackie suggests pairing GLP-1 with testosterone therapy, thoughtful nutrition, strength training, and close monitoring.

Peptides: the next frontier (and the wild west)

Peptides are small chains of amino acids that act as signaling molecules. They tell your body to do something it already knows how to do, just more efficiently.

Unlike hormones, which travel everywhere and affect the whole body, peptides tend to work locally and clear quickly, which is why many are injected directly.

Two worth knowing:

• GHK, a.k.a the “beauty peptide,” supports collagen production, hair follicle health, and skin. Jackie loves it compounded into a topical cream for scalp and face for microbiome optimization, hair regrowth and follicle health.

• And PT-141, which we cover below under FDA-approved options, works on arousal pathways in the brain.

The catch with peptides right now is regulatory: many exist in a gray market, technically classified as research-use only, which means purity and safety testing vary wildly.

Jackie’s rule of thumb: only work with a compounding pharmacy that will hand you a certificate of analysis. If they won’t, walk away.

FDA-approved medications you may not know exist for desire and pleasure

I’ve spoken to enough women who haven’t heard of these, so I’m leaving them here, and why they matter:

• Vaginal (or vulvar) estrogen: Arguably the most underused treatment in women’s health. It can prevent dryness, pain, recurrent UTIs, and even reverse the disappearance of the labia minora that happens with genitourinary syndrome of menopause. Jackie prefers a combination of estrogen and testosterone applied to the vulva, because the vulva is rich in androgen receptors. It can be used proactively, not just reactively. And it carries no breast cancer risk.

Jackie’s closing thought on this: “It’s one of the few treatments we have for anything that I can almost explicitly say is risk free. I mean, think of Tylenol. Tylenol is not risk free, right?”

• PT-141 (bremelanotide / Vyleesi): Works on melanocortin receptors throughout the body and brain, improving arousal and dopamine production. Jackie describes it as more of an arousal medication than a desire one, and notes it pairs well with SSRIs (which famously suppress orgasm) and GLP-1s.

• Addyi (flibanserin): Approved for premenopausal and postmenopausal women, it works directly in the brain, modulating serotonin and dopamine. It’s for women whose desire just won’t “turn on” despite being in situations where they want it to.

A note on designing for desire

Jackie is undergoing a home renovation and designing around her sexual wellness and connection to her husband. Lighting and mirrors in the walk-in closet, removing the TV from the bedroom, installing a whole-home sound system.

She even collaborated with a DJ who is also a therapist to build a 22-minute playlist calibrated to help women move from mental load to physical presence. (She got the idea from Barilla, who made pasta playlists timed to the exact minutes their pasta takes to cook. Genius.)

The underlying principle is that for women, arousal requires a transition. You can’t go from scheduling school pickups to feeling sexy without some kind of bridge. What does your bridge look like?

If you want to learn more about Jackie, follow her on Instagram and work with her here.

While we’re on the topic of perimenopause and menopause:

If you’re bracing for irritation, infections, or yet another post‑sex UTI, it’s almost impossible to stay present in the bedroom.

Momotaro Apotheca offers organic solutions that I use everyday to take care of my intimate health—from their soothing balm, Salve, to their UTI supplement, probiotic, and yeast infection suppository. Curious to learn more? Build your own ritual at https://momotaroapotheca.com/discount/lust and get 20% off with code LUST.

In case you missed it, tune in to last week’s episode or read the highlights here:

Lust in Translation is independently produced and self-funded.

If you shop any brands I share, using my links and discount codes is the best way to financially support this work. I promise I only feature products I actually use and believe in.

If you love what you’re reading and watching, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

Share

Subscribe now

Roughly 70% of women rarely feel aroused out of the blue, and spend years believing something is wrong with them. They think they have low libido, when in fact what’s often missing is the stimulation of their imagination. They say they don’t have fantasies, or know how to cultivate them.

If you’re not new here, you’ve heard me say this: your largest sexual organ is your brain.

I’ve found that the women who are most attuned to their sensuality and desires are the ones who read erotica (including yours truly). And the research backs this up: women who regularly consume literary erotica report higher levels of sexual arousal and satisfaction (Lehmiller, 2018).

But what is it about this medium that works so well, especially for women?

There are two layers:

1. Reading is an incredible relaxation tool. As little as 6 minutes of reading can slow heart rate and reduce stress, making it one of the most effective ways to remove the barriers (anxiety, mental load, performance pressure) that prevent women from accessing desire.

2. Women’s desire thrives in rich storytelling and plot lines. Psychological research confirms that narrative-based erotic content engages emotional and imaginative regions of the brain alongside arousal.

In fact, men have a 50% overlap between their physiological genital response and their subjective experience of desire, while women only have around a 10% overlap.

The body and the brain are frequently operating on separate channels in women—and literary erotica engages the brain, where female arousal truly lives.

If you’ve ever wondered why the romantasy genre is so popular amongst women, this is why. However, romantasy (literature that combines romance with fantasy, often in the form of fictional worlds like dragons, magic and fae) doesn’t vibe with everyone.

That’s why Carly Pifer, today’s guest, created Aurore. It’s a space for writings based on our own, real experiences. As she likes to put it: it’s as smart as it is sexy.

There’s a reason why p*rn doesn’t resonate with many women, and why literary erotica does.

What I personally love about Aurore is that there are over 300 stories and it offers a playful way for you to sample different scenarios, learn what actually lights you up (and what doesn’t), and bring those discoveries back into your own sex life.

Here are two snippets from different moments of a story called My Favorite One Night Stand:

“With my back flush against his broad chest, I let the music take over my body, rolling my hips into his as his fingers intertwined with mine. We moved together, sweat beading at my hairline, a bolt of electricity moving through me every time his hips ground into me from behind, feeling his cock grow harder with each hip roll. I turned to face him, letting my hands graze over his chest and down his sculpted arms, and then reached up to wrap a hand around the back of his neck, feeling the hairs rise in response to my touch. His hands gripped my hips, still swirling to the music, as he leaned in and kissed me.”

“His lips were on my neck, soft and then scraping as he slowly unraveled, his growls in my ear reverberating through my entire body as my moans echoed off the tiled walls. One of his hands slid between my thighs and he stroked my clit, slowly, achingly. My legs quivered and he wrapped one arm around me to hold me upright.”

In our conversation, Carly and I go deeper into how women fantasize: we talk about responsive versus spontaneous desire, body image and turning insecurity into eroticism, “real‑eaters” and why emotional safety matters so much, common fantasies, and how writing erotica can help people rewrite painful sexual or relational experiences.

Before Aurore, Carly was a writer with bylines in Vogue, Brooklyn Magazine, Slate, Refinery29, and Vice, and she now holds erotic writing workshops to guide people through the healing power of verbalizing their desires and commemorating the best sex of their lives.

If any of this resonates, I hope literary erotica can be a great source of inspiration for you to explore what turns you on.

And in that process, talk about, and even act on, your fantasies.

If you’re curious to explore more, you can browse additional teasers here, and if you decide to subscribe to Aurore, use code NATASSIA for 10% off.

Read Aurore

Thank you for tuning in! If you have any questions or comments, please drop them below or hit reply.

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It’s also the kind of thing we rarely talk about. Everyone overshares on the internet, but this still feels like the kind of TMI you keep between you and your pharmacy receipts.

That’s why I invited Lindsay Wynn, founder of vulvovaginal wellness brand Momotaro Apotheca, to talk about this foundational part of our sex lives.

If you need any convincing that this education is necessary, here are some shocking stats:

• 1 in 4 American women can’t correctly identify the vagina on a diagram

• 1 in 5 American women believe they pee and menstruate from the same hole

• 50–60% of women have at least one urinary tract infection (UTI) in their lifetime

• 20–30% will develop recurrent UTIs

• Women get UTIs roughly 30 times more often than men

• 1 in 3 women will have bacterial vaginosis (BV) and 4 in 5 will not recognize it

• 3 in 4 women will have a yeast infection, with half experiencing it more than once.

I’ll be the first to admit: until I was 30 (and before I became a sexologist), I had never heard of the word vulva (it was all the vagina to me) and I thought I peed from the same canal I menstruated from (we pee from the urethra and menstruate from the vaginal canal).

I also had recurring UTIs and yeast infections, and hated how–when treating the latter–Monistat felt like the only solution available to me, yet it burned and itched so much!

I did not believe in organic homeopathic solutions until I tried Momotaro Apotheca’s Yeast Infection & BV Suppository. It worked within a day and it did not burn. I was flabbergasted.

It took Lindsay 8 years (!!) to develop that suppository, bring it through testing, and get it certified—and it shows in how it feels and how it works.

For the past three years, Momotaro has been core to my daily routine. I preemptively insert one suppository after sex or after a long day at the beach in a wet bikini to prevent infections, and I use it religiously when I (now, rarely) do get one.

If I have any cuts, discomfort or itching, I reach for the Salve–their certified organic balm that soothes right away. It’s also great for sunburns and small wounds anywhere else on the body. More recently, I used it to heal a swollen ingrown, which it did overnight.

After every shower I massage the Tonic Oil onto my vulva to moisturize and nourish it. This is one daily intimacy ritual that makes me really feel myself, and I’ve talked about this at length on Instagram over the years. 10/10 recommend.

And if I don’t have time to shower after a quick romp or a workout, I spray the Hydrosol Toner for a quick antimicrobial refresh.

This is genuinely how I use Momotaro on a regular basis. It’s helped me build a better relationship with my body.

My hope is that this episode and this piece expand your sense of what’s possible in your intimate care routine—that you’re allowed to have products, rituals, and knowledge that support your vulva and vagina as much as your skincare routine supports your face.

Over the years, Lindsay and I have become close, so this episode is equal parts informative and unhinged, as we overshare personal stories and break down the science with a lot of humor.

[You can watch it on Youtube, Spotify, or anywhere you tune into podcasts.]

Beyond my own experience, we also answered anonymous questions from you. Here are the highlights:

Do supplements actually work or are they expensive pee?

A lot of them are, especially in the beauty and “wellness” space. But when it comes to targeted products like probiotics or urinary‑tract support, the real question isn’t just what’s in them—it’s how much your body can actually absorb.

You only have so much bioavailability for vitamins, minerals, and active compounds, so more is not automatically better. When you’re choosing a supplement, it’s worth asking:

• What’s the bioavailability of these ingredients?

• Why this dose or this many CFUs (for probiotics) compared with other brands?

• What else is in the formula besides the “hero” ingredient?

A good probiotic is a truly active product. Momotaro’s Daily Probiotic doesn’t need to be refrigerated because the strains are freeze‑dried; they re-activate and interact with your gut microbiome once you take them.

Their Urinary Tract and Bladder Supplement is built around effective antimicrobial dosing—designed to help your body push back against the “bad” microbes introduced by things like friction from sex, bacteria entering micro‑tears, or irritants from flavored lubes that can tip you into an infection.

I see ads for probiotics that claim they’ll make your vagina taste like strawberries. What should a vagina actually taste like?

A vagina should taste like a vagina, not fruit.

A healthy vagina is naturally acidic, with a pH usually between 3.8 and 4.5—the same ballpark as tomato juice or some beers. That doesn’t sound as sexy as pineapple or strawberries, but that acidity is part of what keeps harmful bacteria in check.

It’s also why your underwear sometimes bleaches. Those pale spots on dark fabric aren’t a laundry fail; they’re a sign that your vaginal fluid is acidic enough to lighten the dye.

Taste and smell can shift through your cycle. Around your period, you might notice a more metallic, iron‑y taste or scent because of blood. That’s normal.

If you’re worried about odor before sex, skip the scented wipes and douches and just rinse your vulva with warm water in the shower or over the sink. That’s usually all you need.

If something smells strongly fishy, foul, or just very different from your normal—especially with itching, burning, or unusual discharge—that can signal an infection like BV or something else worth getting checked.

If you want a great breakdown of what different smells can mean, this guide written with one of Momotaro’s OB‑GYN partners goes into 10 common vaginal scents and what they might be telling you about your health.

read the guide

What are some best practices to maintain vulvovaginal health?

• If you want to be proactive, take a vaginal probiotic that is all-encompassing, addressing gut microbiome, vaginal microbiome, and immune health.

• Keep the vulva clean with water and gentle, fragrance‑free products; avoiding douching or harsh “feminine washes” that strip the microbiome.

• Use the Salve if you did something that was “bad”, like using flavored lube, wearing a swimsuit all day, or going from one hole to the next without protection.

• Let your vulva breathe. Wear breathable cotton underwear, loose fitting clothing, and sleep naked (or, at least without panties).

• Stay dry! Take off gym clothes and damp swimsuits as soon as possible. Excess moisture is a breeding ground for bad bacteria. If you can’t rinse off after a heavy sweat sesh, Hydrosol can help maintain a balanced pH without drying out your skin.

• Stay on top of your menstrual care. Regularly change your pad or tampons, and set a reminder on your phone if you tend to forget. You should also look at the ingredients and materials in your menstrual care products. Some have hidden fragrance synthetic materials that cause irritation and it’s worth switching up your product of choice to see if it helps.

• Get enough sleep, eat whole foods, drink enough water and reduce stress. You probably already know this, but when you’re overstressed, it can affect your sleep, digestion, and immunity, which lowers your body’s natural defenses and can make you more vulnerable to infection.

If you’re curious about trying Momotaro, I managed to snag a 20% off code for this community. You can build your own ritual at momotaroapotheca.com with the code LUST at checkout.

shop 20% off momotaro apotheca

Thank you for tuning in! If you have any questions or comments, please drop them below or hit reply.

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In this week’s episode of Lust in Translation, I sit down with Hayley Folk, a very good friend who also has a gift with words. She is perhaps the only sex and relationships writer I know who makes the kinkiest story sound, dare I say…angelic?

For example, here’s her account of the first time she got flogged at a play party by her husband:

“Afterward, in a fog of aftercare, I felt like I had opened up my chest to show him what was inside, and he met me with love; he kissed me and held me and told me I was brave. I’ve never felt so close to anyone else in my entire life. I’ve always trusted my husband, but after playing with impact together, it opened up a new level of vulnerability for us both.”

See what I mean?!

Hayley is also the founder of The Poly Pocket, where she shares her life as a polyamorous, bisexual woman married to a man, and–as her community has grown–built a dedicated online space for queer, non-monogamous women and non-binary folks.

I know a lot about Hayley’s life from our friendship, but I was surprised about how much I learned in this conversation.

And as I was editing it, I thought to myself, goodness, I could’ve gone deeper here or unpacked more of that there. Which means, I’ll eventually have to have her on again (and I’m learning how to become a better interviewer along the way).

We talk about her marrying at 23, opening her marriage, owning her bisexuality, and how falling in love with someone other than her husband at the time forced her to confront what she really wanted: polyamory.

She has since remarried, and generously shares her experience with play parties, impact play, therapy, and the daily rituals that make her marriage to Kyle feel wildly expansive, yet safe.

This episode is about how to move slowly, talk honestly, make mistakes without burning everything down, and create relationships that actually fit who you are.

Besides Substack, you can tune in on Youtube, Spotify, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.

Below are 5 key insights from our episode.

1. What, after all, is the difference between open relationships and polyamory?

An open relationship means partners can have sex outside of their main relationship (and, sometimes, have limited romantic connections too).

Polyamory goes deeper. It gives you space to fall in love and build a life with multiple partners.

2. What are the so-called rules, agreements and boundaries everyone talks about?

Rules are hard lines that can feel rigid, whereas agreements–while respected–have more flexibility that reflect the messy reality of life. Boundaries are your limits, needs, and what you will or won’t participate in, based on your own well‑being.

So, for example:

• Rules are, “You can’t go on more than one date a week with anyone else.”

• Whereas an agreement is, “We’ll check in with each other if we want to go on more than one date a week with someone else.”

• And a boundary says, “If seeing someone more than once a week starts to affect our time together, I will ask to pause new dates while we re-evaluate, because I need regular connection.”

One of Hayley’s favorite examples of healthy non‑monogamy is a friend who keeps a literal “living, google doc” with her partner—a 20‑page list of every rule, boundary, and agreement they’ve ever had, crossed out and updated over the years.

In her own marriage, many things that began as rigid rules (like no sleepovers) eventually became more nuanced agreements as trust grew.

The point isn’t to “get it right” from day one, but to keep the dialogue alive.

3. If you’re thinking about opening your relationship…

Hayley’s advice to couples is to go slower than you think and talk more than feels comfortable.

Many people rush from “monogamous with kids and careers” straight into “let’s open everything up now,” skipping the months (or years) of conversation they actually need.

Questions she suggests asking yourselves:

• What is genuinely inspiring you about non‑monogamy—curiosity, desire, a specific fantasy, a philosophy, or the hope it will “fix” something?

• Are you truly on board, or agreeing because you’re afraid of losing your partner?

• Can you sit down together and write a list of your agreements, and boundaries that feels good for the both of you?

If you’re looking for well-rounded advice, Hayley offers guidance calls, which I highly recommend.

Book a guidance call with Hayley

4. I’m curious about play parties. What should I look for?

Hayley shares her experience frequenting them, with environments that very much resemble Eyes Wide Shut (without the satanic rituals).

If you’re curious about play parties, Hayley’s advice is to treat them a bit like dating: know what you’re looking for, and do your research.

A few things she suggests considering:

• Vibe and curation – Is it more luxurious, or a casual house party? Do you want queer‑centered spaces, or a specific kink focus?

• Screening and consent culture – Do they do applications, interviews, or consent workshops? How do they talk about safety and behavior expectations? And what about STI tests?

• Dress code and structure – Is it cocktails‑then‑play, or more free‑form? Are there rituals, performances, or clear guidelines about phones and anonymity?

She also stresses that you do not have to play just because you’re there. Going in with the expectation “we must have sex or we’re failing” creates pressure that can ruin the experience.

Some of the most powerful nights for couples are simply watching, talking, and using what they saw as fuel for later conversations—or for their own bed.

If you’re looking for a curated list of the best play parties, Hayley made a guide for you.

Get Hayley's Curated Play Party List

5. What is impact play, and where do I begin?

Impact play is a consensual erotic practice in which one person strikes another’s body (by hand or with a tool) to create intense sensation for sexual, emotional, or psychological gratification.

It is a form of BDSM and can range from light spanking to more intense practices like flogging, caning, or whipping, always grounded in explicit consent and negotiated limits.

For Hayley, impact play is the one thing that can fully shut her brain off, allowing her to drop into pure sensation. It can be sexy—hair pulling, dirty talk—but the real draw for her is the mental quiet and the intense trust it requires.

If impact play is calling you, Hayley’s guidance is clear: don’t just let someone say, “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before” and start hitting you.

Her practical steps:

• Talk first, in detail – Share your boundaries, fears, and any trauma or health issues. Agree on areas of the body, intensity ranges, and what’s absolutely off‑limits.

• Learn about drop and aftercare – Both subs and doms can experience an emotional or physical “drop” afterward—feeling low, raw, or disoriented—so plan for comforting food, blankets, cuddling, or whatever makes you feel grounded.

• Build slowly – Start with light touch and gradually increase intensity, checking in verbally or with agreed‑upon signals. Don’t jump straight into “full scene” mode.

• Read or learn together – Books, essays, workshops, and classes can help you understand the psychological and physiological sides of impact play, so you’re not improvising with each other’s nervous systems.

Above all, she emphasizes that because you’re literally giving someone power over your body, you need a strong foundation of consent, knowledge, and trust before you pick up, say, a flogger.

Thank you for tuning in! If you have any questions or comments, please drop them below or hit reply.

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To all of the moms of Lust in Translation, I wish you a beautiful Mother’s Day this weekend!! I did not have time to curate a Mother’s day Gift Guide for partners this year as I was deep in the weeds with the podcast, but I hope it’s restful and full of love.

Follow Lust in Translation on Instagram, we recently started our new account!

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Until next week!

Natassia

Before I dive in, I want you to know that you are able to tune in directly on Substack (click on the video above), as well as anywhere you listen to podcasts.

The most popular ones are Spotify, Youtube and Apple Podcasts, so I’m linking them here.

Lauren Elise Rogers is a Certified Holistic Sexuality Educator and Embodied Intimacy & Relationship Coach who grew up in an evangelical Christian community.

We talked about purity culture, erotic literature and self-pleasure, painful marriages and joyful liberation, and raising sexually empowered teens—all in one arc.

I wanted to start here because it’s a complex and enlightening episode. Even if you didn’t grow up religious, chances are you were taught to fear your own desire. Most of us were.

Lauren’s story shows how deeply those scripts can live in us, and how possible it is to rewrite them at any age.

Below, I share 4 main frameworks and/or insights from our conversation.

1. The 7–14–21 framework: mapping your erotic timeline

One of my favorite practical pieces from this episode is the idea of tracing your sexual formation through key developmental ages: 7, 14, and 21.

Lauren describes guiding people to analyze their own “metaphorical sexual gardens,” going back through their experiences and messages at these ages.

Here’s how you can do this as a reflection practice (journal, voice note, or talk it out with a trusted friend/therapist/coach). I took the liberty of adding my own questions to this guide.

Age 7: Early messages and “good/bad” bodies

Ask yourself:

• What did I learn about bodies and nudity around this age?

• How did adults react if I was curious about my body or someone else’s?

• Were there any rules—spoken or unspoken—about modesty, touching, or privacy?

At 7, many of us absorbed foundational ideas like “my body is dirty,” “curiosity is shameful,” or “we don’t talk about that,” even if no one ever said those words out loud.

Age 14: Adolescence, desire, and social scripts

Ask yourself:

• What were peers, media, or religious communities saying about sex and “good girls/boys”?

• Was I taught that my value depended on staying pure, not being “easy,” or managing someone else’s arousal?

• Did anyone talk about pleasure, orientation, or consent in a way that honored my experience?

Lauren notes that many of her female-bodied clients realize, at this stage of reflection, “Oh, that’s where I learned that my job is to protect men from my body, and that their desire is inevitable and my responsibility.”

Age 21: Adult sex without sex education

Ask yourself:

• What was my relationship to sex, partnership, and commitment around then?

• Did I feel like I had to “perform” being a good partner, spouse, or lover without any real education?

• Was there a gap between what I was doing sexually and what I actually wanted or felt ready for?

Lauren shares that 21 is also the average age at which many people begin engaging in penetrative sex, even though experimentation and curiosity often start earlier. Yet most of us arrive there with prevention-focused, shame-based education at best.

Once you’ve done 7–14–21, look at your answers and ask:

• Which beliefs did I consciously choose, and which were embedded by family, religion, or culture?

• Which ones feel like “soil”—deep in my body, especially my pelvic floor—showing up as tension, shutdown, or guilt when I feel desire?

• Which scripts do I want to retire, rewrite, or reclaim?

This exercise isn’t about blaming your past. It’s about understanding the origin story of your erotic self so you can rewrite it in a way that actually fits who you are now.

2. Faith, pleasure, and reclaiming your body

Lauren helps clients distinguish between embedded theology (the harmful add-ons—gender roles, sexual double standards, shame-based teachings) and essential theology (their actual spiritual values and connection to the divine).

We explore how pleasure can be seen as sacred rather than sinful: from the simple fact that fetuses self-pleasure in utero, to the existence of the clitoris as an organ whose sole purpose is pleasure.

Instead of treating the body as a problem to solve, we can treat our anatomy as evidence that we were made for joy, connection, and erotic aliveness.

For people who choose to keep practicing their faith, the work often looks like:

• Letting go of rigid gender roles and scripts that equate “goodness” with sexual submission or self-erasure.

• Developing a personal ethic where sex, self-pleasure, and erotic exploration are aligned with core values like consent, mutual care, and honesty.

• Allowing pleasure to be a site of worship, gratitude, and embodiment rather than performance or obligation.

3. Toys, variety, and everyday eroticism

For those of you who’ve been taught that using a toy in bed is “cheating” or “corrupting”, a great analogy is that vibrators are like snacks or smoothies, not replacements for meals. They are different ways of nourishing the body.

• A vibrator is not in competition with a partner. It’s more like a pool toy you bring into the water together.

• You don’t become “dependent” on toys, unless they are truly the only kind of stimulation you ever allow yourself. If that bothers you, add in more variety and go acoustic (using your fingers).

• Solo pleasure practices (with or without toys) make partnered sex better by deepening your understanding of what you like and how you respond.

If you’re curious about bringing more intentional play into your erotic life, I partnered with Epiphany to bring you the Mind and Body Bundle: a clitoral arousal serum to heighten sensation (I carry it in my purse at all times!), and my intimacy card deck to spark the kinds of conversations and experiments that keep desire alive.

Think of it as a practical lab for everything we talk about on the podcast—more chances to feel turned on in your own skin, and more chances to create connection (and orgasms) instead of waiting for them to magically appear.

Explore the Mind & Body Bundle

4. Raising sexually literate, empowered teens

One of the most moving parts of the episode is when Lauren talks about parenting her 15-year-old daughter very differently from how she was raised. Instead of secrecy and silence, she centers comprehensive sexuality education and ongoing conversations as acts of deep care.

She compares it to learning how to drive: before a teen gets behind the wheel alone, they have to study, pass a written test, and log many supervised hours on the road.

Yet we often expect young people to “just figure out” sex with no information, then shame them when they struggle.

Some of the outcomes she sees at home:

• Her daughter can clearly articulate boundaries, desires, and what she is and is not interested in doing with her body in a relationship.

• She is not having sex to please a boyfriend or to validate his desire; she is able to center her own wants and limits.

• Research backs this up: young people who receive comprehensive sex education tend to take fewer risks, delay intercourse, and make more informed decisions, compared with those who receive abstinence-only messages.

For those of you raising kids or in close relationship with teens, this is an invitation to move from “protecting them from information” to equipping them with tools, language, and frameworks they can carry for life.

If you’re curious where to start, Lauren has an online course called Sex Ed Prep for Parents.

Thank you for tuning in! If you have any questions or comments, please drop them below or hit reply.

Leave a comment

Connect with Lauren on Instagram, and learn more about working with her here. ⁠

Follow Lust in Translation on Instagram, we recently started our new account!

If you enjoyed this, please share with anyone else who would too. Spreading the word helps us grow and bring you even better content.

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Until next week!

Natassia