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Whew! Let’s dive into this week’s episode because Wendy Strgar is here from Good Clean Love. We’re chatting all about her new book, “Sex That Works,” and we also dive into keeping sexual passion alive in monogamy, cultivating sexual freedom and sexual responsibility, what love and healthy relationships look like, the importance of choosing a body-safe lube, and much much more.
Ready to go? Let’s do it!
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Wendy and I talk about:
- Grace and Frankie and how Wendy consulted for the Netflix series on lube and starting a sex company as a woman. Jane Fonda! Lilly Tomlin! And the drama that is Hollywood.
- How amazing Sarah Mueller from Smitten Kitten is on all of Sarah’s lube research. Check out episode 115 for more!
- The fact that a single use of a shitty lube, like KY Warming, is enough to give you bacterial vaginosis if you’re a vulva owner. Quality lube is a MUST for our genital health, folks.
- Why trying to cut yourself off from certain feelings ends up cutting yourself off from your deepest sexual longing, your libido, and the really magical stuff.
- Falling in love and diving deep into emotions, and why trusting yourself to survive it is what creates more love and more resilience.
- The difference between true popularity and being liked for who you are versus social media likes and empty cheering.
- What the fuel for sexual passion and love is, according to Wendy.
- Keeping passion alive in a monogamous relationship – Wendy doesn’t know if she’s weird or what, but she absolutely disagrees with the common myth that monogamy kills passion and sexual desire.
- Why expecting your partner to be responsible for your sexual satisfaction is the kiss of death to passion in a relationship and is the opposite of being a sexually mature and sexually responsible partner.
- Moving through life in our adapted child mindset versus our functional adult mindset, which is about accountability, responsibility, autonomy, and moving through stuff that can be super fucking scary and difficult.
- A better question to ask than what do you need when you want to nurture connection and have adult relationships from a place of caring and bridge building. Powerful and potentially controversial stuff.
- How to find your fantasies if you haven’t really ever had any or if you’ve been scared to actually open to them. Wendy’s been there.
Resources discussed in this episode
“Your Brain on Sex” by Stanley Siegel
About Wendy Strgar
Wendy Strgar is author of The New York Times-praised book, SEX THAT WORKS: An Intimate Guide to Awakening Your Erotic Life. She’s also the founder and CEO of Good Clean Love, a pioneering organic intimacy product company, as well as a relationship expert. She has written for over ten years on the topics of love, sexual health, and positivity. For more information, visit wendystrgar.com and goodcleanlove.com.
You can also stay in touch on Twitter @wendystrgar and Facebook.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey, everyone. New episode of Sex Gets Real is starting now. I’ve been getting so many messages about my chat with Ruby Bouie Johnson on last week’s episode and just the realness and the awesomeness of Ruby, and our conversation about polyamory. So thank you to all of you for writing in and sharing your delight. I love hearing from you. I’ve also been getting a huge influx of questions from all of you about so many different types of things, from stuff around jealousy and fantasies to marriages and queerness. There’s going to be an episode very soon of me fielding all of your questions. I also got an email that pissed me off. Definitely expect to hear a little soapbox-y rant about that.
Dawn Serra: But this week’s episode is with Wendy Strgar, who is the founder of “Good Clean Love,” which is one of the most successful body-safe lubes on the market right now. She has so many years of offering advice around love, marriage, and sex. She just wrote a book, which we will be talking about in this episode. I just want to give you a heads up. Wendy has tremendous experience, and she is doing really rad things in the world. She also is very cautious and skeptical around things like hooking up and living out, BDSM and dungeons, and putting yourself into sexual situations that lack meaning, where there isn’t care present. You will hear her explain her experiences and perspective in this episode. I think you’ll also hear that there’s some nuance to that around care can look like friends with benefits and pick up play. But there has to at least be some vulnerability and shared respect in that.
There’s also a funny little part where we’re talking about fantasies. She talks about how the fantasy of being hit can be really hot, but actually living out being hit isn’t so great. So I just want to offer, as always with this show, me and the experts that come on are sharing our experiences, our beliefs, and your lived reality might be different. I, personally, love getting flogged. I love the little sting of a whip from time to time. Sometimes even a little riding crop situation that gets me squealing. For me, sharing that with Alex is like the epitome of trust and vulnerability, and getting present in my body – a place where sometimes it’s somewhat foreign to me. The actual act of impact play, of experiencing that adrenaline and that pain, and letting him see me in that place is deeply connecting, and definitely an act of trust and connection. But that’s not true for everybody. So we get to have our own stories and our own perspectives.
Dawn Serra: Wendy has some beautiful things to say about monogamy and passion. We’ve been hearing a lot lately on the show, from polyamorous experts like Andre Shakti and Ruby and Reid. There’s a lot of you listening who are consciously monogamous by choice. I think that there are some really harmful myths and stories, not only in the world with mainstream Hollywood, but even within sex positive circles and sex positive educators pooh-poohing monogamy or looking down their nose at it. So I think it’s really important that we hear Wendy talking about how she has maintained tremendous sexual pleasure and maintained a really intense sexual connection with her husband over the years. Because I want you to hear that having a rich fantasy life and tons of variety and loads and loads of passion in a long term marriage that is monogamous is absolutely possible. It’s absolutely normal. It is absolutely accessible to all of us. For anybody who is monogamous and has been feeling a little unseen or left out, I hope that you’ll feel some inspiration and joy in hearing what Wendy has to offer. It’s a really fun chat where we talk about lube, and we talk about connection. We talk about what being sexually responsible actually looks like. It can actually be a really tough place to be and most of us aren’t really ready for it. So I think it’s going to create lots of thoughts and feelings.
Dawn Serra: Let me tell you just a little bit about Wendy, and then we will jump in. But first, a quick reminder. Please don’t forget to support the show on Patreon. You can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. You can pledge as little as $1. Every single dollar helps. I adore all of you for supporting me. I’m getting ready to start those monthly group calls, where we practice communication skills, where we practice emotional intelligence, where we level up together so that we feel less lonely around the things that are really difficult and scary and challenging. So please also check out the show notes for this episode. I would love to have you on the group calls. People are already enrolling. Of course, Patreon supporters, at a certain level, get free access to those group calls. All kinds of juicy ways that either we can work together, you and me, live in these awesome group calls with this powerful community. Or, just support the show to help me keep doing it.
Wendy Strgar is the author of The New York Times praised book, “Sex That Works: An Intimate Guide to Awakening Your Erotic Life.” She’s the founder and CEO of “Good Clean Love,” a pioneering organic intimacy product company, as well as a relationship expert. She’s written for over ten years on the topics of love, sexual health, and positivity. We are going to jump into this week’s episode now.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to the show, Wendy. I am ridiculously excited to have you here to talk about your book, “Sex That Works,” and lube and passion and all the things. It’s wonderful to finally have you on.
Wendy Strgar: Dawn, thank you so much. I’m so excited to have this time with you. Really grateful.
Dawn Serra: Where I want to start is something that actually made me squeal with joy when I read it. It’s that Jane Fonda actually sought you out to help consult on the show, “Grace and Frankie.”
Wendy Strgar: Yeah, that was quite the little Hollywood drama episode in my life. I learned a lot actually about Hollywood drama by being in this for a little time. But one of our first investors who is really a rockstar in her own right, one of the founders of Code Pink, Jodi Evans, I mean, she is really a force to be reckoned with in the world. She, of course, hangs out in Hollywood in LA with all the people and not surprisingly, friends with Jane Fonda. She was at a party and mentioned… If you know the themes of the show, they were really looking for some information just about how does somebody start a business like this, and how do you have these hard conversations and all that kind of stuff.
Out of the blue, I get this email from Seymour. That’s actually the email she uses – Seymour or something. This long, long email – really long email – end of the email, “Will you help me? Love, Jane.” I’m like, “What? Yes. Jane, of course, I’ll help you.” So we emailed back and forth for quite a while. I would come to dinner, I’d be like, “Guess who emailed me today?” My kids don’t even know who Jane Fonda is. It’s definitely a generational thing of who knew. But it was really fun, and we sent a bunch of products to her. Then I was going down for…
Wendy Strgar: I do a lot of meditation work, and so I was down at Joshua Tree. We arranged that time to… They brought me in, gave me a VIP pass, and I met with all of the writers, and Jane and Lily. For about three hours, just talked about my history on developing a love company and lubricants and what I know about vaginal health. You love a captive audience, right? People who actually really care about what you’re saying, there’s nothing better than that. It was really just a super rewarding time. We took some photos. Keep in mind, no NDAs or anything with this. We took some photos with me and Jane and Lily. I don’t know if you saw one of those photos, but I could send you one. Jane and Lily are like…
Lily actually said something to me. I said, “Thanks so much for doing this work. It’s so important.” She’s like, “Are you kidding me? You’re the one doing the work.” I mean, they just said really dear things like that. They were so just like people, just like us. The following week, I happened to be on some silly morning show in Oregon. I mentioned that I had just been there doing this, and I shared the photo with them. Then, of course, the studio made it more of a thing than it was, which is what TV does.
Wendy Strgar: I’m traveling and I get this call, “Hold please for Martha,” – whatever her name is, the executive producer, the creative director. She just went off on me – “How dare you?” – on and on. I’m like, “Listen, I didn’t sign an NDA. They told me I could use this photo on social media, which is exactly what I did.” So that was the beginning of the end of my love affair with Jane. They actually said that they would review the book. Both of them said that they would love to see the book, and that they would write in. Then after that happened, fairweather friends that they are.
I mean, here’s the thing about the Hollywood people is that, when you can help them, they’re all about it. But they’re not really about helping us, unless it’s a lot of money. And it’s unfortunate. I think it’s one way that we separate ourselves yet again from this. This is how we create this celebrity culture. I guess, in my own way, I sort of participated in it. But I was glad, as I was watching through season three, that some of the things that I had shared with them showed up in the script. So I had a little bit of gratification that I influenced in some ways.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’m just so excited by that show. I’m sorry you have that experience. Because I love that–
Wendy Strgar: Oh, it’s fun. It’s exciting.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it really is. I love it even more now knowing that some of what drove that story about older women and vibrators and sex and pleasure and thinking about things like arthritis. Amd that you still, of course, want to have amazing pleasure and sex and and tackling issues with sexual orientation and marriage, and to know that part of your story is a part of the show. I think that’s so exciting.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. Of course, when you get things like that, you wish your brand will show up on a shelf or something ‘cause we know that those women need lubricant to use that vibrator. But that somehow didn’t make it in, but we know that’s true. I don’t know. It’s an interesting thing. I do like the show. I watch it. I also watched through the season. I think that they do a lot of really extremely bold things, just in terms of what does sexuality mean, and how does it continue to influence us as we age. So yeah. That was a little fun chapter in my own story, for sure.
Dawn Serra: Oh, I love it. Well, you have been creating this beautiful product, “Good Clean Love,” now for a number of years. Your second book, “Sex That Works,” just recently came out. You had your launch party a couple of weeks ago. I had a chance to read the book, and of course, check out people interviewing you about the book and all of your amazing work. “Good Clean Love” is definitely a product I’ve recommended on the show in the past.
Wendy Strgar: Definitely, as you know, I started “Good Clean Love” because I was married for about 17 years at that time, and necessity was the mother of invention. I had such bad reactions to the petrochemical products that my doctors would recommend, that I knew if I gave up sex, I would probably be giving up my marriage. I grew up in a divorce and didn’t want to do that. I had four kids at that point. So that’s how I became devoted to trying to develop products. I mean, it was really for me. I would never have guessed in a million years that I get so good at chemistry.
Dawn Serra: Well, I’m really glad that you brought up the reaction that you were having to the petrochemical lubes because I know I have had some pretty painful reactions to lubes over the years. This was before it was a lot more common and available to be able to get natural lubricants and organic products and things like that. But a couple of months ago, I had Sarah Mueller on from Smitten Kitten, who’s been doing amazing.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah, she’s amazing. Yeah, she’s remarkable. Her study and writing on iso-osmotic lubricants is, for sure, the best in the industry. I send it to people as a point of reference. She really did her homework in a big way.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know that one of the things that is important for people to know about lubes is that bacterial vaginosis, which is a really, really, really common thing for folks with a vulva, is a disruption in the bacteria, and that lubes can actually not only increase the risk of having bacterial vaginosis, but also when you have untreated BV, it can increase your chances of acquiring and/or spreading STIs–
Wendy Strgar: HIV.
Dawn Serra: HIV, exactly. What so many people–
Wendy Strgar: By 60%, actually.
Dawn Serra: Which is a huge. That’s a huge number.
Wendy Strgar: First of all, Dawn, hallelujah! Praise the Lord. This is the first interview I’ve ever done when my interviewer is telling me the things that I usually tell the interviewer. You are incredibly accomplished and really, really thoughtful. So yeah, the whole thing that you just went through is the education that we spend so much time doing with physicians nationwide, and really helping them to understand that osmolality is actually one of the primary – maybe the most primary – feature that you need to think about when you’re giving a lubricant or using a lubricant in an orifice or for sex. Really, many studies show up to a 13 times risk of a single use of a highly concentrated petrochemical lubricant is enough to give you BV. So a single use, up to 13 times risk. Then when you have BV, like you said, most women don’t know what it is. They never heard of it. 84% of the time, it goes undiagnosed. Then they’re 60% more susceptible to much more serious HIV, STDs.
It’s really a very significant health risk, and to the degree that you have this imbalance in your vaginal core, which is really what BV is. It’s like that low grade sore throat. You know something’s off. But mostly maybe there’s this weird odor, but we don’t know what it is. But it’s the same way as when you have that bacterial imbalance in your gut. It’s just not possible to be fully well when you’re walking around with an imbalance like that. So I think there’s a way in which we don’t have a lot of language or understanding for just how profoundly impactful the nature of our sexual health is for our overall well-being.
Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. What I see in the work that I do, and I know you’ve certainly encountered this because you’ve had so many opportunities to answer questions with your advice column and your radio show, is that shame drives people to make poor consumer choices.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah, totally. I mean, she drives us to all kinds of bad choices. Not just at the shelf, but yes, our collective sexual shame is… I always say that if we solved only one problem in the world and it was sexual, we would, by consequence, solve almost all the others. Because the degree to which we carry this darkness that shrouds what is really like a survival need. I mean, after you eat, sleep, and drink, the next thing that we are is sexual human beings. So to the degree that we suppress that and suppress it, and it’s shrouded in darkness of our shame and fear and all the things we can’t articulate, it just creates a lot of anger and other kinds of emotions that would resolve if we could just be sexually satisfied. So it’s pretty tragic.
I think that in most places, the average consumer anyway tends to go towards something they know. There is the innovative, the end of the spectrum consumer. But what we find on shelf is that once people have exhausted the standard brands and come away with the same itching and burning… Good Clean Love is such a friendly-looking product on shelf that– Because we’re a small brand, we don’t really have the money to do major advertising like KY does or whatever. But people will grab that. Then also, I think doctors giving those samples at offices makes a huge difference.
Wendy Strgar: But the repurchase rate on that shelf is generally, nationally 1.5%. But our repurchase rate is the highest in the industry at 25%. Which tells you that those petrochemical products, people won’t buy them again. They’ll buy them one time, but there’s no reason to go back and get it again. Usually, they end up in the garbage. But our products, people come back and buy over and over again. So I’m really grateful for that. I’m so grateful for that.
Dawn Serra: Well, I think that one of the important things-for people who aren’t very lube-literate yet or they’re new on their journey, for me, personally, when I was 18, 19, 20 years old and just going to that little dark corner sex shop that had all of the toxic products – because that’s all I knew at the time – I would buy lubes, try them once or twice, not really like them. They either get sticky or they would burn, and I would stick them in a drawer, and then I ended up with multiple products that just never ever got used. I think you’re so right. Now, my relationship with lube is that when I find lubes I love, I zoom through those bottles. It’s something that I enjoy.
Wendy Strgar: That’s because you’re sexually healthy. That’s because you’re sexually healthy, and you have some regularity in your sex life. But it’s not uncommon at all for us to sell a four ounce bottle of lube, which is by far the best value on the shelf also. But for some people, they could have that bottle for a year or two. They might keep following me in a column or on a show or whatever, but they don’t need to buy that product again. So thus, I’m giving away my commercial secrets. We’re making our Cara Gold lubricant, which is a CBD product in a two ounce bottle. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried the CBD stuff, but I’d love to send you some.
Dawn Serra: Oh, I would love to try that.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. I live in a cannabis state, so I, of course, was compelled to actually try to see how I could make that work in sex. We get some amazing testimonials of women who’ve had some very significant vaginal traumas who have found an amazing amount of resensitizing and pleasure again. That’s so heartening for me when you put your heart into something you don’t really know if it’s going to work exactly the way you hoped, and then you find out in fact that it did. So yeah. There’s a doctor in St. Louis, actually, who found out about it. She has a pain clinic at St. Louis University. She’s going to start giving that to some patients.
For me, this is really the heart of what I love about working and doing what I get to do at Good Clean Love, which is really trying to make real solutions for real people so that they can have access to the healing benefits of sexual pleasure. And that’s the same thing that drove the book and made me reveal so much more of myself than I ever thought I would.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, there was a couple of parts of the book that just made my heart sing with joy and resonance because it was so much of what I like talking about on the show. I know a few minutes ago you were talking about emotions. I spent a lot of time talking about the importance of cultivating and practicing emotional intelligence within our relationships, and that it really takes courage for us to name our feelings, to not push them down to experience them. That was actually a really big part of the book. You started with it and ended with it of like, “You have to be able to feel all of your feelings, including the ones that are scary and hard to sit in, if you really truly want to tap into bliss and ecstasy.” And I’d love to hear a little bit more about your journey with that.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. So the introductory chapter is that learning to feel. If I’ve had my way, that would have probably been the subtitle of the book because the truth is just what you said. I mean, there is no such thing as relationship without emotional intelligence, which tells you why we are so culturally-impaired relationally. That we don’t really value– Many, many people grow up without any, just like you said, basic identifiers. OK. My kids were growing up, it’s like, “OK. You feel frustrated now. Say ‘I feel frustrated because…’” That’s a language you learn, and many people never learn that language. Or, “I’m sad” or “I’m angry” or “I feel afraid.” I mean, we just don’t have fluency in a lot of that.
For a lot of people, they resort to a single emotion, like my father used to just have rage. No matter what his emotion was, the only thing he could really express was rage. It’s like what you said, if you can’t feel that entire range of emotions and you cut yourself off from the negative ones, like fear or grief or anger even, then you think you can selectively filter out some feelings. But that’s really not true. What you do is you cut yourself off from that whole range of feeling, and what gets most impacted is your ability to want to want. That deep libido desire is, at its very core, our most profound longing for expression. But you can’t have that if you won’t feel the rest.
Wendy Strgar: I mean, that’s the first thing I say in the book, and the last thing I say is feel everything. Because that is like the beauty of what we get in this life. It’s messy. My son… I have four children. My third child has just turned 21 and just fell in love for the first time, and then just had his heart broken not long after. We don’t know where the story is going to end. It’s like the range of emotion is so intense and overwhelming. And I’m like, “It’s great. This is teaching your heart to feel. You become more confident.” But I don’t know where this message got sent out that somehow if you feel these feelings, your heart can’t bear it, your heart will break. No, it’s actually the reverse. It makes you more courageous. It makes you more capable. I was telling him…
A friend, an old friend of ours who passed away, gave me this book about the history of love. In the Middle Ages, affairs were different because it was all that courtesans and all this weird stuff going on. But the goal was falling in and out of love. That was the exercise. That they knew that they would fall and fall deeply like Shakespearian. But the idea wasn’t that we stop trying, that we cut ourselves off from the experience, but rather that each of those times we become a better lover. I just feel like this whole young generation has all but forgotten how to fall in love. This is the time to do it.
Wendy Strgar: I know I’m old. I’m trying to learn how to Snapchat now. I got some intensive lessons in snapping this weekend because I’m so bad at it. But I just am so trying to get that message across to young people. I just had an interview yesterday with this guy Zach, who has his show #NoFilter, was saying how he just has this Tinder sex all the time. He’s like, “What advice would you give me to have this kind of sex with feeling?” The guy is the most feeling guy in the world, in his everyday life. I’m like, “Just risk bringing that part of you to this.”
There’s a whole chapter on courage that’s early in the book. I think it’s really important, and I’m so grateful that you are constantly beating that drum about that real intimacy is the most courageous thing we do. It’s not just about taking off our clothes. It’s about baring our hearts. I mean, that’s where the magic is. That’s actually where our lifeblood is. So, yeah. I hope that people take anything away from that book that they will be able to learn to trust that part of themselves and persist in it. Because it’s not a one time gig. It’s not like you’re just courageous one time, and then, “OK. On to the next thing.” If you want to love somebody–
Wendy Strgar: I’m in it for 35 years. I just want to tell you, I have a therapy session this afternoon because I have to keep trying to figure it out. You don’t get there. There is no there. You just try to make a cleaner relationship to the people that dedicate your life to. And those relationships are not disposable, the way we often think of them – “Oh, I’ll just find somebody else.” When you invest huge parts of your emotional capacity in somebody, those are resources that are available for decades to come if you’re smart. We throw those away as though, “Oh, that’s nothing.” But it’s not nothing. It’s everything.
Dawn Serra: I totally agree. Part of my own journey with feelings and emotions was I spent so much time being so scared of rejection, of what others would think, that I literally cut myself off from pleasure, from being seen, from really being connected because I was just constantly trying to do the dance of avoiding the things that I didn’t want. All of my energy was spent in the avoiding and very little in the experiencing and being present. What I’ve continued to learn because you’re right, you don’t arrive, you just keep trying. The more that I’m willing to just have the really awkward conversation, the more I’m willing to just say that thing that feels super scary and move towards… Or, even grief. I had to grieve the stories that I’ve been telling myself and that maybe they weren’t true. I’d lost all these years to that, and to move through that is where I started finding these really deep connections with my body and with sensation and with a partner. It’s scary as heck. But the more I’ve done it, the more I realize it’s not that it gets less scary. It’s just I know that on the other side, there’s something other than the fear. And I think that’s so important.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. Don’t you think that our social media mania totally feeds all that. I mean, it’s like we’re all in a fishbowl. I mean, I don’t really do even my own social media admission. I mean, every now and again, I’ll post something on my page, but I want the real thing. It’s such a weird space’ cause, you know, promoting a book. I know these people who literally spend their lives self-promoting. It’s just so exhausting to be thinking, “Am I gaining something here?”
There was a super interesting article in the New York Times on Sunday about how popularity makes us live longer. But they make this very interesting distinction between being truly likable, as opposed to having the status of numbers and stuff that people count on social. The status part never makes you feel better ever. But being liked, really, truly being liked, actually is the thing that makes you healthier in every way. I think that’s the discovery. Like what you were saying, it doesn’t get less scary. I think, actually, Dawn, you’ll find over time, you just know that you’re going to get to a place that feels so much better when you just are authentic. It’s like the discomfort is just part of this journey. It’s not the block. It’s not the closed door. It’s like, “OK, this feels really hard to say this thing…” That authentic self expression, that’s the only way to a real relationship.
Wendy Strgar: It’s also the thing that feeds sex most. When people self-disclose, and they actually really has shared their fears or their traumas or their whatever it is, that is fuel. That is the fuel that combust and alchemizes into sexual passion. When people, they’re not willing to share that, you literally have nothing to feed the fire. That’s why in my book, I think about “Sex That Works” is different than most books because to have chapters themed curiosity or courage or sensation, it’s like you could talk about that about almost anything, not necessarily just sex.
But the truth is that as you move towards those places sexually, you do it everywhere in your life, where you stop saying no and getting over this rut sex that so many people get into, when they just keep having the same sex over and over again because they’re afraid to try something new or they’re afraid they won’t do it right or whatever. You get stuck with this leftover sex, what’s leftover. But if you consider just coming to that moment, the way you were when you were a kid where you were just curious – “Well, I wonder what would happen if I put my finger here?” You wonder that and you do it. I feel like I just try to encourage that kind of freshness or freedom in our sexual space, in our sexual discovery and exploration,
Dawn Serra: That’s actually something I’d really like to talk to you about. I’ve had a number of non-monogamy and polyamory experts on the show, and also lots of questions from people who are curious about trying group sex or threesomes or moving into polyamorous situations. I also get lots of questions from people who say, “We’ve talked about it, but we’ve decided monogamy is really for us.” Now, how do we keep the passion alive? I think there’s a lot of myths out there that marriage equals the death of excitement when it comes to sex. I know your experience has shifted from, one, sex really not being a source of inspiration or pleasure, to being in a long term monogamous relationship that’s filled with passion and amazing pleasure. I’d love it if you could talk a little bit to the people who are in long term monogamous relationships and want to stoke that fire. What is your advice for that?
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. I first want to say that I think that there’s a ton of books that would lead people to believe that monogamy is akin to sexual death. Esther Perel does it you know, the guy who wrote “Sex at Dawn,” and all these things about how monogamous relationships, there’s no way you can keep them passionate. So either I’m a super weirdo or that’s a bunch of bullshit.
I want to say that a lot of times, also, many people begin their relationship with this really hot sexual fire, and it peters out. Whereas as you said – and I talked about in the book – my sexual relationship was not that– I mean, it was not that good to start, and it just grew over time. So maybe I did it backwards or the right way or something. But I don’t believe that monogamy is sexual death. In fact, what I would say to you is if you really are in – and even leave the word monogamous out of it – but if you’re in a deeply trusting, intimate, vulnerable relationship, where you have the courage to actually have conflict, which means you’re not trying to become like the other person.
Wendy Strgar: That’s another thing that happens frequently in long term relationships, where people are conflict averse, and so they give up what is really unique about them, so that they’re more like the person they’re with. That alone will kill passion because you lose the essence of what makes you different and attracted to each other. So that’s pretty common. My husband and I never did that. And it did make for continuous conflict. But also we have really great sex. So I think it’s a fair deal. But my husband’s very different from me, like night and day different. He’s a psychiatrist, so he’s really good listener and not much of a talker. I am very serious talker, and I have learned over many, many years to be a better listener. Although my children will tell you still that I’m not that good a listener. I’m trying.
If you bring, like I was saying to you earlier, your true emotional content and disclosing what it is that makes you tick most deeply, and you are not afraid to really be yourself in that relationship. This is the biggest key piece, I think, is that a lot of people when they get into a long term relationship – and I’ve heard people say this to me – believe that their partner should be responsible for their sexual satisfaction. So this is actually the kiss of death.
Wendy Strgar: I talk really early in the book about sexual freedom. That sexual freedom really, at its height, is an individual taking responsibility for their own sexual needs. Not to confuse this with sexual license, which mostly is how people think about sexual freedom now, that, “Oh. They can just swipe right or left and have sex with whoever they want.” That actually is just a means to a lot of really painful erotic traumas, I think. We can say whatever we want. But having sex with somebody who doesn’t give a shit about us and probably won’t remember our name is not good for our erotic soul. I’ll go down and you could put it on my gravestone as saying as much. I’ve seen it do really serious damage to a lot of young people. I always tell people when I give them my product, to not waste it on somebody that they don’t love, in whatever form they love that person. I don’t really want to participate or support sex that’s just this biological activity because that’s not what sex is for. You’re never going to have good sex that way.
Anyway, sorry, distraction. Getting back to what you were saying, in long term relationship, when you are responsible for your own sexual health and your own sexual needs, that means that for instance, you don’t hold your partner accountable for being a certain way to make you feel sexy. It’s not like they have to say X, Y or Z or bring flowers or pick up their socks in order to make you feel sexy. That you also have your own comfort level with what feels good to you. That you can articulate or at least move someone’s hand in the direction of what you know from your own experience is sexually satisfying for you.
Wendy Strgar: I have women say to me once, “Well, why would I masturbate? That’s his job.” I’m like, “Oh, my god. Please, can we have a conversation about this?” No! It’s nobody’s job but yours. Your sexual pleasure is yours alone, and nobody gives it to you. That’s a gift that you share with people when you want to, when you feel safe, when you actually feel like you can get to the rawest part of yourself. Then your fantasy starts to unfold. It’s like you never have the same sex twice. But that’s not going to happen to you if you’re waiting for somebody else to do it to you. Except maybe when you’re 16 in the back of a Chevy van, then you might have that experience. But let’s not mistake that huge cascading of neurotransmitters for what sex should be because that’s not what sex is.
I think that kind of fallacy… We have all these stupid romantic comedies that make sex look like that, “Oh, let me rip your clothes off, and let’s kick the seat over. It’s just happening to me, and I can’t help myself.” If it doesn’t feel like that, then maybe I should take a pill or something to make me feel like that. No! That’s teenage sex. It’s not grown up sex. Grown up sex is when you are driven by your own desire to desire, and that you like to touch yourself or at least you are not afraid to. That you are not afraid of your own fantasy Life. That you let that unroll in front of you, which is a huge chapter in the book. I don’t know if you read it. It was actually the hardest chapter to write. But I think it’s actually a place where many people’s monogamous relationships come apart. And that is really an individual’s fear of their own sexual rocket fuel, not what somebody else is or isn’t doing for them. So I just said a million things just now. Sorry that it all came out like that. But this is what happens when I get going about sex.
Dawn Serra: I am so excited you brought up so many of the things you did. I think the Freedom chapter was one of my favorites. Because I’ve been doing some courses with marriage therapist, Terry Real. Some of his work talks about how most of us move through life in an adapted child phase, which is psychology terminology. Basically, we never learned how to be functional adults because we’re not in a world that values that. Adapted child is pretending to be a grown up, but not really having words for emotions, and seeing things is very black and white, and taking rather than sharing.
So much of what you were talking about was this adult stepping into your adult sexuality means taking responsibility and not placing blame. That can look like, “I’m setting this boundary,” or “I am stating this need that I would like to have met.” It also means exploring yourself and understanding yourself, and being able to articulate that because people, I’ve noticed, are terrified to actually articulate their experiences and sensations for that fear of rejection and being seen. But that’s where the good stuff actually is.
Wendy Strgar: Exactly, exactly, exactly. So bravo for you. Yeah, there’s not very many grownups in the room usually. And it’s hard to grow up. I mean, the truth is that it’s not you turned 21, and then you’re a grown up. I have adult children. I want to tell you that growing up happens far into our 20s. In my own memories, I was pretty much an abandoned child in a lot of ways. I grew up in a very violent divorce before anybody divorced in my hometown in New York – Long Island. And I lived a very isolated life.
My biggest fear from the time I can remember was always being alone, and being excluded somehow, which is really one of our most human fears. Because we know that the people who were thrown out of the tribe didn’t survive in the day, It’s that idea of belonging or inclusion is actually the thing that drives social media. That is what that whole business is about. But in our most deep personal life, of where we live, literally live, that takes grown up stuff to do that, to work through and hold. With all my kids leaving, I might even stretch a cry now. I am often in tears of letting go of those really intimate relationships, probably the most intimate relationships I’ll have in my life.
Wendy Strgar: But that’s the idea. They’re supposed to grow up and go on, and now I have to deal with this terror I have of living alone again as a 55 year old adult. It doesn’t feel that much better than when I was 23. That’s the truth. I have more skills with it. I have more backup and capacity. But the deepest parts of what it is that frightens me about that, that’s the same. So if you’re not willing to do that work, and you hold other people responsible for it, ou’re just pretty much taking yourself out of the game.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Wendy Strgar: I always say to myself and my kids that there’s no way around. There’s no shortcut. There’s only through. That’s all there is, is that you actually feel these feelings.I remember being 20 or 24, or whatever, and being really on my own in the most profound of ways, and feeling like if I felt these feelings, they would kill me. I would just die. They were too big. What you learn over and over again from feeling is that, no, actually all your body wants – I talked about this in the Attention chapter – is for you to watch it, just witness this feeling. Just say, “Oh, Wendy, I see that you’re really sad and feel really alone right now,” and then let it happen. Then you move on. The next thing happens. I think actually, for many people that takes a whole lifetime to learn. It seems, for me, it’s going to take me my whole life.
Dawn Serra: Me too. So something else–
Wendy Strgar: There’s another thing.
Dawn Serra: Oh, you go.
Wendy Strgar: I just want to say that when you were talking about that class you took with that adaptive childhood, I’ve met and interviewed a lot of people much smarter than myself. One of the things came out of this idea about this container of relationships. I don’t know if you remember that part of the book where, when you stop worrying about your needs being met, and you worry about what does this relationship need, it’s really weird how everybody’s needs get met, when you’re actually feeding this container. Instead of constantly keeping score about who got what they wanted, everybody gets what they need. That was not my idea, but I love that idea. So I talked about it a lot in the book. That’s like a grown up thing. Certainly, having children, I think, really demands that you do that when you’re trying to make a family. But even for a family of two, it’s the same.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love that so much. I think that we are in a time where hyperindividualism is being highly prized and valued. There’s certainly something powerful to people who are in marginalized or oppressive situations to actually be able to say, “I am my own person, and I deserve these basic rights.” I think we can put an and there instead of a but. When we’re in relationship with people, I think you’re so right, that it’s me and it’s you, and it’s us. When we really truly decide– This is friendships or business relationships or intimate relationships, but when we really decide our connection is a priority and how do we feed that, it creates so much strength for all three of the relationships, versus if I just focus on me that often ends up taking away from you and from us.
Wendy Strgar: Well, I mean, the thing is is that I think that that whole hyperindividualism, the way you talk about it, is just another defense mechanism. Again, I would say that that’s fed by our social media digital, no attention for the moment kind of life we have. Because we all really. It’s like, we’re supposed to be more connected than we’ve ever been. I think that never has there been a time on the planet that more people are alone. We are a herd species. It’s not good for our collective mental health. I think that even speaks to the politics of the day and how we could arrive at this very fractured, extremely fractured time. Because it all starts with the personal.
So it is true that it’s whether it’s a business or friendship or an intimate partnership, when you both come to it and say, “What will it take for this container that’s holding both of us to thrive?” That is such a different question than, “What is my needs right now? What do I want from you?” Right? Because, truthfully, sometimes it has nothing to do with what you want. Actually, usually, it has nothing to do with what you want.
Wendy Strgar: I remember, again, my children have always been my best teachers. My son was like, “I don’t care, I don’t want to do it.” I’m like, “Who cares? If you want to do it. It’s not about that.” This is what is in front of you to do. Have the life you chose. I just feel like we think about things so backward sometimes that we don’t act on our own behalf often, especially in relationship and sex. Because women over and over again, in college, post college will have these relationships. They can call them friends with benefits, they can call them Tinder swipe – I don’t give a damn what you call it – that they end up feeling so empty after. So depressed after they give the most beautiful, tender part of their body to somebody who doesn’t care anything about them, and then wonder how they could feel so bad. Why isn’t that freedom? Because it’s not!
Freedom is actually demanding someone to care for you, take you to dinner. You know what I mean? Get to know what color do you like, whatever it is. Then maybe you make out with them. This idea that sex is the marker about whether I would have dinner with you is insane. That is like collective insanity. I just can’t wait till it reverses itself and becomes in the right order again because we’ll all be much better off.
Dawn Serra: I’d love to talk, you mentioned briefly a few minutes ago, fantasies. That is something that I’ve encountered in so many different iterations in this work, of people feeling ashamed of their fantasies, not knowing how to share it with someone because they’re afraid it’ll end the marriage. But the thing that I find most interesting is, I’ve had a number of women, both as clients and as listeners of this show, who say, “I don’t have any fantasies. I’ve never had a fantasy.” Or if you ask them, “What do you fantasize about?” they say, “Nothing. I’m boring.” The Fantasy chapter in your book is beautiful.
Actually, one of the things I love so much about you talking about your own experience is how you keep a lot of your fantasies to yourself, and allow that to fuel you. Instead of feeling like you have to share all the things with your husbands. But for people who feel like, “God, I don’t know. I don’t have fantasies,” or, “I don’t even know what that’s like,” what would you recommend for people to just start opening a little bit to that erotic landscape that lives inside themselves?
Wendy Strgar: Well, that’s such a complicated question. There’s a couple of things that I would say. On the most surface level, what we know is that our sexual organ that actually holds fantasy, and actually turns on our arousal mechanism is in our brain. It’s conveniently co-located with our olfactory bulb. That’s why when you go out and you smell summer for the first time, you have all these incredibly rich memories of being three years old and smelling the summer. So memory, sexuality, and emotion are all co-located with our belief, with where we smell things. So very interesting research about people who lose their sense of smell, and all the things that go with that.
Anyway, actually, using scent in your sexual encounters, scents that turn you on, actually will help you build those pathways that will help you access where fantasy is. In my mind, fantasy is right behind that space. Your arousal mechanism, and it’s almost like drawing back this curtain of where those fantasies are stored.
Wendy Strgar: One of the things that I think is super interesting in that chapter, and really, I feel saved my life in a lot of ways. When I started to look at my fantasies, and this was in my 40s, before I stopped suppressing them. Because I would have little things come up, and I would think, “Oh, psycho.” I would just really work hard to shut them down. What I want to say is that when you’re working really hard to suppress your fantasies, so much so that you might say, “I don’t have fantasies. That doesn’t even exist in me.” I want to say that the chances that those women are orgasming are very small because you’re using so much energy to suppress the anxiety around fantasy that it’s very hard for your brain to surrender to the experience. So that was my experience, anyway. There was this moment where I just said, “OK, I’m just going to let this come. I’m not going to tell anybody. I’m just going to watch it and see what happens.”
And it was really courageous. It felt very courageous at that moment. I was freaked out. I don’t want to go too much into detail, but just suffice to say that none of my fantasies are politically correct or appropriate. They all have to do with serious forms of submission and domination, which is why we were also fascinated by 50 Shades of Grey, by the way, and in roles that we collectively agree are wrong, but that have existed since the beginning of time. So I’m not arguing in favor of pedophilia. I feel like many, many people– This is an entirely different interview we could have. But the percentages of people walking around who’ve had inappropriate sexual touch at inappropriate ages is astronomical. The fact that those things exist in our collective subconscious is not at all surprising. It’s happened since the beginning of time, since humans walked on the earth.
Wendy Strgar: Now, we say this is bad, this is wrong. But it lives. It just is. So when you see that come up in fantasies is extremely alarming. You start to think, “Oh, shit. Was I sexually abused or how could I have thought of this?” I don’t know. It was scary for me. I was so scared I couldn’t talk to my husband about it. I mean, I would try. I would open my mouth, and then I couldn’t get any words to come out. Then I met this guy, Stanley Siegel, who wrote this amazing book, “Your Brain on Sex.” I highly recommend it frequently to almost everyone that I talked to about this topic, and it’s cited in my book. He was a sex therapist in New York for, I don’t know, 40 years. Really, really brilliant guy, and wrote this book. Turns out, at least this is a theory and it really seems to make sense to me in so many ways, that just in the same way that our subconscious uses our dream state to sort out our unresolved emotions, it also does that with unresolved emotions from our childhood when we become sexual, and turns them into this core of fantasies that really turns our crank.
It’s not anything we have control over consciously, so that lets us off the hook for whatever’s there. But it does actually have this really remarkable healing mechanism because what the subconscious is always trying to do is take painful material in the brain and turn it into something that we can be appeased with or get pleasure from, in the case of fantasies. It’s not a straight line because it’s our subconscious. That’s why somebody with an overbearing mother or an abandonment issue might have any number of fantasies that would be different than mine. But it seems like there is this connection.
Wendy Strgar: One example he gives is this idea that this girl is brought up in a very strict religious family. Then, as an adult, she has this crazy fantasy about having sex with a priest. She can’t get it out of her head. Her husband plays that out with her. There’s this massive healing that happens in ways that we can’t explain.
So what I would say to you is that I really believe that this is true for everybody, and that many people don’t have the courage to look in that direction. Some people actually do have the courage to look in that direction, but not actually connecting the dots to what they need to learn from that, and then play it out even more extremely in dungeons or any number of 3D locations. I actually really speak with caution about taking steps to make your fantasies real. There are a few things my husband and I have discussed over time about potentially bringing in the third person or whatever, is in my head. Few things that I’ve told him, but we’ve never actually done it because I don’t know what would happen in that room that would risk the safety I have with him. The truth is, if I just think it, it’s sexy enough. I get what I need from just thinking it, and I don’t even have to tell him I’m thinking it.
Wendy Strgar: So anyway. Yeah, I think there’s a lot we need to learn about fantasy, and that there’s a lot of peace we need to make about our sexual history as a humanity. I think that individual fantasy work is one way that we can do that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Having fantasies, one, can look lots of different ways. I think sometimes we fall into the trap of trying to make our fantasies be a certain thing, instead of just allowing them to be what they are. That’s the witness process that you talk about in the book. Also, I love we’re allowed to let our fantasies stay in our head and to be this totally tool that we use to have this amazing pleasure experience and go on this journey, either by ourselves or with someone else. I think sometimes living out your fantasies can be a wonderful thing. I think they sometimes can also would be really disappointing. I had a chance to live out a fantasy of mine around being watched. It was kind of like, “Meh.” That was nowhere near hot in my head.
Wendy Strgar: I just want to say a lot of people have rape fantasies, a lot of people do. But to actually be raped is not what happens in your fantasy. I would say that– I mean, whatever. We kind of watch that in (Fifty) Shades of Grey. The idea of it, and then actually somebody hitting you, not that great. I don’t know. I’m not an expert on this. There have been times in my many years of writing that I have tried to write about this topic, and it’s such a slippery slope. I’m telling you, that chapter took five rewrites, with really smart people helping me. It’s very hard to say what needs to be said without risking offending people. I feel like people will maybe be offended by that chapter or afraid or whatever or angry. There’s really so much more to say about it.
Dawn Serra: Well, we are at the end of our hour, and I would love it if you would share with everybody how they can stay in touch with you, find your products online, all that good stuff.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. goodcleanlove.com. We have a beautiful site. We have so much education on there. My blog is goodcleanlove.com/blogs/making-love-sustainable, and you can get it through Good Clean Love or just by going to Making Love Sustainable. I write every week religiously about how to be a lover in your life. My book, “Sex That Works” was number one yesterday on Amazon New Picks. So that was exciting, and it’s available today. I have a website called wendystrgar.com that we just fancied up. It has a free ebook on there, so people could download a little sample of the book that way. I love to talk about sex, as you can see, and would love to do it again with you, Dawn any day and with anybody else who has a spot where they feel like that would be helpful, then I would love for them to get in touch and ask me.
Dawn Serra: Well, thank you. Thank you for being here, Wendy. All of your wisdom and stories.
Wendy Strgar: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Next time, let’s start with gratitude.
Dawn Serra: Oh, I would love that.
Wendy Strgar: I actually skip that part. But I know we would really resonate on that.
Dawn Serra: Definitely. Well, I want to thank everybody who tuned in. I will have all of Wendy’s links at dawnserra.com for this episode. Be sure to grab a copy of the book, and also ask for your library to carry it so it’s helpful to people who can’t afford the book themselves. Check out all of Wendy’s stuff. If you’ve got any thoughts or questions please send them to me. You know I love hearing from you. Until next time, this is Dawn Serra. Bye.