Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
Embracing Your Desire
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Embrace your desire. Own your wanting and gather your sexual agency. Doing this will help you change your relationship with desire. Dr. Juliana Hauser joins me to talk about reframing desire and how to get in touch with your vibrancy. You’ll hear practical ways to figure out what you want sexually and ideas for approaching and trying new things. Learn about the four quadrant exercise, a no thank you bite, and why Dr. Juliana believes safety is the strongest aphrodisiac.
Learn more about Dr. Juliana Hauser
More on this topic:
The Truth About Desire (part one)
The Truth About Desire (part two)
Partner Sexual Desire Discrepancies
Why don’t I want sex as much as my partner?
When a partner wants to start something new
ORDER my Book: Permission for Pleasure: Tending Your Sexual Garden
JOIN my Newsletter: Good Education for Good Sex
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VISIT my website and blog
Sometimes that's the first thing you have to do, and it's the biggest thing you have to do in looking at your desire is wondering at the possibilities that await you.
SPEAKER_01Hello everyone, and welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharky, your host, and we have a delightful conversation today with Juliana Hauser. Dr. Juliana and I are both on a mission to normalize conversations about sexuality. You're going to be encouraged to change your relationship with desire. Own your wanting. Learn more about the connections between safety, surrender, and sex. And here are some ideas on how to handle when you or a partner wants to try something new. Before I have Juliana introduce herself, I want to invite you to sign up for my newsletter. If you're new here, I have a newsletter called Good Education for Good Sex. That's where I share more sexual health education, book recommendations, new blogs, things that are coming up that are new. You can sign up at the link in the show notes to join me. Now, on to my conversation with Juliana Hauser. Juliana, welcome to Permission for Pleasure. Thank you so much, Cindy. I'm looking forward to our time together. I'm delighted to have you and get to know you a little bit. And I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and your work in the world.
SPEAKER_00Yes, so I have two licenses. Like professionally, what backs me is I'm a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. So I work with people individually and as families and couples. And then I have an expertise to focus on sexuality, sex and sexuality. And my way of looking at it is I like looking at it in a holistic way. And I like us looking at how to normalize the conversations about sexuality, how to make it be more of who we are, as opposed to something that's bifurcated in this world. And to realize that we, none of us are really properly educated, whether we have letters in front or behind our names, or if we aren't in this profession, we're all trying to figure those things out. That's so that's a bit of my background and my come from of things. My PhD is in counseling education, so I do a lot of thinking about how to train therapists, other providers, how to show up in the mental health world, but also how to have expertise within sex and sexuality.
SPEAKER_01And I've heard you say your sexuality is the final frontier of self-development. Tell me more about that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I love that sentence. It almost sums up my career and how my worlds came together to focus on this topic. But it took me a while to figure out. And it took me a while professionally and personally. And it was when those two went together that it was an aha moment for me. But I hear this in my professional life a lot. So I'll work with people who have been on a self-development exploration for a long time. And I started hearing over and over again sex is the last place where I went. Sex is the last place that I've talked to, that I know how to find somebody, or I'm finally ready to look at sexuality. And when I ask what they've done, they've done everything else before it. So I started looking at that also just professionally and thinking it really is one of the last places that we put our time into exploring and understanding in general and then about ourselves. And there's lots of reasons why. And then I realized that one of the reasons is because it's such a difficult conversation. It's such a different topic that is laden with all sorts of stuff with it. But also, I think it's because we've misunderstood what sexuality is. And when you know, and the way that I look at it in holistic sexuality, when you understand we're not just talking about sex acts, I'm not just talking about sex acts and who you're doing your sex acts with. I'm talking about sexuality, holistic sexuality, being a way to be a 360 in who you are. And as a therapist, what I've learned is if you are wanting to have, which I think most of us are, authentic relationships and have connections that are meaningful to you, then you have to know who you are in order to show up for those connections and relationships and that sexuality because it's so complicated and it's one of the few things we all have in common. And it's something we have throughout our lifetime. If you're breathing, you're a sexual being.
SPEAKER_01Just in the, you know, being in nursing over three decades, just working with so many people in this area. I find it to be really true that it is the last thing. Yet to your point, it's a such a big part of who we are. Yeah. That it's it's a crucial piece. Why we leave it for last is, I don't know, still a puzzle to me. All the reasons which some of you described, but why I'm also doing what I'm doing, right? And you as well.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's right. And you know, it's so incongruent with, in some aspects, it's the last place that we're going to talk about and do any kind of deep reflection, but yet it is in the forefront of almost every part of our society. So it's it's there for the taking. It's always a part of things. Sex is selling so many things. Sex is in in politics, sex is in media, and everything that we're watching, yet we are avoiding looking at how it's placed in our life, what it means to our life and our relationships, and allowing ourselves to have a deeper relationship with what sexuality can be. The tabooness that we have uh unfortunately made sex and sexuality has been an interference of it being this amazing source of understanding of who we are.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a great framework to go into some of the things I hope we'll talk about because it kind of is an overarching, well, you and I's overarching philosophy and ideals around sexuality for people and individuals and couples. And you're a therapist. I mean, you and I both know the number one issue people come to sex therapy for sure, or therapy in conflict with couples, one of the biggest reasons is mismatched desire.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, and I've so appreciate you using that terminology. I will always veer towards using that terminology instead of saying like high or low or the words that have judgment to what it should be, although that's really what we're taught. But mismatch is the best way to describe if you are in a partnership and you all have a different relationship with desire.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And every workshop I do, literally, this is the number one either question that comes in with hands raised or on slips of paper in a box or behind the scenes or DM'd in. Every single time, how do I deal with this conflict of not having the same desire or level of desire, all the things around this? And I'd love for you to speak to this because I do like how you approach this, Juliana, a lot. And let's give some framework for people in thinking about desire differently. It can transform your relationship with sex with a partner for sure.
SPEAKER_00Great. And I love your enthusiasm for it too. It always gets me so excited. To talk to somebody else who gets it and is on the ground and really working with people. And you're right, it is a very frequently asked question or topic for me just to talk about. And it's often done in a whisper. There's a lot of shame associated with sexuality in general, but really with desire. And I also appreciate you using the word desire instead of libido. That's the terminology that I use too. So I like to explain that at first. We're talking about a similar thing, not the same thing, but libido and desire are similar. But I have seen people just have such a negative reaction to a medicalized view of it. But I just think we have a history with libido. So desire for me, and why I really landed on using that word instead of libido is that I think we're we're really talking about the wanting that we have inside of us. And so that awareness, that relationship of wanting, wanting something, not just necessarily sexual connection, but in general, is something that we don't have a lot of words for. We don't have it in a lot of our conversations, and we need to be. So that makes the conversation even harder because it's not something we're used to speaking about. So, like when I'm asked the question, I'm sure you are too, like, what's the normal amount of sex you should be having? But to me, it's never about that. Because there are plenty of people who are having the number of sex that you could put to that arbitrarily, that they're not having fulfilling sex. They're not actually having a wanting and a connection within that. I'm looking for people to have fulfilling sexual connections with themselves and if they are going to do that with somebody else or other people with that. And that comes from a place of looking at how in touch are you with your wanting, your needs, your desire, and the words that I like to put on top of that and underneath it are vibrancy and your spark. So when I start working with somebody, regardless of the gender, and we're talking about they are not having the relationship of desire they want to have, I will completely take it out of sexual connection in the context of anything sexual and just start talking about what is a vibrancy in your life, what brings you spark. And I never can predict what that initial conversation is going to be like for some. We do lots of grieving and there's tears and there's silence because they've never been asked. They don't really know, or they have lost touch with what that means to them and that difference of how they used to be versus now feels vast and overwhelming to even consider. And it feels scary. If you even start talking about vibrancy, it feels scary to think, what if I can't find it again? So I'd rather just not even talk about it. And I can sit in that with people for as long as it takes. I've never worked with anybody who we didn't get to a place that we found even just one thing that brought them currently vibrancy. And that's really, really exciting. It's wonderful. And I think it takes so much pressure off to take it outside of sexual connection first and find what that is. Everyone is something. And then really, what we find out is once you find the one thing, because it's really not even about the detail of the thing, it's about a mindset of feeling safe enough to start exploring those spaces again. Once you feel like, okay, she's giving me validation, she being me, that I can have vibrancy with my garden, that that's a valid thing to feel vibrancy about. And when I get them to start talking about what do they love, um, I'm thinking of this one woman who said that she just loved how her hands were so strong in being able to shovel and move root systems and that it was a part of her life that she felt that she was capable. That conversation led us to talking that she'd had a really long-standing relationship with really not loving her hands, that the look of her hands felt masculine to her, that she'd had people make fun of how her hands looked bigger than, quote, a woman's should, and realized that one part of her vibrancy was that the size of her hands, the strength of her hands were a positive in this situation, which made her feel really good about herself, which then made her feel wonderful and vibrant while she is gardening. She felt capable. She felt like that that this is where she was supposed to be. When we were able to transpose that in into her sexual context, we had more grieving happen when she thought that it's not for me, or there are other things that were related to not feeling like her parts of her body or the way that she experienced sexuality was the right way, just like she was told her hands weren't. And so we were able to make that connection and loosen up that there could be just a glimmer of possibility that she could find vibrancy as a sexual being, especially when she learned. And this is, you know, I talk about this all the time, is having sexual agency, being able to find vibrancy and a spark in your life outside of sexual context, putting that feeling into a sexual context and defining it for yourself. It's just putting just fluid on and gasoline on the fire. It really makes a huge difference for people. And it's pretty magical. It can take a while to get there, but it's worthy. It's a worthy endeavor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, we talk about this a lot on the show. People, are you hearing what she's saying? I'm not the only one. That practicing these kinds of things, this idea of finding your spark or your vibrancy, or you know, I always call it delight, listeners, or you know, what brings you pleasure outside of the bedroom, outside of sex. This is what Julianne is saying. It helps you move and transfer and translate that into your sex life.
SPEAKER_00And so the first purpose is just to remind you you are a vibrant person and you can find vibrancy, especially if you're coming in and feeling like your desire is, and then again, it's sometimes it's hard to avoid the words, but lesser than you want it to be, then that often is translates to feeling like you are lesser than you want to be, or you're broken, or something's wrong with you. And that messaging is horrific and is shame-producing. So we have to rid ourselves of that. So when we can find it, it's like, oh no, no, you you have vibrancy. Of course, you're gonna feel something different in a sexual connection because of look at all these impediments to where you are compared to where you want to be. And I like looking at those impediments from a really objective way. But we're first starting with, no, you're okay. You are okay. And you are gonna have all the room in the world to define this on your own. I am not going to be the expert of your desire and how your desire should look and feel. I'm gonna help you. So, a lot of ways I kind of look at myself as like a doula, a doula of like orgasms or a doula of desire, of I'm here to support you and you figuring out what is best for you in this process. And again, sometimes I can feel scary at first because a lot of us feel like we want to be told what is right and wrong and figure out how to do in the right part or figure out how not to do the wrong part. And so sexuality can feel overwhelming, especially when you're told, nope, you get to decide for you.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's like revolutionary, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's freeing and it's also overwhelming because there can be such a paradox and paralysis of choice there. But we get through that and it can become a really wonderful aspect of things too. I think the other thing that can be really difficult when you're trying to change your relationship with desire is that we are the genders, if we're looking at it, binary genders, they're bifurcated. That there is one solution for those who have penises, and this is how they're gonna have their relationship with desire, and those who have vulvas and vaginas, they that's a different way. And so what's gonna quote fix one should quote fix the other. And we know that is not the case. It doesn't work, and it doesn't even fix that either. But desire, when you're wanting to change your relationship with desire, um, it is never just one thing. And there isn't a quick fix to it, it is a journey to change your relationship. And when we have a culture that doesn't prioritize sexuality being an important part of your life or important part of self-development, and you are told, oh, there's no pill that's gonna fix this, quote, fix this, if we even think that it is something to fix, but is there's nothing that's gonna address this issue. You're gonna have to put more time and effort, and this is gonna be a self-exploration process. Some people just get glaze over and they're like, what?
SPEAKER_01It can feel, like you said, overwhelming. And yet, you know, the fix that people try in feeling like maybe they desire sex less than their partner, say, and then they want to meet the need of the partner that wants sex more, say. Then if the sex isn't desirable, that's one whole other issue, right? Because that's not really motivating, but it doesn't sustain in the long term when you're trying to meet someone else's need without investigating your own relationship with desire. I mean, this may sound like some of you are going, woo, woo, woo, woo, wait a minute, you're getting too, but this is in fact the core. And so you speaking to it in a sense of relationship to desire for each of us individually. That's it.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it is, and it's fun. This is not this horrible work that you're gonna have the worst time experiencing. It's actually such a beautiful exploration of you. Sometimes it begins with tears and sadness, but it doesn't end that way. And along the way, there may be a variance of emotions, but majority of it's celebration. It's truly magical when someone shifts from the grieving to curiosity and excitement. I know that's when we are about to go leaps and bounds into a very different place, and they're going to have a very different experience of themselves. And if they're in a relationship, in that relationship as well. But it takes some time and it takes some work, and it and some of that is mindset shifting, some of it's education. Some of it is being willing to not know and to be okay with the not knowing of things and guessing, doing trial and error. And the other part of it is allowing yourself to believe something can feel different and something can work. And if you're in a relationship that oftentimes with the couples that I'm working with, you are also alongside of this having to learn how to communicate differently. Because a lot of times, when it's that scenario that you were speaking of of trying to meet their partner's needs, really they've rarely had a discussion about what the needs actually are. It's often an assumption. And then when I start digging more about what those needs and wants are, the language isn't there, the details aren't there, and they certainly don't know about from each other. So we have to learn the skills of communicating and risk taking of saying what you need and want. Of course, that begins with knowing what you need and want. And then you have to learn how to communicate them. And then the last thing is you have to learn how to be someone who can handle hearing your partner or partner's truth and what their needs and wants are, because that's a different skill altogether, is to not be a judgmental person in response to this and to be open to all the variants that we are allowed to have in our agency as a sexual being. Which then all that leads me to isn't it extraordinary that anyone's having great sex? There's so many things that that come into it, and yet there are many who have fulfilling sexual lives.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and we all want that. I think the longer two that I'm in this work, everybody we want an easy button. We want the 10 steps to better being better in bed. You know, these three positions are gonna, you know, you're gonna orgasm to the moon and back. And what I have found, and what you're speaking to here, and what I hope you're hearing in this conversation, listeners, is that there's a deeper work here. There is a deeper issue, and not just issue, but a part of you to be investigated and get curious about, and when doing so can bring so much freedom and vibrancy, like you're saying. And I'm gonna circle back to one thing that got glossed over because what I find so often is that people don't feel like they can want, they don't feel the permission to desire, to have wants, to speak their needs, and this is a key part of this as well, is I think of just recognizing that, like you said, the things that bring you vibrancy and spark, and then seeing how that relates to your wants and desires, and giving yourself permission for pleasure, it's just all wrapped up together. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Pleasure, sensuality, and desire, they're a very powerful trio and they relate a lot to each other. And it's impossible to do work within desire without talking about pleasure or without talking about sensuality. They matter a lot, and there are again two other topics that are really hard for people to talk about and that we're not asked a whole lot about. And you're right, we our society doesn't really value desire and wanting. It also doesn't desire pleasure unless there's like a pretty like you you are allowed to deny yourself pleasure and then overindulge. You are allowed to have pleasure in certain sanctioned areas, but you shouldn't pursue pleasure in other areas that aren't sanctioned. And again, we just we put so many rules related to sexuality. And when you can break yourself free from rules that other people have decided for. For you and really start asking yourself, but what about me? What do I need? And what do I want? You're right. The first step is giving yourself permission to want and allowing yourself to step into that space. And then the next thing is to have fun. And I would say there's so much information waiting for you to be discovered. Instead of it feeling like, again, this is a brokenness that has to be fixed. It's just a different way of looking at it. And there's lots of reasons why our desire changes. There's lots of reasons why we want to change our relationship with desire. Some of it is physical, some of it is relational, some of it is within ourselves. Oftentimes it's all three at once. And so for me, what I think is really powerful and similar to what you're saying is if your goal is, in general, I want to feel differently in my interaction with the world. And I'm going to begin or maybe quote end with my relationship with desire, then I think it makes it a less of a hurdle to overcome because of all the stuff we put on to what desire is. And so I would ask for your listeners to say that too. Like, let's give yourself that permission, or we give you permission right now. If you need a permission from somebody else, you have permission to want and to need and to have pleasure and to know who you are as essential being and to not want things as well.
SPEAKER_01Well, there you go. And to not want things as well. So I'm gonna pivot a little bit to this idea of being able to say no. And let's talk a little bit about safety. I've heard you speak to safety, surrender, and sex. And I do think this is important for people to hear. So I'd love for you to first just frame that out for people. How does safety, surrender, and sex go together?
SPEAKER_00So I think that the number one aphrodisiac in a sexual connection is safety. The number one place for arousal, for desire, for exploration is safety.
SPEAKER_01Tell me why.
SPEAKER_00If you don't have safety, and I'm meaning emotional safety, if you don't have, I mean, obviously physical is a given in this part of the conversation, but if you don't feel safe enough to show up to the connection either with yourself or with somebody else, so that you can connect in an authentic way, so that you can express verbally and non-verbally your needs and your wants, then the chances of that being a fulfilling or sustaining sexual connection or relationship is pretty low in a fulfilling way. A lot of people have learned through their sexual journey to either be performative in their connections or to push through pain, push through not wanting something, just push push on through. That is not safety, although sometimes that's what we've learned safety is, and that's we've learned what control is is just to acquiesce. But what I'm looking for when I was speaking about is when you can enthusiastically walk into any kind of sexual connection and feel safe, then the possibilities are limitless in what you're gonna experience in pleasure and what you're gonna experience in your own connection. And for me, there's three things that you have to have. You have to be thinking about in order to have that kind of safety. You really want to know what do you need from your partner? And this is just I'm I'm just gonna speak about it being one person, but I know that not all is it always just one person. You want to know when a person shows up for you in a sexual connection and you feel the most safe when you can let down your guard, when you feel the most comfortable with yourself, how do they talk to you? How do they speak to you? What do they ask of you? What do they not ask of you? What do they not say to you? How do they touch you? And I'm not necessarily right now speaking about, I'm not talking about technique. I'm speaking about like close physical contact or or do they give you space physically? How do you interact with each other to a place that you feel safe enough to be authentic with who you are and what you need and what you want? And so you go through all of that. And if you don't know where that is, if you can't start a list right now, as you are interacting with other people, you can put that in the context of what do you need from another person to open up to speak about something that's really difficult. So it doesn't have to be a sexual connection. You can start gathering that data for yourself of how when you really open up to somebody, how does that person show up for you? And if there's more than one person in your life that you feel safe to open up to emotionally, what are the commonalities of those? And then most likely you're gonna see something like that as a sexual partner too that makes you feel safe in order to explore in that way. Like one of the things that I would say is I really like someone who communicates. I feel really safe in a sexual connection if somebody is proactively saying that they like something or don't like something, and that I really like it when somebody does kind of a brief check-in. Those two things are always like on my list of feeling good.
SPEAKER_01People do a brief check-in. Tell me one sentence about that. How would that look?
SPEAKER_00Does that feel good? Do you want to be doing this? Do you like this? Anything you want me to change?
SPEAKER_01Should I keep doing this?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, should I keep doing this?
SPEAKER_01Do you want more of this? Okay, good. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And are open to me saying that, like, oh, I'd love you to keep doing that. Or could we shift a couple inches over this way? Just a sentence. And again, a sentence or a question, and that it's that's a very easy exchange. It's something that somebody's welcoming and wanting and has practice with. So that's just one of mine, it may not be somebody else's. But looking at those kinds of specific things make a very big difference. So that's one thing is what do you need from your partner? The second thing is is what do you need from your environment in order to feel safe in it? For some, it's I need the dogs away so that they are not knocking at the door, or our children are asleep if there's children around, or some people feel more safe in the morning, others are later at night. There's a lot of variance in your environment that needs to be accounted for. I had one person that I thought this was just so neat. The fan, the ceiling fan, was a huge factor that they could not, and again, because when I use the word safe, it can feel like this may not go hand in hand, but when a ceiling fan was going, it triggered something in her. It was very distracting. She didn't like the breeze on her, and she could not keep in her body and keep in the moment. So absolutely do fans going uh for her in that. And it took a long time to discover that that was a huge issue. After years of that being an issue that she wasn't really conscious about, it became such a negative association for her in the bedroom. And so having sexual connection with her husband in the bedroom became a real negative. And again, like it took a while to unwind that because it wasn't necessarily a conscious thought. So you look for things like that. You look for things that may not be obvious to you. And then the third thing is what do you need to bring for yourself? What do you need to be responsible for in making sure you're okay, that no one else can provide for you? For some, it's you not to be hungry or not to be tired, that maybe you need to do a work stress dump before you're even thinking about emotional connection. Maybe it's if we're in a disagreement, there's no way that I'll be able to siphon off how I feel about this part of our relationship and move into sexual. So I need us to have some kind of resolution or acknowledgement of that. It's about knowing yourself.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Okay, so the three things are what do you need from your partner for safety? What do you need in your environment? And what do you need to bring yourself on your own? Right.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of work that I do. I I think some of the solutions sound really simple, but and they're not.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think they're often things that people don't we don't sit down and think through it. We actually don't sit with ourselves and say, Hey, what do I need my environment to be about where was I when I felt the most safe? What did that look like? What did that sound like? What did that smell like? You know, even that question I find we don't ask ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we don't usually use the word safe. We would say, what do I like? What do I like? What do I not like? And I find it to be so again, like when I use that fame example, that may sound like that's not a safety issue, that's a like issue. I disagree with that. I actually think our body has micro moments of ooh, mm-mm, mm-mm. And it shuts something down. And it may not be that this this is a safety that's a huge, there's a continuum of safety, of course. But if our body is in a state of like, mm-mm, then it's gonna be very hard, especially if you have multiple things that stack against each other. So if you imagine, again, I'll put this the fan into it for this person. So what this wife needed was to have her partner being really communicative. And she needed in her biomark the fan not to be on for the kids to be a bed, and she needed to bring to herself that she needed to be able to not feel like full, but not be hungry. But the time that they're wanting to sexual connect that they scheduled on their calendar that they're gonna happen, he's feeling shut down, he's tired, and he doesn't want to talk anymore. He's talked all day at work, so he's not gonna be communicative in it. The fan is on and it's bothering her, but she doesn't want to add one more thing because it's feeling like she's nagging. The third thing is that she didn't get to eat because work was too late and the kids had things in the afternoon. So now she just ate a meal right before they're going to bed. Again, this may not sound like a safety thing, but our body cannot understand sometimes the difference between actual physical danger and emotional safety in that. And I think that when we use the word safety in the context instead of liking or disliking, we can understand that this is informing our body that we are feeling okay enough, safe enough to relax into sexual connection with ourselves first. And then if we're partnered with our partner, and whether you are partnering with somebody or not, you have to have that inwardness with yourself first. And that can be done very quickly, or it can take a while and have a runway to that place. But you want to look at all three in order to have your body in the optimal way of receiving and giving connection.
SPEAKER_01Love it. Well, I'm just curious then someone might be thinking, well, what if my partner wants to try something new? This question comes up a lot. That doesn't feel safe to me, or I have feelings about that, or I'm not sure. Let's talk about that scenario within this context of safety and surrender and sex.
SPEAKER_00Such a great question. And also one I'm asked pretty frequently when I'm working with couples because there's a lot of fear that is associated with having a difference of needs and wants. And whether that's desire or the amount or the kind, the other part is really fearful is being judged or turned down. So you've done all this work to know who you are, to give yourself permission to need and to want. You've worked on communication, and then you say it to your partner, they're like, What? No, like awful. I've done all this work for that, and now you're being shut down and judged by the one person. So, what I like to teach people is pay attention to your initial reaction to we'll put it in the scenario first of your partner coming to you. And if your first reaction is judgment, shutting down, and absolutely just it's a no without even really knowing a lot of information, then I want you to work towards this is all in the assumption it's a healthy relationship and that this there's you know consent as a part of this and a part of the relationship in general. And look at the phrasing, and you can use your own wording in it, but basically to say, sure, oh, I would like to learn more about that. That is not a shutdown, that is not consent. That is, I need more information, and I need more information and time to process this because I want to be a safe container and I want us to be curious. Some people think that if you don't automatically shut it down, that that gives permission for it to grow or that you had to go, or that you're saying that yes, you're gonna do that. And it doesn't. It just means like, ooh, I want to show up as my best self for you because I would want that in return. And I have a strong reaction to that. And you are allowed to have a strong reaction to it, just like you're allowed to say no to things. But if we're wanting to grow a relationship where we can be curious, then what I've learned is sometimes when somebody says, I want to try this sex act, is actually not the sex act itself. There is something else behind it that they're interested in. So for instance, let's say someone comes to you, and this is a pretty frequent topic, and they want to try a threesome, they want to add somebody else into the bedroom. And that initially is just like, what? Again, I'm not advocating that it ever has to be a yes, if I'm just working at how the relationship goes in this conversation. Oh, I'd like to know more. And what you want to know more about is what is interesting about that? What turns you on about that? What feels exciting about that a possibility? Ask those three questions again and do as much as you can about trying to release judgment from it. There are times that perhaps what the question is, what you find out is they're just they want to risk take. They want to do something that feels risky and something different. It's really not about bringing a third person into it. That's not the actual need. It just sounds exciting. But maybe you could find risk taking in a different category that meets the need of trying something different and and spicing things up, but isn't a no for you. But you never would have known or gotten to that if all it had been is can we have rethesum? No, we can't. Now I'm mad at you, now I'm mad at you, and that's it. Let's look for some of the things underneath it as well. Sometimes it is a sex act and it's going to be just a yes or a no. The no always prevails when there is a mean difference of meaning. You never want to push yourself to do something that you that is not a yes for you enthusiastically, and you never want to push somebody that doesn't have that enthusiastic yes.
SPEAKER_01But this idea of being curious, you know, of being open to more conversation to kind of peel back the layers of what is it that someone's really wanting or desiring, like you said, is such a healthy conversation to have. And I do think a lot of couples don't have it. I agree. They do not talk about what variety they're wanting to do, or how they want something different, or something they're curious to try, or maybe they heard something on my podcast and they thought, wow, she was talking about using these props. Like, are you you know, people, it could be simple things, or like you said, it could be something bigger, like a threesome, where you're really gonna have to talk through the logistics of that. But I find that people often don't talk about these things they're thinking about or they're curious about, or the fantasies they have. And I wonder if you would share a way for them to do that, to talk about some of these things. I know you have the four quadrant exercise, and that I kind of kind of leading you there because I do like this idea. So I'd love for you to share that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Let me say one thing first, and I I want to introduce the concept of a no thank you bite. It goes along the same category of curiosity, that although, again, like I you you really can't trust somebody's yes until you can hear their no, and you really can't give an enthusiastic yes until you can give an enthusiastic no. And within that belief system is you can try no thank you bites. It's something that like I've taught my children that for the first time that they're trying a food, I just want them to have just oh no thank you bite, a bite.
SPEAKER_01Okay, a a nibble, a taste. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00And so with food, I'll just ask them to try it once. And if it's no thank you, I don't like it, then that's fine, but at least they've tried it. And again, I'm looking at the difference between a nudge and a shove and curiosity versus nudges are okay, shoves are not. And and some no thank you bites really it's such a clear no. But if there's a maybe for you that isn't, you know, being coerced, if there's a if there's like I mean, maybe, then I think you should consider a no thank you bite. And if it if after you do that with a sex act and it's like, oh, definitely a no, um, or like maybe with a twist and a change, or like, I actually liked it. You never would have known if you hadn't tried something once. And not everything needs to be tried once, but if so, I just want to open up to that. So that kind of goes into the four quadrant exercise. And this is something that I didn't come up with. I actually don't know who came up with it, but I find it to be incredibly powerful. There are so many things you can do with this, and again, it appears very simple, but there's a lot of complexity to it. And so you get a piece of paper or have a graphic that you can get off my website, and you put a paper into four quadrants. And one of the quadrants are sex acts that you have done that you want to try again, sex acts that you have done that you think you think you don't want to do anymore, sex acts that you have not tried that you're interested in trying, and sex acts that you haven't tried that feels like it's never going to be anything that's of interest to you. So you have those four quadrants, and then you do either on your own come up with a pretty big list of sex acts. You can give them online, or again, I have one that as a kind of list of things. If you're doing one on your own, a list on your own, you want to have at least 40 items and you want them to be anything from like kissing on a hand to a position that you've never heard of before and you'd have to look it up on Google. You want a wide variety of things to choose from. And then you need to get yourself into the mindset that this is written in sand, not in cement, that this is a moment of time, that we could have done this a year ago and your list would be different. We can do it in six months, and it may be different. It's just a snapshot of where you are. And for a lot of people, it's an exercise for one of the first times they make a decision with purpose and intention about this is a yes or a no for me.
SPEAKER_01I like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's it's powerful. And it's really interesting to watch somebody sit there and sometimes it's like, oh, that definitely goes there. And then they start having a list of like, I don't know, or it depends on this, or I need this to know, and that aspect of it. What I ask you to do is to not get caught in the nuance of maybes. Allow yourself to make a choice. Again, because this is not like a contract that you're putting out there. This is a check-in with yourself. There is so much that you learn when you do this on your own. You learn, like you'll have a quadrant that you're like, that is full. Like, you know, who knew? Or one that there's hardly anything in. And that's really fascinating and interesting to you. It can be really powerful. For some people, it's the first time they've made a decision about a sex act, whether or not in the middle of it, and just all of a sudden having to on the fly decide, like, oh, we're progressing to this. I don't know. Let's see. But this time they're like, hmm, this is a yes or this is a no for me. And even just that act can make a very big difference of moving forward and in connection with anybody else. If you're doing this with your partner, you do it separately. You don't talk to each other while you're doing it. And then you go back to that safety list of what do you need to do? So this is a very safe exchange of information with each other. And I like it when couples do this and that they have this attitude. I'm putting my fingers like, mmm, but that is what I want you to have. I want you to be so excited to find out what your partner's answers are and so excited to share yours as much as possible. There may be some natural nerves that you have, which is fine because it can be fearful if you answered really honestly and you there's some things that you've never said to each other, which is often the case, that can feel scary to share those things. But it's a magical exchange. I've seen so many couples have beautiful insights that never would have happened if they hadn't done this exercise. And I've had couples that said, You mean we've been doing this for five years and you didn't want to do it either? Neither of us like this, and we've been pretending to each other because we thought that's what we liked. Let's mark that off the list. Or you've been thinking about that too. Okay, well, let's put this on the like our list to do that they never shared that was a fantasy or never shared it was an interest or a maybe with each other. And they had that in common. And it's such a relief to not feel shamed or different. And it's also exciting to think that your partner wants to try something new. Where people had the most fear is if they're gonna have a difference. So, what if your I want to try this is your partner's never, I'm never gonna do this. What do you do with that? And that goes back to what you said, you know, with the question that you asked before, which is how do you communicate when you say you want to try something your partner doesn't want to? And the first answer is what I've already said that you go into it and with just like tell me more then. Let's hear more about what this can be. Maybe it feels safe enough to do a no thank you bite, or maybe it's just I need to explain to you why it's a no for me. And just like we're asking, tell me more about why it's a yes, let me tell you more why it's a no, so that it doesn't feel personal or shaming, but that there's an explanation for why that's the case. And oftentimes when you can give a background to why it's a no, you either find something that could be a yes or The need for the other person has a different feel to them, that they have compassion or they have interest, and it doesn't feel like a personal rejection. It feels like a no to the sex act, not to the person.
SPEAKER_01Well, think about the juicy, juicy conversations as well as the nourishing conversations in a partnership that this could provide this exercise. I mean, I'm getting pretty excited about doing it myself. And I'm also thinking if you're listening and thinking, oh, are you kidding me? That sounds really scary. I love this idea that you're bringing up first of saying, do it with yourself. Your sexual relationship with yourself is your primary relationship. So this circles back to what are your desires and wants, right? And this is like a full circle thing here when you really think about it.
SPEAKER_00It is. And again, don't hear that the sex acts in I want to try have to be something that you have to Google to know what it is. It can be, I want an evening that we cuddle, and it is like this just beautiful night of holding each other. That is a valid sex act to want and desire that is beautiful and fulfilling and absolutely enough. And give yourself permission to have those needs and wants. And that becomes contagious. When you start loving and being open to what you're wanting, and you have situations or relationships that are excited to learn and to experience your wanting alongside of you, it changes the vibrancy and the way that you're interacting in the world. And that has a synergy and a contagiousness too in it. And I want to speak to those who aren't partnered too, that there are a lot of sexual connections and sex acts that don't have to be partnered, that you don't have to experience in a long-term relationship. I had a client once, and I love it, she gave me permission to talk about this. She hired me because she was single and she had no intention. She knew she wasn't going to be partnered for a while. And she had a list of sex acts before she'd met me, her own kind of version of this exercise. And she just called it her bucket list. She's like, But how do I, some of these are partnered, so how do I do this? And so we worked on how could she safely go out in the world and find somebody who would want to just be an experimenter with her. And she would just be like, that's a no, that's a yes. And she's like, Can I do this? And you know, is this okay for me to know this about myself? She's like, it could be years until I find someone that I'm in a relationship with that I would do this with. And I don't want to wait that long to know this about myself. And so we worked for a way that felt right and safe for her to learn. And she loved having the knowledge of what her yeses and no's were in these sex acts, but more than anything, she liked figuring out how to do this on her own with breaking all the rules that she'd been taught and had been told were the right ways to go about this, and knowing that it still fit her values, it still fit her needs and wants. And that started extending to all parts of her life. It's a skill that isn't just in your sexual life. When you learn the skill of valuing your wants and having vibrancy in your life, it infuses to all areas.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a beautiful way to wrap up this conversation. I mean, I feel very excited for people to hear this really beautiful way of reframing desire as a whole.
SPEAKER_00That just lights me up. Sometimes that's the first thing you have to do, and it's the biggest thing you have to do in looking at your desire is wondering at the possibilities that await you on your terms.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. On your terms. Love it. Thank you so much for being with us today. I would love for you to share how people can find you in your work, Juliana.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you. I am on all social media at Dr. Juliana Hauser, and my name is 1N. And then I have a website that is um drilliana.com, and there's a lot in there. And then I have a newsletter that I share a lot of information that I don't share anywhere else, too.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. On this podcast, we like to share something that delights us every day. That brings you pleasure and lights you up. I wonder if you might share. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, sure. My daughter and I, if weather permits, we do a barefoot walk in our neighborhood every night. And it's such a special. She is so cute and chatty while we're doing it. And there's something about taking our shoes off, I guess, that feels different and fun to her, and it loosens her up. And we have such a playful, wonderful time. It's it really is delightful.
SPEAKER_01Lovely. Well, listeners, I hope you come away from this conversation thinking about what brings a spark to you. What feels like vibrancy to you? Oh, and certainly just to keep giving yourself permission for pleasure.
