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.
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Listen in for the five questions to answer with a partner for greater pleasure and discovery. Sexual communication is your key to unlocking boredom, assumptions and resentment in the bedroom. Lean into your curiosity with these questions and discover more intimacy and vibrancy in your sex life.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host, and I am talking about curiosity in this season. I just finished Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being, and it's given me a lot to think about in regards to my work, the podcast, my life, and how I want to move forward in curiosity. One of the things he said that I'm really sitting with is this quote Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions. Let me repeat that. Living in discovery is at all times preferable to living through assumptions. As I relate that to our sex lives, to intimacy, I wonder how many of us are living in discovery, and how many of us are living through assumptions. Based on my work and conversations with women for four decades, I can tell you more often than not, sadly, we aren't living in discovery. So in this episode, I want to explore five questions. Five questions that you can ask to get more curious about discovery and really for a pleasure-filled and intimate sex life. Along with each question, I'm going to offer resources for you to dig in further. I have so much content available to you, and I'm going to try to easily direct you toward it. Now, if you're newer to the podcast, I want to invite you to sign up for my newsletter, Good Education for Good Sex. The newsletter is bite-sized educational blogs, tips, and more that I curate for you once a month. You can sign up for that at the link in the show notes or on my website. And friends, if you are a delighted listener of the podcast, please do press the follow button on your listening platform and download episodes and rate the show. It really does support my work. So thanks for doing that. Now, let's go back to Curiosity and Discovery. If you listened to the last episode with Dr. Holly Richmond, I think this conversation here with these questions is a really good follow-up. So if you missed that convo, you might want to download that one and come back to it when you have time. It is worth it. It's like a free therapy session with one of the leading experts sharing how to re-eroticize your relationship and sex life. So if you listen to that, you'll kind of follow right along with this, but if you haven't, they can go hand in hand. So consider this. Would you say the way you're having sex is routine is the way you're having sex working, so to speak, but become a little mooring, stagnant, uninteresting? When our sex lives move into routine, boring, and uninteresting, it really narrows the pleasure pathways available to us. And it can decrease desire. Certainly, it doesn't feel erotic. Ask yourself, can I look beyond my default setting here with sex? Can I recognize the filter I currently see sex through? If you want to experiment past your current boundaries or preferences on purpose, there's opportunity to discover what you can learn, what surprises you, what doors open or close. Curiosity doesn't insist on one way. It allows for exploration, seeking new insights. It breaks through the mundane. And yet here's the reality, and I want to normalize this for you, for all of us, in hopes that you will offer it to yourself and a partner as well. When you explore, when you get curious about your sex life, it's vulnerable. It can feel scary. And also things can go, I don't know, wrong or not work. This is normal. We have a choice in those situations, frustration and shutdown, or to make an inquiry and an adjustment. So as you ask these questions that I'm going to offer, as you talk with a partner, as you try new things, there is some risk. It is a risk where there can be reward. Let's get into these five questions to ask, along with the resources for each to go further. I think the best way to find all these links is going to be on the podcast page where you can find that right in the show notes. I'm not even sure I can link this many links in the show notes. Gosh, I actually really wish I knew if you guys even look at the show notes or if you link from there. So maybe I'll do half and half. Either way, find what you need in the show notes, friends. Okay, number one. What kind of touch makes you feel the most connected to me? This is a question for partners. What kind of touch makes you feel the most connected to me? This question, friends, when was the last time you asked about touch, about affection, about touch that's connecting for you, for your partner? This is an ongoing question that you want to be asking and answering. Do you remember the episode back with Dr. Sarah Nasserzade 87? That was a great short episode about what you're saying with your touch. I also have episodes about affection, about exploring erogenous zones, about exploring new ways to touch. So look for those links if you want to go further, but certainly ask this first question. What kind of touch makes you feel the most connected to me? The second one is what prompts or sparks your desire? We talk about desire a lot on this show. And remember, desire changes. What sparks your desire can change. It's evolving. This is an ongoing question to be talking about. Dr. Holly Richmond's episode, the last one, was an excellent resource. I have one on embracing your desire, the truth about desire, understanding your desire style for better sex, partner desire discrepancies. I'll link to some of these in the show notes, but ask the question of yourself, of a partner, of what prompts or sparks your desire. The third one is how would you prefer I initiate sex? I'm just shocked at the number of couples who do not ask this question and make assumptions about the preferences, and there is a lot of miscommunication when we assume. So this is an excellent question. Hey, how would you prefer I initiate sex? We have a great episode about initiation. I think I called it Everything We Get Wrong About Initiation with Vanessa and Xander Marin. And there's a really good episode with Nicholas of Aria about erotic personas and how we come to sex, which might be really helpful. Speaking of Aria, that is a way to really get into discovery. Are you familiar with Aria? I've talked about them before on the show. It's a subscription for couples. It's an exciting way to introduce yourself to new things, new ways to communicate, new pleasure together. It's not a box of stuff. It's more like a curated experience and scene creation with props. You do get a box, but it's much more than that. My community is loving it, and I'm a big fan. So I have a discount code and an affiliate link for that in the show notes. So Ari is actually a great option for discovery, whether it's talking about initiating sex or as we move forth to the next question: what kind of environment gets you in the mood? I mean, when was the last time you talked about this with your partner? Forcing a perspective change, experimenting with different scenarios can really be spicy and get you in the mood. Tweaking your environment even by a small increment is really a turn on for some people. But also, people need certain things in the environment to get in the mood. So I do have an episode called Sexify Your Space: Tips for a Better Bedroom. That's excellent. Maybe you're just wanting to tweak your environment by a small increment like everything but light, everything but sound, everything but sight, you know, that kind of thing. But talk about what kind of environment gets you in the mood. The last question is what gets your heart rate up and makes you curious to try? This can be as simple as things like everything but kissing, going back to this kind of scenario, everything but talking, everything but using our hands, to fantasies, role play. Maybe you want to check out the episode Toys, Fantasy, and Play in the Bedroom, because Dr. Carolyn Klein is the one in that episode who introduced me to this idea. For people who get a little freaked out about talking about their fantasies, she frames it with this heart rate scenario. What gets your heart rate up? Sometimes we just need language that we're comfortable with. So what gets your heart rate up and makes you curious to try? Perhaps you're curious about kink. I have a fabulous episode dropping soon, probably even next time, for those that are kink curious, super educational episode. You might want to listen to the episodes about how curiosity fuels desire or embracing your desires. Again, you'll find links to those. Because friends, sameness can get boring, even dull. Think about a musician playing an instrument. If they keep playing the same note over and over and over again, you start to just tune out, right? Sex can be the same way. I hope these questions are helpful. I hope that you have some desire to explore a vibrant and intimate life. I'll link as many resources as I can on the episode page. Of course, my favorite resource for you is my book Permission for Pleasure Tending Your Sexual Garden. It's available in hardcover and ebook formats. And you can always find the link there in the show notes. So cheers, friends, to great conversations. Asking these five questions, living in discovery rather than assumptions. That, my friends, that will move you into the direction of giving yourself more permission for pleasure.
