6 Essentials for Connected Sex, Supplementation and Health Issues That Impact Your Sex Life – Episode

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Episode 36 – 6 Essentials for Connected Sex, Supplementation and Health Issues That Impact Your Sex Life

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Jonathan Hunsaker: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Empowering You Organically. I’m your host, Jonathan Hunsaker, joined by my co-host, TeriAnn Trevenen.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Hey, everyone.

Jonathan Hunsaker: We have a very, very special guest today, Susan Bratton. She is the Trusted Hot Sex Advisor to millions. Thanks for joining us, Susan.

Susan Bratton: I was thinking we should rename the podcast Orgasmically You.

TeriAnn Trevenen: There we go.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Empowering You Orgasmically.

Susan Bratton: Empowering You Orgasmically.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love it.

Susan Bratton: That’s this episode. There you go.

TeriAnn Trevenen: There you go.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Susan, thanks for joining us. This is the second podcast that we’re doing with you, and the first one was just so—it was just amazing. I learned so much. I was just a fly on the wall, let you and TeriAnn talk most of it. But just thank you for joining us again. It’s phenomenal to have you back.

Susan Bratton: Thank you so much for being willing to stand for your fans’ sexual pleasure and connection. Not everyone has the courage to do it. Sex is a triggering thing for people. And you guys seem to be really enjoying it, because we’re on our second episode. So, boo-yah!

Jonathan Hunsaker: Exactly. We stand for health, and we talk about being healthy. And yes, we can talk about diet all day long, we can talk about exercise all day long, we can talk about supplementation. If we don’t talk about sex, then you’re not achieving optimum health. If you’re not having a strong sex drive, if you’re not having a good sexual relationship with your partner, all of that stuff, it all combines to having a really healthy life, and a happy life.

Susan Bratton: People who have sex live longer.

Jonathan Hunsaker: I’m hoping that’s the case. So, TeriAnn?

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah, so let’s talk about—I want to talk a little bit about what we talked about last time. I really found it fascinating, you talked about testosterone and estrogen, and not just when people—when you hear those words, we’re not just talking about hormones, we’re talking about communication, we’re talking about the way we connect with one another in our relationships.

And we talked a little bit about supplementation when it comes to testosterone and estrogen, and I wanted you to touch on a little bit—let’s just backtrack a little bit about what you talked about with that, our health being so important when it comes to our sexual—our sex life, or intimacy, and all of those things. Just touch on that a little bit. And then, we’ll take it one step further.

Susan Bratton: Okay. So, the first thing is, on our last episode, we talked a lot about estrogen and testosterone, and how they actually impact our behavior, and why sex is like it is between men and women, because one of us is estrogen-driven and one is testosterone-driven. So, it’s really interesting, when you get out of thinking about it as just this molecule that “supports your libido,” and you start thinking about it in how it manifests in your behavior in the bedroom. That is very interesting. What was your question?

TeriAnn Trevenen: You talked about—we talked about health and how our health is so important to the testosterone and estrogen to help in our sex life.

Susan Bratton: So, your libido is your sex drive, is your creativity, is your passion, is your lust for life, is your vitality. They’re all different words for the same thing, your energy level, how well you feel. You don’t want sex if you don’t feel well. That’s why, for example, if a woman’s going through maybe breast cancer, what is her husband supposed to do while she’s healing?

How does he approach her? What’s on the table? What’s off the table? If you have diabetes or you’re pre-diabetic, you’re having neuropathy, you’re losing sensation, you’re having anorgasmia. If you have—if you’re on your way to heart disease, you have plaque in your pipes, and your penis doesn’t get enough blood flow. Any one of these different things, health issues, can impact your sexuality. Those are just three very common examples of how your health is directly tied to the pleasure and connection of your sex life.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah. And let’s talk a little bit about how important it is to not only maintain your health, so we talked about that, but supplement when it comes to testosterone and estrogen. What are your thoughts on that? And let’s talk a little bit about herb cycling, which I’m really interested in hearing about.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. When—you said something I thought was really good. It was—it took you this long to get sick, you’re not going to get healthy in a matter of days. Coming back to health, and frankly, we’re always working on our health because we’re always trying to reverse anti-aging, we’re trying to do anti-aging, we’re trying to reverse atrophy. Our genitals atrophy just like the rest. As we get wrinkles in our skin, all that stuff’s happening inside. Everything external is a reflection of internal, including our genitalia.

[0:04:54]

So, the herb cycling is interesting, because there are so many great adaptogens and plant-based botanicals that support hormones, lowering cortisol, increasing testosterone, increasing estrogen, managing the aromatase expression of over-estrogen for men, where they’re getting more estrogen ratio than testosterone ratio, which is giving them man boobs and a fat belly.

There’s all kinds of things that get impacted. And there are a lot of herbs that really support us in sexual wellness, thinks like maca, which has libido support, cacao, which has polyphenols that keep the blood flowing in our body, nitric oxide precursors, such as citrulline or l-arginine. I’m not big on l-arginine myself, personally, because about 75 percent of Americans have one form of HSV-1 or HSV-2, which is herpes, like cold sores or genital herpes. And arginine is actually something that exacerbates herpes.

So, if you’re going to try to increase your nitric oxide, eat more arugula, eat more dill, beets, spinach, cabbage, or take supplements that have those kinds of things in it, because as we age, they diminish. So, there’s so many other things, Tribulus Terrestris, fenugreek, tongkat ali. There are ayurvedic herbs, there are traditional Chinese medicine herbs, there are herbs from Russia, like rhodiola, that support libido.

And taking all of these things is great, but first of all, it takes a consistent approach to giving your body the materials that it needs, the cofactors and precursors to your endocrine system, so that you can build up your hormones naturally. And you have to stay with it. It’s not the like “Oh, I’m going to pop this supplement and it’s going to be like a Viagra, and all of a sudden, I’m going to have this raging hard-on and everything’s going to be good.”

No, you’ve got to make consistent effort to—it takes at least 90 days for many of these herbal formulas to gently drip into your body, for your body to begin to be able to rely on the consistent usage of them. But over time, your body actually adjusts to having them, and then, they’re not as effective. And that’s why I like cycling some herbs, like one month, you might want to do tongkat ali, and the next month, you might want to do fenugreek, and the next month, you might want to do Tribulus Terrestris, whatever it might be.

And then, you can also see, once you’re starting to separate a few of these components, you might say, “Oh, okay, I felt really good when I took the tongkat ali. I didn’t notice the fenugreek as much.” Or “Oh, my girlfriend said my semen tasted better on that fenugreek. That was interesting.” Like there’s actually a lot of effects that botanicals have on your system.

So, when you tune into your animal body, which we talked about on the last episode, that we’re all animals, when you really tune into what your body is feeling, how good it is, how your erectile performance is, with women as well as men, being fully engorged, having great blood flow, you’ll be able to sense what’s working for you, and you’ll also be able to sense, “Oh, I need to take more of that.” “Oh, I’m feeling better and better as I add these herbs in over time.” So, there’s both the consistent endeavor, as well as cycling herbs over time. But give yourself 90 days before you start doing a lot of different testing. Give yourself a chance to build up in your system.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah, and I say that a lot to people around supplements. It’s like people will start taking all these supplements at one time, and they’re like “I don’t know what works, and I don’t feel good.” And like you don’t know how each one impacted you. Another thing that I think is really interesting, we talked about this in the last episode with you, but I want to touch on it here again.

I think it’s so important to drive it home. Don’t just immediately run out and get on a prescription because something’s wrong. Because that is more than likely not the best route to go. I’m not going to knock anyone way of doing things, it’s people’s personal choice, and I never want to take that away. That’s something we really believe in.

But, look at your natural health, look at your body, look at what your body needs, look what you’re deficient in. And I think another beautiful thing about what you talked about with the herbs is yes, we’re talking about them when it comes to intimacy, pleasure, libido, but all these things you talk about benefit other aspects of the body, too.

So, you’re taking a natural approach to healing your body, but then also, the benefit of the intimacy side of it, and libido. So, I’m really grateful that we touched on that again, even though we touched on it quite a bit in the last episode. I think it was really important to start that out or start this episode out with that and really cover that.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And I’m going to jump in for a second, because I think it’s very interesting, what you said early on, when you were coming up with all these different names for libido, right? You were talking about passion, vitality—

Susan Bratton: Lust for life.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Lust for life. All of these different things. And yeah, I mean I think it’s really interesting because I think we can separate these things.

[0:09:58]

And there’s times when we all feel a little bit depressed, right? And that affects all of it, whether that’s your passion for life, your lust for life, obviously your libido. You’re not feeling attractive; you’re not feeling whatever. And so, it’s just interesting that this isn’t all separate, this is all together, it’s all one thing, and as you address it, it’s going to make a difference across all areas of your life, not just your sex life.

And I love what you talk about, too, in terms of the cycling of the herbs. I mean what’s really interesting is we’ll have people that will take one of our supplements, and “Hey, I didn’t really feel a difference.” I’m like “How long have you taken it for?” “I’ve taken it for three months.” “Well, stop and see what happens.” And they stop, and like “Well, I just felt a huge difference when I stopped.”

Susan Bratton: Yeah, it creeps up on you.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yeah, because—

Susan Bratton: It’s slow, it’s subtle.

Jonathan Hunsaker: It’s not like taking a Viagra. I’ve never taken a Viagra, but I know the commercials say what’s going to happen. You’re not going to feel that when you just start taking an herb, that instantly, “Oh, this is what it’s doing for me.” But you will feel it, and this is what I loved about talking about the cycling, is take some stuff away and find out what works and what doesn’t. And then, as you said as well, you start taking stuff for too long, it becomes less effective. So, cycle it anyway, right? Because it just keeps your body guessing.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Well, and one other thing, too, is not everything will work for you, to add to that.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Of course.

TeriAnn Trevenen: You may take something, and it’s not what you should be taking, too. So, that’s important to say as well. You shouldn’t be taking every supplement under the sun. Not only for your health but when it comes to libido, some things will work for you, some things will not. It’s just it’s a game, a guessing game at this point, and until you test it out, you won’t know.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And the other thing I want to hit home, because a lot of times, when we’re talking about taking herbs for libido, and maybe it’s just me, but it feels like it’s geared more towards men, and men that have erectile dysfunction, and blood flow, and all of that. And what you said on the last podcast really just made a lot of sense.

I mean women need the blood flow just as much, right? They have an innie instead of an outie. And so, I just want to make sure, because most of our listeners are women, that they’re understanding that this is the conversation for you. Like when we’re talking about herbs, we’re talking about you, we’re talking about your libido, we’re talking about your passion for life. This is not a conversation, quite frankly, for men, in my opinion, because we’re mainly talking to women listeners.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. I’d like to talk to you for a minute about engorgement.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Okay.

Susan Bratton: Have you heard that term?

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yes.

Susan Bratton: It means being filled with blood. It means to nest. That’s another word for it. When—so when we talked about the innie and the outie, the—when we’re born, when we’re in utero, we all start out as female. And about 16 weeks in, we get a, depending on the XY chromosome, we get a hormonal bath that turns half of us into boys. But we start out with exactly the same genital material.

And that genital material turns into a penis or a vulva, a penis and scrotum or a vulva. And the two channels that run down the penis, the corpus cavernosum and the corpus spongiosum, those are erectile tissue. Those are the chambers that fill up with blood to give a man an erection. Those chambers are in our clitoris.

So, we have a clitoral head, a clitoral shaft, so we actually have a shaft, the glans is like the tip of the penis, the shaft is like the shaft of the penis. So, a woman actually achieves a clitoral erection given enough massaging or oral pleasuring or lovemaking. And then, the clitoris has two little arms that drape over the entrance to the vagina.

That’s called the introitus, the entrance to the vagina. And then it has two plump bags that are the legs of the clitoris, that are called the vestibular bulbs, that are actually under the pubic hair on each side of the opening to the vagina. And that whole structure is all the—is not all the erectile tissue, it’s the erectile tissue of her clitoral structure that needs to get filled with blood.

Then she has a urethral sponge. It’s like a pool noodle. You know when your kids are out in the pool and they are in those like extruded little tubes? We have an extruded little tube that goes down the urethral outlet, where your urine comes from your bladder and exits out of your vulva, between your clitoris and the opening to your vagina.

That’s an exit. There’s a tube that runs, a fluffy tube of erectile tissue there. That’s what people call the G-spot. You can get to it from the outside, and you can get to it from the inside of the vaginal canal. And then there’s another sponge, called the perineal sponge, that’s located between the rectum and the vagina, those two tubes are parallel up inside her, and there’s a spongy tissue between them.

All of that’s erectile tissue. And if she doesn’t have all of that stimulated and engorged, she’s going to have struggle climaxing. So, a lot of these botanicals support blood flow for engorgement, for sensation, for achieving climax. You wouldn’t expect a man to have intercourse without being firm. The same with a woman. If a woman goes too fast and she tries to have sex too early, it’s not going to be pleasurable for her because she wasn’t able to achieve that engorgement, that clitoral hard-on.

[0:15:07]

And it’s the whole structure of her clitoris and those sponges that get hard. So, manual stimulation, genital stimulation, hand, rub, massage, Yoni massage. Have you heard the word Yoni?

Jonathan Hunsaker: I have not.

Susan Bratton: So, in Sanskrit, which is an Indian language, which is the classic kind of Kama sutra language, the Yoni is the woman’s vulva, and the Lingam is the man’s penis. So, it’s the Yoni and the Lingam. So, a Yoni massage is a woman’s vulva massage. And if she, I know that a lot of women are thinking to themselves, “My husband would never do that for me,” or “I wouldn’t let him because he doesn’t know what to do,” and I really want to encourage women to get over their fear of their husband being all thumbs, because number one, generally, men are very dexterous with their hands.

So, they’re building things, they’re making things, they’re fixing things, they’re good with tools, they’re good with their hands. And so, it’s a very learnable skill. A man, given an opportunity and good feedback by using the Sexual Soulmate Pact, the free downloadable e-book that we gave in the last podcast when she teaches him how by giving him feedback about what feels good in that moment for her massage if they incorporate that as a part of foreplay. So, taking the supplements to increase blood flow and libido, adding the manual stimulation, will take your sex life to a whole new level, will take your sexual pleasure to a whole new level. It’s physics.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I think it’s so important, what you said. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it in that way, that you wouldn’t expect a man to have sex without an erection.

Susan Bratton: So, why are you rushing yourself?

TeriAnn Trevenen: Why would you not for a woman? How many people say it like that? Seriously. How many times have you heard that?

Jonathan Hunsaker: I’ve never heard it presented that way.

TeriAnn Trevenen: No.

Susan Bratton: That’s why I’m the Trusted Hot Sex Advisor to millions, TeriAnn.

TeriAnn Trevenen: There you go. So, it really is, when you said that, it was like it clicked in my brain.

Susan Bratton: I know.

TeriAnn Trevenen: That makes so much sense.

Susan Bratton: I need to get a massage; I need to get a Yoni massage.

TeriAnn Trevenen: There you go. So, but seriously, that is such an important point that I think we really need to drive home. Like it goes both ways, but it’s harder to understand that in women. We’ve talked—women, we’ve talked about this many times in the last podcast, and now, there’s an innie and an outie. And for men, it’s so visible, it’s easy to understand that, it’s easy to see. For women, you don’t see that.

Susan Bratton: Well, and you only see half of a man’s shaft. There’s 50 percent of his penile tissue that’s buried up inside him. You can, if you actually look at, I have some great pictures, if you actually look at a penis, half of it’s sticking out, and then it continues on inside, up into his abdomen. And that whole thing is erectile tissue, too.

It’s actually like a big banana, but half the banana’s buried inside him. You can get to that tissue, you can give him a lingam massage, to set a real—especially, one in four men has premature ejaculation. It’s partly performance anxiety, partly comes from bad masturbatory techniques, and it can be reversed. Guys, all the time, “What do I do? I cum too fast. I can’t satisfy my woman. My wife is very upset with me. It makes it even worse when I think about it. I just don’t know what to do. It’s ruining our sex life.”

And that, if she takes the time to actually give him a massage, by touching down into his abdomen and feeling where the penis continues into his body, and underneath his scrotum in the perineal area, you can feel the root of his shaft going inside him, and you can stroke the outside and the inside. Once you get that whole shaft engorged, it slows down his urge so that he can calm down, because he’s gotten fully engorged, and then he can have much slower, more—less performance anxiety in sex.

And when he has performance anxiety, she has it, too. Women have tons of performance anxiety around “Am I going to be able to climax? Is it going to feel good? Is it going to hurt again?” We’re so sensitive down there. So, there’s just a lot of things that, once you understand anatomy and you start to really pleasure each other manually and orally, which gives you additional benefits, then it takes the focus off of intercourse, but it actually also makes intercourse even more pleasurable.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yeah, awesome. Awesome information, for sure. So, I want to ask you a question that’s popped up in my mind a couple of times, and I keep forgetting to ask because it’s so much good information coming. So, you talk about libido in men and women in terms of testosterone and estrogen. The words masculine and feminine keep popping up in my mind. Do you ever use those, or do you talk about testosterone and estrogen? I’m just trying to figure out how people are seeing it.

Susan Bratton: Both.

TeriAnn Trevenen: So, you use both? You just talk about testosterone? Okay.

Susan Bratton: Estrogen is femininity, it’s all over the map, it’s going a million miles, it’s got its eyes on everything, it’s sensitive, it’s delicate, it’s fussy. Testosterone is straight ahead, goal-oriented, able to just be like in the zone much more easily, which is why the masculine needs to help the woman, the feminine, get into her body so she can relax and begin that climbing the arousal ladder together.

[0:20:11]

So, instead of sex being quick intercourse, it becomes kissing, full body massage, genital pleasuring, slow oral pleasuring. And with practice, you get perfect. You get to know what each other enjoys.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Got it. Love it. And then, let me ask you one other question before we kind of turn into a totally different topic of communication. So, we talked about supplementation, but a lot of people, and I know we’re more geared towards women, but for men and women, people doing testosterone and estrogen later on in life, where they’re doing testosterone injections or whatever. What are your thoughts on that? I’m just curious where you go on that path.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I am a big proponent of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. So, testosterone therapy for men, as well as some other hormones. Some hormones actually help you with things like hearing, like aldosterone. DHEA is a precursor to testosterone and estrogen, interestingly. Managing what is called your aromatase profile so that you don’t—so that your testosterone to estrogen ratio is low enough that you’re not making too much estrogen and getting man boobs and a belly.

So, testosterone. Typically, men feel good in the 700-1000 mg/dl. That’s the amount of free testosterone in one’s blood. And for women, I really like a combination of estrogen, bioidentical estrogen, as well as progesterone, which you take often at night, and you can cycle it if you’re still in your cycling time, if you’re still producing eggs, dropping eggs and having menstruation.

And then I also recommend supplementing women with some testosterone, especially in a coconut cream. If you take coconut oil and have your compounding pharmacy put your bioidentical hormones in coconut oil, then it’s completely safe to put inside your Yoni, inside your vaginal canal. You can put the testosterone on your clitoris.

You’ll have increased desire and sensation. And then there’s another hormone that I really like. It’s the hormone called oxytocin, which you can make by touching each other. It comes from holding and cuddling and being close to each other. It’s something a mother makes when she has a baby, but it’s also a hormone that lovers make that bonds them together.

And that hormone can also be compounded in an intravaginal cream and put inside a woman’s vagina, and it helps strengthen the tissue, make the tissue more pliable as we age, it plumps it up, it engorges the tissue. So, there are a lot of things that can be done in addition to just using high-quality lubricants, like organic coconut oil as a lube, organic sweet almond oil as a lube when you’re making love, to increase your desire and to just clear your brain fog and make your heart healthier, and it’s neuroprotective. All of these hormones are so good for us.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Got it, love it. And I appreciate you answering that question because I think a lot of people are probably thinking—we’ve talked about herbs, botanical herbs, you’re a big proponent of those. But what’s—where do you go when it comes to that conversation?

Susan Bratton: They work synergistically. I take botanicals for libido support, as well as using bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Love it, love it. So, let’s change the conversation a little bit now to, when it comes to intimacy and your relationship, let’s talk about communication and getting your needs met, and what your thoughts are on that.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, on the last episode, we glossed over it pretty quickly, and I asked if we could talk about it on this episode. And that’s because, for many women especially, they can’t compartmentalize their sexuality with the rest of their relationship. They have a lot of emotional connection. Don’t get me wrong, men do, too.

Most men need that deep emotional connection. Passionate lovemaking is emotionally-connected lovemaking. It’s when you feel totally safe with each other when you can surrender to your pleasure together, when you can just lock your systems together and go off into joy, that you don’t know where their pleasure starts and your pleasure ends.

It’s one beautiful intertwined, interplay of joy and pleasure together. That’s when you start to achieve sacred sexuality. But for a woman especially, to be able to let go, because she’s estrogen, she’s all over the map, he’s testosterone, he’s straightforward, he can compartmentalize a little more, she needs the conditions to be right outside the bedroom as well as inside the bedroom.

And one of the things that was a real pivot, we told a little about my personal story of almost losing my marriage about 11 years in, but now we’re 27 years and going strong, and one of the first things that really helped for us was getting very honest about what we each wanted individually in the relationship. We want certain things out of our relationship, and you can’t expect that—and we’re going to, even though we support the entire gender spectrum, we’re going to stick with the masculine/feminine, monogamous, a boy, a girl in a relationship type of thing, just to make it easy.

[0:25:04]

This doesn’t mean that everything I’m telling you doesn’t work if you’re a same-sex partner, or somewhere on the gender spectrum. But what you want and what your partner wants in a relationship are going to be different, because they’re a dude and you’re a lady. So, for example, you could, as a woman, really, really need security as your number one relationship value, because you need someone to take care of you, you need to make sure there’s good tires on the car, the burglar alarm is set, the healthcare is getting paid, we’ve got enough money for organic food.

Whatever your priorities are, you need that to be set, and you really don’t feel safe and secure if your partner isn’t bringing in enough money. And then, you don’t really feel like you want to connect with them because you’re mad at them, because they’re not meeting your needs. And that is a very, very common thing.

I was talking to a guy recently who said, “My wife is not wanting to have sex with me. What do I do?” And I said, “Well, how are your finances?” And he said, “Well, I don’t have a job right now. I’m trying to be an entrepreneur, but I haven’t made any money for about 18 months. And it’s been about that long, actually, interestingly enough that you ask, that she’s been stopping having sex with me.”

And I said, “Why don’t you go get a job and work on the entrepreneur thing part-time and then let me know how that goes?” He literally, within three weeks, went out and got a job, and she started having sex with him again. She wasn’t getting her needs met. So, she wasn’t—she didn’t want to meet his needs.

So, a lot of women, too, and I know women are primarily who listen to your podcast, because the women are the Dr. Mom’s of the household, so they’re buying the supplements for everyone, and they want to buy the highest-quality they can, which is, of course, Organixx, which I appreciate and why I’m here supporting your brand, because I’m a believer in what you’re doing.

And those women, they want to be totally taken care of, but they also want some freedom. Women today are very emancipated. They’re working full-time, they’re mothers, they’re out in the world, they’ve got that, you know, masculine front on to cope in today’s world. And when they come home, they want to be totally taken care of by their guy, but they also want their freedom.

And so, it’s interesting to see how a lot of women say, “Oh yeah, I want that.” For a lot of women, they want to be cherished. They don’t want it to just be about sex, they want it to be about love. Men don’t understand how much romance is important to women, how much encouraging her, telling her you love her, taking her out for a walk in the countryside, rowing her in a boat on the lake, taking her for a hike.

Moving a woman’s body moves her emotions, and she wants to feel an emotional connection to you. So, those are some of the things that are very, very common for women, where men, often, what they want is recreational companionship. They want you to be there when they go fishing, they want you going fishing with them.

They want touch, affection, passion. Physical touch for them is love. For women, many women, sex isn’t love, sex is pleasure and joy and intimacy and connection, but it’s not how they’re shown their love. The romance and the security are how they’re shown their love. So, I wrote this book, MyRelationshipMagic.com.

It’s a downloadable book. I’ll give you a link for a discount. Don’t buy it on Amazon, buy it at the link that you guys will put in the notes below the podcast so you can save more than half off. This is a workbook for couples. This has saved so many marriages. It’s like 20 pages. It’s nothing. It’s simple. You can do it on a date night.

You can get really clear on what it is you need to feel and how your guy can create those feelings for you in the relationship, and what he needs to feel, I love that it’s a man and a woman here, you make it really easy for me you guys, how—what he wants most, and what you need to get up every day and do for him to make him feel like you’re meeting his needs.

When he starts with a simple checklist of four items, you can get this at MyRelationshipMagic.com is where you get this, he gets his checklist and he’s like “Oh man, that’s all I ever needed, because I was trying all this stuff thinking I’m treating her the way I want to be treated, and she’s not responding. What I’m now doing is just the four things she wants me to do, and I’m, all of a sudden, I’m winning, and she loves me, and she’s coming to me, and she’s super affectionate, because her needs are getting met, and now my needs are getting met.”

It totally changes relationship dynamics. It gets you on the equal footing of—but not the same page. I call it the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule is “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” But treating your partner the way you want to be treated is not meeting their relationship values. They’re a different person. So, the Platinum Rule is “Treat your partner the way they want to be treated,” and that’s when things get really good. And then, you can go on to have hot sex.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Love it, love it.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant, quite frankly. I mean I’ve heard about different languages of love, right?

Susan Bratton: Oh, those are nice, but I like them all. Like I want all five.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Right. And exactly, it’s hard—

TeriAnn Trevenen: I’m the same way.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

[0:29:57]

Jonathan Hunsaker: And I think that’s part of the challenge. I love the fact that you’ve put together a simple little workbook, especially being a guy, I don’t want a 50-page chore, a 20-page workbook to go through it. And I think that’s the biggest challenge in most relationships. And I’ve talked about this before privately, in private relationships. It’s like I’m trying, I’m trying, and they’re trying. But you’re not giving me what I need, and I’m not giving you what you need.

Susan Bratton: Because you just don’t really have that list.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Exactly. It’s like—

Susan Bratton: Of specifics.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Yeah, just give me a list. If I have a checklist, I’ll be phenomenal.

Susan Bratton: I know.

TeriAnn Trevenen: And I think we get so caught up in the business of life that we forget to stop for a minute and say, “What do I want?” and get clear on that. And I think that that evolves and changes over time, and that’s okay. It’s a beautiful thing about life. We’re on a journey, it’s not one set way. I think that stopping and doing that exercise often is important, getting clear, like “What do I want right now?”

Because it does change with our careers, and kids, and things that happen, but it’s not what does your kid want, what does your partner want, what does your family want, what does your job require of you, it’s like what do you want? And that ‘s hard for some people to answer, too, so I think you really have to stop, slow down, internalize, like “What do I want? Not everyone else, me, inside.” And that’s a hard thing for people, just that step alone is a hard thing for people to face sometimes, really answering that question.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And that’s my—that’s a great point, because my question is, is how often does that change?

Susan Bratton: It’s pretty steady-state, but as you mature, sometimes things become more and less important. And so, you—

TeriAnn Trevenen: Exactly.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Kind of the core need, the core’s kind of the same.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, it’s really based on how you were raised, the culture you were raised in, who you are as a person. It’s pretty core.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Got it.

Susan Bratton: It’s pretty fixed, surprisingly. And what you do is you end up with 10 relationship values in rank, order, prioritization, but your partner only has to remember the top four, because that’s like the 80/20.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love that.

Susan Bratton: So, 20 percent of your effort gets you 80 percent of your results. Keep it simple, four things.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Well, and I think those four things like you talk about, most of them don’t change. Things like when you have a kid, or kids, there’s little things on your list that change, but those four things, I love that because those four unique things that you always want, and those things lower down on the list are probably the things that change from time to time with your journey, with your life, with your situation.

Susan Bratton: And like I said on the last show, I write it so a man can read it. I write it for the dudes, so the ladies can print it out and be like “We’re going to do this exercise. Read this book.”

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love that.

Susan Bratton: And it makes sense to him.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love that. So, let’s talk about, now that we know what’s going on outside, because you talk about outside and inside the bedroom and really understanding one another, so we talk about what do you want outside? Let’s talk about inside a little bit and overcoming that boundary of having communication and really understanding one another.

Susan Bratton: So, we’re going behind closed doors. It’s a podcast, you’ve got to be able to have sexy talk.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Sure, right?

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love it.

Susan Bratton: Well, for nearly 15 years now, I’ve been the Dear Abby of sex, giving people sex advice. They write their deepest, darkest, most private stories to me in email, and ask me for advice. And I give them advice. And then they report back. If they hit a stumbling block or an obstacle, they tell me, and I help them solve it.

And I’ve been doing that with thousands of people of all ages, from cultures around the world, for going on 15 years. And I said, “Okay, well what are those little hinges that swing big doors?” What’s that 20 percent of the effort that gets you 80 percent of the results? What are the easy little profound shifts you can do? Like the Sexual Soulmate Pact we talked about, like my Relationship Magic we talk about.

These are simple things that make a huge impact. And I said, “I want to write a book called Sexual Soulmates.” How can—and I don’t believe soulmates are ordained, you don’t find your soulmate, your soulmate’s not out there somewhere, you co-create your soulmatery in your relationship. Soulmates are co-created.

You put intention on being that and learning how to do it. So, what are the things that are really those little sweet things that make a huge difference? And I looked at everything I’d ever told people, and the things that really moved the needle for people. And I came up with six things, the Six Essentials for Connected Sex.

These are the things that really get you on, what I like to call the upward pleasure spiral, instead of swirling down the toilet like so many relationships do. And the first one is the Sexual Soulmate Pact, which you can learn about on our first podcast. And the second is something I alluded to, called Lover’s Space, which is creating a sacred place for you to make love with each other, for slowing down, for getting the temperature right, the sheets soft, having plenty of towels, having organic lube, a pitcher of water, lighting the candles, putting on the music that appeals to you and gets you in the mood, wearing sexy lingerie, dancing for your partner, doing all the kinds of things that are just like getting back into play and making the environment really, really nice.

[0:35:21]

Doing the Soulmate Embrace, which we talked about earlier as well. Slowing down, holding each other, reconnecting your hearts, looking in each other’s eyes, calming your nervous systems, all of these kinds of things, that Lover’s Space is a really important thing.

And then the next one is this Embodied Sex. Feeling each other, touching for pleasure. Instead of touching to get an effect, “Oh, I’m going to touch this thing and it will turn her on,” which guys are very guilty of, because they’re testosterone-driven, they’re goal-oriented, so they want to like “I’ve got to twiggle this knob and push this button, and everything will unlock,” when in fact, if he’s in his head and focused on trying to make her do something, he struggles, and so does she, because she gets performance anxiety, she feels his pressure, and that really falls apart.

So, embodied sex is where, instead, you’re feeling her, you’re touching her skin, you’re not even stroking her skin, you’re touching below her skin to the tissue underneath the skin to give pleasure, you’re bringing pleasure to yourself in all these wonderful nerve receptors by touching her for your own pleasure.

You’re stroking each other’s whole bodies, you’re not just using friction of genitals, which is kind of like unconscious sex. This is conscious sex. So, you have the Soulmate Pact, you have Lover’s Space, you have Embodied Sex, you’re breathing deeply, you’re drawing air into your genitals, you’re [inhaling/exhaling] getting all that oxygen flowing, getting oxygen into your bloodstream, getting engorgement going. That kind of looking in each other’s eyes, connecting, syncopating heartbeats. These are the things that make you feel like you’re connecting with your lover, your soulmate, your sexual soulmate.

What are the other ones? I have to look.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love it.

Susan Bratton: Let’s see.

Jonathan Hunsaker: So, let me ask you, while you’re looking for that.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, good.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Because, and I hear this, and maybe it’s just because I’m a man, but you hear about the time. What kind of—how often are you able to make love like this? What kind of time is involved to do all this? And not that I want to put restrictions on there, but I certainly think about it. It’s like it sounds amazing, and is that like one time a week?

Because there’s so much to do there. Or is there—are there different levels? Are there ways to be intimate and not have it be fast, wham, bam, two minutes kind of thing. But also, I have two little kids, 2 and 4 years old, trying to figure out where do you find that hour of time in all of that. What are your thoughts around that?

Susan Bratton: I feel like an hour’s a quickie.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Really?

Susan Bratton: Yeah. Because it takes 20-30 minutes for your genitals to get engorged. So then, you want to kiss, you want to do some oral pleasuring, you’ve got your massages to get in, you’ve got—you want to take time and do slow lovemaking. So, making love for a couple of hours turns it from sex into pleasure play.

And I think that makes a big difference. And you have to schedule it. You have to get a babysitter, you have to—you’ve got to get the kids to bed early and get dinner done and make a commitment to it. One person’s going to go in and set the bed up and get the water in, da-da-da-da-da. You will have trimmed your fingernails earlier that day because you had the day.

You’d go in and you’d shave really nice and close so you’re not scratching her. She warms up the oil and puts on the lingerie. You get it, so you’re like “Okay, what music do you want? Let me put that playlist on.” You get it all organized so that you can drop into your Lover’s Space together and slow way down and not have “Oh, gosh, in an hour.”

Now I do like to set a timer, if we have to get up and go someplace, so that I just completely forget about the time until I get that 15-minute warning, so I can come back from all that massive oxytocin rush that’s making me out of my mind, so I can get up and function again. So, if it’s daytime lovemaking, you have to do things like that so you can just really surrender to your pleasure.

So, it’s scheduled. You have to plan it, and then you have to be a team to make it happen. And what’s great about that is, especially for people who feel like low libido, once you’re not putting pressure to even go all the way, and you’re just starting with creating a nice space and lying down together and holding each other, and doing massage. If you say, “Okay, if I don’t feel like going on for more than that, I’m not ready, let’s not do it.” And if your partner’s like “Okay, I understand. I’m putting the time into you. I’m putting your genital massages, I’m helping you get engorged, and I’m rubbing you and I’m holding you, and I’m doing those things.”

[0:39:58]

Over time, she’s going to be a “Yes,” more and more and more, to great sex. So, if you’re in one of those marriages that is feeling a little sexless, instead of being goal-oriented, instead of trying to get sex, you drop back to co-creating pleasure. And that begins to increase your desire for each other again.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Excellent. Thank you.

Susan Bratton: You’re welcome. So, the six essentials. We talked about presence a little bit, which was the not touching to make her do anything, not being in your head and strategizing. For the woman, not running her list of things to do. Presence in lovemaking is a mindset. It is just like meditation, where when you meditate, and then you start thinking about something else, and then you bring yourself back, like say to your breath, if you’re a breath meditator, which is what I like because I think it gives you the oxygenation, the calming of your nervous system, as well—if you’re just listening to something but you’re not deep breathing, I think you’re missing something in meditation.

Meditation is a trance state, and orgasm and sex are the same trance state. You go into your theta brainwave state. So, if you can stay in theta, out of your mind and in your body, by focusing on pleasure and sensation, by focusing on being here now with your partner, that presence, you just keep bringing yourself back, bringing yourself back, then all of a sudden, you just start really connecting with each other. And that is a really big one.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I love that, too, because I’ve been doing a lot of studies personally around being present in life, reading books and just really trying to understand it more.

Susan Bratton: Good.

TeriAnn Trevenen: And one thing that I’ve really touched on, and I think it’s important in intimacy, but just in life, when we’re not in the present, when we’re in the past or we’re in the future, we’re fearing, we have expectations, we have assumptions. And that’s one thing that meditation does for you. But think about that in relation to intimacy and sex with your partner.

If you’re thinking about all these different things, you’re not focused in the moment, and then it’s like “How’s this going to go?’ and you’ve got fear and assumptions and expectations. Like how can you even be present and how can you even enjoy that moment when you’re outside of your body and you’re in all these different places?

Susan Bratton: If you’re worrying about having an orgasm, you’re not going to have one.

TeriAnn Trevenen: That’s so true.

Susan Bratton: If you—and—

TeriAnn Trevenen: It’s not being fully present to the state of mind and what you’re in at that moment.

Susan Bratton: Feeling your pleasure. Or correcting what doesn’t feel good, “Harder, softer, higher, lower,” whatever it might be. And we talked a lot about the parasympathetic/sympathetic nervous system and toggling the nervous system, going from sympathetic to parasympathetic, going from—stair stepping arousal, not just driving it straight forward.

And a lot of that is, for women, letting go, opening their Yoni, breathing deeply into their genitals. That helps slow down men’s urge to ejaculate, so they can lower their fear of premature ejaculation and not be in performance anxiety. It also helps women have orgasms, because they—orgasms actually come out of you.

They bubble up out of you like a spring bubbles up out of the ground. It’s not—you can’t squeeze down. You can, but it doesn’t work as well. When you squeeze down and try to concentrate the energy, and get that orgasm out, it’s elusive. But when you just [breathing] open, connect, play, pleasure, get sensation, the orgasms bubble out. It’s a real shift. You birth the orgasm out rather than tightening—

TeriAnn Trevenen: Force it.

Susan Bratton: —to force it in.

TeriAnn Trevenen: It’s like different layers of letting go. It’s letting go of the outside world, then it’s letting go of all of your expectations and assumptions about that, what you’re doing in that moment. It’s like you’ve really got to come off of all those different levels of worry and fear and expectation and be very focused.

Susan Bratton: Gets back to that animal self that really just feels. The other essential is polarity, and we’ve talked a lot about the masculine/feminine, how to reengage that with the Soulmate Embrace, how to create a safe container for her to let go. A lot of what happens for women is that men are ashamed about their own sexual desire, and they don’t encourage their women, because they’ve been shamed, too.

Men have so much shame around their desire, around their penises. Women think that we’re the only ones with body issues, but we’re not, especially in light of today’s pornography, where there’s just these giant dongs everywhere, and guys are looking at themselves, and they’re like “Six inches, feeling small,” and that’s above average.

And women, interestingly, don’t care that much about penis size. But of the women, 20 percent of women have said that they’ve stopped being with a man because of penis size. 50 percent because he was too large, not because he was too small. That being said, it’s a muscle, in a way, that can be enlarged as well, through engorgement and penis pumps, and oral pleasuring, and all kinds of things.

[0:44:56]

Atrophy sets in when you don’t make love, and the more love you make, the more banging boner you get. So, it’s good care for your man to make love to him and to go down on him, and it’s really good care for your woman to stroke her genitals and give her oral pleasuring, and not just intercourse.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Interesting.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, it’s all healthy tissue. Okay, last but not least. So, I’m just going to recap them again. We had presence, we had Lover’s Space, we have the Sexual Soulmate Pact, which is the communication that helps you get to be really good lovers together, we have the polarity of the masculine/feminine dynamic, the encouraging and the safety for her, and then we had the Embodied Sexuality of the eyes, the breath, the heart, the touch.

And then the last but not least is something called Erotic Playdates. I always say that the couples that play together stay together. So, the more that you turn bedroom into play, the happier you are, and when you learn new things together, the beginner’s mind of meditation, that is really, really great, because then it’s not “Oh, I know how to do this, and I’m going to teach you,” it’s “We’re learning together.”

There’s so many things you can learn together, so many techniques. I have a DVD collection, a video collection, that has over 200 advanced lovemaking and pleasuring techniques on it. And when I, still to this day, watch it again, and I go “Oh wow, I forgot about that,” or “Oh, I have never tried that one. We’ve got to try that.”

Thank goodness for Tim, my husband. He is always a “Yes” to everything. He’s my best research partner in the world because he’s always “Yes, let’s try that. That sounds great.” Anything I dream up, he will do. Anything he dreams up, I will do. Because we have intimate trust with each other. So, we’re always learning new things.

Even we don’t know it all, and we teach all these things. We just keep learning together. You can learn about female ejaculation, which is a natural thing that every woman can do. It’s not pee, it’s fluid from your blood plasma that comes out when you’re making love. Every woman can have this experience. Men can learn male multiple orgasm.

You can learn to have expanded orgasms. There’s so many things, the list goes on and on and on. That’s what’s great about sex. You can do it until the day you die, and it keeps getting better, you keep getting better at it. 60 and 70-year-old people are the best lovers. They’re in—healthy 60 and 70-year-old people are in great shape, they have reversed any atrophy, they’ve learned lots of techniques, they’re calm and slow, there’s no kids in the house, they’ve got plenty of time, and they get to be the best lovers.

So, your best sexual years are ahead of you. And if you schedule new things to learn, “Oh, I’d like to learn how to do this. Can we learn this together?” G-spot healing, so many great things. It is just the gift that keeps on giving your whole life to keep you healthy.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Yep, another thing you just said, I think we have—there’s this misperception I think people believe the opposite of everything you just said.

Susan Bratton: I know.

TeriAnn Trevenen: So, it’s so important to be educating ourselves on the topic of intimacy and sex. I mean you’ve definitely broken all of these boundaries and barriers, in my mind, not because I’m not open to the conversation, but you just don’t know until you know. And so, I think this has been a very insightful conversation today, learned a lot of things I would have thought the total reverse of. And very new and interesting things for me, for sure.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Susan, it’s been phenomenal. I mean this is—I know we’re running out of time today, but I could imagine having you back several more times.

Susan Bratton: I’d love to.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Whether it’s through Zoom or in person. Because I think it’s fascinating. And it’s a conversation that needs to happen, right? I mean we have a lot of these, “Let’s not talk about religion, let’s not talk about politics, let’s not talk about sex, let’s not talk about money.” Those are all the fricking things that we need to be talking about if we want to be—if we want to evolve as a species, if we want to be happier people, if we want to be more present beings.

All of those things are the conversations to have, that everybody says not to have. And so, you having this conversation, being bold enough to have this conversation, having it for 15 years you’ve been doing it, is just phenomenal, and it’s an honor to have you on this show. So, thank you for coming here. Tell us again, websites that our listeners can go to, to find all of your free e-books, free resources, and all of that.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. So, if you wanted to understand your relationship values, you’d go to MyRelationshipMagic.com. You can buy the book on Amazon, but it’s cheaper if you just go to MyRelationshipMagic.com, because you’ve heard about it on the podcast. That’s this one I sell. And then Sexual Soulmates is also on Amazon. And then if you want the Sexual Soulmate Pact, that’s free at SexualSoulmatePact.com. And the Soulmate Embrace is free at SoulmateEmbrace.com. And you can follow me on Instagram @SusanBratton. I’m both outrageous and educational.

[0:49:56]

And I’d say the very best things that I’m doing right now are my free videos on YouTube. I have over 200 videos with just this kind of stuff on there, all kinds of things. You could basically look up any question or issue and probably find a video. And if you go to BetterLover.com, it takes you right to my YouTube channel. So, that’s probably enough to get you started. There’s so much because I’ve been doing it for so long.

Jonathan Hunsaker: It’s awesome. Thank you for providing all the resources, too, for coming here and talking so openly about everything.

TeriAnn Trevenen: I have one last question.

Susan Bratton: Get it in, TeriAnn.

TeriAnn Trevenen: So, I have been asking people this on the podcast, because I think it’s really telling of people’s life work and their mission. We have a lot of people who have spent a lot of time on one topic, and really helping people with it. So, my question for you is, I’m putting you on the spot if you could say one last thing to the world in relation to their health and the mission that you’re on, what would you say to people?

Susan Bratton: I’d say don’t give up on yourself about your sexuality. Don’t allow anything that’s happened to you or the lack of information that you’ve gotten to squander what is your God-given right to pleasure and connection. Just keep fighting for yourself by learning new things.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Love it. Love it.

Jonathan Hunsaker: Amazing. Thank you, Susan. Go to EmpoweringYouOrganically.com for all of the Show Notes, transcripts, links to all of Susan’s books and videos on YouTube, and her channel, and Instagram, and all the fun places to find Susan. It’s been phenomenal. It’s been very educational for me.

Susan Bratton: Great.

Jonathan Hunsaker: I can imagine that everybody listening at home is loving it as well. So, thank you for joining us. TeriAnn, thank you.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Thank you.

Jonathan Hunsaker: And thanks everybody at home for listening.

TeriAnn Trevenen: Have a great day, everyone.