Intimacy, Sex, Kink and Beyond: Reclaiming Female Pleasure

What if everything you learned about female sexuality was filtered through shame, social scripts, or outdated gender norms? For many women, particularly those raised in previous generations, pleasure has been shrouded in silence or wrapped in confusing double standards.

Mary Rothwell and sex expert Eve Hall tear down these barriers in this enlightening conversation about female pleasure, bodily autonomy, and sexual health across a woman's lifespan. Eve, a licensed physical therapist specializing in sexual health conditions and certified health coach, shares insights from both her professional expertise and personal journey through what she calls her "sexual revolution" following a sexless marriage.

The discussion explores how women's bodies change through perimenopause and menopause, offering practical solutions for common issues like vaginal dryness, decreased sensitivity, and painful intercourse. Eve explains the biological mechanics behind female pleasure in refreshingly clear terms. This knowledge gap has left generations of women questioning their bodies when the issue was actually misinformation.

Beyond the physical aspects, this episode dives into the crucial components of sexual communication, consent, and redefining intimacy beyond traditional intercourse. Eve encourages women to explore self-pleasure as a pathway to understanding their bodies and communicating needs to partners. The conversation challenges listeners to consider how cultural messaging has limited their sexual expression and offers permission to reclaim pleasure without shame.

Whether you're navigating midlife changes, reentering the dating world, or simply wanting to enhance intimacy in your current relationship, this episode provides valuable insights for embracing your sexuality on your own terms. 

Connect with Eve through her website at https://pleaseme.online

Check out her podcast, "Please Me" to continue your journey toward sexual empowerment.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to No Shrinking Violets
• 7:27 Growing Up with Sexual Shame
• 13:37 Eve's Sexual Revolution Journey
• 22:37 Midlife Sexual Changes & Solutions
• 35:11 Communication & Consent Culture
• 42:33 Beyond Penetration: Redefining Intimacy
• 48:24 Understanding BDSM & Kink

Transcript

Mary: 0:05

Welcome to no Shrinking Violets. I'm your host, mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner. I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives. We'll explore all realms of wellness what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms. It's time to own your space, trust your nature and flourish. Let's dive in. Hey, violets, welcome to the show. My guest today is a sex expert, so this episode might be a bit spicier than my usual. Just a warning if you are listening to this with little ears around.

Mary: 0:51

For me, as a Gen X kid, as well as being raised in the Catholic faith, sex was a topic that was so interesting and so taboo. The catechism teachers talked about being possessed by Satan for impure thoughts, and I took that shit to heart. Billy Joel was pretty accurate about Catholic girls starting much too late. That stained glass curtain never did let the sun in, at least until after high school. I can remember how the boys at school talked about the girls who were easy, although we didn't use words that nice. Although we didn't use words that nice. The 80s movie summed up the conundrum as well, usually with Molly Ringwald in the lead role. The smart girls, who were also pretty, but we aren't going to acknowledge that were always trying for the bad boy who wasn't really bad right, because boys will be boys and they're just sowing their wild oats. Boys' reputations improved when they had multiple partners, or at least they didn't suffer, and the popular girls who were having all the sex weren't really respected. You kind of couldn't win unless the cute, popular guy decided to reach down and pull you up into his stratosphere. Well, I was pretty dang shy. So even if I wanted to be a quote bad girl, I had no idea where to start.

Mary: 2:06

Fast forward to my first job out of graduate school, being a school counselor in a building of 450 high school freshmen Talk about hormones. At the end of my first year, two of my students who ended up in my office several times a week, gave me a condom tree as a thank you. I had to explain why I couldn't accept it. I didn't even know how to work a condom tree as a thank you. I had to explain why I couldn't accept it. I didn't even know how to work a condom when I was a freshman in high school.

Mary: 2:31

In my work with college students, sex was a common topic For my young women anyway. They were typically the ones for whom the landscape was fraught and they seemed to get caught in the age-old double standard If they wanted multiple partners, they were hoes, but the guys were players. So women simultaneously had to protect themselves from being a victim of a player, yet not make the guy wait so long for sex that the girl was called a dick tease. And then there were my male students who believed blue balls were real and that theirs would fall off if they didn't get a requisite amount of usage. But I also got an education from my students. I'm not embarrassed to admit that. There was a college student that schooled me in the true ins and outs no pun intended of BDSM. Today, well, I'm in my 50s and just the other day a fellow menopause sister said that they didn't even remember what sex was like and they didn't even want to be reminded. And it occurred to me, was sex for women ever without layers of guilt or stigma or socialized scripts or just plain confusion? Well, we're going to have a conversation about all that.

Mary: 3:41

My guest today is Eve Hall. She is a licensed physical therapist who treats conditions regarding sexual health. She is also a certified health coach who is on a mission to de-stigmatize conversations about sex and sexual health. Eve is the host of a podcast called Please Me, where she covers all sorts of topics related to sexuality, such as safe sex Me, where she covers all sorts of topics related to sexuality, such as safe sex, orgasms, relationship options and so much more. She is the creator of the Growing Orgasm Revolution, where she aims to bring awareness to the orgasm gap through education, awareness and communication. Welcome to no Shrinking Violets, eve.

Eve: 4:21

Thank you and thanks for that story. That was a lot of fun to listen to. It's.

Mary: 4:25

Eve, thank you, and thanks for that story. That was a lot of fun to listen to. Well, you're welcome and I can't wait to talk about all these things today. So I wonder if you might be able to start by giving us a little bit of background about your journey and how you got to the work that you do today and the message that you share.

Eve: 4:41

Absolutely so. After my divorce about eight years ago, I went through my own I like to call it my sexual revolution, right Quote, unquote where I just went through my own sexual experimentation to really find what I wanted and needed in a relationship. And I think the reason that that was so important to me after divorcing was because I was in a sexless marriage for many, many years and I knew that, as a very sexual being in a sexless marriage, I knew that I never wanted that to ever happen to me again. I knew that that was going to be, you know, probably top three of any relationship that I would enter into into the future, and maybe even number one, you know, I know that physical touch is one of those you know love languages that speaks to me and, and so I knew that that was going to be something important to me. So I went through my own sexual revolution, as I like to call it, and really did a lot of experimenting and really finding what was important to me. And along the way I realized that society had dictated and had shamed me throughout my whole life, whether it was the Catholic church that I was brought up in, like you mentioned before, or friends and family saying that you were, you know, giving off the wrong impression if you wore the wrong outfit, et cetera, et cetera. And so, yes, we do live in a patriarchal society. There are many systems in place that kind of hold women back and hold women down and hold women to not fully express their sexuality and their sexual identities, and it's unfortunate. But, you know, as I was going through my transformation, I was throwing all of those preconceived ideas and all of those you know tropes out the window and really, you know finding myself and what I found was that I really loved to help people to also find their place in their sexual bodies.

Eve: 6:58

And as a physical therapist, we treat all sorts of conditions right, and so the pelvic floor is the area of physical therapy that really focuses on sexual health. Any pelvic floor issue is going to affect your sexual health. So, instead of saying that I'm a pelvic floor physical therapist, which I find very clinical and very unsexy, I like to say that I treat sexual health conditions and things like incontinence, which is an unsexy condition but absolutely can affect your sexual health, to things like painful sex, which is very common in menopause, like you mentioned, and that's oftentimes because you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. Right, you need those muscles to maintain their strength and if you're not regularly having sex you can lose that strength in those muscular, those muscles. And also hormones change as you get older, so hormones also affect the tissue and I won't get into all of that right now unless you ask me a specific question.

Eve: 8:01

But obviously hormones can affect the, the strength of the tissue, and then you can develop painful sex and in men, you know, there are conditions like erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation that can affect them. And these are all conditions that I treat in my practice. So I love helping people, to, you know, get back on that path, to, you know, sexual liberation. Having been on that path and am actively on that path now, I like to help other people to do the same.

Mary: 8:33

There was a lot in that answer.

Eve: 8:34

Okay.

Mary: 8:35

So I did have someone with your exact specialty on back in episode nine. Okay, so we did talk a lot about incontinence and it was actually very eye-opening for me and it made me think about. In that conversation we talked about Emily Nagoski's books, which I'm guessing that you are familiar with, and so one of the things that sort of you're talking about trying to get comfort with your own wants and needs and your body, and I think there's a lot of shame around our bodies, how our bodies work, how our bodies smell like different odors and I think for a long time women have been taught to be embarrassed of those things or kind of what you're alluding to that if you go out into the world and you wanna have experiences, that means that you go out into the world and you want to have experiences. That means that you are fill in the blank, Like there's a way, different script that women are supposed to follow.

Eve: 9:35

And I think that's all bullshit. I mean, am I allowed to say bullshit? You sure are Okay good, I mean, yes, absolutely. Society, our churches, our religious institutions, our families, our grandparents, our friends everybody is telling us how we're supposed to behave in society, right, when it comes to sex.

Eve: 9:59

But the basic bottom line is that we all got here through sex, so sex is not something that really should be shamed. It's something that's completely natural and normal and absolutely fundamentally human. And so my idea, or my message, is to really try and change those scripts, because, honestly, we should not be afraid of talking about sex, and when we are, that's when abuse can happen, that's when you know sexual violence can happen, because we are so ashamed to talk about the most fundamental thing, which is having sex, that when we are abused or we are victims of sexual assault, et cetera, we are ashamed to talk about it, and we're ashamed to blame someone else for what has happened to us. And so it's so important to talk about these subjects, and so that's why I think it's so important to de-stigmatize these conversations.

Mary: 10:57

Well and I often talk about nature on my show that if we look at the examples of nature because we are nature when sex is in a situation where people feel safe, it feels good, and I think there's a reason that nature made it feel good, because nature wants all the species to continue. But a lot of times it doesn't feel good. So let me talk about that part first, because I'm in my mind. I'm like there's so many directions I want to go.

Mary: 11:24

So I work a lot with women in midlife and I often hear these comments about they don't enjoy sex anymore, it's painful, they don't know where to start with it. So what is some advice that you might be able to give women, because everything does change physically also, you know that that things, it's, or everything is a little bit thinner, it's a little bit drier, so we may need to do some different things, but our bodies have changed too. You know I don't look like I did when I was 28. So what are some of the most common things you hear and how might you, what or what tips might you give somebody or things to think about going into menopause age range?

Eve: 12:08

Absolutely.

Eve: 12:08

I love this question. And number one. Yes, our bodies change as we get older, absolutely, and so do our hormones, okay, and so the hormones really affect the tissue. Specifically, estrogen affects the tissue in our vagina and in our vulva and the layer that surrounds the bladder. So if you don't have enough estrogen, you may start getting leaks, even if you've never had a child. Once you start hitting perimenopause and menopause, you might start having leaks.

Eve: 12:42

Also, if you can think about estrogen as being a link in a chain and estrogen is no longer present, so the chain is going to be less strong because suddenly some of those links are missing, right, and so think of the chain as being your skin. If your skin is that chain and you have a lot of estrogen spots that are empty because there's not enough estrogen present to keep your skin strong, it's going to become very papery and thin, and this is something that can lead to what's called vaginal atrophy, where the muscles and the tissue gets very thin and weak, and it can also cause small little micro tears because suddenly those chain links are not there, right? So you have these little micro tears in your skin that you may not feel until something is inserted into your vagina and then suddenly ow, it feels extremely painful. So, yes, painful sex is something that can happen as we get older, but it's typically very easily changed by doing a couple of different things. One is making sure that you know what your estrogen levels are and having those estrogen levels balance, and not just estrogen, but progesterone, dhea and testosterone women also need testosterone. So having those levels checked and then taking hormone replacement therapy which can help you to optimize those levels. There is normal levels and then there are optimal levels. Yes, absolutely. As we get older, normally our levels go down. That's normal. However, it's not optimal. And if we want optimal health and we want optimal sexual health, we absolutely have to make sure that our hormone levels are optimized and they are normalized, they're put in normal ranges. So that's number one. Number two is the muscles in that area are typically smooth muscles. You can control some of them. So, if you like, think about squeezing the pee right, not letting the pee out, or even squeezing to not let, like when you're pooping. Right, you can squeeze your anus Right. So those are your pelvic floor muscles, so you can control them by exercising them. But how many times do we actually do that, unless we're really trying to, you know, strengthen those muscles, so those muscles also need to be maintained and be strong in order to have an active, healthy sex life.

Eve: 15:18

And then the last thing that I'm going to mention is pleasure, and, like you said, it feels good, right, and women have the amazing capacity to have multiple orgasms, and we also have an organ that's specifically designed just for pleasure. So the man has a penis, but the woman, the equivalent that a woman, has, is the clitoris. The clitoris is the equivalent of the male penis. Now, the penis has multiple functions you have to pee through it, it ejaculates, and so it has more than one function. But the clitoris, it's only function is to give a woman pleasure.

Eve: 16:00

So we are very special in that we have that pleasure receptor and it has many, many pleasure receptors on it, more than a man's penis. And when you think about the clitoris itself, it's actually an organ that's almost the size of a penis. It's just internally located. Only a small part of it is visible from the outside, visible from the outside. So it really is a large organ.

Eve: 16:29

And I like to think about pleasure as being not just genital pleasure, right, because yes, our bodies were built for pleasure, but they're built for pleasure from head to toe. Something that maybe rubs your hair, or if someone kisses you on the back of the neck, or if someone massages your feet, all of those things can be pleasurable and all of those things can also be perceived as sexual pleasure. So understanding your body, understanding your hormones, understanding what turns you on, can really help you to have an enjoyable sex life. Yes, when you're younger, but also well into your 50s, 60s and through your 90s and you know that is what I want for everybody listening that wants that for themselves is to really have that elongated, pleasurable, lovely sex life. And I will mention here too because there's one more thing, and you mentioned dryness. Do you want to just ask another question about that? Or do you want me to just go on, because I can go on and on.

Mary: 17:31

You have the floor, go ahead.

Eve: 17:32

Okay. So yeah, dryness is something else that happens to women as we get older. Vaginal dryness is sort of a part of the male has. The man would have erectile dysfunction, the female would have decreased sensitivity and dryness. That's the same exact condition, but it's caused by a decrease in blood flow. So when you don't have enough blood flowing to your genitalia, the man is not going to be able to get erect, and the woman is also not going to be able to get erect.

Eve: 18:05

Believe it or not, a woman needs a quote, unquote hard on to be aroused and ready for stimulation. It's called engorgement, so the clitoris needs to become engorged, and so women need a lot more stimulation to get prepared for penetration, and oftentimes those steps are missed. So if you're missing 20 to 25 minutes of external clitoral stimulation prior to penetration, that might be the reason why you're having painful sex. Also, it could be due to dryness, and there are treatments that I do in my physical therapy practice that address that, which I won't go into details now, but suffice it to say that the dryness is caused by a decrease in blood flow.

Eve: 18:52

Well, and lubrication is your friend right and lubrication is your friend, which is where I was going, and then I never got to that Lubrication is so important, your friend, which was where I was going, and then I never got to that Lubrication is so important. And whether you are 50 or you are 20, if you are having an extensive lovemaking session right, and I'm talking about more than like 10 minutes right Over time, yes, your body can produce more lubrication, but oftentimes with friction. If you have a fan going overhead, oftentimes with friction. If you have a fan going overhead, it will dry up with evaporation. So having lube on hand is so important.

Eve: 19:26

Whether you're 20 or you're 50, it's very important to have lube on hand because sometimes you may feel very wet but there may be one little spot internally that's catching and that you feel a pull and that can develop into a tear and cause pain. So always having lube on hand is important. If you're going to be having sex with somebody without protection, for instance, if you're with a long-term partner and you have sex without using a condom, then I love coconut oil. It's my favorite. It smells good, it tastes good and it's it's a lot of people have it in the house. Keeping a little jar by your bedside table is a good idea.

Eve: 20:07

If you're using a condom, then I would go with something that's more silicone based, because it's not going to be broken down by the the coconut oil. But changing your condom on a regular basis is really important too. So making sure that when you're going into a situation where you're going to be using a condom for your sexual exploration, that you have more than one, because you don't want to limit yourself to the one that you have, because then it's only going to last for a short amount of time, because it will eventually break over time. So you need to make sure that you're changing it regularly.

Eve: 20:42

So multiple condoms for the same lovemaking session, correct, if you're going to be having an elongated lovemaking session, you're going to need multiple condoms, good to know. And what is a really common problem that causes breaking is dryness, because it's catching on the skin, and so, again, lubrication is key, for that too, yeah, makes sense, and it makes everything feel so much better.

Mary: 21:11

Yes, okay. So if we circle back now to that menopausal time of life and a woman is now maybe divorced or starting to date again, but if they've come from the childhood in the 70s, the 80s that often was even if you weren't raised Catholic there were very different, I think, social scripts than what I think younger people now. The way they sort of operate in the whole sexual arena seems different to me, just from my experience with my college students. But if someone is say they're in their late 40s or through their early 60s and they're going to be going back into this situation and they really want to be open to having sex as part of relationships, to me there's two parts to this. The first is what you have talked about comfort with your own body, understanding it, because that again was not part of the narrative when kids were growing up 50 or 60 years ago. So I think that's part of it, right. And the other thing is how do they then have conversations about what they want and need? So what would you say about some of that?

Eve: 22:29

So communication is everything in a relationship. Even in a first-time hookup situation, communication is so important. Before you are entering into the bedroom, before you're going in that direction, you need to talk to your partner about protection and about safety and about their history in terms of when was the last time they got tested and how many partners have they had since they got tested. So I think these are all important conversations to get used to having. So I think these are all important conversations to get used to having. Communication is so important, even if it's awkward. You have to learn how to protect ourselves in a new relationship. Absolutely. When you are getting divorced in your 40s, you are entering into a whole nother world that you were not anticipating. It's a different world out there. Now. However, we need to become very, very comfortable with communicating our wants, our needs and our preferences and feeling safe, because you're not going to enjoy sex unless you feel safe, and so having these conversations is super key.

Mary: 23:38

Yeah. So a couple of things, I would say, going along with that. The first might be because it can be awkward to have conversations that you haven't had before. So the first, I think, is understanding what you really enjoy, you know and I'll go back to Emily Nagoski, who recommends taking a mirror and looking at your anatomy, because there's a lot of women that don't know what things look like down there so, becoming comfortable with that and learning what you really like and giving yourself permission to do that, exploring.

Mary: 24:07

But then, when you're in a situation where you know that you want to have a conversation, being very clear about it, and so sometimes, what might help women that are older, especially if you have children, if you have daughters, think about what would I want my daughter to say in this situation, and the rules aren't different for you just because you're in your 50s or your 60s.

Mary: 24:30

Having those conversations, as you're saying, is really important and not being afraid to say I don't want to do that, I'm not comfortable with that. Because what I heard a lot from my college girls was they went along with sexual situations. They didn't always want to, but they would say to me oh, I just went along with it because it was easier, like I just wanted to get it over with. And it's your body. So, again, thinking about somebody you care about, would you want them to be in that situation? And it's very empowering to have a conversation, and the more you do it I mean practice in the mirror. That's what I tell people If they're afraid to have a conversation. If you're driving, start talking like that person sitting next to you, or look in the mirror and get used to saying words or things that are uncomfortable.

Eve: 25:25

Absolutely and I'm going to just jump on a piggyback on what you just said that consent is important and necessary from the beginning to the end. So if at any point something happens that you're not comfortable with, you can always change that consent and say, no, that's not something I'm interested in or I'm ready to. You know, I think this, we're going to call it a night. I or I need a break, or I'm going to, you know, take a bathroom break and it's okay to. If you're in any kind of sexual situation and you're not feeling comfortable, it is okay to stop and to take care of yourself. Okay, because what we want is for to be on the other side of that experience saying I don't regret it. Right, and if you are just going along with and not knowing what works for you, so you can't express that to your partner, you're not going to get your needs met.

Eve: 26:18

And absolutely, women should know their bodies. They should know what they look like down there it's a beautiful thing and really appreciate your body. Absolutely. Your body is going to change. Your body is not going to look the same as it did when you were in your twenties and sometimes you look back at those pictures and go. Why didn't I appreciate myself more now? Well, you know what? If you look, you know, into the future and your 70 year or 80 year old self is looking back on you right now, they're going to say the exact same thing. Why didn't I appreciate myself more? You are beautiful exactly as you are. Try and find something about your body that you absolutely love and really try and give yourself that self love, because we all are beautiful in our own ways.

Mary: 27:09

Yeah, and I just was reading today about how often the celebrities we see have plastic surgery. I mean the bodies, the faces. That isn't nature, probably 90% of the time. Even the size of our sexual organs are not all the same. We can joke about men's sexual organs, but we also have different sizes and it's just a continuum. So there's nothing wrong with you and there's also nothing wrong with whatever you'd like. As long as your partner is consenting. There's nothing bad or wrong if both people feel safe and comfortable and want it to happen.

Eve: 27:42

Absolutely, and you know, if you are into a kink that you are afraid to talk to your partner about, I highly suggest that you bring it up with them, because I guarantee you that they're going to have some kinks or some desires that they've never told anybody about, that they might want to experiment with as well. And so it's really beautiful when you're able to feel that comfortable in a relationship where you can really fully share your authentic self and that is true of your sexual authentic self as well and so when you have that level of comfort, you really can experience a wonderful, beautiful sex life.

Mary: 28:24

Yeah, it's hard in the beginning, I think, to really change how you do things.

Mary: 28:29

And again, I'm going to talk a little about older women and, you know, I think too men of that older generation. They did not get the same messages as our younger people did about consent and respect, the same messages as our younger people did about consent and respect. They got a whole different script. That's true, yeah, and now I think of course it's their responsibility. But there's also they got training, in a sense the same as we did, like we were supposed to be good, and they got a very opposite message. And so sometimes when you get a reaction, if you express something you don't want and you get a reaction that it makes you feel like, oh man, I might have dodged a bullet with this one, because you're going to find out how they really feel when you start to express yourself Like you're not there to make them happy, you're there to make yourself feel comfortable and safe. So that can be a really good bit of evidence, as you're deepening a relationship is to have those conversations and see how they land.

Eve: 29:35

Absolutely and to your point. I just learned a new statistic that in 1993, that's when it became illegal to rape your wife that was allowed prior to 1993. And in many states it still is allowed. So, absolutely, we were given different permissions.

Eve: 29:56

We were taught, yeah, different permissions. We were taught differently back in the day, but it is now 2025 and we are teaching women and men differently now and consent is absolutely super important. Consent culture is everywhere and we need to have consent throughout the whole experience. Even if you say yes at the beginning, you can always say no at any point in time.

Mary: 30:24

Well, and also we think about sex as just intercourse. I mean, that's typically when we say sex we think or intercourse. So if somebody wants a long on-ramp to an intercourse relationship, they know it's probably in the future of the relationship or they're just in a spot where they're not feeling that. What are some ways people can share that intimacy? Because the intimacy is very important, especially in a committed relationship. If both people agree with that. That can be something that gets strained over time. So how can we reframe that? How can we have physical intimacy without always having intercourse?

Eve: 31:04

I think it's really important for couples to practice touching each other without going all the way to intercourse, because that is the only way that you're going to really figure out what those spots are on your partner that really can turn them on in ways that you didn't even know were there. Our bodies are built for pleasure, head to toe. We have sensory receptors everywhere on our body and any of those receptors can be perceived as sensual, touch and light up that part of our brain. That's a turn on, let's just put it that way Less scientific, right, and so I really encourage people to to explore their partner's bodies with clothes on and to really try to figure out what the areas are that really can turn them on. And also, intimacy doesn't have to be penetration, it can just be touching, holding, hugging skin on skin. It can just be touching, holding, hugging skin on skin. It can be oral sex, it can be massage.

Eve: 32:04

Intimacy is so many things and it's not just penetration, and sex is not just penetration. There's a whole host of things that sex can encompass and it really depends on the two people that are involved. Obviously, sex in an LGBTQ community is going to look different than in a heteronormative community, right, there's going to be parts that line up differently and there's going to be a lot more discussion, and I think that we can learn a lot from the LGBTQ community and the kink community, because they do have to have a lot more conversations about sex before they even have sex to know what they like, what they don't like. Some people some like lesbians, for instance don't like penetration at all, where other ones would love a strap on, you know.

Eve: 32:54

So really, there is a huge plethora of things that can go down, but you need to be able to communicate those things with your partner, and so the heteronormative community can certainly learn from these other communities because, for instance, in like a kink relationship, all of the things that are going to happen are discussed ahead of time, and if you don't want penetration during that scene which is what it's called when you are having a sexual experience with someone in the BDSM community you are going to talk about all of the things that you're going to do. This is a yes, this is a no, this is a hard limit this is my safe word so that you can consent throughout the whole experience, and this is really what we should be looking at for all sexual experiences. We should be thinking about what we like, what we don't like, what our hard limits are, what our safe words are or what we need to say in order to stop if anything does not feel right.

Mary: 33:57

That's a really good point that we sort of measure what is sex by a heterosexual penetration situation. So that's really good to bring all of that up. So I wonder if we could back up a couple steps, because I'm guessing there are people listening that don't know what BDSM is or what kink means. So could you give us a quick tutorial of what is that, what does that mean, what does that encompass, what kinds of situations? Because I think we sometimes think 50 shades of gray, right, and that's supposed to be what all of that is. So yeah, if you could give us a little bit of understanding of that.

Eve: 34:36

Sure. So BDSM stands for bondage, dominance, s is submission and M is masochism. Okay, and each one of those has its own definition. Obviously, bondage is being tied up in some way. It could just be bondage of your eyes, right, so taking away your vision and being blindfolded. That is a form of light bondage, or being tied down. That would be more extreme bondage.

Eve: 35:07

Dominance is one person is being dominant, and then submission is the person. The other person is submitting to the dominant person, and this is an agreement that they make between the two. The dominant person likes to be dominant, the submissive person likes to be submissive. They like things to be done to them. However, they discuss all of the things that they like to be done to them ahead of time and are able to say harder, softer, and guide the dominant person throughout the experience so that it's enjoyable for both of them.

Eve: 35:46

And then, of course, masochism is the idea that someone likes to inflict pain, and then there are other people that like to receive pain and, you know, pleasure. There's a continuum of pain and pleasure, and sometimes some pain for some people can be pleasurable. So that is something that you can also play with as well, and so that's what BDSM is, and a lot of times people think, oh, that's what other people do, but that's just a small sect of society and they're crazy and weird and have something wrong with their mind. Well, 45% of Americans consider themselves kinky, and kink is the world of BDSM. So if you consider yourself kinky, you like BDSM in some form, and so it's actually quite common, and I had a guest on my show one day that said, maybe 45% of Americans consider themselves kinky, but the other 55% just haven't figured out what their kink is yet you?

Eve: 36:49

know, she said, because everybody has a little bit of that in them and you know, if you really are open to exploring sexuality, you will find that, you know, thinking outside of the box or of the box that you've been living in or you've been experiencing can be really pleasurable and exciting.

Mary: 37:07

Well, and you mentioned the word play, so that's important. You mentioned permission and communication, so all of these things you know we've again. We put things in movies, we make judgments about things that are unusual to us or outside of that tiny little middle of the continuum. So as long as both people consent and it's pleasurable and it's playful, anything really is okay. But it comes down to those things, and so if you are really in the 55% that that's not a turn on, that's okay too. It doesn't mean, oh, I'm not playful enough. I mean we as women already get enough messages. I mean, how many movie scenes are there where you meet somebody in the bar downstairs, you go up to your room and you're slamming against walls as you're tearing your clothes off, and we get a lot of these messages that we're always supposed to be ready and on and want exactly what the other person wants, and those just really aren't realistic.

Eve: 38:11

No, they're not, and you know. Unfortunately, what we do see in the media is almost always penetrative sex, which is the way that male or men orgasm. That is not the way women orgasm. Only three to 5% of women can orgasm from penetration alone. 95% of women need external clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm. So knowing what your body needs is important to be able to translate that. So, yes, the messaging that we see is very male oriented. We need to really understand that so that we can really figure out what really does work for us and don't always assume that your partner knows, because your body is going to be different than his previous partner, right, and so you need to know what works for you so that you can share that with your partner. And if you're in a long term relationship and you haven't figured that out yet, now's the time and that's okay, and it's okay to open up these conversations. Even if you have been in a relationship, a marriage, for many years, why not want the best sex of your life now?

Mary: 39:14

Yeah, and I can tell you from my work with couples that when someone finally brings it up, the other person is probably relieved and they're jumping for joy they're like thank you.

Eve: 39:27

Everybody wants to have pleasure in their life and you said play before, and I always think of sex as the adult playground. Right, it is an adult playground we enjoy. It can be funny, it can be awkward, it can be fun.

Eve: 39:43

It should be fun, it should always be fun If you are trying to get it over with you know, or faking it so that your partner can have his orgasm and move along to the rest of your day. You are really missing the boat. You really should be thinking about how you can enjoy it too.

Mary: 40:02

Yeah, well, I just I think, being open to it, because there's so many things that have happened sometimes to women along the way where we've kind of abdicated the control of our body and I think sometimes when you reach a certain age you're kind of done Like I don't want to go there, I don't want to work on it. But I think, start with figuring out what is pleasurable to you. And I think it's interesting that stat of 3% to 5% of women can have vaginal orgasms, because I don't think men know that a lot of women fake it. So I've had people tell me, oh, everybody I've ever been with has had a vaginal orgasm. I'm like, yeah, you think they have. And I've had women say, well, I shouldn't need that extra stimulation.

Mary: 40:46

But I'm going to say that when a fetus is developing until the seventh week, the part of that fetus, the cells that become a penis and the cells that become the clitoris are exactly the same and that does not differentiate until the seventh week. So we don't question that a man needs certain kind of stimulation to his penis to have an orgasm. We are the same. We have parts that give us pleasure and they've developed from the same cells as the men's genitalia. So I think that's really an interesting fact to know. The whole thing, everything that's developed on there, came from the same, the same cells.

Eve: 41:26

Absolutely, and I always recommend, too, that women have their own personal sensual practice and masturbate, because if you don't know how to have an orgasm on your own, it's going to be really hard to have an orgasm with a partner. It's really important to know your own body and there is a relationship that you have with yourself and then there's the relationship that you have with your partner. Just because you enter into a partnered relationship, that doesn't mean that you need to throw away that relationship that you have with yourself. Continue to take care of yourself and to pleasure yourself and to understand what works for you, because as you get older, your body changes and what worked before is not going to be the same that works for you in the future. So constantly knowing what your body needs is so important.

Mary: 42:16

Yeah, and that's. I think it's a good point about self-pleasure, because that's also been something that we've been taught to be ashamed of. I don't think men have as much as women, but again, it's nature, there's a reason, it feels good, and if you're not sure where to start, I would say the book Come as you Are by Emily Nagoski is a beautiful place to start. I don't know if there's anything else you could recommend, but just that journey for women of stop putting pressure on yourself, just start to learn about yourself. Take your time, learn self-acceptance, and then that can be the basis for being able to communicate your needs to someone else.

Eve: 42:54

Absolutely. And yes, reading books is wonderful. Buying toys is even more wonderful is wonderful. Buying toys is even more wonderful. So I would say, explore your local toy store. Or if you don't want to do that, you can go to my website. I have a beautifully curated toy store on there as well. Try different types of toys and see what helps you to get there.

Eve: 43:19

Not a lot of women I don't know what the percentage is, but not everybody can orgasm from their hand. I personally have never learned how to do it. I try it all the time. It just never works, you know. So I love my toys and that's okay. And having your favorite toy and introducing it to your partner can be a really sexy thing too. So don't ever be afraid to introduce those toys to the bedroom because they can help you to get there. And you're absolutely right in terms of faking it right, because 80% of women have faked it in their lifetime and I know that I can count myself in that 80%. I do not do it anymore because I know that that would be training my partner to do what I don't like and I don't want to train them to do what I don't like.

Eve: 44:01

I only want to train them to do what I do like, so do not fake it. It is okay to not have an orgasm, it's not the end. All be all right. But if you are discounting the fact that you're ever going to get there in sex, you never will.

Mary: 44:16

Yeah, and I think that's a good point, that we also have the expectation that we're supposed to have an orgasm, and it's okay to not just being able to communicate what you like and what you don't like is just a very important aspect of the whole thing. So, eve, can you share with us where people can find you and of course I'll put everything in the show notes but tell us where they can find you and how you can help people.

Eve: 44:48

Absolutely. So you can find me on pleasemeonline and, as I mentioned before, I'm a licensed physical therapist. I treat sexual health conditions. I also do intimacy coaching for single people and for couples. So you can find me on pleasemeonline and go to the contact me page. Can find me on pleasemeonline and go to the contact me page and there, if you send me a message, it will go directly to my email and I always respond to all of my emails, so you can reach me there.

Eve: 45:11

And again, my website has a beautifully curated store of sex toys. If you want to buy something for yourself or buy something for your partner, there's also great lubes that you can get there. And I will mention too that there's Bonnie's Herbals, which is a completely natural product, and there's one called Sex Butter that has a little bit of peppermint in it. So if you're in menopause and you have a little bit of decreased sensitivity, it can also be really super beneficial to use a product like that to help with increasing your sensitivity. And I wanted to just say one more thing about what you said before. If you are discounting that you're going to have an orgasm, you will never get there, right? But if you, if your partner has an orgasm and rolls over and goes back to sleep right.

Eve: 46:02

Without you know. If you want to continue, you need to speak up and you need to say hey, I'm glad that you enjoyed yourself. How about helping me to get there too? And whip out those toys and say why don't you hold this one? And I'll hold this one. And it doesn't always have to end when they finish. And I just want to end with that, because I think that that's really important for women to understand too.

Mary: 46:26

Yeah, thank you for that, because it also is normal for it. You mentioned this before. We didn't really go into the detail. It takes women longer to get to that level of arousal than it does. I think it's something like three or four times as long, it's like 21 minutes for women.

Eve: 46:47

I don't know the stats anymore Between 20 to 25 minutes for a woman to be ready for penetrative sex, because our clitoris has to also become engorged, just like the penis does. So it's super important to get some of that. You know stimulation beforehand.

Mary: 47:00

Yeah, there's so much I think we've been misinformed about. So the one thing I'm also going to recommend is, if women are trying to become more comfortable just the thought of sex or being comfortable with their bodies, or learning about their bodies or communicating they can listen to your podcast, right.

Eve: 47:19

That's right. You can find Please Me podcast with Eve and you can find it everywhere that you listen to podcasts. On Spotify, the video is also available, and the video is also available on YouTube, so you can certainly listen to my show as well.

Mary: 47:33

Yeah, because I think that's a great entryway into. If you've heard this conversation today and you're feeling shocked or curious or whatever the feeling or emotion is the more that you listen or are open to things, the more you're comfortable with it. And if having a pleasurable and mutual I should say mutually pleasurable relationship with someone else, or even with yourself, if that's part of what your goal is, then getting comfortable with all of this. If you felt cringy with any of this language or like there's a gasp that comes from you, then I think start. But if you really have that desire, start to open your mind to some of these things.

Mary: 48:19

Read some books, listen to Eve's podcast, because the more you get comfortable with the concepts and that a lot of people feel the way you do and there's a continuum of things that people like and they're all okay, as I said, as long as it's mutually agreeable and no one's being hurt and they don't hurt in a sense that they don't want to be. So it's a pretty big continuum to explore. So, eve, thank you for being here today and for having such a interesting conversation.

Eve: 48:54

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Mary: 48:58

And if you have thoughts on today's show, please comment or use the link in the show notes to text me and check out the link to my website for everything I offer, from free resources to online programs and coaching. And until the next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant Violet that you are. Thank you,