We Can Do Hard Things Episode 15
Sexy Qs, Farewell to Faking It & Vouching for Vibrators
Okay everybody. We are back. Thank you for coming back to We Can Do Hard Things, especially after that very intense sex episode we just did. If you haven't listened to it yet, you really just need to go back and listen to the sex episode, because this is a follow-up to the sex episode. We had so many hundreds of bazillions of questions that people wanted to ask about sex, that we're dedicating a whole episode to the Qs, and I won't call them As, I will not call them answers because I don't really have any answers about sex, but we're just going to call them responses.
And also a disclaimer, all of our answers and all of the things that we say are ours, not intended to make anybody think or feel a certain bad or good way about themselves.
GD:
Right. Or they're also not based on any sort of knowledge or facts, or research-
AW:
This is our experience, that's it.
It's our experience.
Right. Whatever we say, you're going to want to double check before enacting in your own life. Okay. So sister Amanda's here, Abby's here. We're going to get all of our responses to this first caller who wants to talk about something simple and not at all awkward, which is orgasms. Let's hear it. Not an orgasm, but the Q.
Julie:
Hi Glennon and Sissy. My name is Julie and I'm calling because I want to talk about a hard thing, orgasms. I want to hear your thoughts on how to optimize orgasms, and what it looks like to come into a healthier relationship with your Yoni, your sacred sexuality. And I'm in my own process of exploring that, too. Thank you.
Love it. Orgasms. Orgasms. I would like to hear Sister, your thoughts on orgasm… Just go. Talk to us about orgasms, your relationship with orgasms.
Way to pass it over. Way to just like-
…Orgasms.
Way to just hand her a nice treat.
Yeah. I love that. You're like, "For this one, I feel like it should be you," just because, she's like, "Not it, not it."
Well, I feel like you've figured out some more things about orgasms in a heteronormative relationship than some of my friends have is all I'm going to say. So-
And you, by the way.
I never figured it out in my other relationships. So go ahead, Sissy, go.
Well, I think what you're referring to is what I told you yesterday, which is that I've never faked an orgasm, which apparently is not typical.
Nope. It's not typical. All I did was fake orgasms for my entire life. Go ahead.
That is not to say, I am like you, see previous episode, am not hashtag sex queen, I'm not saying, therefore I have always had an orgasm when having sex. All I'm saying is I have never faked having an orgasm during sex.
So, I think that that, and I don't know, I haven't talked to a lot of people, may be as not typical. But I think that I just, and this probably relates to what we talked about too, is that I also can't talk during sex. I don't. So I feel like with the not talking and the faking an orgasm, it's just a bridge too far for me. Like I can't do it because I feel like I can live without getting what I want, but I just can't stomach living without what I want while also forcing myself through some like elaborate performance, pretending that I've gotten what I want so that the other person can feel better about not giving it to me. It just seems very odd thing to do. I just, it's very odd-
It's so odd, but so many of us do it anyway, but how do you set up sex with your husband so that all of this doesn't just go, just say things. I'm sweating again.
I was really sweating too. Okay. Sorry, John. Well, so prior to my marriage, it didn't go great for me, I will say. What I did learn is that 75% of all women never reach orgasm just based on intercourse alone. So that's a big ass percentage. And then we have this whole typical heteronormative couple is just having intercourse. And that means if this is true of you, and you're listening, please know that if you are three out of four people, then you're not having an orgasm and it's also, you are correct not to. There's nothing wrong with you. That is not what we rely on. And therefore, sex for me is really good.
But he understands that about you. He understands that about women. He understands that you have to set up sex in a way where, how do we say it? You are first.
Oh yeah. I am always first. Yes.
And that leads to a very happy situation for both of us. I think it's just kind of this functional thing that if you're faking orgasms, how can you ever get where you want to go if the other person thinks you're already there?
You'll never get there. So it seems like it's part of the cyclical thing where it's, if you're faking an orgasm to check the box and just get through it, you're always going to be in a situation where you're checking the box just to get through it. Like it's never going to improve at all.
And that's where the anger comes in.
Yeah. I mean, it's so important to have the conversations on what does make a person climax. Right? Because it's very easy to understand when a man, in a heteronormative marriage or relationship, when a man climaxes, for a woman it's a lot more complicated and nuanced. And I think what's really important because the world is set up for women to not have orgasm. And it's not because of our physical inability to it's just because, Glennon and I would ask you, why would you fake orgasm in your hetero marriage, normative life before me? Why was that? Because for me, it literally blows my mind to-
It makes you crazy.
In the most intimate moment and to fake this thing, because I bet if you were to have a… I can't speak for the men that you've been with, but like, it would hurt my feeling so much to know that you had faked this moment that I was present for. Because I don't want you to not have an orgasm, that would make me so sad and so upset that you felt like you needed to move this moment along.
It is that, it's the speed, too. I feel like women are trained to not be too demanding or whatever.
Because it takes longer, you mean?
It takes me longer, it takes me longer. And so it's a lot of my brain being like, okay, it's fine that this is taking so long.
I got to tell myself, like she's not getting angry or bored or annoyed. Like it's okay.
Yes. And I-
Yes. It's the willingness to ask for too much.
It's reclaiming our time.
That's exactly right. And I know this about you, so I have to make sure that you feel that my energy is the same and we're good here.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
Yes. Yes!
I think it also goes back to, because I just realized as I was sitting here, I framed that whole thing of, I'm not going to do some elaborate performance too, so that you feel good about what you failed to do. But I think that's a step beyond I think most of us are in the place and I get it of the like, "Oh no, I'm pretending not to make them feel better. I'm pretending to mask that I must be broken. That my shit doesn't work the way it's supposed to." Because, part of it is placating the other person, part of it is just, I don't want to reveal that, apparently if I was a normal sexually functioning human, the way I was supposed to work, I would have already had an orgasm.
It just takes women longer.
And also it takes different shit. 75% of women do not climax just from intercourse alone.
I'm going to just get a shirt that says that.
Because it's not you. You're not supposed to. It's not like the movies.
It's not like the movies where in five seconds everyone's writhing and-
Nobody is writhing, that's all fake.
But I just want to say one thing. I think it is a good thing to assume best intentions-
…that if men knew this, that they would be devastated to know that we were all faking, or that a lot of us were faking orgasms. That they knew that penetration wasn't the only way of it. And I'm sure some of them would, and I do feel deeply that I've had partners who did not give a shit. So there's that too, that everybody's complicit in the faking of the orgasms sometimes. That there is, and can be. I think there are probably women out there who feel on their deepest level that everybody knows the game and everybody's fine with it.
This is why all women need to invest in toys. Sex toys, vibrators, whatever it is that, and by the way, I bet you your partner would be super into it, right? Like if you find that you fall in the seventy-five percent category, like most of us are, then you need to figure out a different way. And there are ways. And now you can order this shit online. Before back in the day you had to go into the store. It was a little bit like…
I've done that. I've done that.
A little bit scary and nerve wracking.
And I do feel like, the whole vibrator thing… I think let's make that right now. We're going to break and tell you that's our thing that's making life easier, we're going to have the segment of what's making life easier? Vibrators are making life easier when it comes to sex. Also, all this partner talk, you don't have to have a partner to have sex with a vibrator.
I think that sex alone is a beautiful, amazing thing. It's like introvert sex. Introvert sex. You don't have to deal with any other people. And then it's just actually sort of the perfect situation.
Don't say that your wife is literally sitting right here.
It's not the perfect situation. It's like almost perfect.
You're right. You're right.
Also, it's sexy for me to think about you doing that, so…
Okay. Okay. Good. And also by the way, for lesbians, for whom sex takes so much effort, and by the way, it's actually all people. Everybody needs more effort, right? Because we know women don't… But the vibrators do make even our sex very much easier sometimes. Sometimes we're too tired for the whole rigamarole.
The whole rigamarole is so much rigmarole. Okay.
It also goes back to what we talked about in another episode, which is the response of desire. If the vast majority of women go responsive to desire, physical, to mind, those kind of supplemental stuff that can get you from the physical space to the mind wanting it is a very helpful tool.
And let's just wrap this faking orgasm thing up with, we need to, in all ways, stop rewarding mediocrity in rooms, in the board meetings-
In sex
…in sex, everywhere, we need to stop applauding, moaning and rewarding just the bare freaking minimum.
And orgasms are a way that we continue to this process of: male does the bare freaking minimum, not with generosity, not with service, not with knowledge and we reward it.
And also just, A, you're normal, it's not that you should have had an orgasm based on that.
B, some people, I mean, I would be fine with the occasional sex where I didn't have an orgasm, I get it. Like, that's fine. But I'm also not going to fake it to ensure that it's more likely that I won't the next time.
Yes. Yes. We have a few write-ins that I want to talk about. So one, so many people asked us, how do we talk to our kids about sex? So how do we break this cycle of not talking about this thing, of passing on the silence or awkwardness that convinced our kids in a million ways that sex is shameful, that sex is something we don't talk about. That sex is something they have to go through their whole lives alone on.
How do we, and I'm asking this question because I do not know this answer. We bring it up all the time with our kids. I think we're probably more open than most. And our kids still cringe. Every time we bring it up, they run out of rooms. I was thinking about this earlier. And this moment came to mind where, when the kids were really little, I used to try to talk to them about anatomy really carefully, the difference between a vulva and a vagina. And sister you talk about this all the time with Alice, but there was this book we had that talked about like the birth canal, the tunnel, and they just kept describing it as a tunnel. It's a birth canal. And I remember being upstairs, having a new family over to the house.
And their kids were downstairs in the basement playing. And we have this, you know those little tunnels that they have at little gyms. We had this tunnel that the kids would climb through. And from the basement, this woman I was trying to impress, because I thought she was really cool that her friends were over, either Tisha or Chase. I can't remember, started yelling, "He won't get out of my vagina! He won't get out of my vagina!" I ran downstairs and the kid is in the tunnel. There's been a lot of confusion in our family when we're trying so hard to talk about sex. I feel like you do a really good job, sister Amanda talking to the kiddos. What can you tell us about these conversations with our little ones?
Well, they're really little now. Alice just turned seven this month and we're just starting very, very basic. So, we just mostly talk about body parts now. That makes me laugh because we had a similar situation where there were like 20 people over at my backyard and Alice came running out of the house and screamed, "I fell down and banged my clitoris".
I hate when I bang my clitoris in front of people.
Everyone was like, "I'm sorry." But I think it's really important. That did feel like this moment of joy for me, because I swear to God, I found out I had a clitoris when I was in college.
Like last Tuesday. Yes.
What is that about? It is because it's the only part of women's bodies that its only function is pleasure. That's a reason we don't learn about it. They're talking about how even the experts don't often don't use the term clitoris because it's so scandalous that its only job is to give women pleasure. And parents don't have any reason to discuss it because it's only about pleasure.
I'm like, that's your clitoris. It is there to give you pleasure. We just talk about things like that. And we just talk about the body parts. And then when she asks about sex, I just tell her what sex is. I don't say things like, "When a mommy and daddy love each other so much," I say, "Sperm is ejaculated from a penis into a vagina and it fertilizes an egg."
But do you talk about sex as just that act or, because that's not how I would describe sex to my kids as a same gender couple.
Well in that case she asked how babies were made.
Oh, got it, got it.
So we did it. She has not asked directly what sex is, she's asked about babies and how we get them and vulvas and all of that stuff. So, but for me, it's not even at this age, it's less about talking about sex. It's more about talking about all the things. Like how when people want her to smile at them, I'm like, "You don't have to," when she goes with a babysitter, she's like, "I don't like them." I'm like, "Okay, good. Tell me more. What was your body telling you?" When she wants to eat, "You know what, listen to your body. Does your body want more food? Is your body finished with your food?" For me, it's just like sex is just an extension of all of these other ways that we learn to disassociate from what our body's telling us and what our body wants and needs and how we learn to just accept what other people require of us, and adapt to it.
That is so interesting. The idea of when your kids are little, sex talks can be just a million different ways you teach your children to trust their own bodies. And to not allow themselves to be objects, just some objects that have to smile and be pretty for the world and to teach them about desire instead of just being desired.
And what you like. Even teaching, what do you like?
That is irrelevant. What do you like? What does it feel like? She loves for me to scratch her back. She loves for me to, and I'm like, oh, you like the way that feels, you like that? Ask me to do that. You know, it's just it's-
And also I would say that what we talked about last week in terms of, or in the last episode, about each adult, each person listening, figuring out what is sex to you. Because when you think about it, the things we don't know how to talk to our kids about are always things we haven't figured out for ourselves. If we don't have an idea, I want to pass on to my kids the beautiful, nuanced, personal ideas I have about things. I don't want them just inhaling the cultural idea about that thing. I want to share with them what I believe. And I want them to know that there is no definition of sex. Here's mine. You will one day have yours.
That's right. That's right. And I think that, I've traveled so much around the world and it's really interesting to me how in European culture, they are talking about bodies and sexual parts and sexual interactions and experiences from the time that these kids are little. So nudity, for instance, is not a thing that people in Europe care about, people are much more free with their bodies. Then the next step is much more free to talk about sex, much more free. And guess what? Fewer teenage pregnancies, fewer STDs are happening in these countries that talk about these things with younger children. So it's weird. Why is it in America that we are so-
Because we're a purity culture.
That's exactly right,
Because we're freaking Puritans and it's just so many people wrote in, babe. You're exactly right about purity culture. And what we mean by that is this idea that we were talking about in the last episode about women are worth more when they don't give away the only currency they have, which is their bodies. It sucks.
It's so frustrating, like religion, the way that I was taught about sex, basically I had to figure it out on my own because of the Catholic religion that I was born and raised in. So it was like, "Let's not talk about it and let this 15-year-old child figure it out herself, let this 15 year-old child figure out her own sexuality, her own relationship with her body, her own," rather than having that be an ongoing conversation that you have with the adults in your life.
MM-hmm.
And as much as our kids hate it, I am fine and completely comfortable talking about sex in front of them. And I'm going to keep making them uncomfortable until they learn from themselves, what they, and their relationship with sex and their bodies are going to be like.
And this is huge. And I feel like, not to be bringing it to this other level, but it's an incredibly relevant piece, which is that in a world where one in four women or girls has experienced sexual trauma where interpersonal violence, when children are sexually abused at the level that they are right now and, and girls particularly, it is both the talking about the sex, it includes making nothing stigmatized, making nothing, talking about our bodies, making nothing uncomfortable for your child to speak to you about because if your child is traumatized, I still have flashes of a few shame sex experiences I had, when I'm having sex with my loving, wonderful husband. I can't imagine the level that the trauma that you bring inside of your body to every sexual interaction, when you have been abused as a child, raped as a woman, all of that confusing that you take with you.
So, I think it's a service to our children to be talking about what are our sacred parts of our body, who is allowed to touch them? We are allowed to touch them. I mean, we being you, the child are allowed to touch them whenever you want, making it a free conversation throughout both protects them from the ongoing threat of abuse to them and will help them later on to not bring those experiences with them.
And I think that the purity culture that you just brought up introduces this entire level of shame that is so traumatic and Abby, it isn't true that they left you to figure it out yourself. They saddled you with the views that everything regular sex was shameful.
Not to mention homosexual sex was deviant. So, you weren't left to navigate on your own. You actually probably would have done fine if you were left on your own, you were saddled.
Yash, you were poisoned.
You were poisoned and then left to navigate and find a joyful life of freedom in your sexual experience.
Yeah, poisoned from every avenue. And then suddenly somebody is like, "why aren't you healthy?" Well, I've been poisoned my entire life.
I mean, I found a quote book that I used to keep during late elementary school and middle school. And I was flipping back through it. I kid you not, this was a quote that I wrote down. A Saint, somebody or other, and it was, "God can do anything, but he cannot raise a virgin after she has fallen."
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Okay? I wrote that in my quote book because I was so, and then I wondered why didn't I have more spontaneous, joyful sex? That literally God made the earth and the stars, but he cannot raise a virgin from whatever depths of hell she has descended to.
Yeah, maybe that does enter into your psyche and transfer throughout the whole of your life.
Of course it does.
Even wanting to even consider having sex as an adult. It's like, this shit is so fucking toxic. God.
Why do we feel so inhibited? Why do we feel so shameful? Why can't we let ourselves go in bed? I mean, everybody, but especially people who have been raised inside religious purity culture, it is very, very hard to detox from that poison.
We don't want to go to hell. We want to go to heaven.
The goal with the kids is I just want to raise kids. That sex is so precious there's nothing precious about it.
That there is no rule structure that you can follow to have sex. I want every person to have access to birth control. I want every person to have access to reproductive justice. I want every person to have access to preventing sexually transmitted diseases. And then I want every person to know and trust themselves and what their bodies want and their own value enough to navigate it without these-
Cultural ideas
And decisions about what is sex and what is it worth?
That's right. That's right. That's good.
Okay, babe, I'm going to ask you to answer this last write-in. Don't worry. We're going to do a whole other one about sex. But for this last one, so many people asked us and I think it's because we are feminists and very progressive and in the same gender marriage, I think they think maybe we're like edgier than we are-
Uh-huh
…but we got a lot of questions about how you and I feel about polyamory and how you and I feel about non-monogamy for ourselves. So, babe, I want to hear real quick, your very open-minded thoughts about non-monogamy.
Well, I think it's just the worst thing in the world. I think that it is not good for me. It doesn't sit well with me. We've had many conversations, not whether we would do this, but no.
No we're not.
How can people do that?
We aren't mature enough you guys. I feel I am someone who in order to find comfort and power in my own skin sexually, I had to go outside of what everyone told me was expected of me. Because of that, I conceptually understand that my friends who believe in non-monogamy, practice non-monogamy, I have dear friends who practice polyamory, who I truly believe, because they tell me and I can see it in their lives, that they have found what works for them.
To that I say, hell yes.
To anyone who is asking my wife and I about non-monogamy I say, hell no. And get behind me Satan and no, no. And additionally also no and for good measure, one more no.
I think that one thing that we talked about, I believe people should be able to do whatever the hell they want with their life.
This is no judgment on the way other people choose. And quite frankly, I hope that those who are living in non-monogamous relationships or living polyamorous lives, I hope they understand that we are still warriors for you also.
But I can't consider it as an option for me and my life and my wife, because I have I think probably too many insecurity issues.
Yeah maybe. I don't know what it is because-
Jealousy issues and-
Yeah. Yeah, we're very jealous people.
I would never want to share you with anybody. And it just wouldn't work for me. The way that my trust and heart is set up it doesn't jive with me. I'm a one-woman kind of person.
I'm like monogamous through and through.
You're the most monogamous that ever monogamoned. And I do feel, this goes back to what we talked about in the last episode. This is why it's so important to define what sex is for you. Because my non-monogamous friends have a very different definition of sex than I do, when I said it's something that is this place that I go to, that I can only share with one person that, is not what their definition of sex is.
And so, when you figure out what it is for you, that's what's important. Not what the world… Oh, you're going to ask for it. You're going to-
Tell them what Sabrina said.
So, we have this friend, who's a comedian, who's just the funniest person on earth named Sabrina.
Sabrina Jalees.
We were doing an event with her, and she was talking about how she's a queer and married to a woman. And she's super progressive. And she was talking about on stage about how since she's progressive about everything, everything, the gay rights, the queers, all the things. And then somebody brings up polyamory and she says, "And then I turned into the Westboro Baptist church."
And that's how I feel. I'm like, yes. When she said that we were on stage, I was like, that's exactly how I feel. That's right. That's right. That's right.
Mostly I just marvel at it. We were at dinner the other night and John's sister brought up his fifth grade girlfriend and I had to do deep breathing exercises to not look like a total freak that I was like, "Oh, oh really?" Talking about, I don't know how people do it. I don't know how people do it.
Is it a level of not being as evolved as we should? I don't know, whatever it is. It's what we are.
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
But I do wonder if it is just an evolution. Cause if the sex is currency, if you're not actually giving yourself away, I do wonder, just not because I'm ever going to be able to do it, but if sex isn't as giving yourself away, which is what we figure the whole, save yourself, you're exchanging goods and services through your sex all the time. Then you're not really losing any part of that other person when they decide to have sex with someone. I can intellectually, theoretically see how a more evolved understanding of sex might take the currency so much out of it that I don't lose because you have exchanged this thing with someone else.
I wouldn't be surprised if we looked at a spectrum of sexual evolution and the people who are in non-monogamous relationships that are very consensual doing it all the way it's supposed to be done or whatever, that that is a more evolved. I'm just not there. And I don't ever want to be there. And additionally. So the question is, "G, how do you feel about non monogamy?" I think my answer would be homicidal. I feel homicidal.'.
Don't hit us up.
Don't hit us up. I love talking to you two about sex. Shocked about how much I love it. I think it's so fun. This is fun. Also, I'm glad it's over. And-
That was a good idea.
Yeah, that was a good idea.
And also, Nagoski's Come As You Are, great book.
Yes I actually just got that.
You are normal. Good.
Going to read it. I'm going to read it.
Get rid of the idea, that picture you have in your head of how it's supposed to be and just live in the what is. We love you. We can do hard things.
And teach your daughters what a clitoris is.
"I banged my clitoris."
"I banged my clitoris!"