#68 Talk About Sex and Intimacy: A Conversation with Susan Bratton

Ready to transform your dating and intimacy game? Join us for an insightful conversation with renowned intimacy expert Susan Bratton as she unveils powerful techniques to tackle the stress and fear often associated with the sexual aspects of dating. Discover how understanding and communicating relationship values can lead to more fulfilling connections. Susan introduces her workbook, "My Relationship Magic," a resource designed to help you identify core relationship values, ensuring healthier, more satisfying relationships.

Ever wondered how to align your relationship values with your partner’s? In a candid discussion, Susan shares personal stories on how her husband and she navigated their primary needs.  Learn practical advice for ensuring value alignment to navigate your relationships more effectively.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intimacy, Dating, and Relationship Values
• 8:22 Understanding and Communicating Relationship Values
• 13:52 Safe Sex and Relationship Values
• 26:25 Enhancing Intimacy Through Communication
• 32:41 Sexual Health Discussions in Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth podcast. Frank talk about sex and dating. Hello everyone, Tamara here, welcome to the show. Today's guest is Susan Bratton, and we'll be talking about intimacy and better sex. If you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. Thanks for joining me today, Susan.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Hi Tamara, you are so welcome and I'm excited to talk to you. You know I almost always talk about sex because I'm an intimacy expert, which means basically I have written 44 books and programs on passionate lovemaking and bedroom communication skills and sexual health and wellness. But I really like what you've been doing lately with regard to the kind of the intersection of dating and relating and sexuality, Because I think in some ways the sexual aspect of dating is one of the scariest parts of dating.

Speaker 2: 1:01

I mean it just really creates a lot of stress in so many ways. And so I have some I would say I like to call them tricks or techniques or approaches or ways I think about dating that could possibly empower your listeners a little bit more, and, and in all honesty, everything that I talk about in dating can be directly applied if you're already in relationships. So there's nothing we're going to say today that you can't take away and go oh, I'm going to use that one. I've really found that so much of sex is just oh shit, I never thought of that. I'm going to do that.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Yeah, and when it comes to dating, everyone's so afraid of either if they do it too soon the, you know, especially if women do it too soon, men will lose interest. Nowadays it's a little less like that, but there's still the whole drive or you know the back and forth of when to do it and all the things about it and how far, and yeah. So I like everything you had to say. So, yeah, where should we get started? Just um, talking about the dating moving into it, want to start there.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Well, let's talk about dating and sex. How about that? Since that's kind of where we're going, and let me give you some kind of some of my thinking and then you can probe where you want to. How's that sound? Sounds good. So, with dating these days, especially dating on the apps, which I know a lot of people are like, oh hell, no, no more apps. But even on the apps, what's interesting that's been happening is that you know, we've got new kinds of apps Like we've got poly apps, like field, and we've got, you know, you know, apps that allow you to like Plora, which is a really good app for people who aren't just interested in hookups and dating but they want to create community. They want to be in community with people who have shared values.

Speaker 2: 3:00

And I think that the very first, most important thing to understand about yourself and being in relationship whether you're already in one or you want to get in one is what your relationship values are. And you have a set of values that are very important to you and if those aren't met and you're in a relationship, it's not a good important to you. And if those aren't met and you're in a relationship, it's not a good relationship for you and in some ways, figuring out what you want partially goes to looking back at what you had that didn't work and what you had that did work in the past that served your relationship values. And you know how I talk about. You mentioned it earlier before we started rolling the golden rule and the platinum rule. The golden rule is do unto others as you have them do unto you.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Treat people the way you want to be treated. And I mean I think that's great from like a morality perspective, like that makes sense. But from a dating and relating perspective, I like to have people play the platinum role by the platinum rule. And the platinum rule is treat your partner the way they want to be treated and have them treat you the way you want to be treated, because in every relationship you're two people with very different experiences, desires, needs and values. But your partner can't treat you the way you want to be treated unless you know what it is and you tell them. And one of my wonderful mentors, dr Patty Taylor, said to me one time you're always training your partner, whether it's implicit or explicit.

Speaker 2: 4:45

If it's implicit it's they're kind of acting how they're acting and you're allowing it, and you're implicitly giving them the okay to do the things they're doing, or you're letting them do things that you don't like and you're getting mad about it, but you're not telling them what you want. And explicit is look, this is how I want to be treated, these are my boundaries, these are my desires, this is, this is what I need to be happy in my relationship, and I want to know what you want, because it's not going to be what I want, and I'll give you some very specific examples of it. So this all figuring this out is a little. I have a little workbook and it's called my relationship magic and it's at my relationship magiccom and it's a downloadable little workbook and it is one that I charge for.

Speaker 2: 5:37

It's $27 on Amazon, it's nine 97. If you just go to my relationship magiccom so I always send people there because you want to print it out and write in it anyway, and essentially what it does is it says what are your values? And your values come from the way you were raised, your education, your socioeconomics, your religion and faith, if you have it, your gender expression and identity, your personality type whether you're a highly sensitive person, a neurodivergent these are all way into it as well. Your culture all kinds of things go into what your relationship values are. And what we found over the years is that if your partner knows about your top four or five and they can do the things that make you feel like you're getting those needs met in your relationship. It's like the 80-20 rule. It gets you 80% of the way to feeling like you're in the perfect relationship.

Speaker 2: 6:42

But a lot of people don't. They haven't yet explored, okay, what are my relationship values? And so let me give you an example of in the workbook you get a whole page worth of I don't know, there's 100 of them on there to pick from and you put them on a list and then you start rank, ordering them, and you say to yourself, would I be in a relationship if I couldn't have this? And pretty soon you've got them kind of filtering up to the top. And then you say, in my past relationships, were these values met and if so, how were they met? And if they weren't, what would I have needed to have them met? And when they weren't being met, what were the know? It's really, it's a relational exercise and ultimately I'll just give you an example of myself and my husband. We are celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary next week and we didn't learn this until about 12 years into being married, when we were on the brink of divorce and he'd been treating me the way he wanted to be treated and it was getting on my nerves and he didn't know what the hell I wanted and I didn't know what he wanted. We just didn't understand each other very well and we were doing what we thought we were supposed to do. You know kind of the prescription of the. You know the dating world in. This would have been the 1990s and early 2000s and we did this values worksheet and realized that we had some shared values which we worked, that worked really well for us, and some that weren't that we were almost at odds about.

Speaker 2: 8:22

For my husband, his number one relationship value is passion. He wants a hot sex life. He wants me to be sexy. He wants me to wear lingerie. He wants me to want him sexually. He wants to see me naked. He wants me to touch him, kiss him, rub him, stroke him, hold him. He wants a lot of physical and kinesthetic connection. That's the number one reason he's in a relationship. He's very self-reliant, he doesn't need anyone. He's somewhat of an introvert and he, just when he's in a relationship, that's what he wants, is that? And he was always grabbing me and I was like, why is he always grabbing me? It's too much, you know. I didn't like it until I realized what he was doing was trying to get that affection, that physical affection that is right at the top of his list for being in a relationship. So I had to really consciously focus on getting, giving him that and making sure that he was served in that way that I was meeting his number one relationship value.

Speaker 2: 9:20

Mine was security. I came from a very, you know, difficult childhood, had a lot of things happen to me. I didn't feel safe and women generally don't feel safe because we are the prey, not the predator, in the world of the Homo sapien, and so I needed things like for him to always have my back, to keep his eye on me, to have a burglar alarm, to have a good working car, to have health insurance, to have some money in the bank the things that were going to keep me happy and healthy and safe. And he is very good at that because he's just a very, very risk management oriented person. I think it drew me to him. He felt safe to me. We both valued honesty. We realized in that time that being honest was very, very important to both of us and neither of us wanted anyone to sugarcoat anything. We really wanted the true truth, no matter how bad it was and no matter how hard it was to say, because that made me feel safe and secure and it made him know he was in an honest relationship, that he wouldn't get blindsided.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Then for me, I need a lot of novelty and variety. I get a lot of offers. I'm an extrovert. I like to go out and do things. He's an introvert. That's not so important to him. He'll do the same thing every day, day in, day out, day in, day out. That would make me crazy. But I also needed freedom. I needed the freedom to go do those things, whether he wanted to do them or not. So I wanted him to totally take care of me and yet also allow me to have my freedom, and he was fine with that. He wanted to take care of me and give me my freedom. He didn't want to always do those things, but he wanted to make sure I was safe.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And then what he wanted was he wanted. He liked that I could see who he was and show him where he could go. He is a deeply financially oriented, numbery guy with metrics and data and he lives in his spreadsheets and his numbers universe. He's like it's always like click, click, click, click, click, click, click in his head, and so he's so deep in the weeds he can't see the big picture. And he wanted me to make sure we were going in the right direction and that I could show him what he was capable of. He trusted that I could really see what he was capable of and he liked that growth orientation of my love and support for him and these I'm not going to keep going because it just gives you an idea of what it's like when you understand what it is you want and you specifically explain it to your partner in ways that are actionable for them, in these little details.

Speaker 2: 12:02

So when you're dating and you're looking for who, you know who. Who is who you want. You need that relationship values match and you and I think in the world today you also need the values match around what you stand for. What do you stand for? Are you LGBTQIA supportive, women's rights supportive, women's bodily autonomy supportive? Are you, you know, oriented toward having an open democracy? Or are you a person who wants, you know, to take away Social Security and Medicaid and put the Ten Commandments in every school and not keep a separation between church and state? And you know you're deeply religious and you think everyone should follow you know, the Christian rule or whatever those differences are which are kind of how they're appearing right now in our political climate.

Speaker 2: 12:54

Those are values values too, and you need to find someone who values the things that you do, if it's community and being in community, or it's faith or it's family. These are very classic kinds of relationship values. So the more clear you are in understanding what you want, the easier it is for you to look at someone and say here's what I'm looking for. Is that something you could support? And what do you want? Because I think that really helps you in the I'm looking for a partner or I'm in a partnership and it's not really meeting my needs. How do I, you know, how do I operate on it to fix it? Can it be saved? Right? And a lot of times it can be saved because you haven't explicitly told your partner what it is you want, so they're treating you the way they want to be treated.

Speaker 1: 13:50

Yeah, yeah, and it's yeah. Everything you're saying makes complete sense, obviously, and you're not like faking it or telling someone what to be different. You're just saying what, how you are and feel and how you, what you are into and your values, and there's two. So, yeah, it was a very clear example of like I can see when you're dating, if someone says something you're like oh yeah, that's my number one and you don't have it, so let's not date anymore, and then it's easier to find the right person and give up instead of wasting months on someone exactly it's good and and I think it's very important also.

Speaker 2: 14:23

I mean, isn't what I just said is like it's so easy to understand and yet, yeah, people don't. People don't even know that they could do that. I really think the relationship values it's called a relationship values elicitation process. That's what the kind of technical relation dynamics, you know words would be if you were a therapist or what have you which I'm not, by the way, but because I'm not interested in seeing people one on one, I'm really a very kind of mass market person teaching passionate lovemaking techniques and things, person teaching passionate lovemaking techniques and things. But what I found is that I had I had I had to have a tool that would help people outside the bedroom get their needs met so that when they were inside the bedroom things could really flow without grudges and judgments and angers and withholds and resentments and eggshells and you know, all of the things that make sex not be as good as it possibly can. But the other component of it, I think as well, is that there's two ways to look about, look at dating. One of them is through the kind of relational lens of I want, you know, a single long term monogamous partner who could potentially end up being my life partner, which is still the approach that many people take. But the alternative, kind of if you put it in two big buckets is, um, I just want to have a lot of life experiences with a lot of people. I'm not really ready to get into a long-term monogamous relationship. Or I want to be poly, or I want to be non-monogamous cause, you know, consensually, consciously non-monogamous, or I'm just playing the field, or I just want to have serial monogamous relationships. I'm not ready to settle down right now, I'm just enjoying myself. And in that way, I think that a part of the people who are just like I'm kind of in it for the sex, I'm kind of in it for the fun. I don't need them to be my everything, I just want to have, you know, hot sex and good times, and so many of us are much more um, emancipated to feel that that's possible for ourselves than we ever have been. And then it becomes okay. Well, what kind of sexual relating do I want to have? Am I looking for research partners to learn how to have an expanded orgasm practice, or to awaken my G spot and learn female ejaculation? Or to, you know, try some kinky stuff together or, uh, I'm really interested in Shibari and I'd like to hang out with somebody who wants to tie me up and suspend me from some you know ropes. Um up and suspend me from some, you know ropes, you know.

Speaker 2: 16:58

There's a lot of options out there for the kind of sexual and adventure parts of relationships as well, and we have more and more distinctions about that and I really encourage people to, if that's what's right for you right now, have those experiences in a safe way, which always leads me to wanting to have my high level STI testing conversation, because if we've learned anything from a pandemic, it's that it is really easy to get sick for most people and nobody wants the long-term downstream effects of any kinds of STIs. And there are long-term downstream effects of things even when you just think, oh, I'll take an antibiotic and I'll get rid of whatever I get. There's a lot of things you can't get rid of that easily and antibiotics ruin your gut, so why put yourself into that when you could do safe testing? So I'd be happy to go anywhere you want. I could talk very briefly about my best recommendations for safe testing or go wherever you want to go.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Yeah, we can do the safe testing and then talk more about communication within sex. You know like we talked about dating. Maybe some examples after that.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Great. So for SDI testing I recommend something that I call a full panel test, and I am the chief advocacy officer of a company called BasisDX, and they are. They came out of the pandemic world and they're a next generation at home collection kit company. So you can order the kit, keep it at home or keep two at home and then when you find someone that you'd like to be intimate with, you can just do the kit. It's just a little blood spot, a swab urine, send it in, have your partner send theirs in, get results within 24 to 48 hours of sending your test in. They take insurance. So it's nice, and what I love about that is you're ready, you don't have to get an appointment, you don't have to go have a phlebotomist take vials of blood out of you, which prevents a lot of people from going to get tested. Even just getting the appointments is a pain in the ass. And so I like the next generation and my recommendation is to test for the eight kind of gnarly STIs that are out there and most people don't even think about that. They think about, maybe. They think about chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, hsv one and two, but I also like to test for trichinomyosis, gardnerella, hsv, which is herpes one and herpes two. You know there's just a number of things that can be and hepatitis, a number of things that can be tested for, that are so easy now that it's good to just add them all in. So that's at fullpaneltestcom, basisdx, and the way that I like to do it is I like to say, hey, I am happy to have a make out with you, kiss you, you can put your hands on my genitals, I can put my hands on your genitals, but no mouth to genital or genital to genital contact until we have.

Speaker 2: 20:17

A lot of people have herpes, and I think it's important to have a herpes test to see if you have the antibodies, but to not discount or say that you can't have sex with people with herpes if they know they have it. Then the very important thing to do is to say well, do you ever get outbreaks? And then just do body scans each time you're with them intimately until you get to know them, time you're with them intimately, until you get to know them, because herpes can present on your lower back down by the end of your, you know, by the end of your spine, as well as on your genitals, as well as, of course, on your upper lips too, and so it's really important because some people can't feel them, they don't have the sense that they have an outbreak and they can't see it back there, and so a good body scan is always very important, especially with new lovers and having the um, that boundary around. You know, we're going to hand wash, we're going to, we're going to touch each other, but not the whole rubbing together thing, because most many, many STIs are skin to skin contact transmitted. So it's not just about penis and vagina, and oral is not any more safe.

Speaker 2: 21:29

You can get HPV and get oral throat cancer or get, you know, cervical cancer from the human papillomavirus, and only women can be tested in a pap smear for that.

Speaker 2: 21:40

Men can't even be tested, and that's another reason to go in for your pap smears very frequently or to notice if you have any kind of little genital warts. So I think that if you're going to be a grown-ass person dating around and having sex with multiple people, that you owe it to your future self to take care of yourself and you owe it to other people to have the safe sex talk. On my Better Lover channel at betterlovercom, I have how to have the safe sex talk, when to have the safe sex talk and what STI tests to get, and if you want more information about that, that's a good kind of resource. But this is, you know, like basically I'm your mom telling you what I want you to do to be safe and to keep others safe. And there's STIs are rampant and it is very, very important to be safe and to have fun and have lots of sex. You can have both. You can have, you know, the best of all worlds safe, sexy sex.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Yeah, yeah, that's great information, awesome, thank you, and very just straightforward. I don't want people to make such a big deal about it or, like you know, get weirded out or whatever. But yeah, it's, like you said, common and rampant and so everyone needs to worry about it and talk about it, all right, and then you were going to give a few examples. Like I really liked how you talked about your husband and you with the relationship values. So are there sex values or just communication in general?

Speaker 2: 23:28

I would guess yeah, if you think about your sexuality, it's kind of a combination of two things. It's the verbal communication piece and the body-based kind of pleasuring techniques piece of it, and the body most people are drawn to. Okay, you know, how do I give a blow job, how do I eat a pussy, how do I have intercourse? And most people think they already know how to have intercourse because they watch porn. But honestly, people are worse at intercourse than they are at oral and they're really bad at oral because they don't have any skills, because they mostly can only get their information from pornography, which is primarily degrading to women, doesn't show what women need and our arousal cycles is just there for the male gaze to masturbate to, and so it just really, really and it's more and more hardcore and it's unrealistic and it's not heart connected, it's not conscious, it's just you know not what most people want. Sometimes they want some variety. That includes certain fetishes that you can see on porn and you know and all of that, but basically it's not. And so I think it's very important to understand how to have orgasmic intercourse for both parties. And intercourse and having orgasms from it for women is a learned skill that all women can do. It's just that if you haven't yet, it's because you've kind of been getting fucked like porn, not really having sex like lovers, and men prefer to be lovers most of the time as well. You know everyone's on a spectrum, but generally people want to be loving and have passionate pleasure together and joy, and you know satisfaction that everyone's satisfied and that's kind of what we're going for, and so I'd recommend my orgasmicintercoursecom is just all that is is just all my techniques that help both lovers have incredible orgasms the whole time you're making love. Because you start to understand that women need about 20 to 30 minutes of engorgement and warm up, that you're not racing to intercourse, that we have as much erectile tissue as our male body partners, but it doesn't have, that it needs time to get to full erection. So everything feels good. And then that the vagina isn't just a you know inside out penis that wants to be it's not a stroking machine, and that that what feels good to a penis is can feel good to a vagina. But a vagina also wants some other things. So it goes through the heart tongue and glissando and penis pivots and palm quads and you know all kinds of things that people have never been exposed to and that's all free. I have a lot of free resources for people, so I think that's important. And learning oral pleasuring is also important Full body touch, breast pleasuring, good kissing techniques but you can't really get good at any of that if you don't have good communication.

Speaker 2: 26:38

And as you mature, what you want keeps changing and even in every time and date that you have a lovemaking date, you want something different. If you're really tapped into your body, your moods, your energy levels, how where your heart is, you know where your mood is, how you're feeling about your partner. Sometimes you're feeling about your partner, sometimes you're rambunctious and energetic and other times you just want languid lovemaking in the sunshine with lots of slow kissing and full body touch, and we want to have all those kinds of sex. So the way that you can have them is to have communication skills where you can just say anything that you need at any time and you you really tapped into your body and your moods and your feelings and your sensations and your desires and you're willing to give yourself what you're asking for and what you need from your lover and you have no issue asking for it because your lover wants to know and they never take it as something they did wrong. They're hungry for your feedback and you can stop anytime and say anything you need, and you have laughs and giggles and you fall in love. And you have all of this because you've got this great communication platform.

Speaker 2: 27:52

And what I found is that generally, every you know, sex is a big bell curve, and so there are some people who are on the I never want to say a word and I don't even like to talk, and there are other people who love to talk through sex. Completely. It is like to talk the whole time and all of that's reasonable, but you do have to be able to have your needs met and express your needs and, you know, make your requests and and and be able to take, you know, stop and to take rests and be done when you're done and not go further than you want. And, you know, make sure you say hey, today I don't, you know like I'm on my period, and so you know, I don't really want you to go down on me or I'm on my period and I definitely want to have sex.

Speaker 2: 28:33

I love period sex or whatever it is, you know, and the best way that I found to do that is, with something that I call my sexual soulmate pact, p-a-c-t, like an agreement, and you can download that at sexualsoulmatepactcom.

Speaker 2: 28:49

And essentially what it does is it helps with really two of the biggest issues. One is I don't know what I want. I just know what I'm getting, isn't it? But if I say something, my partner like emotionally collapses and or gets defensive or tells me they know what they're doing or doesn't take my input or kind of checks out emotionally after I say something, and so I don't feel like I can say anything, so I'm just kind of getting by, and that's the opposite of what you want. You want zesty, exciting, conversational, you know fun times and then, once you get that communication going, you can add the moaning and the dirty talk and fantasy sharing and the adoration and the worship and the encouragement and all of those kind of next level verbal communication techniques that lovers can learn to have with each other that really ignite passionate love making. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Normally I would say, like, if you want to share how to get ahold of you, well, I mean, you can still share that part. But I know you gave you gave several websites that were all very good and interesting and I will definitely check them out. But if there's anything else you want to add about that, or even like just a kind of wrap up final comments, like what the takeaway you want people to really have?

Speaker 2: 30:24

no-transcript. An incredible service to the people who listen to your show and if you're listening today, you are one of those people who cares about your sexuality and wants to move it forward and have incredible sex, and you can have that by continuing to learn these skills. So whatever links I drop that are interesting to you, go there and get whatever you want. If you're on my newsletter, you'll be. You'll be signed up for my email newsletter. I do five of them, five of them a week. I give out tips every every you know, five days a week, and what's interesting about it is that it takes me about 30 hours a week to write those newsletters. I write them fresh. They are full of information, but I will meet you wherever you need to be met with regard to what's going on with you.

Speaker 2: 31:10

So if you're, if you get my newsletter and you reply to it, I get your reply personally. So if you have a question about anything you can ask me, oftentimes I'll be like oh, here's the video that answers that, or here's the article that gives you the answer to that. Um, I pretty much heard everything in the decades that I've been doing this, so I've got a lot of resources and I'm here for people. It's what makes me good. Um, you're also welcome to follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram by my name, which is at Susan Bratton, s-u-s-a-n-b-r-a-t-t-o-n, and I guess I just, you know, really am here to support everyone's sexual growth and pleasure and satisfaction and intimacy and connection. So thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 31:55

Yeah, thank you. I mean, like I said earlier, it's definitely, I mean it's amazing information. There's some stuff I haven't heard and a few of the dating apps you mentioned early on I had not heard of. I thought I was pretty in the know on the apps, but I'm glad you mentioned a few new ones I didn't know. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 32:10

Noah Ilan runs Plora and she's a wonderful podcast guest. If you'd like an introduction, I can introduce you, and I'm curious what I said today that you'd never heard before. That struck you. I always appreciate the feedback.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah, I mean like the apps, and then just the concrete example of the values. Like I know I've met someone who we have shared values, but you gave, like you know, more expansive, because when I try to explain it I'm like, well, we have these two things in like, in common and that that brings us together. But you, you said many more things and that's just like a more concrete example to share, cause like I don't know if it resonates when I say it which is my two. You know you had such a full range of things and and just, and then the STI testing you obviously I actually talked or thought about doing an episode on it, so I'm glad you covered that, because now it's covered and people can go get their own kits and that makes it much easier, just because you always you want people to go get tested, but you're like, are they really getting tested? Or you know, obviously you can give them the result sheet, but this makes it much easier.

Speaker 2: 33:14

And good, great. Thanks for that feedback.

Speaker 1: 33:18

I really appreciate it. Well, thank you again and if you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. And thank you again for being here, susan. Frank talk. Frank talk, sex and dating educate.