Natalie Vartanian and Bob Schwenkler share their takes on how dirty talk can increase passion in (and out of) the bedroom.
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Dear Reader: The following is a co-written article between the creators of Sex the Podcast, Natalie Vartanian and Bob Schwenkler, exploring their relationship with each other.
This is a raw and honest conversation around sex. The following is what we’ve found to be true for US. Our hope is that it sparks a desire to gain deeper levels of understanding of what’s true for YOU.
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Why Did We Write This Article?
Natalie: It breaks my heart to see woman after woman who is not able to truly own her desire. There is guilt and shame, but more than that there is confusion. This leads to regret not only to the things she does do around sex, but the things she does not do.
Sex is a powerful thing in that it can keep us locked down or can liberate us. It can cause heart numbing pain or create unbelievably immense pleasure. It can keep us trapped or facilitate deep healing.
The more we can own our desires, especially as women, the more we connect to who we are at our core and become confident, powerful, self expressed beings in the world.
I have come to a place of embracing my sexuality, my drive and my pleasure. I am standing tall in the things that turn me on and not only communicating that with my partner, but with the world. There is confirmation, validation, satisfaction when I speak to what I feel and want and hear it being reciprocated.
All of the interactions I have with Bob are consensual and powerful because we’ve done our personal work. We communicate, before, during, and after our sexual experiences. At the heart of it is trust. Deepening trust and connection. Allowing ourselves to feel pleasure.
More than anything, the reason for this article is about wanting to normalize what has felt taboo and wrong and restrictive for far too long.
Bob: Men in our culture hold tremendous amounts of sexual shame. From how long we last, our ability to get an erection, our ability to orgasm, to our ability to please our partner, we’ve been loaded up since day 1 with tons of things a “real man” should do or be. To top it all off we’re not typically given safe venues to discuss our fears, insecurities, and shame.
This article is a venue for that discussion. It’s a chance to release that next layer of shame so that we can more fully heal and create healthy relationships with ourselves and our loved ones.
What you’re going to read may scare you, it may anger you, or it may turn you on.
Whatever is true for you, know that our intention in writing these words is not to tell you what’s objectively right or wrong. It’s to share with you what works for us, explain some of our beliefs behind what works for us, and to create a conversation that, we hope, will free all of our bodies and minds.
Sex is a part of all of our lives in some form or another, and I’m taking the stand that honest conversation will lead us to greater depths of self knowledge, understanding of the world we live in, and profound connection with the people in our lives, regardless of the type of relationship we have with them.
That said, let’s begin with…
We Play With “Wrong” and “Right” to Find Out What Actually Works For Us
Bob: I grew up with very, very little frank discussion around sex. Not in my family, not at school, not in the culture. I ended up taking on a lot of shame around my body, sex, and sexuality. I never felt a safe space to play and experiment. Not with my own body and not with another’s.
“Play” is a key word here. Experiment. It means that we try things out. There’s communication before, during, and after. I still get it wrong sometimes with Natalie. But with us that’s ok. There’s pre-established trust and understanding between us. That allows me wiggle room to make mistakes. When I make a mistake I’m then presented with the opportunity to deepen our trust by creating communication around what happened. A break in trust is also a powerful opportunity to deepen trust. Usually it’s not glaringly obvious that something happened, but from time to time there’s a voice inside me that urges me to check in. So I do, we talk, and we get more clear with each other than we ever had been up until then.
I play. I experiment. I try new things out. I tap into places within myself that I’ve never allowed myself to access. We communicate. Trust is deepened. Trust is damaged. And trust is deepened further still.
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I play. I experiment. I try new things out. I tap into places within myself that I’ve never allowed myself to access. We communicate. Trust is deepened. Trust is damaged. And trust is deepened further still.
And in the end I know myself better than I did at the beginning of it all. I know what I like and what I don’t like, or what I’m ambivalent about. I know Natalie’s likes and dislikes. Our mutual knowing is deepened, and the cycle of play and experimentation repeats.
Natalie: If you are like most of us, you grew up in a rigid religious upbringing or had pretty traditional cultural values instilled in you from when you were a child. Not that either are necessarily bad or good, but what happens is we take all of that on as hard, fast truth and allow it to dictate the way our lives play out, especially in the bedroom.
I grew up thinking masturbating was going to take you straight to hell (and I started pretty early having a high sex drive and all). Then there was the added layer of ‘wrongness’ with wanting to be sexual with anyone other than the opposite sex, especially out of wedlock. I could not even connect fully with what felt good because all of the things I heard growing up cast a pretty dark shadow on all of it.
Somewhere along the way we gotta to strip it all away. We get to ask ourselves what works for us individually, and in relationship (casual or committed).
What if having a high sex drive and being a slut isn’t wrong … but oh so right? What if putting a lock down on your lust is the actual detriment and not the acting on it? What if being radically honest with yourself and each other when it comes to pleasure is what is most important because that will lead to respect and true giving and receiving?
I know that I have this super safe, sacred and playful space with Bob and that has allowed for us to truly experiment and discover what is mind blowingly and body expandingly possible. The freedom that is available as a result is beyond words. Find a partner who will hold that space for you to explore without judgment and find out for yourself what feels good for you.
“Slut” Doesn’t Have Any Inherent Emotional Charge
Natalie: The word in and of itself means one thing and the meaning we have made up about it is something completely different. If we look at the actual definition of the word slut in the dictionary we find the following:
A woman who has many casual sexual partners … AND … A woman who has sexual relationships with a lot of men without any emotional involvement.
To me these are simply statements. However the fact that a woman has many casual sexual partners or basically sleeps with a lot of men without getting emotionally attached is seen as a bad thing.
Even in the dictionary they preface the definition of the word as a ‘derogatory’ or ‘insulting’ term. Who says? Who decided this? I personally do not see anything wrong with having multiple sexual partners (as I did at various points in my life) or not being IN LOVE with them in order to have sex with them.
The piece here to untangle is that women are not allowed to experience sex for sex’s sake – for the pure pleasure of it, and heaven forbid if you do it with more than one person at a time.
It has me want to use the word even more to honor my sexual nature … to bust up the societal expectation of what a woman’s sexual behavior should entail (which may I add is also super outdated … we are in the year 2015 after all!).
Bob: Us humans are meaning making machines. We’re constantly on the lookout for ways to identify and categorize things in the world around us.
But where one person sees a knife and thinks what vegetables they’d like to cut with it another sees it as a dangerous object to keep away from children at all costs. Another sees a way to carry out an act of murder, and yet another sees it as a way to end their own life.
Words and ideas are the same. The word “slut” means nothing without a person to create that meaning, and each person will create a different meaning.
Yes, I’m getting heady. Ultimately my point is that I get to choose what “slut” means for me. For me it is nothing more than a tool to get (and keep) my girlfriend feeling wanted by me.
Sexual Desire Isn’t Wrong, It’s Right!
Natalie: Bob calling me a slut is a HUGE turn on. Plain and simple. I get super hot and bothered… I start moving my hips uncontrollably… I want to feel like I am his sex toy. I have a huge sexual appetite, with a wide range of desires, and I feel at age 35 that I am finally owning it. I am a slut and proud of it.
Bob: I want you like 24/7 – Love, Natalie. As Natalie and I were writing this piece she jokingly typed this line into my section. I’m leaving it in because it illustrates an important point. Women oftentimes want it just as bad as men do (or as much as we are stereotypically considered to)!
For me it’s actually a piece of my personal work to let myself feel desired, and it’s no understatement to say that she is DTF most anytime of the day or night. She wants me, and as I open up more and more to this it’s hot to know that she digs me!
It’s also my personal work to open up to my desire. “What would I like to do to Natalie?” is a stretch for me oftentimes. But there are moments where I lose my sense of self with her. My body moves of its own accord. Sometimes it’s a slap and sometimes its a guttural growling. Other times I want to feel her desire, to play with the energy of “Make me know that I’m the ONLY man you want.”
She’s no tender, spotless flower either. Her fantasies are MUCH more varietous (yes, I know that’s not a word) and vivid than mine. What she asks of me in bed (or on the floor) oftentimes tests the limits of my comfort zone.
(Some) Women Want to be Claimed
Natalie: There are so many areas of life where I feel I need to be in charge and make shit happen. For me the bedroom is a place to let the inhibitions (and control) go and allow my partner to really take the lead.
What this means for me is TRUST – complete and utter trust that he will take care of me, my body and my turn on by curating our sexual experience.
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Of course I can set that tone and communicate my desire (i.e. I want it rough, or I just want to feel your body against mine, can you be soft and gentle with me), however after that, I want to know that I can trust my partner to ‘take me there.’ I don’t want to worry about anything except being in the moment, connected to my pleasure (and my partner) and follow him in the sexual journey he is paving for us.
What this means for me is TRUST – complete and utter trust that he will take care of me, my body and my turn on by curating our sexual experience. I want to know he wants me, desires me and can really hold all of the energy I have, which is an ocean of pleasure … and when a man can meet me in that way, all I want to say is “Take me! I’m yours!”
The more he claims me and I can let go, the more I give myself up to him and can own the part of me that fucking LOVES being his slut.
Bob: This one goes WAY against my lifelong conditioning as a “nice guy”. Growing up I got the idea in my head that it was wrong to even look at women, let alone want to claim a woman.
So what does it mean for me to claim Natalie, or any other woman/person/thing for that matter?
It certainly doesn’t mean that I make her mine and do whatever I want regardless of what she wants.
What it does mean is that I allow myself to want her. It means allowing myself to hold her as the singular object of my attention while we’re making love, fucking, kissing, playing, joking, or crying. It means that I allow myself to desire her as if she were the last woman on the planet. It means I get to be an animal, for a period of time. To let go. To make love to her madly and passionately and, in that moment, demand for her to desire me as if I were the last man on the planet.
It also means that I bring deep awareness and presence to the game. This is where I can let myself desire her madly but not need anything of her in return. It’s me showing up with lack of expectation. It’s the difference between trying to get something from her (whether consciously or not) and simply allowing myself to feel the energy of my desire.
This is a place where her “yes” is as beautiful as her “no”. The former invites me to move straight forward and go deeper. The latter invites me to get genuinely curious and discover, along with her, where the yes does lie.
She Gets Turned On By My Dirty Talk – Because I’m a Trustworthy Man
Bob: Calling my girlfriend a slut to her face lets her trust me more. You see, we’re connected at a level beyond words. She knows in her body if I’m holding something back. If I’m suppressing anger she knows it. If I’m suppressing joy she knows it. And if I’m suppressing my sexual desire she knows that too.
If I’m closing up and holding back then she will feel me and begin to close up in kind. Our connection and trust begins to weaken.
Turns out we are all empathic in this way. We all know, unconsciously more often than not, when someone’s desire isn’t aligned with their words or actions.
When a man is out of alignment in this way he becomes untrustworthy. He will seek to get his needs met in sideways, covert, and creepy ways.
But give a man the support to release his sexual shame, permission to be himself, and a safe space to express his desire (without needing a certain response to validate it), and something different occurs.
The man who speaks his desires openly, without shame and expectation, is a trustworthy man.
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He stops being creepy and needy. Women no longer have to wonder what his intentions are because he’ll speak them clearly. He’ll do this without anger or resentment if/when he gets a “no”.
The man who speaks his desires openly (whatever they happen to be), without shame and expectation, is a trustworthy man.
Natalie: There is something super hot about how vocal Bob is about his desire, especially around his desire for me. It was not like that in the beginning of our relationship, but as time has gone on and the more we have played and learned to trust that it is all okay, the more open he has become.
He doesn’t hold anything back. He is honest with me. He honors his body, as well as mine. He follows through on his urges and that turns me on like no other. I get to not just witness my effect on him but hear it as well.
In the past I had men attempt to speak to their desire, however I was unwilling to receive it. Or maybe the more accurate statement is that I was unable to reciprocate it. I did not feel comfortable enough with myself and my sexual energy to communicate my desire to them, to share my deepest fantasies, to vocalize what truly turns me on. Being called a slut is one of those things that I hid for a long, LONG, time.
Bob is the first person I trust enough to let him in on this intimate and vulnerable physical world of mine. Here is the thing – each time one of us opens up it allows the other to do the same and it becomes a ping pong effect of trust and turn on and pleasure.
None of that would be possible if either of us held back and bought into our insecurities and judgments around sex. We’re loud and we’re proud.
How Did That All Land For You?
The things that have opened up for us individually as a result of playing with these things that are super taboo and shame-filled is extraordinary. It feels as though we are both shedding anything that does not feel good or true or connected to who we truly are deep down.
As a result our relationship has reached mind blowing levels of amazing. Our sex life has become the area where we can be literally and metaphorically naked due to the safety and trust present. It’s a gift that we are both extremely grateful for.
We are also clear that none of this would be possible if we were not being honest and vocal about everything. And we mean everything. The more we share the parts of ourselves that have been hiding scared in the shadows the more accepted we feel. We begin to bring full presence and love into the relationship, both in and out of the bedroom.
Who knew speaking the word slut could set us free?
As we said at the beginning of this article, we realize that what we shared may cause some emotions to come up for you. Maybe feelings that you did not even realize were inside. They are all okay. Consider that they may have wanted to come out and be loved by you in a way that hasn’t yet felt ok.
If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this: At the end of the day, you get to decide for yourself what works and what doesn’t work. It’s your life and your body.
So… What’s your desire?
Natalie and Bob are the creators of Sex the Podcast. Click here if you’d like to get a free copy of their eGuide 5 Tips to Creating the Sex Life of Your Dreams.