Ep #164: Flower Side Chat: Your Pleasure Zones and You: Part One

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast with Dr. Sonia, episode 164.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling, and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues, and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello, hello, hello, come on in, everybody. So good to see you. I’m so excited, it’s the flower side chat. I am always so excited to do this. This is the flower of the flower side chat. I’m going to move up my desk so you can see. It’s actually pretty big. So this is the flowers and I’m at the side of the flower and that’s why this becomes the flower side chat. And also just, I don’t have a fireplace, but I have a big, beautiful flower which is an expression of our sexuality as women are blooming and opening up. So of course this is where we get to be as we do the flower side chat.

So good to see all of you. So the way this call will go tonight. It’s your opportunity to ask me anything. And I should introduce also Donna Jennings is here, Coach Donna. And she coaches with me in the Lit Clit Club. So we’re going to have a conversation. Feel free to put any questions that you have in the Q&A. That’s the easiest place to do, to put your questions in the Q&A. Donna will be reading the questions in the Q&A and we will be answering those questions. We have all sorts of things.

We have models up here. We have of course, [inaudible], my best friend. This makes me happy. We have toys in the back. If you have questions about something, I can always answer that too. Whatever questions you have, let’s go ahead and put in the Q&A. Looks like we’ve already got some stuff in there. Alright, so yeah, feel free to use the anonymous feature. We won’t say your names, or at least we’ll try very hard not to say anybody’s name. But this is basically our flower side chat. Donna, did you have anything you wanted to say?

Donna: No, I was just kind of trying to do a little scouts honor of not saying somebody’s name. She’s talking to me. She’s talking to me, especially when we get on with people we coach and we know, and then I sometimes blurt something out.

Sonia: So, Donna is a talker, let me just say. When I try to get words into my own flower side chat. We’ll see how this goes because this woman is a talker. Okay, so at the beginning of this, we always have a disclaimer and the disclaimer for this is that we are medical professionals, but we’re not specifically your medical professionals.

So if you have any questions or concerns, we can answer general types of questions, but always check in with your own healthcare provider to make sure that it specifically applies to your needs. And they will address your specific concerns. What we talk about is just kind of general stuff that’s out there, but we put our bent on it. And then of course, we are both coaches. We’re certified through The Life Coach School. I’m a Master Certified life coach. I’m also a trained sexual counselor.

For those of you that are not as familiar with me, I am Dr. Sonia Wright. I am the midlife sex coach for women. I am so excited to be doing the flower side chat. We haven’t done it in a long time. But I want to get to the place where we’re doing them every month so that you can all join us and you can get any questions that you have. We always have questions about menopause and hormones and sex and libido. We always have some sort of question on that.

So go right ahead, put any questions you have in the Q&A. And we are here for you. This is your opportunity. So if you have specific questions then go ahead and put it in the Q&A. And I know that, Donna, some people have put in some questions ahead of time. Do you have those ready for us to start with?

Donna: Yeah, I have someone who is asking an interesting question and that that is, how is it that they have maybe a stronger orgasm with a toy than they do with their male partner and is that a problem?

Sonia: No. Any type of orgasm is a good orgasm.

Donna: It’s a good day.

Sonia: So it’s never a problem unless you make it a problem. If you make it in your mind that you have to have a certain type of orgasm with one partner versus another type of orgasm with another type of partner. One’s mechanical, one may not be mechanical. That’s kind of like you’re assigning your orgasms to somebody else. Somebody else is responsible for them and not you. And that it should be better in this regard versus that regard. These orgasms are yours. They don’t belong to anybody else.

So you get to have fabulous orgasms in whatever way and with whomever and with whatever you would like. So when you start kind of dissecting and separating out your different types of orgasms and saying, “I should have more of an orgasm with my partner.” It’s putting a lot on you and it’s putting a lot on your partner. And I mean, if you start thinking along these lines that I need to have a ‘better orgasm’ with my partner, than I do with my toy. Then that’s going to interrupt your relationship with your toy. And that’s one of our most wonderful relationships that we can have.

Donna: Don’t interrupt the relationship with the toy.

Sonia: Don’t mess up that relationship, whatever it is, that you choose to do, don’t mess up that relationship. But also, that’s putting a lot of pressure on your partner. The type of stimulation that you get with a toy that’s going to be a higher level of stimulation, because it’s mechanical, it’s got a motor, it’s constantly going. Your tongue or your partner’s tongue or whatever can only go so fast, or whatever they’re using.

Donna: We’re clocking it, no, anyway, sorry.

Sonia: So if we start comparing them, they’re different types of stimulation. You get to have different types of orgasm. It’s completely fine if you have an orgasm that is of different strengths or whatever. Because it just all depends on what you think about that organism. If you think the orgasm with your toy is stronger and therefore better and then you start thinking your orgasm with your partner is weaker and therefore not as not as good. It’s more like if you are using your toy versus if you’re doing manual stimulation, there’s going to be a different degree there.

But sometimes you like a different pace. Sometimes you like a different stimulation. Sometimes you like a different scenario. And so the question becomes, is there a place for you to appreciate all different experiences and not necessarily label. As soon as we start to label things as good and bad or not as good as something else. Then we get up in our minds and we start feeling guilty or sad or we try to make things be something that they’re not instead of just embracing what is.

Donna: There’s something’s gone wrong with us or we’re doing it wrong.

Sonia: We add so much to ourselves, it makes it more, instead of just being in the moment and experiencing our body and the sensations and being there with our toy or with our partner. We’re up in our heads going, “I hope this is stronger than it usually is. I hope this is better somehow than it is with my toy. If my toy’s too much then should I stop with the toy?” We’re all up in our mind and when we’re up in our mind we’re not in our body.

Donna: And connected. And then to think about exactly what is guiding that toy. You are and you are very, in general, I expect, keen on exactly where your pleasure zones are. And then when you’re on it you sit there. When you’re on it, you enjoy that even more. How often do you have the conversation with your partner of are they hitting your pleasure zones? Are you broaching the conversation with them? Are you willing to have that conversation?

Because, yeah, it’s your hand, you’re kind of driving the train then versus your partner driving the train. And unless you communicate to them, they’re going to kind of guess that what they’re doing is working.

Sonia: Yeah. Or you can just hand the toy to your partner. [Crosstalk] the orgasm that you want and you can still have the connection and the satisfaction. And 85% of women that need some type of stimulation to their clitoris when they’re engaged in penetrative sex. So it’s perfectly 100% okay to add a toy onto your clitoris. And in fact it’s very, very pleasurable and so much fun. So if you have not tried it, I am suggesting you try it. And bring it to the bed to your partner.

Donna: Yeah. If we could write you a prescription we would, for clitoral stimulation as needed, as multiple times a day, anyway, but as needed. And which actually kind of is a great segue into another question which is, why is penetration not so pleasurable? And because then Dr. Sonia, where are the pleasure zones? Why is it not so pleasurable inside the vagina versus outside?

Sonia: Well, I mean it depends. So some people, I think it’s all how we’re wired, it’s our neural connections. So if we’re talking about the vulva, you can’t say vulva without vulva, this being something wonderful and amazing about the vulva. The light shines. So talking about the vulva and our pleasure zones. You are correct that the majority of our sensations are in the vulva area, which is the outside, the outer lips, the inner lips. There is the vagina here, and there’s the goddess spot or the G spot. But that is in the neurons that go to the G spot.

The nerves that go to the G spot are also intricately entwined in basically the clitoris. So it’s kind of a whole adjunct. It all works together. But the majority of our sensations are on our vulva region as opposed to our vagina. And the reason for that is our vagina’s used to birth a baby, which is the size of a football. Imagine if we had all the nerve endings that we have on our clitoris, inside of our vagina, if we ever decided to give birth once we would never do it again.

We would just, when that baby comes up just so that’s shut. We wouldn’t want anything else ever coming out of that because it’s so painful. So instead, the clitoris, it’s so beautiful. It’s this wishbone shape and it’s deep to the tissues of the lips. But it just stretches out of the way and kind of opens up like a wishbone and then a baby comes out. And it just kind of snaps back. The vulva is really an amazing place and it has all these nerve endings. And every woman is wired a little differently. So some might really, this is the clit right here.

Some people might really enjoy stimulation to the clitoris, while other people may not. It might be a little bit too much for them. They like to keep the hood over their clitoris. Now, the clitoris, the legs of the clitoris extend down your inner lips, on the inside of your inner lips. So some women like to get their inner lips massaged. Some people like it on the left, some people on the right, to the left, to the left.

There’s a reason why it’s [crosstalk]. So basically we’re all a little different. Some people, I don’t have the anus on this puppet, but it would be down here. Some people have a lot of beautiful nerve endings in their anus and they really get a lot of pleasure from anal play and anal sex. And you’re right, the majority of it is on the outside and not necessarily in the vagina.

Donna: And those pleasure zones are and you get those nerve endings that are so sensitive. One of the things that’s interesting is how for males, the penis is so sensitive, all those nerve endings are there. Ours, we can stimulate those nerve endings, but the largest portion are deeper that we transfer that sensitivity, that pleasure to the nerves that are deeper versus male external. And that you stimulate what’s on the outside and for us you stimulate the outside or you touch and join the outside to stimulate those nerve endings that are deeper with the clitoris being the primary thing that is exposed.

Sonia: Well, let me say that the clitoris is analogous to the penis. And when we’re talking on a biologic level, when we’re first being made, there’s this point in time where you don’t know the gender, if it’s male or female. And it has this embryologic tissue that is the precursor to the penis and the clitoris. They split into female male gender type of thing. But basically they have similar nerve endings.

But the clitoris is three to four inches. And it has the same amount of nerve endings that you have in the penis, which if you add the internal structure to the external structure of the penis, that’s probably on average eight or nine inches. So there’s the same nerve endings, but over a smaller surface area. So that’s what makes it more intense in terms of sensations and stuff like that.

But I don’t know internal versus external in terms of, I think that it’s just that the clitoris, we normally just talk about the little tip of the clitoris. But there is the whole, this and that and then there’s the legs that go down and are analogous to the penis. It’s just that we have a lot of nerve endings in a smaller space and we’re fantastic.

Donna: And it may take kind of helping train our partners in where we are sensitive and what feels good to us rather than just the assumption. And again with male female, the assumption that penetrative sex is just going to do it for every woman. Is going to create orgasms for every woman and just rather than just that assumption and then us thinking that should be the case.

Sonia: Well, I’m always, I’m going to push this envelope, it’s not an assumption. It’s something that we have been trained to believe, an assumption is something, you have some information and then you come up with a theory or an idea. No, this is the way society, which is a patriarchal society, has trained us men and women and non-binary individuals to believe that penetrative sex is ‘better’. And there’s obvious reasons for that.

I do think that it is correct that we should talk to our partners. We should know our bodies first. We should know a lot about our bodies. And then yes, we talked to our partners about our bodies and educate because every woman is a little different. So they may have had a partner previously and the partner really liked this. But you don’t necessarily like that. And sometimes our partners don’t get it in their minds that what worked on one person doesn’t work well on another. So we need to kind of have these conversations and get that out there.

Yeah, so I’m going to just interrupt and say keep your questions coming, put questions in the chat. So if you don’t have access to the Q&A, put your question in the chat. The chat it’s only focused on or addressed to Donna and I and not to everybody else. Or there is an anonymous feature as well in the Q&A. So please continue to put your questions in the Q&A so we can continue this discussion and it’s a lively one already. And so the flower side chat, there’s always something going on.

So we have a participant that says, “I believe it’s important to express my needs to my partner and enjoy exploring varied positions or formats.” Here, here.

Donna: So cheers to that, right?

Sonia: Yes, I definitely believe in that as well. And I love the freedom that you have to know that it’s important to express your needs to your partner and you enjoy exploring. Now, I think explore, exploring, exploration, it’s something that’s really important. And I’m going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is we tend not to think of the future. We don’t really look and see how much more sexual intimacy, how many more years of sexual intimacy do we have ahead of us.

And so we might think we’re in our 50s, 60s, 70s and we have a limited time, but really let’s talk about it. If you’re in your 40s and you’re going to live to your 80s or 90, you have 40 more years. If you’re in your 50s, you have 30 more years. You’re in your 60s, you have at least 20 to 30 more years, So if you’re in your 70s and 80s, you still have a good 20 years or more. So really thinking about that, we don’t want to settle. We don’t want to settle for a sexual intimacy that’s kind of okay.

We want to be able to talk and ask for what we want. We want to be able to know what we want. We want to be able to know more about our bodies. So this becomes very important. So all of you on this call, put in the chat, how many years of sexual intimacy you have ahead of you if you’re going to be living to 95. Because I want you to really realize how many years. I’m 56 years old so I have 39 years.

Yeah, somebody else is saying they have 45 years. Yeah, somebody else is saying they have 30 years. Somebody else is saying they have 50 years. So we need to write down and be aware. Now, if you have 45 years, what do you want to do with that time?

Donna: Exactly. We’re planning for retirement, why not plan for pleasure?

Sonia: I know. I love that. Planning for retirement. Yes, you have retirement parties and you plan for anniversaries and stuff like that. I totally want to plan for this. Yes, any more questions coming?

Donna: Yeah. Someone says, “What thoughts can I think to increase my libido? I want to initiate sex with my boyfriend but never have the drive.” There might be a couple of things in there, but libido, initiation. And I would ask, on one hand I would also be a little curious about where this attendee is on that scale age wise, even a range. Are you 20 to 30, 40 to 50? Because that could actually also shed a little light on things.

Sonia: Yeah. She’s in her 50s. So let’s break this down. What thoughts can I think to increase my libido? I love this question? First of all, what I love about this is an understanding that you can impact your libido. It’s not something that’s fixed and you have no say in it. It’s very flexible. It might look different than it did in the past and that’s okay. We do talk about the more responsive type of libido versus the, what is the word?

Donna: Spontaneous.

Sonia: Spontaneous. Yeah, the spontaneous.

Donna: It just came out here.

Sonia: So with the spontaneous, that’s what we’re taught is the only type of libido that’s out there. But we have to be aware that there’s a spontaneous one where your mind’s in the mood, your body’s in the mood, you’re like, let’s do this. And then there is more of the responsive one. And that type of libido is where you’re coming from a place of neutrality. So when you talk about… I love that one.

Donna: There you go.

Sonia: So the fact that you want to increase your libido, yes, recognizing that there’s things that you can do. So each woman is a little different when it comes to her libido as well. So it’s an important aspect of this to know and understand what turns you on, what turns your mind on, what gets you going. So I have some Diamonds that tell me what really turns them on is when they think that their partner is very attracted to them, when their partner talks about how beautiful they are and things like that.

Maybe they’re the people that would be more into texting and sexting throughout the day before they’re going to have some intimacy in the evening. If they’re going to have sex later on in the evening or the weekend or something like that. They might be the type of people that like to sext and text throughout the day and say, “I can’t wait till we get home and you’re so beautiful”, and that kind of thing. So there’s that type.

There might be the type of people that are more, I need to really get in my head. So let me listen to some erotica and kind of get it going that way. There’s other people that are into clean sheets or the smell of their partner. There’s some people need to relax themselves. So everybody’s a little different. So the question is, what do I have to think? What do I want to think in order to increase my libido? And so I need to know what is it that turns you on because that will kind of tell you what it is that you kind of need to think and where you need to go with this.

Donna, do you have any other things you’d like to add in there? Because I know you love to talk about libido, too.

Donna: Yes, I do love to talk about libido because there really are a number of things that can impact libido. I love that you started with, what can I think because you’re taking ownership just like Dr. Sonia said. You’re taking ownership and responsibility. And so you’re not just advocating that to somebody else responsible. There certainly can be conversations with your doctor. Again, looking at making sure medically, physically things are in good shape.

But then the conversation with your partner being mindful, yeah, what do you like? How often have you considered that? What do you like? If the experience you’ve been having, if you haven’t been very involved in it, or if it hasn’t been a great experience, then you may not be interested in doing that again. There are restaurants we go to that are total do-overs and we enjoy and there are some we try and no thanks. So are you having experiences or have you had experiences with this partner that you want to have again or would you rather do the laundry?

And then how can you create the experience that you want and so let’s be mindful as opposed to, well, I just should want sex. Okay, how about good sex? How about fulfilling sex where you feel fulfilled? I had to say that slow and carefully, where you feel fulfilled and are not just there for them or because they want it.

So a number of those factors and certainly that’s something that we get to talk a lot about in the Lit Clit Club and can counsel on if you want, I mean coach on kind of thing on a variety of things that can impact libido. But yeah, being mindful, taking accountability, exploring what would be adventurous, would be good sex, would be adventurous sex. If you define it, then you can move towards it. What would you like to have happen?

Sonia: So that person’s also saying, “I’m just not turned on. I’m attracted to him. Do you think HRT will help?” So HRT, which is hormone replacement therapy, that’s something that’s systemic and we usually tell people that’s something you take by mouth or a patch and it’s something that the hormones are throughout your body. So we always say, check in with your gynecologist on that. While you’re checking in with them on the HRT ask them about testosterone because that can impact libido as well.

A lot of women don’t realize that we have a lot of androgens in our body as well as estrogen and progesterone. And when we are getting older and going through menopause and things like that, our hormones are tanking. And we actually lose a lot of testosterone, and that’s something that we don’t make tons of it in our body, but it is something that’s important in our body as well.

So also check-in with your gynecologist or your doctor concerning testosterone and see if that can help with things like that. So sometimes HRT can help some people and other times it doesn’t necessarily. Sometimes people will choose to add on a little testosterone to see if that helps out. But then there’s also your vulva health. And we always talk about your vulva health. There’s the systemic, but then there’s also the localized estrogen where it would be a cream that you would put on your vulva.

A lot of people will talk about estrogen replacement, vitamin E replacement essentially, and it’s cream or a little pill, or it’s a ring, a little ring that you stick inside of your vagina. And so people get fixated on the vagina and they don’t realize that we actually need the estrogen cream on our vulva. So if you’re talking to your providers, then ask them about also cream on the vulva because our tissues start to atrophy and get thinner and it might be painful. We might not have as much moisture or lubrication as we did previously.

We may get, when we decrease estrogen then also the nerve endings are not, they don’t feel the sensations the same way and you might need stronger and stronger stimulation. So if you’re noticing that you need stronger and stronger stimulation, you used to be able to use a little vibrator, now you need a big ass wand in order to feel the same type of vibration, the same type of orgasm. Then it’s probably having to do with the decreasing estrogen that’s happening in your vulva area. So these are things to all be aware of.

So there’s the systemic HRT. There’s the localized HRT. We definitely need to keep our vulva nice and safe and happy. And [crosstalk] something on my podcast when we were talking about genitourinary syndrome of menopause. So this is something for women to be aware of as well. So you can go back to my podcast. I think it’s about maybe four podcasts back. And I’m interviewing Kelly Casperson and we’re talking about HRT and genitourinary syndrome in menopause and all those fun things.

But yes, go talk to your doctor about that. Let’s see. I know that there are some extra questions in here and some extra comments. So another person said they’re 73 and they anticipate living until at least 103. I love that. That is so good.

Donna: You go. You go.

Sonia: So yeah, so that’s the number of years that you’ve got there. So we have lots of time to make sure that we’re getting the pleasure, to optimize our pleasure. So definitely optimize and this is not about whether you have a partner or not because you always have a lover. Your best lover should always be yourself. You should always know about your body, how it responds. You get to go on this exploration. So Donna talked about adventures. We get to go on adventures and so I love that, that you get to go on this adventure.

I love the fact that you’ve got almost 30, 29 more years of intimacy ahead of you. So let’s celebrate that and let’s make it exactly what you want it to be.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast. If you enjoy Dr. Sonia’s fun and caring approach to sexual intimacy, head to soniawrightmd.com to learn more.