Speaker A: Welcome to sharing my truth with Mel and Suzie. The uncensored version where we bear it all.

Speaker B: We do 1234.

Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone.

Speaker C: Welcome back to sharing my truth.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us. It's Melan, Susie, and we just want to give you a quick reminder to rate this podcast five stars and give us a little review about how much you love us, because we do have a little praised kink, me and the old MILF over here. And don't forget to follow us on Sharingmytruth Pod on all of our socials. Go to our website, sharingmytruth.com and leave us a voicemail. You can DM us, you can email us, you can talk to us. We'll answer.

Speaker B: We will.

Speaker C: Hey, babes.

Speaker B: Hello, darling.

Speaker A: How are you?

Speaker B: I'm truly fabulous.

Speaker C: ****, yeah.

Speaker B: But I love the way you just called me the old MILF.

Speaker A: No, I just meant, like, my old friend MILF.

Speaker B: It's okay. I can take it. I'm a big girl.

Speaker A: At least you're a MILF. I didn't call you the old maid.

Speaker B: That's very true.

Speaker A: Come on, you got to be grateful for Grace.

Speaker B: That's absolutely true. Whatever. I'll take what I can get at my point in life, to be fair.

Speaker A: Well, we have a very exciting and important episode today, and we spoke to Dr. Carolin Klein, who I am literally obsessed with, I hope she doesn't mind me saying. They literally have a girl crush on her. Like, I am so obsessed with her. The answers we just had our interview with her and the answers that she gave us, and I'm so excited to share this interview with everyone. It's so amazing what she says about just sexuality as a whole. Obviously, she's a sex therapist. She's a registered psychologist. She's the director at West Coast Sex Therapy, and she's just challenging these normative ideas about sex and the way her opinions mean it's mind blowing, honestly.

Speaker B: I mean, I found it fascinating because it's just such common sense. Yes. The way she was speaking and just sort of common sense, no judgment. It's just enlightening, really. And you just think to yourself, if there was more of a narrative like that in society, how much healthier people would be, how much we would sort of live in a much healthier, happier, sort of non dark world. I really do think that she was amazing. And lightning is really the only way I can describe it because she said a lot of things. Yeah, that's what I think. Yeah. She's just amazing.

Speaker A: I literally am obsessed with her. I blacked out after our interview with her because I was like, I don't even know what our conversation was, but I know it was great. I've been wanting to have therapy for a very long time, and I know that she you speak to her and you're like, I could literally open up to you.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And I've honestly never felt that about a therapist in a really long time.

Speaker B: Interesting.

Speaker A: It's amazing what she was just like. She's so open. And I think that's such an important thing. And most of the sexual community is just we're always trying to be more open, more open, more open, like, find these answers. And sometimes there's just not an answer.

Speaker B: Sometimes.

Speaker A: There doesn't need to be an answer. It doesn't need to be performative.

Speaker B: It's just what it is. We're overcomplicating things.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: One of the things yeah, she said in the interview is like, let's say you like a certain kind of TV program. And do you have an explanation as to why some of those wild sort of shows about crime and **** on TV? Why do you like that? You don't do that in your life. Why do you want to watch that and you actually have no explanation for it? Or even some of the shows like these shows that are super popular that people watch, like Love Island or whatever. And why are you watching this complete trashy TV and you don't actually have an explanation? Or me. Why do I scroll through TikToks? I don't know.

Speaker A: It's just the way you ******* are.

Speaker B: And that's sometimes it's just sometimes something's interesting that is actually not interesting and you don't actually have an explanation. But why do we have to have an explanation? Yes. I don't need to explain everything. And I think society we are a little fatigued. Do you like that? Fatigue?

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: By the idea of constantly explaining every facet of yourself and sticking yourself in these amazing, huge descriptions that sometimes I don't have a full description for who I am and I identify with.

Speaker A: The white blonde malflady.

Speaker B: No, I mean, I was born a female. Identify with being female. I'm heterosexual. I've never really thought outside of that. But still, I have facets of my personality that are not like I don't have an explanation for exactly that. Need to, but I don't need to. But we seem to need it so desperately.

Speaker A: Well, we want answers. I think that's very it's very human normative to want answers to everything. That's why we're so obsessed with religion and all these things like why are we here in general? But I think what she says, it's.

Speaker B: Like, you want answers. Society has told you that if you are not exactly like X, Y and Z, if you're female or even if you're gay or whatever, and you're not exactly like the thing in the box, the description, the ingredients on the outside, then what are you exactly? And it's ridiculous. And I think to challenge that, and we sort of pretend that we do, but I don't think we really do. We don't sort of just let people get on with things. And she had so many interesting things, and particularly, I think what was the most interesting for me is that she was talking about different age ranges of people and that why are people coming to see her when they're younger, when they're in their mid part of their life, when they're older, and listen to the next bit. Listen to the interview. But that is fascinating.

Speaker A: Let's not give it all away. Mel.

Speaker B: No, I said listen.

Speaker A: Well, here it is, guys. We hope you enjoyed the interview. Let us know what you think and.

Speaker B: We'Ll see you after the show. We will.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Carolyn. I'm Susie.

Speaker B: I'm al, obviously. Lovely to meet you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. I know you're very, very busy, so we really appreciate you taking the time in the middle of your day for this. We're going to get into it. We just have a couple questions. But we obviously just want this to be a know, and that's kind of what the podcast is about. It's about just sharing your truths, but making it fun and not making anything scary, which I'm sure you have a lot of experience with as well, being a literal sex therapist. But yeah, this is great for us, and we really just want to start the conversation off with asking the basic question of what does a sex therapist do?

Speaker C: We talk about sex all day mean? I guess my very first answer that I always try and educate people about is that anyone can actually call themselves a sex therapist in Canada, in Ontario, it's a little bit different. I think you guys are in Ontario, and they do have a certification process in Ontario for people who want to be. But the rest of the provinces here where I'm in Vancouver, anyone can hang up their shingle and say they're a sex therapist. So I always know if you do a Google search for sex therapists in your area, you are going to find a bunch of people doing some really crazy, wacky stuff that might be really fun to check out. It might not be what I do. So I'm a registered psychologist, and that means that we've got a pretty ironclad code of conduct, and it means the kind of stuff that I'm doing in the office might be a little different than some of the things others might do, but in general, I'm there to help people with their emotions around sex. So people come to a sex therapist because they are feeling shame or anxiety or disgust or guilt about their sex. In some ways, dr. Marty Klein, who I have the same last name, but I'm not actually related to him in any way, although I know him well. He always has a great saying, and he says a great sex therapist is just a therapist who isn't distracted by sex. Because at the end of the day, we're really just working with people with the painful emotions that tend to accompany sex. Because we live in a society that doesn't talk very openly about it, which is so great that you guys do talk openly about it, because I think that actually goes a long way to helping people that they don't even end up in my office because they start to see that they're normal, that things are not wrong with them. Right.

Speaker A: So when do you think that maybe starts as that they're seeing that or they're kind of feeling shame about sex? Does it start from a very young age?

Speaker C: Yeah, great question. So I would say it starts super young. And I'll share a quick little story. So I'm a mother. My daughter is about to turn nine. And I've shared this story before. Last September, I was doing a forum here in Vancouver, an inspirational forum. I was speaking at it, and I needed to it was on a Friday afternoon that I had to go for a sound microphone check at the theater. And it was my day to pick up my daughter and her best friend from school that day. So I dragged them with me to the theater and did my microphone check, and they sat in the empty audience seats. The summit was going to be the next day. And when I was done, I called my daughter and her friend up to the stage to go out the backstage doors. And my daughter sweetly says, she says, mommy, I wish I could come with you tomorrow and hear you speak. And I said, Well, I think that'd be really boring for you. And she said, why? Because you're going to talk about sex. And before I could answer, her best little friend jumped in and she said, Isn't that inappropriate? And my daughter this is a very proud moment for me as a sex therapist and mother. She said, no, sex can be really healthy for adults. And I was really proud. But it just goes to show that this eight year old right away hears that I'm just going to be talking about sex. Not that we're watching sex, not that we're having sex, just that I'm going to talk about sex. And she's already gotten the message that to talk about sex is inappropriate. And I see that with my daughter's friends all the time, that there's this taboo around sex. There's this taboo about talking about it. They have been given that message loud and clear. So I think it starts really early on.

Speaker B: Wow, that's so interesting. That's fascinating. I have two daughters. They're teenagers, and I think I'm very open. And I think the way they are compared to the way I see a lot of their friends and it's continuously fascinating to me because I think we live in we're supposed to be in a more progressive world, and everyone's supposed to be more open, and it's just not happening. And you're absolutely right. It's coming from what's coming from at home. It keeps getting passed on generation to generation. Doesn't mean it's just crazy. Yeah, that's fascinating.

Speaker C: It does? Yeah. Well, I was at a family reunion in Mexico recently, and I was talking to my cousins who live in Mexico and talking about this conversation. And I don't know, on my Instagram, I put some of it of teaching kids about the ********. And one of my family members was sort of like, well, why would a child need to know about the ********? And I sort of think, well, why does the child need to know about their elbow? Like, these are our body parts. Why wouldn't we? And if we don't talk about the ********, then really again, they're not learning that that's a part of the body that's actually really important for sexual pleasure. And I definitely when I had my first sexual experiences, no one was talking about the ********. I wasn't saying to partners, hey, make sure you focus on this part of the body. So if we're not talking about it, we're actually setting people up to not have great sexual experiences. And yet we want sex to be this thing that's supposed to be fun and feel really good and be really connecting. And instead, a lot of young women, their first sexual experiences are not good. And I'll say one more quick thing about that. I was recently at a conference, and one of the research studies that was being presented that I thought was so fascinating was they were looking back and asking young people when they had their first sexual experiences, how they felt about them. And what you see in the research is men see their first sexual experiences as this rite of passage. They feel really good about it. I'm turning into man, like, becoming a man. And women, they see it as the loss of something. And even our language, you lose your virginity and they see it with this thing of, like, my first time was not good, and I should have done it in a different way or a different place in time. And we're not helping women or girls to think about how do they want it to be. We sit there fantasizing about their wedding day for hours and hours. What do you want it to look like? But we never have the conversation with young women of, well, what would you want your first sexual experience to be like, so that we help them have a positive one.

Speaker A: That's so interesting because Mel and I have spoken about this before is like, I do not remember learning about the ******** or any kind of women pleasure anything about that in any of my sexual health classes in school. And then also, I don't even think I knew what the ******** was until I was like 18 years old. And that's like, way after when I lost my virginity still that so many.

Speaker B: People still don't understand the stimulation of the ********. Like having sex, it's all about penetration. And that even in today's world that people don't understand. That is just fascinating to me. As a Gen X at my age, being 50, like, how can we still be here. I just find it deeply, well, sort of disturbing, fascinating all at the same time, which kind of leads on to the next question, if that's okay with you. The people that come to see you, are they a specific age group? Do you find like there are specific like we talked about, when do these things start? But even when is your awareness around there's an issue or is there a particular kind of trigger point in terms of age?

Speaker C: Yeah, great question. So I only work with adults. That's my training. So I see people from age 19 and up, and I think my oldest client to date was 89, I think. So right through from 19 to 89. Yeah. And what I would say is there's definitely some spikes in the demographic where we will see people come in. One of the prime times is once people have children because their sex lives take a real hit. And at this point, they've been living together for a while, they're into their routines, they're into life stressors. And now kids come along and their sex lives take this real turn for the worse and they're sort of panicking, like, is this as good as it's going to get? What does it mean about us? Are we just becoming roommates? So we see a lot of couples come in around that time where they are struggling with their intimacy. There might be a desire discrepancy, but we're also right now seeing a lot of young men in particular, although I'll talk about women and non binary folks as well. But young men coming in where I would say the impact of *********** and the lack of sex education to go along with it is leading to a lot of distress in young men. So I'm neither pro nor anti ****. You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use a hammer to smash one in. And we use *********** in great ways in sexuality and people can use *********** without good sex education to create a lot of shame and anxiety. So we're seeing a lot of young men come in who are thinking they have premature *********** because they're not lasting 45 minutes, because that's what you see in ****. And we're seeing lots of men who are fearful of their erections or lack of erections because they think they should be hard before their partners even touch them. All these different things because in **** you only see a hard ***** and you only see it lasting forever. You see it hard even when the man's going down on the woman, all these different things, right? So **** plus no education leads to a lot of sexual anxiety. And so we get right now a big demographic of young men coming in. And similarly, right now, the whole thing of sex addiction and do you like sex too much? We see men coming in thinking they like sex too much. And we see women coming in thinking they don't like sex enough. So there are all these fears of am I normal? Do I like it too much or too little? Is my body doing what it should? So we are getting a lot of young people coming in with that. And then again, we get this big spike when you've got kids and then we get them all the way up to 89. Wow.

Speaker B: And if you are 89, if you are a lot older, what kind of suddenly happens that you're like, I'm going to sort of now do something about it? Or is it just like I've been unhappy or whatever for so long, I'm going to do something about it? Or that the society is more open and I can see somebody about it? Is that part of it that people don't even know? Who am I supposed to be talking to?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Those things. I think there's a variety of them. I can't remember the 89 year old specifically, but in general, for some, it is that a spouse has passed away and now they're kind of back to like, hang on, how do I find myself my own sexuality? When I was raised, masturbation was not okay, but is that true and can I explore pleasure within my own body? For some it is that aging sometimes comes with changes to the body and medical conditions and how we don't want to give up our sex life. So I've got a whole bunch of people in retirement age who are saying, hang on here, we're not ready to give this up, but we need to find a new way of doing it. And again, they were often raised with the ***** and ****** model and now that doesn't work so well. So it's like how else can we be sexual together and maintain it? So lots of we want to enjoy retirement and that includes sexually.

Speaker B: That's amazing. And do you think it's what are they looking at? Are they looking at media in general? What do you think is helping them to think or society, the shift in society is helping people to think. Actually, no, I don't have to live like this. I can do something about this.

Speaker C: Yeah, I do think there is a shift. I think there is a big shift. And some things know lori Brato's work with Mindfulness and Emily Nagoski come as you are. And Dr. Lori Mints becoming clearer. I think there are books making their way around and there is more of like, women deserve pleasure too. There's definitely always been still a focus for men and sometimes a tying to their feeling of manhood. So for men, there's often a lot of incentive to keep the sexuality going in addition to just the pleasure itself. But I do think we are getting out there more. I mean, the fact that know, I think I was listening to Emily Morris's podcast and how she was the only podcast back in the day and now there's so many podcasts focused on sexuality. Right? And it's amazing that we are seeing it and despite it being so tricky on social media to get any content about sexuality out, the fact that we have now have access to YouTube and podcasts and everything, I think people are getting exposure to a lot more positive messaging about sex.

Speaker B: Okay, that's amazing.

Speaker A: So we're in the right?

Speaker C: Totally, totally. Yeah. You are creating the direction. I mean, again, I think so many people are going to be listening to your podcast, they're going to be like, okay, I'm not alone with that, or oh, that's a really interesting way of thinking about that. And the fact that the two of you are willing to each have different voices about it and talk it out is amazing because we don't have that role modeled very often. Totally.

Speaker A: Like it's so hard because you want to be able to talk to your and obviously you said you're a mother, and I'm not a mother, but I think they gave me some kind of book from the 70s that I swear to God that to talk to my mother about sex was not it wasn't my favorite thing to do. And it definitely wasn't her favorite thing to do. So we didn't really talk about it at all really. We spoke of everything. You could even think about sex and I was like, I'm hiding this under the couch and I'm never looking at this again. And that was my pretty much sex education from my parents. And then obviously everything else was at school and then I had to figure everything out and I was a very sexual person very early for whatever reason and no one else seemed like myself around me. It was much more like you are this weird kind of slutty, sexy person and I was energy besides maybe the boys in my class or the men around me and why am I kind of maybe the only woman who's completely okay with that? But I was like, why does no one else feel kind of the same around sex? And so that was just a very interesting thing kind of growing up around that. Were you more of a sexual person when you were younger as well?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. The language I always think is really interesting because what I would say is that I am just a pleasure seeker and whether it's food or it's my cozy bed or it's sexuality, I mean, I just go for things. I push myself to exercise because it's good for me, but not because I like it, because there's no part of exercising. That to me is pleasurable. Right? So I am geared towards pleasure and I think as a kid I just was really curious and that is still true today. So you put curiosity and pleasure seeking together and you tend to find that there's parts of your body that can be really pleasurable. Yes, I was interested in sexuality. Again, I don't think I thought of it as sexuality. I think I thought of it as pleasure at a very early age. And I think it was, as I was going forward, very similar to your, you know, in high school, I remember wanting to think about and talk about sex a lot, and my friends would sometimes be like, well, we don't have to talk about that all the time, Carolyn. And now my friends are used to it, that it is what we talk about all the time. But, yeah, I think now my curiosity is even stronger because people have such discomfort with it, because there are so many nuances of culture and generation and where in the world you grew up. So I still find it super fascinating how taboo we've made sex.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then in your experience and your obviously expertise, what does good sex in general mean? Obviously it's very a personal thing, but if someone has a healthy sex life, what does that look like?

Speaker C: Yeah, in some ways, I totally know what you mean about personal, of how it gets carried out, but in some ways, I would say it's not very personal. It's pretty generic that good sex or a healthy sex life is one that doesn't have a ton of negative emotions or negative consequences associated with it. If your sex life has shame and anxiety and guilt and fear and disgust associated with it during or after, that's not a very healthy sex life. If your sex life leads you to feel more disconnected from your partners during or after, that's not a very healthy sex life. So whatever it is that people are doing doesn't really matter to me. But as long as the emotions associated with it and the connections associated with it are the ones that you want to have, that's a great sex life.

Speaker B: People talk about it a little bit more, but there's still so much shame sort of wound up in it. And I see, like, from my perspective, I have young teenage girls, and I do see teenage boys that that is the way they learn about sex, and their first experience is what they think is going to happen. So that now, obviously, they have so many crazy ideas that they think that obviously sex is going to be like **** because they don't understand, or most people don't understand, that it's entertainment. It is not meant to be how it is. It's meant to be fantasy, it's meant to be fun, it's meant to be entertaining. And that somehow we still don't understand that. And it's so very loaded that you were taught young men just don't know what to expect. So I think that also makes me think that they think sex is, like, such a complicated thing, and that sort of leads into things like fetishes. Like, I think people think that everyone's out there doing all these crazy things and you're really, really boring, and that everyone's got some wild thing or they go to some party or whatever it is they do. So, I mean, that would be my question. Is that actually common, that people have fetishes? Or we like building up a bit like ****, this whole idea about sex, but actually, no, most people are just having not I hate the word normal, but a healthy sex life.

Speaker C: Can I ask you, what is it you think? If you're saying, is it what we think, what do you think?

Speaker B: Well, I seem to think it's a lot about feet. No, feet or people, and I hate feet, so feet or people maybe dressing up in certain personas and bondage.

Speaker A: And what about cuckolding?

Speaker B: Cuckolding? Is that technically a fetish?

Speaker A: I think it is.

Speaker C: Well, so this is what's interesting. I mean, the whole term fetish is one that can I back up for a second and say something else?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: I'm a registered psychologist and it's interesting that it's only in sex that I see people self diagnosing all the time. So if you have any sort of medical condition, you would never go to your doctor and say, you know what, I have diabetes. You'd go to your doctor with the symptoms and you'd say, Doctor, tell me what's going on. But in sex, people come in and they say, I've got a sex addiction or I've got erectile dysfunction or I have a fetish. In some ways, the terminology, everyone's defining it for themselves. And a lot of that's based on societal attitudes and the fact that we again, don't talk about it openly, whereas clinicians would sometimes define these things quite differently. So a fetish, we would say, is something where it is really quite atypical, not necessarily in any way problematic. Like, if you like feet, you like feet, what's the difference? Other people like **** sex and you could argue, which one? Some people are going to be more disgusted by one than the other. But I think in terms of fetishes, what I would say is both extremes are true. I think that on the one hand, people are a lot kinkier than they let on. And we know from Dr Justin Lee Miller's research, for example, and his great book, Tell Me What You Want, that the vast majority of people at some point are interested in threesomes or group sex or gang bangs. The vast majority of people at some point become interested in some sort of power exchange. So the BDSM kind of stuff, those are incredibly common. And on the other hand, what I'm also going to say is people become interested in them. But on the other hand, the vast majority of people coming into my office are more on the side of being too vanilla for their own liking. Their sex has become incredibly boring. Their heart is not racing anymore. They're doing it in. The same way in the same order every night. They brush their teeth, wash their face, put on their pajamas, crawl into bed, lie there. Then their partner comes in, the room starts to rub here, rub there a little bit like the genie and the magic lamp, hoping that something's going to happen and they try and will sexual desire out of them. Out of the most boring and vanilla circumstances. I say this in the kindest way possible. Most of the sex my clients are having is not very desirable sex and thankfully then we can work on that and change it. So I think people want to feel excited, they want their heart racing, they want to feel kind of the titillation of something and then they are constrained within society's bounds to be like, well, that's kind of weird, we shouldn't try this, we shouldn't do that. So they end up having really vanilla sex that isn't very good.

Speaker A: And so can I ask you for maybe people who don't really know or not really sure what is vanilla sex in the way of how you're speaking about it?

Speaker C: So in the way that I'm speaking about it, I would say that really vanilla sex is often sex where they do it in the same order, same way, the same moves that they've done for the last whatever number of years they've been in their relationship. They do it in the same room of the house, they do it at the same time of day, usually the end of their day. It's sex that they believe is sort of like, well, this is the only time we have, or that they believe, well, we're not that young anymore, this is what it should look like. But there really is no true memory making. Each sexual act is as unmemorable as the one before it. And I always say intimacy is about creating experiences together. And so it's interesting to me how many times people come into my office and say they are here to talk about intimacy when really they're talking about two bodies just moving together in ways that aren't great for either of them. I think that vanilla sex is in some ways the sex that has nothing added to it and it is just ***** and ****** or a little bit of touching here, a little bit of oral there and there's not a lot of memory.

Speaker A: Mean. So Mel and I have both been in relationships for quite a while now. So like my relationship I've been in for seven years with my boyfriend and.

Speaker B: Mel, how long have you and Max been 25 years.

Speaker A: I was going to say dating. So maybe I would love to know, if you deal with couples, what's the best way to kind of maybe spice things up if you feel like you're kind of getting into this vanilla sex?

Speaker C: Yeah, great question, great question. Now obviously when I'm working with a couple, it's what's within their values and what's within their kind of pleasure. Thermometer you don't want to get people doing things that are outside their values or that trigger a disgust response. But that aside, what I would say is normally I say to people start with the stuff that has to do with your five senses. If you're kind of getting into that routine end of the night in your bed, all this kind of stuff, well then start to play around with taking away the role of sight, blindfold each other and notice how it changes it. Or put music on again. Early on in dating, if you end up at your partner's house, normally they're going to have music and candles going and later on so many of my couples, they've got no music. And I always think it's so different to have sex to enya versus an African drumbeat versus nine inch Nails versus dirty talk versus sweet loving talk where you just gaze into each other's eyes and tell each other how much you love each other. Those are all different kinds of sex with different tempos, with different amounts of pressure. So play around with sound, play around with sight, play around with taste. All of the five senses is a great way to start because I watch a lot of couples, they go straight for the sex store and it's like okay, we bottle of sex toys and it's just not doing it for us. But that's because they haven't changed the context yet and they're going straight for the hard hitting stuff and sometimes we need a bit more of an on ramp. So that's kind of sometimes where we start from. Let's change the whole mood in the room. The other one that I'll quickly say is the communication piece. Start to talk about what's hot and this part I could talk about for hours, but I'll keep it concise back to even some of the stuff we were starting to touch on earlier. People often have this fear of if I share with my partner this thing that kind of gets my heart racing. Will my partner think that I actually want to do it like a threesome or a gang bang? Or will my partner be disgusted and think I didn't know you were like that, that's not who you are. And the big thing that I always say is that sex is how adults play. And so my daughter as an eight year old and she's starting to grow out of it now, but 5678 year old when she plays with her friends, she never plays that. She is the eight year old daughter of a psychologist. Never. She always plays that. She is like an aerial gymnast or she's a warrior princess or she is a teacher with 20 bad children. Anything that is not her life. And so in sex we know it's the same thing that early on in dating, well, anything is great because you're still getting to know the other person. But once you're 25 years in, you need to have things that are not your everyday life. Just like the television I watch is not people mopping their floors because that's what I have to do at home. So we want sex to be stuff that gets our heart racing, that is somewhat fictional. And so too many people put too much stock in fantasies, thinking, what does it say about you? And just like you guys were saying, I think one of you was using that word, sex is entertainment, like the **** analogy. And so know it's always interesting that people say, what does it mean about me that I like this sexually? And then I say to them, well, what does it mean about you that you like watching Mission Impossible or the Coen Brothers? What does that mean? It means that stuff entertains you and you have more of a positive response to it than negative emotion. So I would say my hint to people is use the five senses and start talking about sex knowing that it's just entertainment. And so go and have fun with your friend or playmate just like my daughter does with hers, knowing that's a play session and it's just about creativity and letting go and getting your heart racing.

Speaker B: It's so fascinating to hear that because so many people get so wound up, don't they? And things that they like and they think people are going to think I'm weird or this isn't normal or particularly like heterosexual men, if they like watching something or they're interested in something to do with other men or whatever, they get so wound up in that, oh, what does this mean about me? And you've actually just answered the question. I mean, it's a bit like well, like you said, I like Mission Impossible. I like this TV show or this film. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't fundamentally mean anything. Groundbreakingly, massive about me, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Whenever I watch **** or something like that, I'm like, oh my God, this is so weird. Like, whatever I'm watching, I'm like, I don't know, is this normal for me to be watching this or whatever it is? And then, I mean, millions of other people are watching this exact thing.

Speaker C: Totally.

Speaker A: And it's just so funny to because I am more cautious about bringing it up to my boyfriend being like, oh, this is what I'm watching these days. Because it's a weird, shame thing that you can have. Even if it is like even if millions of other people are watching it, you don't want to feel like you are disgusting to your partner what's their.

Speaker B: Reaction going to be.

Speaker C: And again, I'm so lucky to have a great group of friends where we were away recently and we all decided to show each other clips of the kind of **** we watch. And I know, so rare. And there was men and women we were there with couples. And I know that that is so rare for people to do that. But then, of course, the flip side of that is you're always thinking, oh, I'm weird and twisted for likeness. And we have no problem saying to our friends, oh, my God, did you see this show on Netflix? You got to check it out. It's so dark or It's so funny or it's so know. There we have no shame to go for the most extreme things. And we celebrate craziness. Like, we celebrate the Coen brothers. We celebrate like, how twisted can you make your mind? Except when it comes to sex. And there it's weird for people to say, oh, my God, you got to check out this **** clip that really did it for me last night. And 50 Shades of Gray was the one exception to that rule where women were passing that book along, which is kind of ironic because, again, it's not a great work of fiction, totally funny. But we got to get to that place because otherwise the flip side is that we have couples who really are calling it intimacy, and yet it's the least intimate thing they do. It's the part of their lives where they know their partners the least. They don't know what they just recently got off to. They don't know how often they **********. They don't know how they **********. And to me, that's like, then how can you call that intimacy? That's okay if that's your choice, but don't call that intimacy. Then you have more intimacy talking about your retirement plans, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. That's so interesting the way you've said that and framed that. Like what you've just said. I mean, you're talking about entertainment, talking about TV or what you're watching. You could be somebody who's, like, watching some weird crime show where these horrible shows where people are being murdered in these gruesome, grim, horrible ways. But we don't immediately think you're a psychopath and you're going to go and murder somebody. But if some guy says he watched gay ****, then, oh my God, that's the end of the world. That means he's gay. Well, it doesn't mean anything. It just means that's what he was watching today. And it's fascinating, isn't it? When you put it terms, it's fascinating. Do you think that great sex or good sex or healthy sex? I don't know if those things are very interlinked and intertwined and in a sort of straight or deviating line. Do you need to have spontaneity or does that no for good?

Speaker C: I'm so glad you asked that question. I'm so glad you asked that question. And I'll tell you why. Couples come in or individuals, and I always ask them, what's your goal coming in for therapy? And 99% of the time, I will hear that word spontaneous in their goals. They'll say, we want to get back to having spontaneous sex. And I'm going to say it in the short form here on the podcast. I say it a bit differently when I'm in my professional role, but I always kind of look at them, and I say, really? You had spontaneous sex like in ****? Like, you were just hungry for pizza, and you ordered pizza, and then you opened the door, and then you were like, oh, no, I don't want the pizza anymore. I just want to have sex. Because I always say the best sex that most people are referring to, that they had early on in dating, was the complete opposite of spontaneous sex. If you've got a heterosexual couple and the man asks the girl out on a Tuesday night to go out Friday night, from that moment on, that girl was thinking about, okay, I got to make sure I have time to get home and shave and shower my let sorry. Shave my legs, shower and do my bikini line and what's the underwear and what am I going to wear? And then she got herself ready, and she had the full on shower and did her hair and did her makeup and brushed her teeth to make sure she didn't have garlic breath from her lunch, and he was doing the same thing. And then they wind and dined, and then they were touching across the table, and then they got in the car and were touching each other's thighs on the way home. And then they were kissing and necking as they were putting their keys into the door. Like, what part of that was spontaneous? Right?

Speaker A: It's a lot of Floorplay.

Speaker C: It's a lot of foreplay. It was a lot of building of anticipation. So, of course, the moment he touches her, it's electric, and it feels spontaneous because it feels like, whoa, I was ready to go right away. But there was no part of that that was spontaneous. And instead, what we now require is that people are supposed to be in the mood, in the middle of changing diapers and cleaning up, spit up, sort of like, well, that's the wrong context. So I don't think spontaneity is accurate at all. I think that even if you end up at a bar hooking up with someone, you got dressed up that night, you got dressed up, and who knows who I'm going to meet. I don't think there's a lot of great, truly spontaneous sex. I think that is a myth we've got to overcome. And as I always say to people, sex is, again, unless you're doing it by yourself, it's a very social activity. There are no social activities at my age that aren't planned. I never have my girlfriends just show up at the door and be like, Carolyn, we were in the hood. We thought you maybe want to go out. It is always planned, days and weeks in advance. Of course, one other thing I'll say is, on the other hand, I watch some of my couples take the idea of planned sex too literally. And they do it like Friday night, 06:00, pants off, we got to go. And I always think there's nothing hot about that either. You don't want to have to schedule dessert and you schedule going out for dinner, and then you see how much you want to eat and you see what you want to eat and there's flexibility there. And so same thing with sexuality. I want people to schedule time, and I want people to schedule preparing themselves, having their shower, brushing their teeth, because all of those things are the things that get in the way for people, where they're like, oh, I don't feel like I'm fresh or I feel like my breath smells or my partner's breath does smell. They just scheduled in, getting ready and having time with each other that is going to create the conditions needed for sex. Don't schedule the sex itself and also don't expect spontaneous sex, right, because we.

Speaker A: Have an entire episode about scheduling sex and whether that does work or does not. And for me, I like to, as you say, take the spontaneity out of it. But I remember those days when you're just kind of like animalistic, way more animalistic about it, and you just want to get on that person and it's super exciting and you really want their **** in you and it's just a whole thing. You're welcome, and it's a whole new experience. And yeah, I find that if you're like, okay, I'm going to look cute, and then it's like a whole thing. But you've seen them all day already because everyone's working from home nowadays and it's just like a whole thing. I find it so hard to kind of get over that. Is there a way to just kind of get over seeing them every day?

Speaker C: All I mean, again, Susie, that's such a good question. And the thing is that relationships, including sexual relationships, take work and effort. They're like your home and hopefully you love your home, but it's not like you just get to do nothing. And one of the things that I think is always interesting is how much we've conflated love and sex. And so people often have this idea of, like, I love my partner, so I should want to have sex with them. But I always remind my couples that birth control only came about 60 years ago, in the 1960s. And before that, could you imagine if we stayed as horny as we were in the first six months of a relationship after 25 years? Like your marriage mal, how many offspring would people have had?

Speaker B: Terrifying.

Speaker C: Terrifying. And your children would have died because there wouldn't have been enough food for them, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So the brain is actually designed that once you have really pair bonded, once you are nest building, it's designed to be like, you know what? We need enough resources for the offspring because our brain doesn't really know about birth control. And so it makes a lot of sense that as we have more familiarity, as someone becomes familial, whether those are stepsiblings, whether those are us and our lovers, as they become more familial, the brain starts to turn down the desire knob. And so we have to strike that great balance. And Esther Perelda is such a nice job talking about that in our meeting in captivity, to strike the balance of how do you build comfort and security, but not so much that you're completely familial. How do you keep the newness and that the individual doesn't lose themselves so that you can still be interested in the other and what they have to say? So COVID was terrible for sexual relationships. It was great for masturbation.

Speaker A: It was horrible for hell. Yeah.

Speaker C: Because people were squished together and became way too familial.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: So I think my answer to you is we both need to change our expectations that love and desire magically go together. They don't. And we have to create lots of newness and opportunities to keep relearning and learning about our partners. Let's come back there to open up the communication, talk about sex differently. That'll do it as well. But if we become too familial, it's going to be a real challenge to have that eroticism there.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: Amazing. It's just to hear it back is.

Speaker A: Just I know the real doctor.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: What you think and believe to hear it back, it's almost like, I don't.

Speaker A: Know, we're in the Matrix or something.

Speaker B: I know. It's just so incredible. And how lucky your patients clients are to have you because it's so common sense, all this stuff. And we're still so wound up we're so wound up in this mess of trying to proceed and be progressive, but we're sort of we seem to go nine steps forward and five.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But it's fascinating.

Speaker A: And Carolyn, you have literally been so incredible for this entire interview. And just yeah. All of your answers have been right on, and I want to ask you a million more things, and I hope you'll come on the podcast again. For now, we just have one last question, and it's kind of a more personal question to you, and that's what is one truth that you would share with your younger self, and whether that's in sex or just in life, what is that truth?

Speaker C: Oh, that's a great question. I'm sure I'm going to come up with three better answers as soon as we hang up. You can see them on the next.

Speaker A: Episodes when you come on.

Speaker C: Okay. But if I think about sexuality and pleasure and the struggles that I watch people have, and that, of course, me as a human being has also had, I would say the one truth is that I wish I had told my younger self, who did at times doubt, was I inappropriately interested in sex? Was there something wrong with me? Is just there is nothing wrong when you are having pleasure that is not at the expense of anybody else, when it is you owning your own body and owning your own right to pleasure. I think I would just have given myself even more permission than I did.

Speaker B: Yes, that was an incredible answer.

Speaker A: Yes, I totally agree with it. Yes, give yourself more permission than I love that. I love that so much because I don't think especially women are giving themselves enough of credit for just wanting to have their own.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we can't wait to have you back on here. And yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Hopefully, maybe when we're in Vancouver, we can get together for a little.

Speaker C: Please reach out. Please reach out. We love knowing our community, and so I would love that.

Speaker B: Absolutely fantastic.

Speaker A: And Carolyn, where can our followers find you and our listeners find you on your social media?

Speaker C: I'm on Instagram, and it's Dr. Carolyn Klein spelt D r. And then I don't know why my parents spelled my name without an E, but Carolyn doesn't have an E, so it's Drcarolinklein. And that's Instagram. Or you can always send me a message through our website, which is westcoastsextherapy.com.

Speaker B: Amazing.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon, carolyn, you've been an incredible help, and I'm sure our listeners will have so many other questions that we'll forward to you as well on our next pod.

Speaker C: Wonderful. Thank you so much, so much. Have a great night. Take care. Bye.

Speaker A: Amazing interview, Mel.

Speaker C: Really?

Speaker A: I mean, we said it. She's incredible. She really has so much to say about why sex in just life in general, at every age, at every speed, it's so important to us and why we need such a more healthy sex community and why it's so important.

Speaker B: Well, it gives me some sort of faith in humanity, to be honest.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, my God. Totally.

Speaker B: It's like that everyone is different. Everyone is unique, everyone thinks something different. And just the way she talks about a lot of different things, including relationships. And actually, why do you sort of have this sort of very intense period when you meet somebody initially and then that wanes, and then everyone sort of freaks out and actually no, that's what biology kind of designed you to do. Yes. Does that make sense? Designed you to do.

Speaker A: Yeah. Biology for sure.

Speaker B: Somebody, actually, to put it in those terms, is, like, amazing. And then talking about things like **** that we're still so hung up on, we're so intensely divided, I think about it, that it's entertainment, and obviously, if it is taken as entertainment and the sort of fantasy realm and sort of an interest realm, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. If it's taken in the other realm, which some people read it completely. That's what it is. And that it can be young people. That's their education. That's all they're looking at. And of course, it's not exactly brilliant, but I thought that was the way she put it was very good, very interesting.

Speaker A: No, I hope we have her on the pod again. I Hope She'll Accept Our Invitation various again because she Was incredible. And I have so many more questions. And if you guys have more questions that you guys want to answer that you guys want answered from Dr. Klein, I'm sure she'd be more than happy to and you can always send those into us. And we will pass it on in our next interview with her. So thank you guys so much for.

Speaker B: Listening again and we'll see you next time. We will. Thanks for listening. Till we meet again. Love ya.

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Speaker B: Get it?

Speaker A: Now go to the link in our bio, put in the code and get jiggy with it.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for listening. Please rate and review this podcast and follow us on social at sharingmytruthpod and leave us a voicemail on our sharingmytruth.com to share your stories and experiences with us. We'll see you next time.

Speaker C: Bye bye.