The Turned-On Couple Podcast

In last week’s chapter of The Turned-On Couple, you learned about why it’s important to master the art of sexual initiation. I use the term “art” because with seduction and initiation there’s no formula, no one-size-fits-all script. In Pt 1 of Sexual Initiation, we learned the importance of understanding our partner’s experience and why communication matters. Mastering sexual initiation requires a...

What is polarity? Equal and opposite energies are found in every part of nature. Cause and effect, Yin and Yang, masculine and feminine, initiating and yielding, giving and receiving, leading and following, light and dark. Each opposite plays its role in forming the whole. Most of us flow easily between these roles. One moment we’re following someone’s lead in conversation or agreeing to someone e...

Sex and stress do not make happy bedmates. That’s a biological fact. Human suffering, illness, politics, environmental issues, human rights violations, and finances are just some of our stressors. Bad news often comes at us from all directions; conversations with family and friends inevitably end up processing that bad news. Even in our happy moments, the undercurrent of stress may always be prese...

Mismatched desire is the number one challenge my clients bring to me for resolution. Statistically, if you’re part of a couple, there’s an 80% chance you have experienced this or are experiencing this in your relationship right now. “We don’t have sex anymore. I don’t understand why.” These clients don’t feel wanted or desired. And they don’t know what to do about it. It usually starts with accusa...

No matter how dry your sex life is right now, there’s a path forward for you as a couple. Like anything in nature, change is constant; everything has an ebb and flow, an expansion and contraction, a rising and falling. Yet when it comes to sex and intimacy, ebbs and flows leave us feeling confounded and insecure. If you asked 100 couples if they’ve ever been through a sexual drought, 90 percent of...

This is a milestone post as it’s the final chapter of Part 1 of The Turned-On Couple (relationships). In Part 2 we’ll be moving into the subject of desire, the what, whys and hows of desire in long-term relationships. Burning Man 2025 is around the corner. This year I’m packing up my partner and sending him off for his own experience in our Post Office camp. After 5 years, I’m taking a hiatus and...

I once sat in on a group conversation about jealousy. The attendees were made up mostly of people in polyamorous and open relationships. For this group, jealousy is an emotion that requires honest investigation to successfully live their chosen relationship models. Those who choose to have multiple partners necessarily need to learn how to manage jealousy by working together with their partners to...

On a trip to the snowy woods of Northern Wisconsin, I curled up in front of a fire to read a book on Japanese folk religions, a fitting subject for a natural environment that evokes stillness and silence in a busy mind. The Japanese culture is synonymous with ritual, particularly ritual tied to nature’s rhythm and beauty. Shrines, festivals, purification rites, ceremonies, and ancestral veneration...

My partner and I are about halfway through a six-week road trip from San Francisco to Vancouver Island. We’re living, working, and adventuring out of a 19x6 foot camper van we built ourselves, complete with a bed, a tiny kitchen, and just enough space to bump into each other 47 times a day. Thanks to Starlink, we’re still connected to the internet (and the rest of the world), but staying connected...

We are walking, talking, memory machines. We draw information from old memories and apply it to our present-day decisions. Every pleasure to which we’re drawn, every pain we avoid, every relationship dynamic or conflict pulls from these memories to guide our physical and emotional experiences in the present moment. Interestingly, the memories that most impact our adult emotional state took place l...

I used to think I knew who I was, who he was, and suddenly I don’t recognize us, neither him nor me… My entire life, as I’ve led it up to this moment, has crumbled, like in those earthquakes where the very ground devours itself and vanishes beneath your feet while you’re making your escape. There is no turning back. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed A client recently asked me a vulnerable...

I woke up feeling emotionally battered from news footage I’d watched the night before that personified bullying behavior by a politician. I thought about people who currently live (or have lived) with an adult bully. I wondered how many of them were left emotionally triggered by the embarrassing display played out on national television. Bullying can happen in every form of relationship from the b...

Your lights are on, but you’re not home Your mind is not your own Your heart sweats, your body shakes Another kiss is what it takes You can’t sleep, you can’t eat There’s no doubt, you’re in deep Your throat is tight, you can’t breathe Another kiss is all you need — Robert Palmer, You’re Addicted to Love Ask most couples about the early stages of their relationship, and they’ll remember the ease t...

As I said last week, Part 1 (chapters 1-28) of the Turned-On Couple is where the rubber meets the relationship road. This is where you lay the foundation for intimacy and desire to grow. So let’s look at another more nuanced part of relating that be a silent killer of connection. Confirmation bias We all have it. We experience it every day in the news, our politics, our workplace, and (most direct...

As we progress through Part 1 of The Turned-On Couple, which is focused on love and relationship dynamics, you’re getting an idea of how many aspects of your relationship can impact your sex life. Building a strong, secure foundation as a couple allows for honesty, trust and the security to explore and grow together. Many couples will begin coaching with the goal of creating a better sex life. Wha...

As we’ve learned in earlier chapters, no matter who you are or how happy you are in your relationship, you’re going to experience conflict. Experiencing conflict in your relationship is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of wisdom: It’s simply a polarized dialogue between two people holding opposing positions. How we navigate this dialogue is determined by how skillful we are at moving through con...

This is the final Horseman we know all too well. Defensiveness. Every one of Dr. John Gottman’s Four Horsemen (Contempt, Stonewalling, Criticizing, Defensiveness) is a maladaptive strategy to protect us from harm. I’m sure you can trace your protective strategies back through the ages, even to the playground, when you were first introduced to these deadly relationship horsemen so many years ago. “...

Stonewalling is the third behavior in what's known as the Four Horsemen; four toxic communication habits that, according to Dr. John Gottman's research, are strong predictors of a relationship's breakdown. Stonewalling is a form of emotional and physical withdrawal and punishment in which one relationship partner refuses to engage with the other partner in the midst of a conflict. Stonewalling may...

Narrated by Corinne Farago Last week we talked about researcher John Gottman’s Four Horsemen, identifying patterns of four deadly relationship dynamics. This week we’re looking at contempt. What does contempt look like, and how do we tame that wild beast? I remember the first time I recognized contempt in a couple early on in my coaching career. They would swing from language that was supportive a...

Renowned psychologists, John and Julie Gottman have made significant contributions to the field of couples therapy and relationship research. One of their contributions is the model known as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” to describe communication patterns that can predict the end of a relationship. That’s right, based on years of research with thousands of couples, we can predict which rel...

"Couples' conversations range from daily tasks to deep emotions. Finding balance between the mundane and profound is key to a healthy, lasting relationship. Here are three levels of conversation to identify and invite. Get full access to The Turned-On Couple Community at theturnedoncouple.substack.com/subscribe

No matter how well we were parented, cared for, and protected, every one of us grew into adulthood carrying emotional wounds that caused us to form negative beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. (Read that sentence again!) Some of us were wounded in our family home; others were wounded (intentionally) by bullies on the playground, or wounded (unintentionally) by friends. Our trust may h...

Having coached many couples over the years I hope I’ve earned the right to make a few broad generalizations based on my exposure to many, many relationships. For my purpose here, I’ll stick with woman/man pronouns, but keep in mind this also applies to any relationship with a masculine/feminine polarity, regardless of gender. Consider these two statements: Men don’t want to talk about their feelin...

“Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center of the human experience.” — Brene Brown My coaching couples lead busy lives. Most have to really juggle their schedules to find time to be alone and share much needed intimate time together. They’re very effective in getting things done, building careers, organizing kids, and planning life, but somehow these things don’t translate into vulnerabilit...

It’s hard to believe we’ve only been living with “smart” phones with internet access since 2007. Prior to that, if couples wanted to ignore each other, they hid behind newspapers. The old cliché of the man sitting at the dinner table with a newspaper up to his face has been replaced with the couple sitting in a restaurant scrolling their cell phones. Same problem, same complaint, and same solutio...