It’s time for some squirrel sex!

two squirrels (not having sex)

Yep. That’s right. I’m suggesting that you have sex LIKE a squirrel.

Not WITH a squirrel. That’s a post for another time 😉

OK, OK, I’ll explain.

Yesterday I was watching two squirrels play in the redwood grove in my backyard. I know they were playing because it wasn’t the usual macho, fight-to-the-death intensity that two males exhibit. This was more like a frisky, friendly game of hide-and-seek. They went up one tree, gracefully circling the trunk, leapt to the next tree and spiraled down in the same playful way. I was fascinated watching them.

Then the one I assumed to be the male started to lead the female along his special path through the branches of bay and eucalyptus at the edge of the property. He would run along for several feet for a stretch he was obviously familiar with, look back, and she would tentatively follow. I watched them for a few more minutes doing this follow-the-leader dance before they disappeared.

The point of my story is this: As a sex and relationship coach for the past decade, I’ve talked one-on-one with hundreds of guys, giving them suggestions on how to improve their love lives.

A high percentage of men I talk to are anxious, uncomfortable in their bodies, preoccupied with strategizing, and generally do not enjoy themselves very much at all in the bedroom.

Watching the squirrels made me want to climb up on my roof and shout, “GUYS, where is your sense of PLAY?”

I don’t necessarily mean being an adolescent goofball, or turning her off with childish antics. I mean having the self-confidence to lead you and your partner into an open, light-hearted state of pleasure and sincere delight.

I understand that many men have trauma and emotional scars that keep them from relaxing into pleasure like an alpha-squirrel with his potential mate.

And that many of the skills that have made men successful at work unfortunately train them to have less delight in their lives away from the office.

And that if you have ED or PE or DE or STD or RSVP or any other scary abbreviations that it can be a challenge to overcome the tendency toward a downward mental and emotional spiral when presented with a sexual opportunity.

STILL….

I want to encourage you to find a way to introduce a minimum of 10% more play into your bedroom activities.

Start a pillow fight. Start a wrestling match. Tickle-torture her. Pin her arms over her head and growl while you bite her neck.

If things have momentarily gotten stilted, uncomfortable or heavy, put on some light-hearted music. Take a break with a glass of wine or champagne. Make up a song about her beauty and sing it to her. Kiss each of her fingers and kiss your way up her arm. Or kiss each of her toes and make your way up her leg.

Remember this: Your partner was once a little girl who loved to play. How can you connect with that delight-filled aspect of her without ever losing sight of the fact that she is now a fully-grown woman?

That’s the challenge I offer you.

Enjoy the journey, my friend.

Say the One Thing to “Shock her into Love”

Woman talking, Man listening
You know those times when the woman you’re with is talking about something that she doesn’t really care about, and you’re only half-listening, because you know she doesn’t care?

What do you do when that’s happening?

Do you just keep pretending to listen, hoping that her monologue doesn’t last too long, and try to say “Mmm hmm” at the right times?

Or do you get resentful and ruminate about all the other times that this has happened?

Or get angry at yourself because you don’t know what to do to get her to stop without pissing her off?

Well, I’ve got another option for ya.

Most of the time when this is happening — when she’s not so connected to what she’s saying — it’s because there’s something that she’s really wanting to feel or say and she doesn’t know how to get there. She doesn’t know how to contact it.

But you can help. Here’s how.

Interrupt her with something like this: “Hey babe/honey/my love/sexy (insert your favorite nickname here), I notice that I’m starting to drift off as you’re talking, and I would much rather be right here with you. I wonder if there’s something you’re really wanting to say, but you’re not saying it.”

The short version — and you can use this with women who like it if you’re very direct — is this: “Sweetie, what do you really want to say right now?” This is the phrase that can shock her into the present moment.

If she’s feeling defensive, she might try to fight with you when you interrupt her. “I am trying to tell you what’s really happening,” she might say. “Why don’t you just listen to me?” But a good woman will understand what you’re doing and ultimately be grateful that you’re wanting to truly connect with her.

Important: You’re not asking her to “come to the point” or “get to the bottom line,” like you might in a work environment. This interruption is designed to get her to reveal a deeper truth that she’s partially experiencing, but not fully in touch with, or unable to verbalize yet. So you need to be both loving and direct. Both gentle and fierce.

The caveat with this phrase is that you actually need to be ready to hear her deeper truth. If you can do that, if you can draw her out, it’s very likely that she’ll open to you more deeply, both emotionally and sexually.

And that’s what it’s all about, my friend.

Dave Chappelle goes off!

Watch Dave Chappelle ROCK the premature ejaculator label!

There’s a lot to enjoy in this clip, but one of the things I love the most is Dave’s lack of shame about ejaculating early:

“If I come, man, it was right on time.”

Dave gets laughs on this line because men are not supposed to ejaculate early, yet he’s completely owning and celebrating it. He even dares to compare himself to an Olympic athlete! I love it.

Since I’m regularly helping guys last as long as they want to in bed, I can tell you that nearly every man I coach does not think of himself as an Olympic athlete when he ejaculates early. To those guys: Consider taking a page from Dave Chappelle’s book.

How about celebrating some of your ejaculations with a “Woo hoo!” or a “Yeah, baby!”? Sounds crazy, right? Are you afraid of the response you might get from your partner, or perhaps your Inner Critic?

As teenagers, nearly all of us learned to ejaculate as quickly and quietly as possible so we wouldn’t get caught. Repeated hundreds of times, that swiftness and silence takes a toll. Throw in one part sex-phobic, puritanical social norms, one part parental disapproval, and one part peer comparison, stir, and you’ve got a stiff drink called Toxic Sexual Shame. It’s an epidemic among men in our society.

You can take my MultiOrgasmic Lover training if you want to make progress in healing your own Toxic Sexual Shame.

But if you don’t want yet another self-improvement program, just howl like a wolf during your next orgasm. And then notice if any shame arises.

When you can really own your sexual pleasure — regardless of the timing of your orgasm — then you’ve come a long way towards becoming a sexually integrated man.

Kiss her like there’s no tomorrow

Kiss from "The Notebook"

Think about the last time you kissed a woman on the lips. (Or a guy, if you’re gay or a straight woman.)

I’m not talking about a friendly kiss — like a “peck” on the mouth — but a kiss of some length.

Maybe it was with your wife, your girlfriend, or a girl you hooked up with. Doesn’t matter. Just try and remember the kiss itself. 

If you can’t remember it in vivid detail, I have a challenge for you. I want to encourage you to be fully present the next time you kiss.

What does that mean, “fully present”? That means all of your attention is on the kiss itself. That your mind and your body — in this case, your lips — are in the same place at the same time.

And that, as much as possible, you are relaxing your strategic, or anxious, or thought-filled mind. 

Place the focus of your attention on the lip-to-lip contact. On the movements of your mouth and hers. And the sensation of the contact. For the length of this kiss, let nothing else in the world exist. Only the contact of your mouth and hers. Nothing more.

Keep your attention there, on your lips and hers, with laser focus, until the kiss ends. Then look at her.

I’m betting that you’ll remember this kiss longer than you remembered your last one. And chances are, so will your woman.

Try it and see for yourself.

Your porn habit and the film “Don Jon”

Still photo from the film Don Jon

Watching the movie Don Jon stirred up a lot for me. Have you seen it? If not — and if you’re interested in seeing a well-done portrayal of how of internet porn affects young men these days — I recommend you watch it right away.

The movie is about a good-looking guy in his 20s who dates plenty of attractive women, but he has a compulsive relationship with porn. You could call him an addict: He masturbates in front of his laptop (with a large box of tissues nearby) several times a day.

Let’s stop here for just a second. I just love that a movie with a theme like this — one that directly addresses such a “taboo” sexual subject — made it out of the labyrinth that is Hollywood. God bless ‘Merica!

The reality is that giving teenagers and young adults unlimited access to free high-speed porn via the internet is like giving cocaine addicts free and unlimited supplies of their favorite drug. Before you call me crazy for making that comparison, current neuroscience has revealed that the same pathways in the brain’s pleasure center are used for both sex and addictive drugs!

Imagine this: You’re a teenager and those powerful surges of erotic energy are beginning to flow through your body. You turn to internet porn to gratify those urges. If you have a somewhat addictive personality, you might watch a few hours a day for several years. This can’t help but have a profound effect on your interactions with flesh-and-blood women. Not just in reduced confidence, but with effects like erectile dysfunction as well.

Don Jon still from the movieBack to the movie. The protagonist in Don Jon has created a mental composite of a woman who is a perfect “10” — in overall beauty, in specific parts of her anatomy, and in her sexual capabilities as well. Well then! Why bother with a real-life woman when she’ll never compare to your imagined ideal? Even the stunning Scarlett Johansson doesn’t measure up.

I strongly encourage guys who are starting my MultiOrgasmic Lover training to take a break from porn. Here’s why. MOL is designed to reacquaint men with their body’s natural arousal response, and if you’re immersed the training, you’ll find that avoiding the dopamine-jacking stimulus of pornography will get you the results you want much more quickly.

But even if you’re not engaged in my program, I’d like you to consider to take a break from high-speed internet porn regardless of your level of use. Focus instead on the sensations of pleasure in your own body, whether with yourself or when you’re with a partner.

Little by little, you start to reconnect with your true desire — a kind of internal hunger or longing that’s not based on external images. As you experience more and more of this delicious connection with yourself, you’re able to modulate your desire levels more easily. And as a result, you can last as long as you want.

Give this to yourself: Take a “porn fast” for a month — or 90 days, if you’re a hardcore user — and see if there’s a clear, positive change in your sex life at the end of the fast. I bet there will be.

And if you already own the MultiOrgasmic Lover training, now would be a good time to recommit to working through the modules and giving up porn.

Go for it!