Bez Stone In this episode, SLSP host Tatiana Berindei joins writer and sex coach Bez Stone in a dynamic conversation about how to save your relationship. Tune in to hear some key information and concrete things you can do if your relationship is struggling. Bez even shares with us her strong (and somewhat surprising) opinions on the topic of foreplay. You don’t want to miss this one!

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me Bez Stone. I’m really excited to have her here. We are going to be discussing how to save your relationship, which is a very nuanced topic and we’re going to dive into some really interesting trajectories today around it. Let me tell you a little bit about Bez before we get started. Bez Stone is a Stanford educated writer, a certified sex coach and an authority in women’s sex and sexuality. She is sought after nationally by couple, women and groups and has helped thousands of people reclaim sexual passion and connection. She was one of the first speakers to say clitoris on the Ted Ex stage and has strong opinions about foreplay and everything else to do with women and sex. She lives with her family in the California Bay area. Welcome to the show, Bez.

Thank you, so happy to be here.

Yeah. So before we dive into all of these juicy topics that we have before us today, will you tell our listeners what your superpowers are?

I have a huge capacity for investigating things that are happening in my life.

Yeah, I love that question. So the three superpowers that I wanna say right now are, one, my curiosity. I have a huge capacity for investigating things that are happening in my life, wondering why they’re happening, wondering about the possibilities of them, getting curious about other people, in particular my partner and my kids and that’s definitely one of my superpowers. Another superpower of mine is my ability to change. I can change on a dime, make a total 180, pivot, disrupt whatever the current jargon is about that. That is how I was created and I can change very easily, which has led me down all sorts of incredible twists and turns in my life, my relationships and career.

And the third one is that I have a really big appetite. And I believe that having a big appetite is one of the most misunderstood superpowers, particular for women. We can talk lots more about that because I do think it has a lot to do with our topic as well.

Yeah, can you say a little more about that?

Yeah. Well, it’s one of the things that I believe is really native for the feminine. I don’t know how you talk about gender on this podcast but for those of us who identify as women or who identify more with the feminine aspect of the universe having an appetite is inherent to who we are. We want to experience life, we like to eat, we wanna feel, we wanna engage with the world and, in general, having a big appetite is a marker of wanting things and wanting things is one of the primary ways that I believe that we can help our lives, our relationships and help ourselves feel more fulfillment. I think that desire and the desire inherent in this I have a big appetite, I want more, I want better, is actually really fundamental for creating the kind of changes that someone who is wanting to save their relationship might be after.

I love you so much. Truly that is one of the best things I think anyone has ever said.

Love it. It’s true.

Yeah.

I know.

Yeah, well, because it totally turns this idea that is rampant in the spiritual community about desire being a bad thing.

I know that is totally a place that I have gotten stuck in my journey because I’ve been exposed to so many teachings along the path that have this underlying message. I mean, I’ve also been exposed to other teachings that I tend to gravitate towards more that talk about we’re actually gonna be doing it, a Facebook Live on it today, about …

Oh cool.

… hedonism and the spiritual path. So I just love that you said all of that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s something that I really believe in. I get that on multiple fronts most of us have been trained away from knowing what we want even and certainly from saying what we want. We’ve been trained away from it when it comes to food in that having a big appetite literally, physically, for food and the consequences of having a big appetite are not viewed as favorable in our society, especially for women. So there’s a constant message that most of us, I feel grateful that this is changing, but that most of us or many of us inherited from a young age that being thin is better, being less demanding is better, wanting less is better, sort of being moderate when it comes to food but also to your desires, whatever they may be.

Yeah.

And from my perspective as a tracker of great relationships and also a teacher of Chuck’s, you wanting something is, like I said, it’s the most helpful thing you could ever do for your life.

Because in the absence of having a desire, nothing happens. There’s nothing wrong, right? Instead of creating fulfillment for yourself and for your partner and in your relationship and what happens for me at least and what I’ve observed in other people is that we go on auto-pilot, we go on auto-pilot of what we’ve seen, what we’ve heard, what we think is normal, what we think is reasonable and while that can be fulfilling depending on who you are, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re thinking about saving your marriage or your relationship then most likely that automatic seeing is not working for you.

Yeah, totally, totally. And I think, I just wanna throw out there because I think there’s a difference between having desire and having attachments to outcome.

Definitely.

And I think it’s really important to name that, you know? Because I think one, one creates abundance and fulfilment and another creates a lot of suffering.

Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up because on every front that I imagine we’re gonna touch into today or that we already have even that attachment is unfulfilling and it’s also not hot. When it comes to sexuality in particular, feeling more attracted to your partner, feeling more attractive to your partner, desire, raw desire, is one of the most attractive things that I know of and I have some explanatory stories I can tell you about this from working with people that are coming to mind right now, desire’s super attractive. It almost always feels good to hear when it’s expressed without attachment. And when it’s expressed with attachment it suddenly becomes pushy, creepy, demanding, scary.

Yeah, but it doesn’t feel good. So there’s that aspect of what you’re talking about that I do think is so important to unpack, that there’s a big difference between yeah, I want this and I want this and I better get it, right? Those are very different energies and will yield different results.

Yeah.

The second piece of that, that I think is really important when talking about sex in particular and relationship is that there’s a huge difference between me acknowledging my desire, feeling it, letting it be true, speaking it to myself of even to my partner and acting on that desire. So those are two totally different muscles, right? It’s like, I don’t know, chewing and swallowing. They’re two different parts of the process so it’s not a good example. Let’s see if I can think of a better one. They’re two different parts of something, the difference between desire and chewing and swallowing is that desire, the second part, is optional, right?

Right.

I have a practice of really saying yes internally to my desire no matter what it is.

I have a practice of really saying yes internally to my desire no matter what it is. I let it be true. I may want chocolate cake and I say, “God, I really want chocolate cake right now. That sounds so good.” But do I go eat it? Not necessarily. Sometimes but not always.

Yeah.

I then weight the consequences of, do I actually wanna follow through with this or not? And sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I may say, God, I wanna stay up all night and have crazy wild sex with you or I want a divorce you or I wanna have sex with someone else. Or whatever my impulse is that’s coming through me, I just wanna run away from my children. I don’t wanna be a mother right now. This happens to me often and I let that be true, right, rather than fight it and think, oh bad Bez. Slap, you shouldn’t think that. I did, that’s what happened. I let it be true but then the choice point, whether I actually follow through with that, they’re not as completely different than having the desire itself. And I think why this matters so much for me and why it comes up around this topic is that usually, in my experience in working with thousands of couples, when couples are struggling or one person’s struggling or is aware that they’re struggling in a relationship almost always there’s a big backlog of unexpressed desire.

Unexpressed truth of all kinds but particularly unexpressed desire and it’s so often I hear that people of all genders don’t wanna say what our desire is because we’re afraid. We’re afraid it’ll offend our partner, we’re afraid that we can’t have it so what’s the point of speaking it.

We’re afraid that’s it gonna ruin our lives, we’re afraid, ironically, that it’s going to ruin our relationship even when our relationship is not working that well for us to begin with.

Yeah. Okay, we’re totally going to dive into this more. We do have to go to a quick break before we do but obviously there’s a lot to discuss here and I just wanna reiterate how much I love you.

I love you too.

Thank you. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work and what you’re up to?

Yeah, sure. So you can go find me on the web at bezstone.com, my first name Bez, my last name Stone, .com. You can also find me on Facebook, I’m active there and I enjoy talking with people. I work with couples. I do private coaching and run programs that support couples in having extraordinary sex, particularly if sex is the thing that’s causing you problems in your relationship, that’s where I come in. I, also, like I was telling Tatiana before the break, just am embarking upon some fiction writing after a big life change that happened for me last summer. So stay tuned for that too, I’m actually working on women’s sexual empowerment thrillers. I wanna create a whole new genre of thrillers and more.

I am so excited to be on this.

Sexual empowerment thrillers.

Yes.

So stay tuned for that.

Yes, totally.

Yeah.

All right.

Awesome.

We’re gonna go to break and when we come back we’re gonna unpack more about how to save your relationship. So stay tuned.