Do you ever feel like a failure at sex?
In this episode, I’ll be breaking down why perfectionism is the enemy of good sex and how you can build a virtuous cycle of intimacy with small, consistent wins. I’ll share real stories, practical strategies, and a fresh way to think about sex that takes the pressure off and brings the pleasure back.
If you’re ready to ditch the pass fail mentality in the bedroom and start experiencing deeper connection with your spouse, you won’t want to miss this episode.
Resources:
Intimately Us app (free and paid versions) – a fun and easy way to increase novelty, get education, and increase communication and connection.
Free Masterclass: How to Fix Mismatched Sex Drives in Your Marriage (Without Therapy or Pressure) – Get a jumpstart in overcoming desire obstacles
Couples Retreat – An intensive, romantic, and life-changing weekend that will strengthen your marriage and sexual intimacy.
Get Your Marriage On Program – The perfect solution for couples to get the education from the retreat but on your own timeline. Besides education, you get the benefit of one-on-one coaching, group coaching, and a community to support you in your journey. Small group cohorts within this program also offer intensive help and support. New men’s and women’s small groups are starting in January!
Guides and workshops – Inexpensive learning opportunities about specific topics to improve your marriage and sex life.
Private Facebook group – Christian Couples Improving Sex and Intimacy
Let us help you get results like these amazing couples!
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
Dan: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt like if sex wasn’t great, you failed or you failed your spouse somehow? Like if everything doesn’t go perfectly or if the littlest thing derails you, it just even wasn’t worth it. You’re not alone. So many couples unknowingly set themselves up for disappointment by thinking sex has to be a certain narrow way in order for it to even be worthwhile, when what actually leads to a fulfilling, passionate love life is something totally different.
In this episode, I’ll be breaking down why perfectionism is the enemy of good sex and how you can build a virtuous cycle of intimacy with small, consistent wins. I’ll show a I’ll share real stories, practical strategies, and a fresh way to think about sex that takes the pressure off and brings the pleasure back.
If you’re ready to ditch the pass fail mentality in the bedroom and start experiencing deeper connection with your spouse, you won’t want to miss this episode.[00:01:00]
Before we dive in, we just concluded our 14 days of Sextimacy Challenge through the Intimately Us app, and I want to thank everyone that has participated. Can you believe it? This year, we had over 7, 000 couples compete for our prizes, and it has been a fantastic turnout. The feedback has been very positive, and I hope that as you take time every day to build these habits of connection and pleasure in your marriage, that you will also Also grow intimately together as a couple, you’ll find deeper connection, more pleasure, more joy in sex and intimacy and everything involved in making your marriage so strong.
It’s an unbreakable bond between you and your spouse. So thank you for participating and look forward to, and I look forward to working with, and I look forward to inviting you to our future challenges that we have planned [00:02:00] this year. They’re going to be absolutely phenomenal.
Allison, as you edit this, I want to mention the following. So if you can splice this in this year for our grand prize, we gave away airfare for two to a lucky couple to anywhere in the United States. So this wasn’t some small contest. This was a big deal, and I’m grateful for your active participation.
In about six weeks from the time that I recorded this, we’ll be doing our in person couples retreat in sunny and beautiful Southern Utah. This is an excellent place opportunity for a couple that wants to grow deeper and stronger in their marriage. It’s ideal for a couple that would say, yeah, we have a pretty good marriage, but when it comes to sex and intimacy, we wish things were a little bit better there.
And this is going to be just that. Now, [00:03:00] of course, the focus isn’t all just about sex as in like, techniques and things like that. It’s about intimacy, doing a deep dive into your relationship, your dynamic, and how all of those things affect your marriage. So it’s an excellent four day, four night deep dive into everything to do with intimacy in your marriage.
And it’s also balanced with a lot of fun and it’s limited to just a small number of couples and we have one spot left. So if you want to claim this last spot, you better hurry up. All the details are on our website at get your marriage on. com.
A few years ago, I was wide awake, and it was after midnight. I was laying next to my wife, who had fallen fast asleep, and there I was again, feeling like a sexual failure. And I felt so far away from my wife, even though we were still naked and physically close together on the bed. We had just had another sexual encounter [00:04:00] that didn’t go well, and I was really disappointed.
You see, I had been tracking how often we’ve been having sex on the calendar, like I think a lot of couples do. And I’d have a special symbol that meant, you know, whether or not I had an orgasm or she had an orgasm and so on. So I was tracking these things on the calendar. And as I was flipping through the calendar, I realized that my wife didn’t have orgasms as frequently as I thought she ought to have.
And that took it upon me to mean I wasn’t a good enough lover. So around that time, I really invested in how to up my game, up my skill, in being a better lover in bed. Part of this was fueled by our differences in sexual desire. In our marriage at the time, I had higher desire for sex than her, and convincing her to have sex was a bit of work on me.
on my part. So I thought if sex was more pleasurable for her, if she had more orgasms, then she would say yes to sex more often. So [00:05:00] I had these two strong reasons why I wanted to really pursue sex more and to make it more pleasurable for my wife. The thing is, the more I focused on my wife having an orgasm and sex, the worst my, what do you call it, batting average became.
Uh, it was, um, It just got worse, and I don’t blame my wife. She probably felt like a project, and there was all this enormous pressure. And I feel like if the littlest thing derailed us in sex, like she got distracted because there was a knock on the door, or something from our kids, or something, I, it would just ruin the evening.
It wasn’t great for us. And so, uh, our sexual encounters were usually filled with feelings of a lot of failure. And then as we keep pursuing, trying to make this better. Yeah.
So while still trying to pursue this and [00:06:00] make things better sexually for her, I started to experience, well,
and every time we get into our, um, Every time we’d start a sexual encounter, I would think, I hope this time is one of those lucky times. Everything’s going to work out. And there’s enormous pressure on me to perform even to the point where I started to experience some physical sexual dysfunction myself.
And I was so embarrassed that my member wasn’t working the way I wanted it to, that I started to avoid sex, even when my wife advanced and initiated, which was really out of character for me. And what we had done is we set up sex to kind of be this pass, fail experience, and it wasn’t good for either of us.
I’ll tell you how that story concluded as you listen to this episode, but first I don’t think my story is unique. I talked to another couple recently and this in this marriage, it’s their second [00:07:00] marriage and sex didn’t go off very well at the beginning. She felt a lot of pressure to perform and to impress her new husband, and he struggled to keep his penis up, and she took his lack of erectile ability personally, like, as a sign that he really wasn’t attracted to her, when that wasn’t the case at all.
Either way, these meanings kept interfering with them. Able to have a good sex so sex for them became pass fail as well There was a lot of unspoken expectations that sex should look a certain way So as a result they started to avoid sex sex became less frequent and think about it. It’s like the cycle, right?
What happens is, you set up a pattern where sex, you have a lot of pressure that sex needs to go well, you have sex and it doesn’t go well, you feel bad, you hate feeling bad, and a good way to deal with feelings when you feel bad is to avoid them. So, you and your spouse [00:08:00] avoid sexual encounters, or you avoid having sex in that particular way.
But if you avoid it long enough, you start feeling like, uh oh, things aren’t right, we need to fix this. So then, you have sex again, but before you go into that sexual encounter, the bar is set so high, expectations are set so high that it has to go just right, just go perfect this time. And because the expectations are high, you have a lot of room to fail.
And of course you fail and you both feel even worse off afterward and you avoid it even more. So, and then the cycle repeats to the point where couples actually stop having sex. They form sexless marriages or marriages where sex isn’t as frequent at all like they used to be. And then they scratch their heads and wonder, what went on?
What’s going on here? We need some help. So, this is a vicious cycle and it’s all about avoiding, um,
So I want to talk today [00:09:00] about how to avoid this vicious cycle and instead focus on a virtuous cycle instead of chasing perfect
So here’s the premise of my whole message today. Instead of chasing perfection in the bedroom, what you want to do is build momentum with small, consistent wins. And in order to do this, you need a few key mindset shifts, which we’ll be talking about today. The first is, when you go into sex, instead of thinking,
There are some key mindset shifts to make in order to have virtuous cycles in your marriage. Rather than making sex a pass fail experience for you and your spouse, what you want to do is think instead is, what is something small, completely doable, that will almost guarantee a win for us that’s not pass fail, and something we can do consistently?
And if you can build on top of little wins [00:10:00] over time consistently, you’re going to have much more success and it’ll create a virtuous cycle of closeness and connection and pleasure rather than one of feeling like a failure and that of avoidance. Also, another key mindset shift I want to talk about today is instead of viewing sex as something discreet, that is, it’s black and white, we did it or we didn’t.
What if you viewed sex or your sexual encounters kind of on a spectrum of arousal and pleasure and fun, and what if you viewed it as more of an ongoing connection and conversation rather than something just so discreet like we did or didn’t pass or fail. There is something amazing about consistency and I’ve talked about this before.
I live three hours from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and 45 minutes from Zion National Park. Two very popular national parks with amazing views. And these deep canyons were carved with water. Just a small amount of water, over [00:11:00] time, carved these immense canyons. beautiful canyons. There’s something about consistency.
Little things done over time with the right momentum can do huge things in your marriage. This is why one amazing night once every few weeks won’t be enough to create the momentum you need. What you need is regular wins, consistent, pleasurable and connection times that will turn things into a virtuous cycle.
So let’s talk about how to build a virtuous cycle for you and your spouse in your marriage. And I want to give you three practical ways to do this. Number one is orgasm isn’t the measure of success or failure anymore.
The first is to change the mindset around how you view a sex, a successful sexual encounter. And it is [00:12:00] to ditch the idea that orgasm is the only measure of a successful sexual experience. This past weekend, my wife Emily, and I had a wonderful experience teaching at our virtual lovemaking retreat. We had, uh, dozens of couples from all over the world join us for this weekend where we taught a very specific sexual technique, uh, a practice, more like, and we gave them sexy homework to do across three sessions.
Uh, one of the exercises we gave them is actually a mindfulness exercise. It’s about becoming more tuned in to your sensations while doing an erogenous zone touching exercise. Pretty amazing. Don’t you think? I taught the group about secondary erogenous zones, and these are the non genital areas of your body that once they’re awakened, respond to touch in deliciously arousing ways.
And these areas of our body can include things like your earlobes, the [00:13:00] inside of your wrists and fingers, your lower back, your inner thighs, and so on and so on. If you touch these things right in the right way, it usually yields very arousing, pleasurable feelings. It’s super hot and sexy, right? So I teach them this practice, and I give them the challenge, and then I tell them, um, to not have an orgasm that night.
And I hear virtually a lot of groans from the audience, right? No orgasms? What do you mean? This sounds like a cruel trick. You’re going to get me highly aroused, but you’re telling me I’m not allowed to have an orgasm? The point is, I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m just teaching that there’s incredible pleasure when there’s zero pressure to be, uh, I’m just trying to teach that there’s incredible pleasure and zero pressure when you don’t have to perform something, when there’s no specific outcome other than just to sit, relax, tune in and to enjoy the [00:14:00] pleasurable touch as it is.
It’s about being in the moment and it’s no longer about performance or hitting some goal or some finish line. In fact, the only finish line couples had was the amount of time they’ve allotted to spend together. That was it. So when you can make orgasm no longer the main focus of your pleasurable time together as a couple, it will remove so much pressure.
Think about me and my wife years ago when I was trying to improve sex in our marriage. Thinking orgasm was the measure of whether or not I was a good lover or not. Think about the incredible pressure I put on myself and incredible pressure. I put on my wife that if she didn’t have an orgasm, I felt like a failure.
And I took it so personally when, once we ditched that, that was no longer the script for us. It was more about, Hey. We’re here, we love each other, and we’re going to have fun no matter what. No matter what the outcome is, we’re going to just spend time enjoying each other. When that became the [00:15:00] focus, orgasm started happening.
It was a byproduct, but it wasn’t the main focus. And we started to really enjoy sex. It became a virtuous cycle for us. So that’s tip number one. Don’t make orgasm the sole goal of why you engage sexually. Alright, mindset shift number two is to challenge old beliefs about sex that no longer serve you.
You know, hermit crabs, these are crabs that carry a shell on their back, it becomes their home. Hermit crabs, they outgrow their shells and they go look for a new one that becomes their new home as they grow. It’s not that they’re not grateful for their old shell, it’s just no longer serves them and they’ve outgrown it, so they need to find a bigger shell that accommodates them better.
Or think about those Russian nesting dolls, those Matryoshka dolls, where the core stays the same, but as you grow and mature, you gain new insights on how to live more fully by adding on more layers. [00:16:00] That’s the model in my mind. When I say, I want you to challenge old beliefs about sex that no longer serve you.
I recently had the privilege of working with and coaching a couple that I guess you would call them. They’re a good to great couple. They’re in this trip, wonderful transition in midlife where they are realizing that their old models that they had about sex growing up and what was taught to them from their culture is just no longer really serving them and they are Kind of in this middle phase where they’re realizing, wait, there’s so much more for us in our marriage, more depth for us, more sexual excitement and adventure we could be having.
And they’re kind of in this middle where they’re trying to grow to that next level within them. It’s a really exciting time to work with couples that are right in this transition time with her about ready to take off like a rocket to enjoy new heights together as a couple. One of the key things they have to do is make recognize what are some of the unintentional, maybe [00:17:00] intentional, internalized messages from childhood that made them feel guilty about sexual desire?
And are there any ideas that they now need to unlearn about pleasure, or how pleasure is bad or not virtuous, and to surround that? Now, many of us carry beliefs from our religious, cultural, or societal influences that make us feel sexual pleasure is shameful. And I am not of the camp to shoot guns at, or really, uh, let’s see what I’m trying to say.
Personally, I’m not here to go on my podcast and, let’s see,
Personally, I’m not here to throw rocks at church or church leaders, or I’m not here to talk about how bad purity culture is. I don’t think [00:18:00] that’s the right approach, because you’re still shifting the responsibility away from yourself onto someone else, as it’s they’re the cause for why we’re having failure, or not as much pleasure in our sexual relationship, when all along it’s been our responsibility to begin with.
It’s about integrity, Not purity culture in my opinion, so it’s not less. It’s Although yes, you’d have grown up in a culture. You have absorbed messages ultimately you are responsible for your own Way of thinking you’re the pilot of your ship. You’re the author of your own story So it’s about deciding what is it that I want to cultivate and think about that’s really going to serve me well in my relationship And I want to recommend for you to consider that pleasure facilitates bonding in marriage.
Pleasure is designed to bring two people closer together, especially in that marriage context. The more pleasurable your sexual experiences are, the stronger the bond is going to be [00:19:00] between you and your spouse. And you can form an unbreakable marriage as a result. And another thought I hope to propose for you is feeling erotic thoughts, erotic feeling.
is part of being human. God has instilled within us this erotic nature, certain themes, certain ideas kind of peak our sexual interest by design and they can be harnessed and bridled in positive ways that are designed to bring you and your spouse closer together. And for you to have more pleasure and fun in life.
It’s sex really is a gift. It’s for you. My third challenge, let’s see,
My third recommendation for you to create more wins so you can create a virtuous cycle and to shift away from the pressure to more pleasure in your relationship is to redefine what sex is for you. When someone asks you if you’ve had [00:20:00] sex, I bet you think, like most people, did a penis go into a vagina and was there an orgasm?
And yes, that is true, that is sex. But there is so much more to sex than just that. I heard of a couple, um,
I read a story of a couple where due to a really rare medical condition, vaginal penetration just wasn’t going to be an option for them in their marriage. So, they had to learn how to improvise in their marriage and not let this lack of Vaginal penetration stopped them from having a great sex life.
They’re really determined to have a great sex life regardless. So they got creative. They figured out how to make other forms of erotic pleasure and sexual play be what they were going to do in their marriage. And they went on to describe what they had discovered for themselves. And I think there’s a lot of lessons we can learn from couples like this.
If you realize that the way you’re doing sex today wasn’t an option, can you still have an erotic [00:21:00] thriving sex life today?
I’m going to ask that question differently.
I think we can take a page from this couple and maybe ask yourself if you’re physically unable to have sex in the way you are today, are you going to let that stop you? And if not, what other forms of creative sexual and erotic activity can you and your spouse do to continue to build a thriving, growing erotic life?
This will help stretch your mind to think outside the box as to what you define as sex and you can really grow beyond it. And remember, sex isn’t just penetrative intercourse. Yes, that’s a beautiful and important part of it, but it’s not the only part. If real good sex is about ongoing connection and pleasure.
Let me give you a few specific examples of what I mean, and of course, [00:22:00] the list is endless and don’t yuck my yum because there are some ideas that I have that you may not like, and you might have some ideas that I might not like, but that’s not the point here. I want to challenge you to think creatively on these little wins that you can accumulate consistently over time.
That’ll help create a more virtuous cycle in your sex life. Okay, here are some ideas. What if you were to wake up spending a few minutes cuddling and arousing each other sexually before getting out of bed? What if, uh, when you kiss because you’re about to leave for work or leave the house or whatever, you made that kiss just a little bit more extra, a little bit more special, a little bit more passionate, and really breathe in each other and smell each other’s hair or whatever it is that you do when you embrace each other romantically?
What if you and your spouse were to, uh, flirt and play and tease over text messages throughout the day as you’re apart? And what if you build [00:23:00] anticipation for what’s to come? What if you were to make your date nights something a little bit more intentional, like something you’re really going to look forward to.
Put a little more creativity and thought into it so that when date night does happen, it’s something a little more meaningful for the two of you. There’s more going to be connection there and more shared pleasure. What if in your marriage, in your intimate times, you consider more outercourse instead of intercourse?
And by examples of outercourse, examples could be mutual masturbation, that can be really fun, oral sex, manual stimulation, anal play, and so much more. It doesn’t always have to involve your genitals, too. Like I mentioned earlier, We can wake up your secondary erogenous zones to turn your whole body into this huge battery of pleasure where you can feel great sexual excitement from your head down to your toes.
What about other things like dancing together or using touch in creative ways? [00:24:00] Or what if you just decide we’re going to have dessert tonight, but desserts on me. In other words, you have to eat dessert off my body or showering together or other rituals you can make that make pleasurable and connecting time a little more exciting.
Or what if, you know, you define sex as it’s a period of time we’re going to spend together. We only have 10 minutes, we’re going to set the timer, and we’re going to play for 10 minutes. And it may not include intercourse, but we’re going to see how much arousal we can build and sustain in that 10 minutes.
The key reframe here is this, that sex is not just a discrete event. But it’s like a conversation over time. It’s a way of relating with each other over time. It’s about building arousal, enjoying the pleasure of sexual arousal over a stretch of time, over days even. I want to conclude with this idea about finding your home base because be getting good at sex isn’t just about technique.
Technique is only [00:25:00] going to get you so far, but it’s really about investing and loving the core of each other. It’s important that you invest in your spouse first. I was talking to a gentleman just the other day about this and his marriage. He and his wife had married for not very many years and life is busy, uh, careers and, uh, school and homework and, uh, starting a family.
And in this instance, uh, sexually, they just feel like they’re getting further and further and further apart to the point where it’s like, One will come home and the other, they’ll say hi, but they kind of live parallel lives. There’s not a lot of investment in each other anymore. And so to course correct that, you need to remember that it isn’t just about sex.
It isn’t just about, um, if we’re not having sex, we’re avoiding things that are painful to you. But it’s about having the courage to really address what needs to be addressed. This also means growing up [00:26:00] and growing up often means learning how to be more flexible and open. If your spouse, for example, needs to talk instead of have sexy time, even though you had planned sexy time together, they need to talk.
It’s being open to that. It’s about prioritizing connection. and togetherness over just the things you want. And just remember, life happens and it’s a willingness to do life on life’s terms. Also, the measure of a marriage isn’t how good you are when things are easy, right? When things are easy, you’ve had a good sleep, you’re on vacation.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to have a great life. great sexual connection or, or it feel like every, your marriage is great then. But what about when things are get really hard? How do you respond then? That is the real measure and test of the marriage. It’s when you’re tested. Can you still love when loving feels invalidating?
Can you care for your spouse even at times you feel dismissed? That’s the real test. [00:27:00] That’s when it requires you to really grow up and invest even more in your spouse. And I promise the way you respond in the difficult moments can set you up for more wins down the road by building a strong relationship of trust.
So in summary, there’s my key takeaways from today’s podcast episode is chasing perfection in your sexual relationship often leads to a vicious cycle. So stop aiming for perfection. Instead, what you want to do is focus on small wins that you can always do that always have a good result to create positive momentum in your sex life and do those consistently.
And shift sex away from this pass fail mentality, or as an event, as a discreet something we do or don’t do, to this ongoing connection, this ongoing conversation we have. Reframe your thinking that pleasure isn’t bad, in fact, it’s the [00:28:00] foundation for marital bonding. And last of all, challenge your outdated beliefs and redefine what sex means for you in your marriage.
So, as we end, What’s one small, pleasurable thing you can do today to start creating a virtuous cycle in your marriage? If you want tips and advice, the Intimately Us app has the Daily Intimacy Challenge. That’s a great place to start, but also your own creativity will also take you far here. Just ask yourself, what’s a small win we can make that will lead to creating a virtuous cycle in our relationship?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and your ideas. You’re always welcome to reach out to me. We have our private Facebook group that is growing and we’d love to carry the conversation there. That’s on Facebook. Go to get your marriage on and you’ll see our private group there. Also, if you and your spouse would like more coaching on this, you’re at, you want to be in that transition.
Like that couple, you want to grow from good to great, [00:29:00] or you need some help breaking some, um, Uh, maybe some mindsets that aren’t serving you well anymore. We’re helping you get out of this trap of this vicious cycle and start creating a virtuous cycle. That’s what our coaching program is all about. This is something I help couples with every single day.
You’ll find those details at get your marriage on. com slash program, and as well as our retreats and other wonderful things that we have for you there. As always, have a great day. Thank you for listening and share this podcast with your friends and they will thank you for life. Now go get your marriage on.
