Have you ever been intimate with your spouse, but instead of enjoying the moment, you’re stuck in your head?
Maybe you’re wondering if they’re enjoying themselves, worrying about your performance, or feeling pressure to make everything go just right.
What if trying so hard to have great sex is actually what’s getting in the way?
I know what that’s like. In fact, there was a time in my own marriage when my determination to be a great lover actually made things worse for both Emily and me.
In this episode, I’m sharing a vulnerable story from our marriage about how my best intentions backfired—and what finally helped us turn things around.
If you’ve ever struggled to relax during sex, felt pressure to perform, or found yourself overthinking instead of enjoying intimacy, this episode is for you.
I’ll share what I’ve learned about letting go of pressure so you can experience more pleasure, presence, and genuine connection with your spouse.
Want to take your connection even deeper?
Join Emily and me for our Virtual Lovemaking Retreat, November 6–7. We’ll help you slow down, get out of your head, and discover a whole new level of intimacy together.
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: At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Simone Biles was the biggest star of the games. A lot of people call her the greatest gymnast of all time. Then during the team final, you might recall this on the news, something strange happened on her very first vault. Afterwards, she put it simply, “I didn’t know where I was in the air.”
Gymnasts have a name for this. They call it the twisties, which I can only [00:01:00] imagine it means you’re really twisted up in the air, right? Your mind and your body lose track of each other, and when you’re flipping and twisting high above the ground, that’s not just scary. It can be really dangerous. So, Simone pulled out of the team final, then she almost, stopped every other event that she was scheduled to do.
Her body hadn’t forgotten how to do gymnastics. It’s just that her mind and her body had just stopped working together, it seemed. But lucky for her, she didn’t stay there. About a week later, she came back for the balance beam final, and she won a bronze medal. Fast-forward three years to the Paris Olympics.
She won three gold medals. Same gymnast, same skills, but what changed was getting her mind and her body back on the same team, especially when it counted. I’ve seen this exact same thing about getting our body and our mind together on the same team in the bedroom, including my own bedroom. By the way, if you’re new to this podcast, [00:02:00] a big welcome.
My name is Dan Purcell, and I have a master’s degree in counseling, and one of my life’s missions is to help married Christian couples find greater joy through their s*xual relationship, and I want them to have happier, stronger marriages as a result of a better s*xual and emotionally strong relationship.
So welcome, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. So I want to ask you, have you ever been in the middle of a moment and your brain and your body seem to just disconnect? Or your mind just keeps wandering, you can’t turn it off. You might be thinking about, “What’s my spouse thinking?”
Or, “Why is this taking so long?” Or, “Is this taking too long?” Or worried if your spouse is bored or if you’re getting bored or wondering if you’ll last long enough and so on. By the way, this is very common and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. In fact, it’s so common that the pioneering s*x researchers, Masters and [00:03:00] Johnson, they gave it a name back in the 1970s.
They call it spectatoring. It means watching yourself from the outside instead of actually being in the experience of it all. Most of us husbands and wives, we’ve, we have, we’ve been there in- including me. Now contrast that spectatoring experience with what other experiences you may have had where you feel completely and wonderfully lost in the moment.
You feel your breath taken away. It’s like time slows down. You feel really connected and alive, and you walk away feeling absolutely thoroughly loved and maybe even inspired. I want to give this a new term now that it’s twenty twenty six . So instead of spectatoring, we’re going to call it the managing mind as opposed to the present mind or being fully present.
And today I want to show you how to recognize, that difference and how to come back to the present mind when you want to. So I’m recording this. Uh, I had just gotten off the [00:04:00] ship from our intimacy cruise last week with 23 other couples and I got to say, we had an absolute blast on our cruise. And this is something we talked about in one of our classes, this managing versus present mind.
And it had a big impact on everyone there and had an impact on me. So I want to talk about it more today.
So as I reflect on this, i’ve been thinking about why I get up in my own head and start being in that managing mind, and I think a lot of it’s because I’m trying to manage my spouse’s mind.
I’m trying to think what is she thinking or guess how she’s going to respond. So my mind plays through all these scenarios anticipating, like, rejection, for example, even though the rejection actually hasn’t happened yet. We haven’t even reached the bedroom, and I’m already playing through these different scenarios.
And for a season in my marriage, my wife and I, when we got together, we were totally in the management mind. Let me tell you about a particular symptom of that. Now, we in our [00:05:00] master closet had a calendar, and together we would keep track of our s*x life on that calendar. And we had different symbols that meant different things.
I know, it’s really cute. We tracked how often we were intimate, and I made a note of who had an org@sm. Around this time, I was also learning about, s*xual pleasure, how to improve technique too. And I admit my motives were really pure. I absolutely adore my wife, and I want to give her the absolute best pleasurable experiences she can have in the bedroom.
I want to be a generous lover. I want to be the kind of husband whose wives might brag to their girlfriends that, “Yeah, he can give me multiples every single time.” However, the calendar showed a very different story. At the time, our husband to wife org@sm ratio was more like thirteen to one. I’m not really proud of that.
And I took it personally that, it was that low, and I made it a personal project to get better at my s*xual [00:06:00] technique. So that calendar, in a way, became my personal scoreboard. And the harder I would try to make s*x great for her, the worse s*x tended to go for us. And looking back, it’s pretty obvious, right?
Like, If you’re a wife listening to this, tell me, how would you respond if you just felt enormous amount of pressure from your husband that s*x had to have a certain outcome, it had to go a certain way in order for him to feel good about himself? Would you like to take on that job, take on that pressure ?
Absolutely not. In fact, it was taking away pleasure and replacing it with pressure in our encounters. So Emily felt enormous pressure to perform because, uh, she thought my ego was on the line and depended on it. So, uh, we had two people in bed that were, and were both in our performing mind. We’re trying to manage each other through our s*x, and it wasn’t great.
Nobody was really there I mean, we were there. [00:07:00] Our body was there, but we weren’t in our body. We weren’t really present. Our, our heads were trying to manage each other instead. One thing I’ve learned about human sexuality is that, and this is something I coach couples about, that I get to coach, is that when you give your sexuality a job to perform, or you give your sexuality an evaluation, it will rebel every time.
I promise. Our s*xual selves want to be free. They don’t want to have to prove something to someone else. Great s*x, by the way, it’s kind of frivolous. It squanders time. It’s even slightly, selfish sometimes, and I say that in a good way, like selfish in a healthy way. for us, during that season, my s*xual performance was being evaluated, and my body rebelled, predictably so.
Using a language only my body knew how to say it, in the form of er3ctile dysfunction, loud and clear. Now none of us were having fun [00:08:00] at all. So what I’ve explained to you is how we get into this managing mind. The managing mind cares about performance, it cares about outcomes, and it is busy trying to manage other people’s minds and expectations. These thoughts and actions activate the fight or flight side of our nervous system and bring an anxious energy to our intimate encounters.
And if you know anything about making love to someone who feels anxious or brings anxiety to things, it is definitely not a turn-on . Now, my friends, in contrast, s*xual arousal runs on the calm rest and digest side of our nervous system. For husbands, an erection literally depends on our nervous system being in that state.
But when we feel watched or graded or evaluated, even by ourselves, the body shifts into that fight or flight and acts as a kill switch to our s*xual arousal. And fight or flight, by the way, pushes s*xual arousal, in a negative way for wives too.
Research shows that for [00:09:00] wives too, that anxiously watching yourself gets in the way of arousal and orgasm . So my body wasn’t just rebelling against my wife, it was protecting me from a threat that my own mind had created in that. So let me define again those two minds. We have the managing mind is where your attention is on controlling something outside of you, something outside of your direct control, right ?
That’s being in that performative mindset. for example, it’s my spouse’s pleasure, my spouse’s response to that pleasure or that touch. What you think your spouse thinks of you, for example . In contrast, the present mind is when you’re settled in your own body and actually you’re with your spouse in that.
Here’s the thing that I think matters. The only truly unique gift you can bring your spouse in an intimate moment is your full presence without distraction, just being there fully and [00:10:00] loving it. Nobody else can give them that. The managing mind takes that away. The present mind gives it and it’s a great gift.
Maybe that’s why they call it the presence. By the end of this episode , by the way, you’ll know how to catch yourself slipping into your managing mind and I’ll give you three specific steps on how to come back into a present mind. Now you might be thinking, “Wait, isn’t caring about my spouse’s pleasure a good thing?”
Absolutely yes. Caring is good. But controlling or trying to manipulate to get a certain outcome , that’s where the problem comes in. That’s when you’re too busy managing things. Caring is all about heart. Managing is all about mind or, or trying to get into their head on things I’ll give you another way of saying it.
I’m a pretty goal-oriented guy, and I have learned that it’s meaningless for me to set a goal on something that I don’t have direct control over. I used to think that I had control over my wife’s ability to cl1max, for example. But the [00:11:00] reality is an org@sm is a reflex, like sneezing is a reflex or getting hit in that spot right under your knee that makes your leg kick.
That’s also a reflex. Org@sm is a reflex that happens in the body when you have the right stimulation. And sometimes for my wife, it is something that she has to do. It’s, it’s not all on me. And that’s the thing that I got conflated. I was setting a goal on something that was never really mine to control that got me into my managing mind.
Now, this doesn’t have to just be about s*x. This can be about your relationship. This can be about, the kids. This can be about the in-laws. It can be about finances or the budget or just feeling seen by your spouse and having deeper conversations, or just wanting help around the house with the mental load and everything else.
it’s all about how we’re trying to go about solving these things. That’s where we get into either that managing or that performing mind versus [00:12:00] being really present. Now, I’ve promised you that, if you want to get out of that managing mind and to be more present with your spouse, there’s three steps to do it.
And the three steps are notice, pause, rewind. And let’s talk about each one. The first is to notice You can’t come back from somewhere if you don’t know you’ve left. So the first skill, by the way, is catching your managing mind in the act. The easiest way to do that is to listen to questions running through your head.
The managing mind and the present mind ask very different questions. For example, the managing mind asks, “Am I doing this correctly?” While the present mind asks, “What am I noticing?” The managing mind asks, “Is my spouse enjoying this?” Where the present mind says, “What am I feeling in my body right now?” The managing mind says, “Do I look attractive?”
While the present mind says, “What feels pleasurable or connecting to me right now?” The [00:13:00] managing mind says, “Am I taking too long? Is he or she bored?” The present mind says, “What is happening in my body right now?” The managing mind says, “What is supposed to happen next?” Where the present mind says, “What would I like more or less of right now?”
The managing mind says, “Are we reaching the expected outcome yet?” Where the present mind says, “I wonder if I can stay curious without needing any particular outcome right now.” Notice that every managing question points outside of you, and every present question brings you back to your own body. Now, which of these managing questions do you think trips you up the most?
Here’s what it looks like, uh, for my wife and I. A little while ago, Emily and I had set aside a few hours just for lovemaking, and I felt like a kid in a candy store. Uh, we were gonna have so much fun, and there was so much that we wanted to do together, and we talked about it beforehand.
[00:14:00] But I was already in performance mode when things got going. Then Emily said something because she could tell I was not being present. I was starting to manage. So I slid right back into the managing mind and, it just threw us both off. Now, I was thinking about what she was thinking about me and, at that point, I couldn’t really be present with her.
Even though I was physically there, I wasn’t really bringing my whole presence to the encounter. Anyway, not my best moment but I recognized it. I was able to notice what was happening and now that we have a language for it, we can say, “Hey, are you in your managing mind right now?” Or, “I think I’m in my managing mind right now.” And that helped, like, us recognize what’s going on. I mentioned earlier today that, Emily and I just got home from the intimacy cruise with over 20 other couples, and one of our classes that we taught was on this concept, the managing mind versus the present mind.
A boudoir [00:15:00] photographer that we brought with us, Lindsay, she told us this principle really spoke to her, and she sees it help her with her boudoir photography clients. She sees it, uh, because her clients all the time come to her, like a woman will come to her appointment just all full of nerves, and she’ll hold up maybe one of the outfits that she brought and say, “My husband said I’d look really good in this, but I’m not sure.
What do you think?” Lindsay can see that she’s totally in her managing mind right now. She’s trying to manage a lot of things like what her husband will think of the photo when he sees them. She’s trying to think, “What will I think of the photo when I see it? What will I look like in this outfit? Will I regret that I wore this one and should I have worn something that I feel a little more comfortable in?”
And so on and so on and so it goes. She starts second-guessing everything and it pulls that dear client away from her present mind where her natural confidence lives. So [00:16:00] Lindsay has gotten really good at helping her clients get out of that managing mind and into the present mind. Like, “Let’s focus on what you have control over, what you like, and let’s go with that.
Let’s not worry about what your husband’s gonna think about these photos,” for example. I see this all the time in my coaching too. People tell me that they’re afraid to bring something up that’s really, uh, you know, uh, vulnerable with their spouse ’cause they’re constantly wondering what their spouse is thinking or how they’ll react.
And it’s really hard to be present with someone while you’re also trying to manage or even read their mind. So my friend, here’s your action this week. Pick the managing mind question that you hear the most often in your own head, then write down what’s its opposite. What would the present twin be? That way when that question, that managing mind question pops up, you already know what to think instead.
Just swap that thought with a new, more constructive [00:17:00] present one. All right, and here’s the heart of this whole episode . You can’t manage someone’s mind or be in managing mind and be really present at the same time. That’s why this exercise is so important. Okay, step one was to recognize it. Step two is pause.
So when you’ve noticed that you’ve slipped into managing mind, I want you to stop for a few heartbeats. take a few slow breaths maybe, and work to find your center again. This isn’t the same as quitting. You’re just helping your body shift out of that fight or flight mode and back into rest and digest.
And when you pause, check your goals. Am I in the managing mind because I’m trying to control something that’s not really for me to control? This was a big shift for me. I told you about, uh, our tracking on the calendar, my performance-oriented approach towards s*x, and how it really got us both in our managing mind.
I gave up the goal of making Emily org@sm because that, I [00:18:00] realized that was really never within my circle of control. I, I couldn’t control whether or not she had that outcome or not. Instead, I replaced it with something I did control, which was celebrating us as a couple, enjoying Emily for who she is and her deep beauty, no matter what outcome happens from the encounter.
Just enjoying the, her presence and being there and celebrating us. And that one shift for me changed everything. In fact, it helped settle my whole body down in that entire encounters going forward. I was less anxious coming to our s*xual encounters. Now, there’s fascinating research on this from the world of golf. Cognitive scientist Sian Beilock studied golfers putting under pressure. Uh, that’s a high-pressure moment, right? The ones who struggled were closely monitoring every step of their swing.
Paying too much attention to your performance is exactly what makes it fall [00:19:00] apart. It’s true on the putting green, and it’s true in the bedroom, a client of mine that I coach, uh, recently shared with me how things were off to a good start at first, but when a knock came at the door from their young teen needing something, it threw everything off.
He could already anticipate what usually would happen with this type of a scenario. He would see that his wife would be wondering about their child and would realize that she’s not being really present right now in the encounter, and then she’d start to worry that he is worried that she is not thinking about things, and she’d try to help convince him that she is trying to get back into things.
Meanwhile, he’s just, “Ah, I see the disconnect,” and he just wants to give up on the whole encounter. But not this time. Sure, they were frustrated at the interruption, but they were happy to tell me that this time, instead, neither person got upset. They just laughed and rolled over [00:20:00] and tried to enjoy each other again.
So here’s your action. Before your next intimate time, set one goal that’s fully within your control, something like, “I just want to enjoy our time together and relax together.” Not based on an outcome. It’s just you two. Which leads me to step three, which is rewind. This is what you do to get back on track when you need to.
I want you to hear this really clearly. Losing your focus isn’t too big of a problem. It happens to everyone. It’s, it’s going to happen. The real skill is getting it back on track when it does happen. I told you about that couple where they had the knock at the door, that they were interrupted by that teenage child.
Another thing they did that night that was a huge win is they hit rewind. So after you notice yourself getting your managing mind and you pause to get back in that, uh, rest and digest state of your nervous system, go back to rewind. Can you say something like, “Hey, can we try that again?” [00:21:00] Or, “Can we go back to the last wor- moment where things were feeling good and connected?
And can we start again from there? Can we back up foreplay to where, the part where it actually was feeling good and c- continue from there again?” So this couple, they did exactly that. They backed up to that point. They felt connected again and gave it another go, and they had a much, much better outcome to their time.
They could handle the interruption and still be present with each other. I told you about the afternoon with Emily and I, uh, the candy store afternoon. We paused. I apologized for being disconnected . We talked about it, which really helped us both settle back in our rest and digest. Then we could just rewind.
We took it slow. We just focused on enjoying each other and being present instead of just trying to manage each other’s minds again. The difference between those two parts of the same afternoon was night and day. When we’re really present with each other, we can actually [00:22:00] feel each other. That’s where deep connection lives, and that’s the paradox, right?
I told you about how, like, back in the calendar tracking days, my body’s rebellion was being too performance-oriented. When I finally let go of my performance, that approach, instead of focusing on my orgasm as the goal, everything got better, including, believe it or not, her ability to reach orgasm with ease.
That anxiety, that tension wasn’t in it, uh, slowing her arousal down. She could actually build arousal because I was more calm and present in it, too, and that’s when things really got better for us. That, my friends, was the technique that I could not read about in a book so I wanna encourage you to pick a rewind phrase, maybe something like, “Let’s try again,” or, “Let’s rewind,” something that feels natural to you. That way, when you need it, you’ve both talked about it, and you can kind of go back to that [00:23:00] spot. Now, I know a lot of couples may be watching this or listening to this right now, might be thinking, “But Dan, if I stop managing my spouse, if I really give up on trying to manage their mind, you know, I’m gonna be really disappointed.
I, I’ll never get what I want in this marriage. What, what about me and what I want? If I don’t plant the little seeds in her mind or in his mind about this or that, he won’t think about it. She won’t realize it, and then we’ll never get to what I want.” Now, trust me on this. You really wanna get out of the managing mind, but it requires both people in the relationship to commit to bringing their very best to the relationship.
And this is where coaching can really help you. Let me give you an example. A couple I’ve coached in the past, they’re in a relationship where the husband has a history of pornography use, but he hides it and lies about it until it comes out in a less than pretty [00:24:00] way. She gets angry and upset, and she says she can’t trust him, and he says he can’t tell the truth around her because she loses her temper.
So they, both feel really stuck, and the energy in their relationship is really spent trying to manage each other. He’s trying to get her off of his back, and she’s trying to monitor his, digital use. And so they’re both in, trying to manage each other, and that’s kind of how the relationship just feels really enmeshed in this ball.
They each fear setting aside managing each other for an afternoon or for a day or for a week and just seeing what presence can do instead because it’s really vulnerable. it means there’s a chance that the other person might not make it, and they, fear that if I let go of monitoring and managing my spouse, something bad’s gonna happen.
But if you could channel all that energy into being more present, you’re not trying to manage [00:25:00] your spouse’s mind, not trying to control them, I bet they would probably get a lot closer to the very thing that they both really want, which is an intimate marriage, an intimate connection because they can actually bring their full presence to their relationship Now, I can explain how to be more trusting.
I can explain how presence works in this episode . But the best way to learn how to do this is by practicing, and it’s by practicing with your own body, using it in real time. and better if it’s real time with your spouse. Nobody learns how to slow down by watching someone just talk about it. It’s like riding a bicycle.
You learn how to do it by actually getting on the bike. That’s why Emily and I are teaching a live class on slow s*x at our upcoming virtual retreat. This is November sixth and seventh. And we’ll walk it through you as a couple at a pace where you can actually practice it in your marriage. And you’ll find the link to this in the description of this episode, and I’ll [00:26:00] explain a little bit more about it in just a moment. But friends, I just wanna ask you, think about the last time you were intimate with your spouse. Which mind did you bring? Did you bring the managing mind or the presence mind?
And remember what we talked about today, the three steps to getting out of the management mind into presence, and those three steps are to notice, to pause, and rewind. And, uh, we don’t wanna bring that anxious energy, that fight or flight energy to our s*xual encounters. We wanna bring the rest and digest, ’cause on a physiological level, that’s where arousal happens.
But on a more deeper intimate level, that’s where deep connection really happens from being present. And remember that presence is one of the best gifts you can actually give your spouse. So if you wanna go deeper with us on how to create more presence during your intimate encounters, join us for that workshop that we’re teaching on November 6th and 7th.
We’re calling it a virtual retreat because you’re invited to get a hotel room or an [00:27:00] Airbnb or send the kids to grandma’s house. What you wanna do is create about 48 hours or two nights where you’re alone. You’ll join us over Zoom. You won’t be on camera. But that’s Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday night, and we walk you through the practice that some call t*ntric s*x.
We prefer the term slow s*x, but it’s the same kind of a concept. It’s taught through a Christian perspective. Anyway, this is another way of saying we’re gonna teach you how to bring more presence during intimacy that, you might actually say, “We’re actually making love, not just having s*x.” We’ll give you specific homework to practice getting out of your managing mind into your body and, and presence with your spouse, among many other things.
So you’ll find those links in the description below. Now, if you want something even more immersive, in April, we’re putting on our in-person couples retreat. This is four days, four nights, luxurious accommodations, beautiful Southern [00:28:00] Utah outdoors. We have the whole resort. And this is a time where we do a deep dive on all things intimacy, both emotional and s*xual intimacy in your relationship.
It’s limited to just 20 couples. It’s intimate, and this is a great event. And now is the time to sign up for it. We’ve sold out of every spring retreat we’ve ever done, and, spots are filling up. So, act on that. You’ll find those, items also, the link to that in the description, or you can go to our website, getyourmarriageon.com, click Events, and you’ll find the details there.
Friends, thank you for listening. Now, go get your marriage on.
