Episode 370: The Science of Sexual Pleasure
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You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Lehmiller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. How do you define sexual pleasure? Take a moment and think about how you would respond. Feel free to pause and come back.

For a lot of people, pleasure means physical pleasure and specifically orgasm. While orgasms can certainly be a highly pleasurable experience, that's not the only way that we derive pleasure from sexual activity. In this episode, we're going to dive into the science of sexual pleasure and satisfaction. Some of the topics we'll explore include the many and varied forms of sexual pleasure that exist,

common barriers to experiencing pleasure and how to get more pleasure from sex, as well as why men tend to expect pleasure from sex, whereas women tend to hope that sex will be pleasurable. We'll also explore the factors that predict sexual satisfaction and how to cultivate a more satisfying and pleasurable sex life. I am joined once again by Dr. Candice Nicole Hargens, an award-winning associate professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, where she studies sexual wellness and liberation.

With over 70 published articles, Dr. Harkins has made substantial contributions to the field. Her work has also been featured widely in the popular media. Her debut book, titled Good Sex, is now in print. This is going to be another fascinating and very practical conversation. Before we get to it, here is today's top three segment, presented by Field. Field is the dating app for the curious, where you can really get to know yourself.

Field wants to help us develop our self-understanding through exploring our desires and curiosities. And in fact, their data shows that 62% of Field members evolved their sexuality and interests in their first year on the app.

To that end, our top three segments are designed to equip you with the knowledge you need to go on your own journey of sexual self-discovery. In these segments, my friend Ashley Weller, host of the amazing What's Your Position podcast, will be joining me and we'll be sharing our top three tips for exploring a different aspect of your sexuality. Today, we're diving into the subject of threesomes. So, Ashley, are you ready to talk three ways? I sure am. All right, lay it on me. What's your first tip for having a successful threesome?

First tip, talk before you touch. Before anything happens, have an open conversation about what everybody wants. What you want to experience, what turns you on, what you want to feel. Threesomes aren't just physically satisfying, they're also mentally gratifying. So making sure that you have open communication before any clothes come off or hands start flying is my number one tip.

Yeah, that was my number one tip as well, right? So you definitely want to communicate about the experience beforehand and set your boundaries. And, you know, I think field can also be a great place if you're wanting to explore three ways and find potential partners, because having a threesome is actually the number one desire on that app. So it's a community of people who are going to be more well-versed in talking about it, right? And that's really where a lot of threesomes go off the rails is that people don't have that communication before

So if you can kind of narrow it down in the beginning to other people who might be a little more experienced and versed in sexual communication, that's going to make it all the easier. Absolutely. So what's your second tip?

Set the mood. It's so hard to come into a room and be like, okay, I guess now we have sex. Play a game. Play strip poker. Play sexy Pictionary. Buy a really cool game and set the mood by creating a really erotic, fun atmosphere.

Yeah, I love that. And I think setting the mood is something that often gets overlooked in all kinds of sexual activity, whether it's masturbation or sex with just one partner or having a three-way or group encounter. Lots of people don't really think about the importance of mood setting and they just kind of jump into the sex. But when you set the scene,

That can make you feel relaxed and at ease and help to deal with potential anxieties and other things like that that might creep into the picture, especially if you're trying something new for the first time, like having a threesome. Now, I didn't have that one on my list, but another one that I did is to think about what you need in order to feel safe in this situation. And that includes feeling safe.

both emotionally and physically. Like oftentimes when it comes to sex, we only think about the physical risks. We don't think about the emotional risks. And when it comes to having a threesome, things like jealousy, insecurity, other things like that have a way of sometimes popping up. So think about what it is that's going to help make you avoid feeling jealous or insecure.

I absolutely think that that comes with knowing yourself and knowing what might trigger you, regardless of how many people you're about to have sex with, but understanding where your boundaries are, like we talked about earlier, but also understanding maybe how you might feel. Play out the scenario ahead of time and come up with ways to deal with that before the situation presents itself. But also remembering you're never going to be able to prepare for everything. So allow it to happen and take breaks when you need to.

So true. And that's why I often recommend a book called The Jealousy Workbook for people who are exploring threesomes or non-monogamy for the first time, because it's a way where you can kind of mentally work through the emotions that you might experience potentially, and so that you'll have a plan in place in case some of those uncomfortable feelings pop up. All right, what's your third tip for having a successful threesome?

My last tip is to balance it out. You don't have to be a part of every moment of the threesome. Sometimes it can be really overwhelming to have two people all over you, and it's really hard to focus on pleasure when that's taking place. It can also be really hard to focus on pleasuring another partner while you yourself are getting pleasured. So sometimes it's nice to just step back and watch the action happen in front of you.

Yeah. And also sometimes you might just need to take a little break. That's okay. Now, I didn't have that one on my list, but I think it's a great tip. But one other one that I had was to have a safe word or exit strategy in place in case things move past your comfort zone. I know we often hear about the importance of having safe words in the world of kink, but I think they can also be really valuable when people are exploring threesomes and group sex.

right? Because it's a way of unambiguously communicating to your partner or partners that things have moved past your comfort zone and you just kind of want to step out of this, right? So I think having an exit strategy can be really helpful.

I agree. Safe words, I feel like should be used in every sexual situation, even non-sexual situations. But when you're having a threesome, making sure that everyone who's part of the threesome is aware of your safe words and knowing that if you say one, just take a step back. You may not need them to follow. Have those rules in place as well. If I leave the room, you can keep playing. Or if I leave the room, I need you to come with me. Those kinds of safety nets in place as well.

Yeah, I think these are all great tips for getting started in terms of thinking about how you might approach navigating threesomes in a happy, healthy, fun way for everyone involved. So thank you so much for sharing your tips with us on this, Ashley. And that wraps up our top three segment presented by Field. A huge thank you to our friends over at Field for sponsoring this segment and helping us to expand our horizons in the dating world and on this show. We have much more ahead on today's show, so stick around and we're going to jump in right after this short break.

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Okay, Candice, let's talk about pleasure. So in your new book, Good Sex, you talk a lot about pleasure and you encourage us to think differently about it. So for example, a lot of people and even a lot of sex researchers equate sexual pleasure with orgasm.

But those aren't the same thing. You can experience pleasure without having an orgasm. And we also know that orgasms aren't always pleasurable. So for example, I have a colleague who has actually conducted some research on what she calls quote unquote bad orgasms or orgasms where you just don't have feelings of pleasure that are present. And it turns out that it's actually a fairly common experience. So tell us a little bit about how you define pleasure. What does pleasure mean to you?

My definition of pleasure is evolving. And a part of the research that I did for this book was looking at all of these definitions. And a paper was coming out that's now published that I talk about in the book about like different types of pleasure. So not only your capacity to experience something as enjoyable...

like a sensory enjoyment or an emotional enjoyment, but also like the propensity of your body to recognize something that is enjoyable and the different types or categories of pleasure, that was new to me. So someone taking pleasure in sexual competence versus their sensations of sex

All of those things for me amount to, does it feel good emotionally or physically? And they can resonate on different levels. And do you have the capacity to know when something feels good emotionally and physically?

Yeah, so pleasure means a lot more than just having an orgasm, right? So, and pleasure has all of these different dimensions to it. You know, it's not just about the physical sensations, it's about emotional pleasure as well, as you described. So, yeah, I think having that broader lens on what pleasure is can be very useful.

Now, when we look at people's reasons for having sex, and there are lots of them, in fact, there are 237 distinct reasons, as my colleague Cindy Meston previously discussed on the show, we see that pleasure tops the list. And one of the main reasons people want and pursue sex is simply because it feels good.

However, sex doesn't always feel pleasurable. And I'm sure almost everyone listening can relate to this. You know, there have probably been times where you had sex where it either wasn't pleasurable at all or where there just wasn't nearly as much pleasure in it as there usually is. So what are some of the most common barriers to sexual pleasure? You know, what are some of the things that hold us back from experiencing more pleasure in our sex lives?

And this is where I think a lot of people do get confused about the relationship between pleasure and orgasm because some of those factors that prevent you from feeling pleasure are similar to the factors that prevent you from experiencing an orgasm. So if you do feel distracted,

then you're not as attuned to your pleasure. If you're experiencing something that's an uncomfortable position, it's probably not going to be pleasurable. So physical pain, and I like Dr. Shemeika Thorpe's work on sexual pain navigation and management. If you feel guilt or shame, it reduces your pleasure for some people. For some people, I've been finding out more clinically that

It feels incredibly pleasurable. And then the guilt follows, like the more pleasure, the more pleasurable it feels. The guilt and shame follows that as opposed to it constricting your ability to pleasure. But those are some of the things that get in the way. So maybe not understanding your body or your partner's body and how they work together. Using sexual aids or toys or tools that might feel too powerful or not powerful enough for you. Those are things that influence your sexual pleasure.

Yeah, so pleasure and barriers to pleasure are very much biopsychosocial, right? So you've got biological factors like what are the actual physical sensations? Is this painful? What is the position? Are there ability issues or other things, health conditions that might be interfering with your ability to experience pleasure?

And then you've got the psychological factors like you can be in your head, you can have feelings of guilt or shame or other emotions. You can have different levels of stress. You can have learned experiences about what sex is supposed to be or how it's supposed to happen that can get in the way of or interfere with.

pleasure. And then you've also got the relational side, you know, the social and environmental factors, like what is the particular context in which sex is taking place? And do I feel emotionally safe with this person? And

You know, can I really relax and be in the moment because I've got that feeling of safety and connection with my partner? So, yeah, in trying to understand why somebody might not be experiencing pleasure, there's lots of different factors you need to look at there because it's not as simple as saying, you know, just tweak this one thing and then you'll experience more pleasure because maybe you, for example, switch to a different position, but that doesn't deal with anxiety or anxiety.

an issue with connection with your partner, you know, again, so many things can go into this. That's one thing I hear a lot. So on that relationship level, once again, the person may have experienced really great pleasure with their partner, but if they're in conflict or if they're, you know, on the outs, actually, then the sensations, they experience the sensations as less pleasurable.

Yeah, the relational context definitely matters here. So something you found in your research that I think is interesting and important to talk about is that people hold gendered expectations around sexual pleasure. So specifically, you found that most men expect that sex is going to be pleasurable, whereas most women hope that sex will be pleasurable. So talk to us a bit about that. Why don't women have the same expectation of sexual pleasure as men do?

I think historically, we have this idea that women shouldn't experience sexual pleasure, that sex is an active duty for them to provide pleasure for their male partner in this context. And then as we evolve out of that on the social level or the political level,

You have a lot of people who haven't had an opportunity to experience pleasure because maybe they don't have insight into what brings them pleasure. And so they're like, well, this could be okay for me, but it's got to be really great for my partner. And

And so most, especially in hookup culture, which was the context of the study that I did, most of the people there were like, well, it may or may not be pleasurable, but I'm willing to go see. I hope it will be. And the guys were like, well, I know at the end of the day, I'm probably at least going to have to forget. So it'll be pleasurable whether or not I want to be with this person or to have something more longstanding, totally different thing.

So guys in that context came to believe that the sex was for pleasure. That was the key and main purpose. And for the girls in that context, it was like sex is for me to find out if it will be pleasurable. And then if there's something that maybe you can do in this relationship. Yeah. And so I was thinking as I was putting questions together for the show about how

One of the factors that might be contributing to this difference in gendered expectations around orgasm is the simple fact that we have an orgasm gap, right? So, you know, if men are orgasming most or all of the time when they're having sex, it kind of makes sense that they're going to have that expectation for pleasure because more often than not, orgasm is experienced as pleasurable. Again, as I said previously, not all orgasms are pleasurable and pleasure and orgasm are not the same thing, but, you know, there's certainly a relationship there.

By contrast, when you look at the prevalence of the orgasm gap, especially in the context of a casual relationship, women's rates of orgasms are very low in the context of hookups. They're much higher in the context of an ongoing long-term relationship. But if women have this history of

much more sporadic orgasms compared to men, it makes it less likely that they're going to expect pleasure is going to happen because they just don't know. And so, especially in the context of, you know, very casual encounters where you don't know the person very well, yeah, you can be hopeful that you're going to experience pleasure, but probably not have that expectation just because the odds of orgasm and hookups is just so much lower for women.

And then the types of sex that we're describing, most of them, we're talking about vaginal penetration with a penis. And for a lot of women, that's not the most pleasurable sexual option. And so it's fine. It can feel good and it can be amazing, but maybe being touched with fingers or being lit, there are all of these other options that are still acts of sex.

could be used a bit better or more thoughtfully in a sexual encounter. And so sometimes they're having a harder time advocating for the things that would bring them pleasure that are all sex, but they don't count it in the same way.

Yeah. And, you know, it goes to the fact that the sexual script during hookups is very different than it is in long-term relationships, where in a long-term relationship, there tend to be more items on the sexual menu and there's more diversity in people's sexual repertoire. And then that opens up more opportunities for orgasm and pleasure and so forth to occur.

Now, in your book, you talk about strategies for experiencing more pleasure. And you say a good starting point for this is to start by identifying and understanding your own pleasure profile. So tell us a little bit about this. How do we identify our pleasure profile? Okay, so the pleasure profile that I talk about is based on, I'm going to pull this up because this was one of my favorite things to write. So I had to pull up all of the different types of pleasure so y'all can hear about.

One, you can be a sensual pleasure person. The sensual pleasure person is what we mostly think of when it comes to sexual pleasure, like the sensations of something feeling good, physiologically.

Then you've got your bonding pleasure person. This is probably the second most common one. It's like the intimacy created between the sexual partners is what makes it pleasurable. Then you've got your pleasure-related validation. So it's like your sexual self-esteem is in written. You feel desirable. You feel like a sex goddess or a couple like you. And that helps you feel the sexual pleasure. And the other is sex-related mastery, pleasure-related mastery.

So you feel like you're highly competent sexually, your sexual prowess and skill set is really amazing. And you get pleasure from watching your partner experience the pleasure that you're able to provide. And so thinking about what pleasure is to you, and it can be all of those things, none of those things, it's not an exhaustive list, and how you want to experience pleasure

Helps you map out then what you communicate to your partner. So your partner might be trying to, because competence is their jam, get you to feel a way. And you're like, I just want to feel close to you. It's like, so it's not really about your skill. It's about our intimacy, our connection, like being able to bond. And if you guys communicate that with each other, whether or not you're in a committed long-term relationship or something that's a little bit shorter term, you can understand what will make the experience pleasurable for everybody involved.

Yeah, you know, I think many of us are actually kind of disconnected from our sense of what it is that brings us pleasure. Like, if you think about previous sexual encounters that were pleasurable, it's easy to have them come to mind and recognize that, yeah, that was pleasurable. But what about it specifically was pleasurable to you? And that's where I think it's interesting and important in your book that you encourage people to reflect on some of those premonitions.

previous experiences and think about, well, what was it specifically that I enjoyed or found pleasurable about it? And that can tell you something about your own pleasure profile. And if you want to get more pleasure in your sex life going forward, having that better understanding of what it is that actually brings you pleasure is really crucial to doing that.

And that it can evolve. It can change. So maybe in one season of your life, you got a lot of pleasure because you felt desirable. And another is like, I want to feel physically the pleasure. You know, that was actually going to be the next question I was going to ask you about. Dating app fatigue is real. Mindless swiping, meaningless DMs, and an overwhelming amount of likes can make us feel frustrated and disconnected.

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In your book, you talk about how pleasure is something that we need to think of as a practice, right? So you can't just identify your pleasure profile now, implement it in your sex life and expect that, you know, for the rest of your life, you're always going to have pleasurable sex. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about this, about how pleasure can evolve and why we need to think about it as a practice instead of this one-time set it and forget it kind of thing.

Absolutely. Because we're all things evolving. You want to make sure that your practice of good sex is evolving with you. And that includes trying different things that may be pleasurable to you, things you're curious about. Also offering yourself an opportunity to talk through pleasure. So I love a little recap, like what was good about that experience afterwards and

And then that lets you and your partner know, oh, I want more of that. Or I don't want as much of that. But it can change. And I think that's human to change, to grow, to evolve. And none of these options for pleasure are necessarily right or wrong. But if you stay in a practice of it, doing the things that please you and learning more about what your options for pleasure are, you have a better chance of allowing that shift to enrich your pleasure as opposed to constrict it.

Yeah, and I think it's also really important here for people to recognize that your partner's pleasure, what they enjoy and their pleasure profile is going to evolve as well. You know,

Many people, especially in long-term relationships, keep approaching sex the same way for years and years and years and years. And eventually, it just doesn't work quite as well anymore. You habituate to it. Yes. You know, and there can be lots of different reasons for this, but as sex educator Joan Price has said on my show before,

the most common complaint she hears from older adults about their sex lives is that the old ways just don't work anymore, right? And yet people still keep approaching sex in those ways, right? And that points to the fact that we need

to allow space for pleasure to evolve for ourselves and for our partners. We need to check in about this. We need to communicate about this. What do you want more of? What do you want less of at this particular moment and at this particular stage of your life? All of these things change. And, you know, as you mentioned, trying new things continually is important as well, not just for fending off that habituation of arousal, but also just

what it is that you like and enjoy because oftentimes we don't know until we try it. As an example, like let's say dirty talk, right? Maybe when you were younger, you just could not get into dirty talk because you just got two in your head and were overanalyzing every word that you were going to say.

But maybe sometime down the road, you might find out that you actually are into dirty talk because you've kind of shed some of your inhibitions around it and you can learn to be kind of like more in the moment and not care as much about what other people think. So that's why we need to keep trying new things is because what we're comfortable with or okay with or capable of, it's just going to be different at different stages of life.

One thing I want to add is that like this concept of savoring versus devouring that I bring up in the book, that was something that my friends and I might've talked about it. My friends and I were having a conversation around our dinner table one day. And I was like, what kind of, what was your best sexual experience? What was your best sexual experience? And the conversation,

The way they described them was like, oh, so you want to be sober? Oh, you want to be devoured? And I was like, oh, that could be like a nice little framework. So a person that wants to be sober or wants to savor pleasure tends to want it to be a little bit more slow and sensual, being able to have the time to notice the intricate details of the sexual experience, to immerse themselves as one might in a really hot bath, like

like to ease into the sexual experience. And a person that wants to be devoured or enjoys sexually devouring is more like, I want to be flooded with it. You know, I want to experience all the sensations simultaneously, you know, to like engorge in the experience, take it all in at once and like sit with that weightiness of something being so delicious you can't stop. And both of those are beautiful things. It's beautiful options for pleasure.

Yep.

I want to come to one of your dinner parties. It sounds like you guys have fun conversation. Good sex suppers. Good sex suppers. Oh, I got to start doing those. But yeah, you know, thinking about, again, those experiences that were really pleasurable for you. Like if I think about this for myself, like there's one that immediately comes to mind and it was just fun, right? And I laughed during it. And it was just sort of having that kind of element of playfulness is what made it pleasurable because, you know, having that playfulness and,

makes you feel more relaxed and present and in the moment. And, you know, I think we all need a little bit more play in our sex lives. Absolutely. I would say for me, it was one of those experiences where it's like all day and just kind of in and out and just laying around and then get back into it and laying around and get back into it. And it wasn't orgasmic. It was just an extended scene of pleasure. And that was like, wow.

Yeah, that can be a very interesting thing to think about is what was your most pleasurable experience and didn't orgasm even happen, right? And sometimes orgasm wasn't the key defining factor in terms of what made it pleasurable. It never is for me when I think about that. Like if I'm thinking about the top five, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I can't remember like specific orgasms, but I remember like certain elements of experiences that were pleasurable. So yeah, it's helpful to do that inventory of your pleasure profile. So at the top of the show, I asked how you define pleasure. So I have another definitional question for you, which is how sexual pleasure and sexual satisfaction are different.

So this is another one of those cases where people might intuitively imagine that these are one in the same, but they aren't. So how is satisfaction different from pleasure? Yeah. So satisfaction is like getting what you want out of the sexual experience. You go into it with pleasure.

an idea or an expectation or a hope like we just described, but that thing is fulfilled at the end of it. So if you went into sex, and in the book I referenced Cindy Messon's work as well, if you go into sexual experience because you want revenge...

Did you get the revenge you wanted? I think that's satisfying to you. And I would love to see a larger study of whether all of these other options for a sexual desire, what people want sex for, if they produce sexual satisfaction. I'm curious about that. But it's getting what you want. Whereas pleasure is more so about those physical and emotional enjoyable experiences, like liking what you get.

Yeah. So it's possible to have pleasurable sex, but to not be satisfied with your sex life, right? So for example, maybe you're not having sex as often as you would like to, or maybe the communication just isn't there. The sex feels good, but maybe there's some other issue. And so, yeah, you can be dissatisfied with your sex life, but still be having pleasurable sex. So they're two different things. Yeah. And satisfaction has a longer term

window to it usually you can say I'm satisfied with this sexual experience but you can also think about satisfaction like I'm satisfied with our sexual life or my sexual experiences risk pleasure seems to be more in the moment

Yeah. And it sounds like having both pleasure and satisfaction is kind of like the holy grail, because not only does the sex that we're having feel good, but it's happening in a context that's kind of meeting all of your wants and needs. And so, you know, we've talked a little bit about how to find more pleasure in sex, but how do we go about getting more satisfaction? You know, what are some of the factors that influence how satisfied we are with our sex life?

identifying the reasons that you do have sex. So we have all of these, we said 237 reasons and reflecting for yourself on the last few reasons, like, okay, why did I have sex that time? And if I had sex for a reason that didn't feel like it felt good to me, you might even reevaluate your reasons for having sex to improve your satisfaction. You

You could increase pleasure and sometimes increased pleasure can increase satisfaction because they're correlated, but not the same thing. But you can also look at how frequency, novelty, duration, longevity of the sexual experience shape your satisfaction.

Yeah, there are so many different things that go into sexual satisfaction. And my colleague, David Frederick, who's been on the show before, has done a lot of research into what distinguishes the most sexually satisfied couples from the least sexually satisfied couples.

And he finds that there are several key things. One of them is just having more novelty in your sex life. So it's the people who are mixing it up and trying new things. For example, using sex toys, engaging in role play, sharing fantasies, maybe engaging in a little light kink, you know.

Any kind of novelty tends to be linked to greater sexual satisfaction. Also, mood setting is another thing that's really important. You know, people who take some time to kind of set the scene tend to have more satisfying sex lives. And I think that makes a lot of sense because if you put some effort into setting the mood, whether that's adjusting lighting or

Or lighting a candle so you've got like a certain aroma or cleaning up beforehand or whatever. All of those things. All of those things can contribute to more satisfying sex because they allow you to be more present and in the moment. And they just kind of create like a different mood and atmosphere and ambience. You were intentional. It's the intention, I think, that you just described. So that setting the scene, putting music on, everything.

cleaning the room, all of that takes time and energy. And you had to think about that prior to the sexual experience. And I like that addition of those things to increase sexual satisfaction.

Yeah. And you don't want to be sitting there like having sex and thinking about that pile of laundry that's on the floor or whatever, or hearing, you know, this noise that's coming through the window when you could have had music on instead that might've created a different mood. So yeah, the mood setting and scene setting, I think is really important.

I also just conducted the first aim of a study on black and white women's sexual satisfaction and sexual functioning overall. So satisfaction, desire, arousal, all of that. And because we're talking about pleasure and satisfaction, I'm going to share some of my preliminary findings that were so wild to me. Oh my goodness. Okay. So I was looking at who people voted for in the last election. Okay.

Only to find that there's a statistically significantly higher report of sexual satisfaction and sexual pleasure among women who voted for the current president than women who voted for the past vice president. And I am now sitting with what that means. Like, and how do I...

process, analyze, interpret, discuss those findings in our current political climate. So all of these things we're talking about are at the forefront of my mind right now as I figure out how I want to write it.

You know, that's really interesting. And I've done some research before into kind of like the intersection of politics and people's sex lives and also in their sexual fantasies. And I found some interesting things. And one that I found during the COVID pandemic was that

That period in time was actually much harder on Democrats' sex lives and relationships than it was on Republicans. And Republicans were more likely to report improvements in their sex life, and Democrats were more likely to report problems and new issues in their sex life. And so we don't always know entirely what to make of some of these different findings, but it does seem that

Your political beliefs or background can influence your sex life and satisfaction, sometimes in ways that are different than you might intuitively expect or predict. I wasn't even surprised, though. It was just like a bit disheartening. So...

Yeah, there's so much more we could say on that topic. I actually have a whole paper that's under review right now that looks at people's openness to having casual sex and dating somebody who is of a different political party than they are and how that intersects with gender. And one teaser finding from it is that men are a heck of a lot more open to crossing the aisle politically than women are. Yes, I can believe that because we didn't see any differences in the partners, most of whom were male. So I was like, what?

what is this? So I can't wait to cite your paper. Okay. So we've talked about lots of things that you can do to try and boost sexual pleasure and satisfaction, but even with the best intentions and efforts, it's probably not realistic to think that sex is going to be pleasurable and satisfying 100% of the time, right? So your sexual experiences will probably, hopefully mostly be good, but there's going to be some variability and that's okay.

So in other words, there's a lot that we can do to improve and enhance our sex lives, but we shouldn't strive for absolute perfection. Absolutely not. I think that that's way too much stress to put on yourself. You can just let it be what it is and enjoy the ebbs and flows.

Yeah, don't go for perfection. And, you know, I had sex therapist Barry McCarthy on the show recently, and he talked about what he calls the 85% rule when it comes to sex and pleasure, which is... Good enough sex. Yes, good enough sex, right? So we should be expecting, you know, 85% or so. The vast majority of our sexual encounters will be good or great, but there's going to be that 15% where the quality is going to be somewhat mixed, where it might not be so great, might be bad even, and that's okay, right? So...

Ultimately, it's about sort of setting these realistic expectations for your sex life. So yes, absolutely, do things that are going to promote more pleasure and more satisfaction, but just don't have these sky-high expectations that are going to be impossible to meet.

Absolutely. And to your point earlier about like good sex being fun, having fun with bad experiences too, being able to laugh at yourself and your partner if something is just off and it's just not working and you just lay there like, you know what, never mind. Yeah. So we're running short of time, but I have one more question for you, which is whether there are any other tips or advice that you'd like to share when it comes to cultivating a more pleasurable and satisfying sex life.

Yeah, I think the main tip is that you're worthy of good sex, pleasurable sex, satisfying sex, orgasmic sex. Those are the things that are most meaningful to you. And so if you want those things and you're not yet at a place where you are experiencing those things, it is a worthwhile investment in your well-being to see how you can get a little further along in them. Because, you know, you come into this sexual experience, you make your sexual debut and you have so much to learn.

And a lot of us aren't given good access to information that helps us monitor those things. So whenever you find a good resource, like a podcast like this or a book or, you know, even like sexual health networks or influencers, you know, tune in and start to practice some of the strategies that you hear because it is worth it.

Yes. And to highlight what you said, reiterate it. You are worthy of pleasure. So thank you again so much for your time, Candice. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work and get a copy of your new book, Good Sex?

You can find the book everywhere books are sold. It's on pre-order now, but it will be on sale probably by the time this episode comes out at Barnes and Nobles, on Amazon. My book partner, Karis Books, a indie store here in Atlanta area. They sell it online. And you can find me at drkandisonpole.com or on Instagram, threads, Facebook at Dr. Candice Nicole.

Well, we'll be sure to include links to your book and your social media accounts in the show notes. Thank you again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please consider becoming a Sex and Psychology Premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.

You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.