Episode 408: Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?
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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 Leigh Miller. 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. You've probably heard the phrase before that nice guys finish last.

The idea behind it is that in the heterosexual world, nice guys don't have much success with dating or sex because they just can't compete with the appeal of the so-called bad boys. So is there any truth to this? Well, actually there is something to it, which is what we're going to be talking about in today's show. We're going to discuss how being overly agreeable has the potential to diminish sex appeal while also interfering with one's own sexual pleasure.

As my guest today likes to say, nice guys need to learn how to say no sometimes, which might sound counterintuitive, but you'll understand why in a little bit. We're also going to talk about the false dichotomy of the nice guy and the bad boy. You don't have to be one or the other. In fact, you can be a good bad boy. To that end, we'll also talk about how to be more confident in the bedroom without being selfish or entitled.

I am joined once again by Caitlin V, a sex and relationship coach specializing in helping men overcome erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety, and premature ejaculation. With over 150 million views on YouTube and nearly a million subscribers, she has become a leading voice in the field. Her expertise is now reaching an even wider audience with her TV show, Good Sex, available for streaming now on Discovery Plus and Max. This is going to be another fascinating episode.

Before we get to the main topic for today, here is our Just the Tip segment presented by Popstar. Popstar was founded by two sexual medicine doctors who are creating science-backed products to support male sexual health and pleasure. Whether you want to make sex last longer, finish stronger, enhance your health, or just make things more pleasurable, they have a solution for you.

In our Just the Tips segments, my pal, Dr. Joshua Gonzalez, one of the founders of Popstar, will be joining me to answer your questions and share tips and tricks to help men boost their bedroom confidence and performance. Today, we're diving into the subject of whether there's anything you can do to change the taste of semen. Let's talk about it.

All right, Josh, it's surprising to me how often people ask about semen's nutritional value, like how many calories are in it and whether it has any protein. So let's start there. What is the nutritional value of semen?

It's not much. I mean, it's got... I forget the numbers exactly, but while it does have protein, it's not something that you're going to want to use as a primary source of protein. There's a couple of calories from what I remember in about a teaspoon of semen. I agree with you. It's very interesting that people are so obsessed with this as if like...

You know, they're going to be like, oh, instead of chicken, you know, I'm just going to eat a bunch of cob as my source of protein. But yeah, I agree with you. People are obsessed with what semen tastes like, the caloric value, the protein content, all of that.

Yeah, it's something that it's probably not going to cause weight gain, right? You'd have to consume a whole lot of it based on the relatively low caloric content. But it's also something that you probably don't want to rely on instead of, you know, taking your protein shake in the morning. Right.

All right. So let's talk about whether there's anything you can do to change the taste of semen. And before we get into how you can make it taste better, let's talk about why it can taste bad. So for example, how can things like diet and lifestyle lead to a more bitter taste? So we always tell patients that, you know, whatever you're taking into your body is going to make it out somehow, right? So everything that we take in is excreted in our urine, in our tears, in our stool, and in our ejaculate, our sweat, I'm sorry.

So, you know, if you're taking in a bunch of food that's going to be broken down into things that taste bitter, or if you're smoking a bunch of cigarettes, you're drinking a bunch of alcohol, that stuff comes out and can smell bad. And if it ends up in your semen can sometimes taste bad. There is a natural bitter taste already to semen. And so when you add on top of that, all of these products, it can often make semen taste worse.

funky, right? For the lack of a better word. That's kind of how I think about it and how I counsel patients to think about it. Yeah. So anything you're putting in your body can potentially affect what is coming out of your body in terms of secretions, in terms of its scent or even its taste. Exactly. So on the flip side then, how do you make semen taste better? Like what can you do there?

So, you know, if you're engaging in any of these activities that we know can negatively impact the taste of your semen, right? Like if you're a cigarette smoker, you're drinking a lot of alcohol, cutting back on those things can help. Cutting back on things like red meat can also sometimes help neutralize the taste.

the taste. We've all heard of asparagus and urine, right? If you're eating a bunch of asparagus, it's not just going to make your urine smell too. It can also affect the smell and taste of your semen. So cutting back on some of those things and then also trying to take in some of the things that we know can help at least neutralize it. So making sure you're staying well hydrated, super important. There is some truth to the whole pineapple story and it's because of the extract bromelain. So taking in

fruits like that can help sometimes neutralize or even partially sweeten the taste. Yeah. So lots of things you can try in daily life to affect the taste of semen, if that is an issue for you or your partner. And also something else you can try potentially is taking supplements, right? So tell us a little bit about the world of semen supplements.

supplements. It depends on which one you're talking about, but Popstar specifically, we have two products that affect your semen. The first is our sort of hero signature product. It's the volume and taste enhancer. And the formula consists of a number of ingredients that were well-researched by my co-founder, Dr. Brian Stikes, her and I, that have been shown in the reproductive literature and the veterinary literature to increase volume. And

also affect taste. So we spoke a minute ago about pineapple. Rather than try to put pineapples directly into the product, that would take a lot of pineapple, we use bromelain, which is the pineapple extract that provides the sweet flavor. We like to think of our products, both the volume and taste enhancer and the fertility supplement, as sort of being whole ejaculatory health supplements. The fertility product actually came out of

interest from our customers who were asking if it would help them get pregnant. And while there was ingredients in that first initial volume and taste enhancer, we decided to then come up with a formula that was specifically targeted towards enhancing fertility as well.

So interesting. And who knew there's all kinds of products out there to help support various aspects of your sexual health. Well, thank you so much for sharing your tips with us, Josh. That wraps up our Just the Tips segment presented by Popstar. A huge thank you to our friends over at Popstar for sponsoring this segment and helping us all to have better sex. We have much more ahead on today's show, so stick around and we're going to jump in right after this short break.

Join me for an online training at the Kinsey Institute about the latest research on sexual fantasy. I've studied the sexual fantasies of more than 10,000 people from all around the world, and I'll be sharing everything I've learned in this workshop. You'll learn what we know about where our fantasies come from, the deeper meaning behind our fantasies, how fantasies evolve across the lifespan, cross-cultural differences in fantasies, and so much more.

This course is open to anyone who's interested in learning more about the topic, but it will also offer applicable skills and frameworks for clinicians, educators, researchers, and sexuality professionals. Participants will receive a certificate of completion from the Kinsey Institute. This course takes place on Saturday, July 19th. Check the show notes for the link or visit knsy.in slash fantasy science.

Alright, Caitlin, let's just dive right into the big question. You know, we often hear that nice guys finish last, with the implication being that, at least in the bedroom, good guys are going to struggle to attract a partner, and even if they do, they probably won't be able to satisfy them. So, is there any truth to this idea? Do nice guys really finish last when it comes to sex and dating?

It's so funny to think about finishing last, especially in our previous episode, we talked about stamina and the ability to last as long as your partner wants. So there's actually some benefit to finishing last, but that's not what this quote refers to, right?

We need to separate some of these ideas. We need to separate the idea of like the good guy and the bad boy, because the way that they're presented for most men is as a choice, as like a binary. And there's actually like a pretty problematic YouTuber that I'm not going to state the name of, but if you're really curious about it, you'll be able to find it. But he broke this down in a way that I had never seen it broken down before. And it makes perfect sense. I'm just going to give him that much credit. He put these two things in a matrix.

And he said that it is not that women either want a good guy. They really don't necessarily desire someone who's like all good. First of all, because that feels inauthentic, right? None of us are all good. None of us are all bad. We're all a combination of light and shadow. And ideally, if you own them both, then that makes you an integrated person, right? And that's attractive to us.

Good guys are more likely to end up in the idea of the friend zone, right? Like they're too nice. They lack any sort of sexual edge. They lack any sort of like shadow side that creates attraction. Yeah.

On the other side of the matrix, if you're like all bad boy, right, then you may be fun for a one night stand. But ultimately, you're not going to be someone who is going to find it easy to create long term partnership and healthy relationships. And you don't want to be toxic for the sake of attracting people anyways, right? Like that's not the strategy either, right? No one is all good or all bad. And so when someone occurs to us as having...

of mostly one of those traits, they're not the right combination to have a successful relationship, right? You might get laid, you might get a friendship, but you're not going to have the kind of dream that most people are looking for, right? And so we can think about those two things instead as something that you want to rate high on in both categories.

in order to attract a partner and attract a healthy relationship. You want to rank high on good guy traits. That looks like being presentable, thinking about your appearance, maybe having a beard, as you mentioned, if that works for you. Maybe it is, you know, being able to provide, like having some kind of financial or other kind of security skills

Not so much that you are like just a wallet, right? But like most people are looking for someone who has some degree of financial stability in this world, especially if they plan on bringing their own financial stability to that relationship. Or maybe they're looking to have children, etc. So you want to rank high in these good guy traits, which also means like treating women with respect and, you know, essentially like adding to their life in these ways.

But you also would ideally rank high on the bad boy traits as well. And in this particular example, bad boy traits include being smooth with women. Because most women sense, at least in like the heterosexual dating and mating space, that if you are good with women, that means you have experience with women, right? Like if you know how to flirt with me and you're charming and you're smooth, those actually qualify as bad boy traits because that's

indicates to me that maybe you've been around, you've got some experience. But other bad boy traits, maybe like being physically good looking, being a little bit even like, I'm reluctant to use some of the language that he uses. The way that I would describe it more is having a really strong and grounded sense of confidence.

Even like a touch of like self-importance can feel like a bad boy trait. But also those are indications of someone that's going to be like a protector, right? Someone that's going to look out for not only his own best interests, but the best interests of the people who are around him, friends, family, partner. So yeah.

Is it that nice guys finish last? I think it is more authentic and realistic and representative of what it actually looks like to be a human. And I think women really know this for ourselves, but we don't know. We don't want to give men kind of the same credit. And again, I'm painting with a super broad brush here. But I think the guys who get what they want when it comes to relationships with women have a mixture of good guy and bad boy traits that is authentic to them.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. You know, I know a lot of guys who are the quote unquote, nice guy. And, you know, you're right, they do get friend zoned a lot, and they really struggle to attract a partner. And I think in some ways, it is because there's that

that you either have to be the nice guy or the bad boy. But I think also if you're just looking at the nice guys, there are different types of nice guys that are out there. You know, there are some who are, you know, genuinely kind and respectful, but there are other people who are nice guys where they're really just trying to avoid discomfort. And it's kind of like masking some deeper insecurity. You know, they're not expressing what they really want.

they're being more agreeable than they are being authentic. And that's where it's kind of like you fall into kind of like the pushover category because you just like say yes to everything and no matter what your partner wants. And, you know, that's a different kind of nice guy, you know? So there's like the performative nicety that's like masking insecurity. And then there's like the, I'm just like a genuinely nice kind of person.

And I think that that performative aspect of niceness gives us the ick, like collectively, all of us. I think unless we are looking to take advantage of people, when we see people, you know, giving us the shirt off of their back when it is unnecessary, when we see people pleasers out violently.

violating their own well-being, their own boundaries, their own standards in order to performatively care for or please or, you know, again, I think a lot of people pleasing comes from trying to avoid discomfort, right? If I make someone else upset, if I stand up for myself, if I protect my own sovereignty and my own peace that like I will somehow be making other people feel uncomfortable, right?

That is behavior that most of us are turned off by because it lacks authenticity. It lacks realness. It lacks balance. Like we are the yin and the yang, right? Like there is a little spot of dark in the light and a little spot of light in the dark. And if we are repressing parts of us,

In order to, you know, maybe manipulate the people around us, which is people-pleasing, let's be real, at its extreme, is a form of manipulation, right? I will give you everything that you want, anything that you need. I'll anticipate all of your needs, but in exchange, I'm going to expect things and I'm not going to articulate it. Well, most of us do pull back from that.

Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, I feel really deeply uncomfortable when someone is too nice to me because it's like, what am I going to owe them in exchange for this? Like, this is too nice. This is like going overboard. You know, it's one thing to be nice to someone. It's another to like really go and take it like too far. And like you said, it can give you the ick or it can be a turnoff.

And that's saying something because you and I are both from the Midwest. Yep.

All of us have our own comfort around giving and receiving. And plenty of us feel a lot easier being in the giver role than we do in the receiver role. And I talk to the guys that I coach about this all the time. Like, how good are you receiving? Not just in bed, but like when someone offers to get you a glass of water or a coffee, when someone, you know, offers to help you hold the door as you're moving packages, like, are you good at just saying yes and receiving help? And

And receiving on an energetic level is associated with yin energy or feminine energy. And so for a lot of the guys that I work with, they're very disconnected with their feminine energy, their internal feminine energy or their yin, their ability to like rest, relax, receive. And so we work on that as a way of, again, it starts with them. As I was saying in our previous episode, your sexuality starts with you. Well, guess what? Your relationship between masculine and feminine energies, or if you don't like that terminology, electric and magnetic energy or yin and yang energy, like all of that starts internally. And

On the other hand, if you're like pretty good at receiving and you're good at having your own boundaries and you're good at giving within the structures that work for you and don't deplete you, it can be really exhausting to feel like you have to care give other people who are not doing that, right? If I have to hold someone else's boundaries for them because they are likely to exceed them on my behalf, like you were just saying, that...

raises my hackles that that's a red flag for me as soon as i feel like i have to be responsible for the other person not overdoing it now i have to be responsible for both of us it feels unfair yeah now you work with a lot of men who are quote unquote good guys or nice guys you know they're kind and thoughtful they are respectful of women and some of them even identify as feminists yet

Yet many of them find that they're struggling in the bedroom. And I can't help but wonder if the problem for some of these nice guys is the simple fact that they're not immune to the Madonna whore complex. You know, I talked about this on a recent episode where I gave a real example of this guy whose wife wants to be dominated and she wants to be called a slut in bed. But he is totally uncomfortable with this because he thinks that that would be disrespectful to her, even though that's what she wants.

And I see this as kind of a pattern in a lot of these nice guys where they're kind of afraid to go where their partner wants because they don't want to disrespect her, but then she's not getting what she wants, you know? So I wanted to get your take on this and whether you think maybe the Madonna whore complex is something that might explain why some nice guys get kind of stuck sexually.

Yeah. So let's go even further back and say the Madonna whore complex results from an inability to hold the same complexity in women that we were just talking about in men. To hold the complexity of she is neither good nor bad. She is neither pure nor dirty. She is capable of being all things, both sexual and not.

And the way in which our society really likes to keep women in sort of those two categories, these two buckets of like the women, wife material and sex material, really. And I think so much of that comes from the idea that if we have sex with a woman who is pure, we make her impure. But if we have sex with a woman who is already impure, there is no sort of consequence. She's already tarnished. And so we're not taking anything away from her. And what underlies all of that is the belief that women really like don't enjoy sex at all.

And that any sort of sex that a man has with a woman is taking from her, is violating her, is using her body, which I think removes so much female agency inside of the entire side of all, all sex and all dating and all eroticism, right? Like women enjoy sex. Shocking news, right? And,

like to your point that if, if a man is specifically not giving her the thing that she's asking for, even if he feels like he's doing it out of respect for her, he's not necessarily actually respecting her on the deepest level as a partner. And, and, and again, being good giving in game, right. That he's like willing to at least try it. If it's not a hard no for him, if calling, you know, if he'd be willing to call a hookup slut, but he can't call his wife slut, then we know it's not actually a boundary for him. Right.

It's something related to the woman that he's being intimate with. So I think one of the issues with this is that we tend to start at a 10 instead of a one, right? And she may have a fantasy that goes, I want you to throw a bag over my head and drag me upstairs and have sex with me and call me. Maybe it's a little bit more or maybe it's less extreme than that. But for him, it comes off as really extreme, right? I would ask them to consider what represents like something on a scale from like one to three, right?

Is it a spanking? Is it a little choking? What feels accessible to him that doesn't feel like he is violating his wife or himself in the process and that also begins to scratch that itch for her? One of the consequences, and you're the expert on fantasy, so I'm actually kind of curious to hear your thoughts on this, but I think one of the consequences of us not speaking our fantasies a little bit at a time is that by the time that maybe we do address them, they're really big and pressing. They feel very urgent. Yeah.

And so she may have presented this as like, this is an urgent thing that I really need from you. And he might be like, whoa, I could have used a little bit of like a non-ramp to that particular thing. Looking to boost your bedroom performance? Our friends over at Popstar have you covered. The easy to use lidocaine based Popstar delay spray relaxes nerve cells and postpones your climax, helping you to go the distance while keeping premature ejaculation and performance anxiety at bay.

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Yeah. So, I mean, I think when it comes to fantasies, like it is a complicated discussion to have with a partner about what it is that you want. And, you know, you're right that sometimes we have these fantasies for years, maybe even decades. And it's like when we finally share it with a partner, it's like we really have that sense of urgency behind it. And our partner is just kind of

caught off guard because it's very much out of the blue for them because this wasn't even on their radar. So yeah, I think, you know, it's often about negotiating or finding some compromise with your partner where maybe there's some element of the fantasy that they share that you can pull out and you can play with and that it feels comfortable for each of you that starts to feed into what your partner really wants, but is still playing within your own comfort zone. I think that's great advice and a great way to kind of like approach a situation like that.

But so, you know, I gave an example there of a guy who didn't want to give his partner what she wanted because he didn't want to disrespect her. But at the other end of the nice guy spectrum, you have the guys who are the pushovers who will do anything their partner wants. And paradoxically, that can create problems too. And I saw a video you did where you talked about a guy who was always trying to give women everything they wanted, yet, you know,

again, always ending up in the friend zone or they would always inevitably break up with them. And he's like, what am I doing wrong? I'm doing everything that they want. And you said that the problem for him was that he was saying yes to some things when he should have been saying no, which sounds counterintuitive. So tell us a little bit about this and why learning how to say no is actually important for nice guys.

I love this. I love no in general. I love a no. My friends often make fun of me for being a no before I'm a yes because they'll be like, hey, can you? And I'm just my default is to say no. And then I'll think about it for a minute longer and go, actually, you know what? I could bring pasta to the potluck. I can do that. Right.

But there are plenty of folks who default to a yes before a no. And that is actually, I mean, not that I wouldn't necessarily prescribe either one as a way of being, but if I had to choose, I would say start with a no, right? Because if you start with a no and then you become a yes, it's because you authentically decided or came to an understanding that you could do that thing and that would feel good for you, would feel right for you, wouldn't be a violation. If you start with a yes and then you have to retract your yes

and become a no, it's harder even for non-people pleasers to say, yeah, you know what? I agreed that I could DJ at your birthday party and now it's three days before and I've decided I can't and I should never have said that I could. Now we're in a stickier situation, right? So it usually works a lot better if we say no to things first. That said, that can be really hurtful when we're in the realm of fantasy, right? Nope, I can't make your Dom's Up fantasy happen. Right.

Okay, maybe we don't want to default straight to a no. Maybe we want to default to a maybe when it comes to our partner's fantasies and working out our sex lives. But the reason for that man in particular is that if you don't say no, if you never say no,

I can't trust you to say yes. If you don't have any boundaries, you don't have any limitations, if you're willing to do anything and everything for me, then how do I know when you're doing that because you want to versus you're afraid of some imagined consequence? You're afraid of me being upset or leaving you or whatever it is. When you say no,

and I know that I can trust your no, then your yes means so much more to me. I like to think about this in terms of, I gave a TED Talk once and my example was, we have to first agree on the canvas. And when I think about like having a sexual encounter as sort of making a work of art together, we actually really importantly need to start with some very basic constraints to know what we're making. If I get together with a partner and I'm like, we could make anything. It could be watercolor. It could be

sculpture. It could be cast. It could be bronze. It could be 10 foot tall. We could do this entire wall of my home. Or I'm like, hey, I want to have a sexual encounter with you. I've got some 8x8 canvases and acrylic paints, and I actually only have five or six different acrylic paints. Do you want to make a work of art with me? It is so much easier to create something that we're both going to agree upon if we take the one with the more constraints, 8x8 canvas, some paints,

We don't even use our paintbrushes. We've just got our fingers. Great. I now know what I can create and what I can't create. But if I come to you and I say literally anything,

Where do we even begin? There's like, well, you know, now we have to negotiate every single possibility that both of us can come. It's exhausting. Right. And for those of us who are maybe a little bit more performance oriented or we have a little bit more performance anxiety or we put a lot more pressure on ourselves. Oh, now we have everything on the table. Like that is a recipe for disaster. If we just stop.

set up some mutually agreed upon constraints for this session. We don't have to stick to canvas and acrylic for the rest of our sex life, but we just put some rules in place in this session. We have a lot more creativity. It's the irony that, you know, discipline creates freedom. Constraints create opportunities when it comes to sex and intimacy.

You know, this conversation has me thinking about a finding in the social psychology literature on attraction, which is that we tend to be more attracted to people who didn't initially like us at first and then later change their mind. And it's so it's sort of like when we win somebody else over, that heightens our attraction to them. And it's sort of the same thing where, you know, saying no and then becoming a yes, like

that has something magnetic about it, right? In terms of how we feel about the other person, right? So I wonder, you know, to what extent there might be kind of like a parallel there that's going on. I'm laughing. You just let me cover my eyes because I feel so called out by that. But that is true for me. So thank you for naming that. You know, I think also, I don't know if it was a study or where it comes from, but the idea that we love our IKEA furniture more than we love our furniture that became pre-assembled.

Because we love a little struggle. Like we do, we do. You know, one of the things that's true about humans is that we have for hundreds of thousands of years had all sort of insurmountable struggles that we were faced with. Feast, famine, disease, exposure. It's literally not very many generations ago that people died from measles. And now maybe there'll be this generation as well.

But it wasn't that many generations ago that they didn't have running water, electricity and understanding of germ theory. Like it's not that far back. Right. And so now today in the world that we live in, where we can like pull up an app and have a hookup and have a pizza delivered and, you know, at the same time.

we love a little struggle. We need a little struggle. We need to know this is how butterflies become strong, right? If you cut them out of their chrysalis, they never learn how to fly. Like we need to push against a thing in order to know how strong we are in order to feel like we earned the thing. And I think that is true in terms of relationships as well. So flirtation is fun when there's a little bit of friction. None of us wanted to be frictionless, even if we think that we do.

Yeah, and you know, that's also why playing hard to get, to an extent, can work in terms of dating and attraction, right? What we see in the research is that when somebody is too easy to get, like they're just too available or seem overly eager, people tend to not be attracted to that, right? By contrast, when somebody is too unavailable, that makes it seem like you're uninterested and, you know, people also...

aren't really attracted to that either. But there's a sweet spot in the middle of where you're just a little bit hard to get and where, you know, you have to try and win the other person over. And that it's, it's that little sense of mystery about are they attracted to me or not? That kind of peaks our interest and curiosity. So I'm not like an advocate for playing games in the world of dating, but there is something to be said for being just a little bit hard to get.

I totally agree with you. I'm not an advocate for playing games as they're like typically presented in media and especially by like the manosphere influencers and like how to catch a woman. But I do not do that. Let's not do that. But let's can we make it fun, though? Right. Can we introduce friction that has integrity to it?

Fun friction. Fun friction. Listen, if you had to define sex, I think fun friction is the definition. That's the whole thing. And it happens on every level. So it's not just on a physical level, but also an emotional level. In order to create interest and intrigue and reasons to continue to come back together and to explore each other, it is more fun for us if there is a little bit of friction present. The interesting thing about that is that you actually don't have to manufacture it.

When I started dating my current partner, I was like all in on him. And I kind of felt like I had to win him over. Not that he ever like specifically disliked me, but I was like, we, I think we should be in a relationship. And he was not on the same page as quickly as I was. And that's why I was like, oh, I'm so called out by this. But yeah.

Because I was so all in on our relationship and I was there before he was, I did have to do two things. I had to maintain integrity to myself, which meant being transparent at the right times and saying, hey, like, I really do want to be in a relationship with you. And it's really, I feel very secure in that we would be great partners together. We just celebrated our anniversary, so I think I was right. And I had to do this other thing, which is to maintain sort of like my integrity

I mean to say like self-care, that's not exactly the thing, but I had to maintain my own boundaries, my own sense of self and my own security in myself. So integrity to him by being honest and care for myself by not making myself abundantly and over available. And instead, like making sure that I was still

having a rich social life with my friends and that I wasn't just like making myself available endlessly on nights and weekends and, you know, buttoning his calls if I was actually busy having a different conversation with somebody. You know, like we have a tendency, I think, when we like someone to try to win them over by being endlessly available. And that's where the fun friction comes in. But the fun friction doesn't have to be manufactured if you are caring for yourself and making sure that you have a rich life beyond just a partner.

Yeah, I think you're so right that just having some basic boundaries can help to create that little bit of excitement and mystery because your partner has to be away from you and unavailable for a little while in order for them to miss you, right? Yes. Or for you to miss them. And so, you know, just having that boundary of like, I'm not going to immediately respond if I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone else, like,

I think that's also just like basic common courtesy to the other person that you're speaking with, right? Yes, yes. You know, I know how there is that excitement, that temptation when you're in the throes of passion in a new relationship to just like drop everything to, you know, respond to them and be with them. But, you know, having just like a little bit of self-control and some boundaries around that can be a way of further heightening the excitement.

Totally. And my favorite definition of boundaries is the distance at which I can love you and me both. And that distance requires me to first love myself enough to make sure that I'm caring for my things and my world and my people and my work and all of that. And then the other person. Now, another issue for a lot of nice guys is that some of these men fear that

you know, if I'm going to take charge sexually, that I'm going to come across as being creepy or aggressive or selfish. So I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about how you can help us reframe that fear and start like owning our desires in a healthy way. So how do you walk that line between being confident and assertive in the bedroom without venturing into seeming like you're entitled or selfish?

Two things, intention and understanding how women's desire often works. So...

Women report that feeling desired by a partner is often one of the greatest turn-ons that they experience. You know, if we look at a lot of like really common female fantasies, have some degree of like a powerful man who has to hold himself back in some way, who wants her so bad that he's like almost overcome by his desire. And then he demonstrates a degree of restraint, right? Yeah.

So if you can get that and you can like allow that in, and again, I'm painting with a broad brush here, but if you can just allow that as a possibility among many, that one of her greatest turn-ons is actually your desire for her and your restraint around that, but like how badly you want her and how selfish you could be in your desire for her when you're also keeping in mind that we're having a consensual relationship.

relationship where her desire and her pleasure also matter, which is two things to keep in mind at the same time. But if you are a safe enough partner and she knows that you care about her pleasure, and then you demonstrate for her the intensity of your desire for her, that that may actually be a part of her turn on. So allowing that to be true on one hand. And then on the other hand, I think it all comes down to the energy before the action, the being before the doing.

The being in this instance, being about like feeling that you can own that assertiveness, even that aggressiveness, even the dominant part of you, feeling that you can be that with an intent to serve.

with an intent to be safe, with an intent to have everyone feel satisfied. Even if you're, you know, I think I would give the example of a guy who allows himself to be like selfish in bed and say like, I'm going to use your body with your consent, with your permission, right? For my own pleasure, because...

Nine times out of 10, he's doing all the other things that we've talked about of being really oriented towards his partner's pleasure. Right? So if she knows deep down inside that you care very, very deeply about pleasing her and you care about her orgasm, you care about her satisfaction, and then you come in from time to time and you go, okay.

This is about me. I can't hold back. I desire you so intensely that I'm going to like take you on a journey. I'm going to like please myself through you. Like, I think that's very hot personally. I've turned on. I think.

surrounding, right? Like, oh my God, you have to have me, right? And the intent and the desire behind that is so clear. Whereas if it's performative and if the intent is self-serving, I think a lot of us have been with a very selfish lover. We feel the intent there is like really not to care for us. The intent is to get whatever they wanted out of this encounter and then have it be done.

the flavor, the energetic frequency. And I know I'm really speaking in these like esoteric terms and this like intangibles, but we feel the difference.

We feel the difference in every single interaction. I always say it's about how you do it, not what you do. We have encounters with people where we know that they want something from us versus when they want the best for us. And I think it really comes down to that. And then having a conversation and communication with your partner, letting her know that this is something that you maybe feel a little uneasy around, but you want to experiment.

with so that you can develop your confidence around so that she knows and she can be on the same team as you in getting the results that you want. Yeah, I think that's so true. And you know, there's nothing inherently selfish about making your own pleasure a priority during sex. It's just you also have to care about your partner's pleasure too. Yes, a thousand times over. And I think it's about a balance. It's about creating a balance between those two.

Well, thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Caitlin. It's been a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work? Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I had an absolute blast. You can find me on YouTube at Caitlin V. You can find me at CaitlinVNeal.com. That's C-A-I-T-L-I-N-V as in victorious, N-E-A-L.com. I have all the hard to spell names, so I have to spell it out. Thank you.

And on my website, you'll find tons of free guides. You'll find information about my courses, about my coaches. And there's many different ways that you can work with me or learn from me if you liked what you heard today. Well, great. And I'll be sure to include thanks to all of that in the show notes. Thank you again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you.

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.