Melody Thomas is passionate about pleasure, with her brilliant podcast The Good Sex Project looking to normalise conversations about sex, relationships and our modern lives.
Season two was recently released, with a focus on the pursuit of joy and pleasure through the lens of politics, porn, ageing and much more – a recent episode talks about ‘horny stories’, with another explores sexual desire and faith.
We're delighted to be presenting a pleasure masterclass with The Good Sex Project later this month at The Village in Auckland (follow us on Instagram to win tickets), hosted by Melody with intimacy and relationship experts Nic Beets and Verity Thom. They’ll be exploring the vital role of having and re-centering pleasure in our lives, plus answering some audience questions following the Q&A – submit yours via the form at the bottom of the interview.
Ahead of the masterclass, Melody had a chat with Nic and Verity about all things pleasure – to give a taster of what to expect on the night.
There's a lot going on in the world, and a lot of people are struggling to get by. Given that, is it selfish to focus on pleasure?
The trials of the world can make it hard to see the value in pleasure. But to focus on struggle and pain, injustice and evil without relief is a recipe for depression and burnout. On the other hand, unbridled hedonism with never a thought for others leads to loneliness and desolation of the soul. As with all things in life, there is a need for balance.
Pleasure is a source of refreshment, reminding us of the goodness of living. Pleasure is a way to signal to yourself that you are not just in survival mode. Pleasure is a way to celebrate and affirm life. Pleasure is your body telling you things are going good.
You need replenishment to keep going in life, support others, and contribute to society. “You can’t pour from an empty cup” is a truism we see repeated in relationships. Pleasure gives us guidelines for where we can restore ourselves and provides us with an important incentive to keep going.
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What benefits can pleasure offer us, both generally and when it comes to sexual pleasure?
Pleasure is a motivator – we are drawn to seek out pleasurable experiences. Often these are experiences that are good for us. For example, research is still discovering the myriad health benefits offered by keeping sexually active – from reducing blood pressure and strengthening your immune system to better sleep and longer life! So pleasure is often our body’s way of telling us we are on the right track.
Beyond the physical, pleasure is an affirmation of life. Feeling good is a big part of what makes life worth living. Sensual pleasures (including the sexual) are some of the most grounding, centring experiences we can have – keeping us in our bodies and in the present moment.
Touch is our first language of connection. Pleasurable touch and, especially, being sexually intimate with another person is a major and potent way to feel connected to others. That sense of connection is essential to our wellbeing; we are social animals and suffer when we are isolated. Speaking on behalf of the WHO, the US Surgeon General recently said, “Lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day… (and) is associated with increased risk of disease, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease and 32% increase risk of stroke”.
Obviously, sex is not the only way to connect with others, but for many of us, it is a particularly profound way – when it goes well. And that’s where centering pleasure is so important. Pleasurable sexual connection with another can feed the soul, give us energy and hope to keep going and contribute to the world.
In The Good Sex Project, sex educator Emily Nagoski says, "literally everything you were taught early in your first 20 years about sex was fundamentally both wrong and wrongheaded". Her advice was to start from scratch, and in doing so, to "centre pleasure". How do we begin to centre pleasure in our lives more?
If you are wanting to plant a flower garden, first you have to pull out all the weeds. An implication of what Nagoski is saying (and arguably the focus of much of her work) is that first, you have to recognise how you have been miseducated, misinformed and brainwashed to believe many unhelpful things, to hold harmful attitudes and act in ways that do not serve you or those you care about.
Maybe you’ve been raised as a guy to believe that you should always be “up for it” and are ashamed by the (perfectly normal) variability of your erectile functioning. Maybe you’ve been raised to believe there are only two genders and can’t understand why neither gender role fits for you. Maybe you’re a woman whose mother taught you that sex is something you do to please others and then are wondering why you’re not interested in sex.
To centre pleasure you have to work out all the “brakes” that interfere with your ability to just show up as yourself and work out what you feel like, in this moment.
As if that wasn’t challenging enough, being able to centre pleasure requires a healthy relationship with yourself. Self-worth and self-respect are necessary to feeling the entitlement to pleasure. So many of us are so caught up in shame and insecurities (negative stories internalised from things that happened in our upbringing) that we struggle to really be connected with ourselves, let alone others. We fear we are not good enough, not important enough to say what we feel or ask for what we want.
So you need to prepare the ground within yourself for pleasure to take root in your life sexually.
What if you grew up in an environment where pleasure was never mentioned, or it was framed as a dangerous or evil thing? Any advice for moving past shame and embarrassment to a more empowered place?
When you have grown up in a sex-negative environment, it’s vital to deconstruct those attitudes and to recognise the covert messages and underlying politics of repressive beliefs. To combat shame, build self-compassion and trust in your own judgement and morality.
However, sometimes, we can’t move past these things easily or quickly despite wishing we could. We have to be patient with ourselves when we discover our early conditioning is still getting in the way of our pleasure and freedom of expression. If it’s really hard, or there is trauma there, you might need the help of a counsellor or therapist.
To move past old beliefs and attitudes it is good to have a new place to move toward. So read, watch and talk with others who have attitudes to sexuality and pleasure that exemplify how you’d like to be. At the same time, commit to staying away as far as possible from anything that is feeding your shame and sex-negative beliefs.
Experiment and explore with an open mind – see what works for you – what gives you pleasure, joy, and satisfaction. Sometimes, we may have to override anxieties that are rooted in outdated beliefs. For example, many of us feel dirty or embarrassed about solo sex. Yet masturbation can be a really useful way to explore both how your body works, (what kind of stimulation you find pleasurable) and how your eroticism works (what kind of thoughts or images turn you on).
Currently, most sex ed classes in Aotearoa high schools omit the subject of sexual pleasure. Do you believe it should be included? Why?
OMG yes! Firstly because divorcing sex from pleasure is a recipe for BAD sex. We already have so many people (especially young women and queer folk) who have little idea that sex can be for their pleasure because that is so rarely depicted in our media. This ignorance leads to seriously bad outcomes – dysfunctional relationships, physical pain, abuse and exploitation.
Sadly, the approach to sex ed in schools is typically very heavily influenced by adult fear about children’s emerging sexuality. When people are anxious, they often become controlling. Yet, trying to stop young people from exploring their sexuality is like stopping the sun from rising.
What we need to do is give young people good answers to their questions. And that has to include educating them about pleasure. Research shows young people want to know about this and also shows that good sex ed reduces harmful sexual experiences (e.g. reduced sexual pain, reduced sexual assault…).
If we want to keep our young people safe we need to recognise that all the components of good sex are the same as the components of safe sex: self-exploration, coming from a place of self-love and worth, the ability to set limits and respect others’ boundaries, the ability to talk about sex, particularly with the people you are wanting to be sexual with, the skill set required for consensual sex. All this leads to pleasurable sex at a deep level, beyond just the physical, and is ultimately also safe sex.
For couples who might be struggling to connect sexually after years together, how can centering pleasure help to bring back the 'spark'? Any advice or activities for doing that?
When most people talk about bringing back the “spark” they’re typically referring to something that is particular to the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship. What polyamorous people refer to as NRE (new relationship energy). You can’t go back there – it’s not possible to have exactly those kinds of feelings outside of a new relationship.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have great sex in a long term relationship. There are many other sources of passion, engagement and excitement available, but they involve accepting where you are and looking forward not back.
Very often what gets in the way of the “easy” sex that you remember from the early days of your relationship is a lot of unexplored or unresolved differences. Not just about sex, but about everything in your relationship.
If you want to be able to centre pleasure, you have to remove those barriers. For many of us that means talking at a level of intimacy, of vulnerability, that we find challenging, if not terrifying.
Some people say talk is unsexy; we argue that the vulnerability of real emotional intimacy is the path to the best sex of your life. The trust built by successfully negotiating tricky conversations lays a powerful platform for having open and honest conversations about what you’re into, what you’re up for and what will bring you pleasure.
