Sex and the Psyche

Before welcoming renowned sexual medicine physician and women’s health advocate Dr. Rachel Rubin to Sex and the Psyche, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz explore why understanding our sexuality requires looking beyond what happens in the bedroom. They discuss the importance of a biopsychosocial approach to sexual wellness, recognizing how our biology, psychology, relationships, and social experiences all influence our ability to experience intimacy, arousal, desire, and pleasure.

Dr. Jenni shares why she values Rachel’s commitment to collaborative care between medical professionals and sex therapists, emphasizing that meaningful progress often happens when physical and psychological factors are addressed together. From hormones and perimenopause to anxiety, body image, attachment, and past experiences, the conversation highlights how interconnected these influences can be- and why patients deserve care that considers the whole person.

Daniel offers a compelling perspective on the relationship between fear and sexual functioning, drawing on his EMT training to explain how the body’s stress response can interfere with physiological processes, including erectile function. Together, he and Jenni explore how anxiety, fear of rejection, concerns about body image, or past violations can affect our ability to feel safe, connected, aroused, and present during intimacy.

The conversation also challenges listeners to become stronger advocates for their own sexual health. Knowing what questions to ask, seeking appropriate medical and therapeutic support, and continuing to advocate for answers that feel meaningful and individualized can open the door to a deeper understanding of our bodies and experiences.

This thoughtful prelude to the upcoming conversation with Dr. Rachel Rubin invites listeners to get curious about the connections between the physical and psychological dimensions of sexuality and to recognize that sexual wellness is far more complex, personal, and multidimensional than many of us have been taught.

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What does it take to build the sexual wellness brand that women actually deserve — and why has it taken this long?

In this episode, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz sit down with Ada Trujillo and Kim Aviv, co-founders of Mila- an intimate wellness brand that is doing something the category has never quite managed: making pleasure feel as intentional, beautiful, and culturally fluent as skincare.

Ada is a former professional basketball player turned CPG marketing powerhouse who has raised millions for major consumer brands. Kim is a finance and operations expert with deep startup experience. Neither came from the sexual wellness world. Both felt deeply underserved by it-and decided to fix it.

At the center of their product line is the Aura, a pending-patent pleasure device that layers four distinct functionalities to map the full arc of female arousal, not just the finish line. Warmth. Orbital massage. Vibration. Suction. Designed to be explored, not just used. Beautiful enough to live on your nightstand. Quiet enough that nobody walking in would know what it is.

But this conversation goes well beyond the product. Jenni and Daniel bring their combined 17 years of clinical practice to a conversation about why sensuality is a lost language, why lube is non-negotiable at every age, why men feel excluded from women’s pleasure and how a toy can change that, and why the lowest common denominator approach to self-pleasure is costing women a whole range of experiences they never knew were available to them.

Ada and Kim share what it is like to pitch sexual wellness to skeptical investors, and how a $1 million raise became $2.5 million. They talk about what is coming next, including a product for couples, and why they believe sexual wellness belongs on the same shelf as matcha and Pilates.

Check out Mila!

Mila Instagram

Mila TikTok

Mila Facebook

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What happens when a couple has spent years working through trauma, parenting, mismatched desire, rejection, and the complicated realities of long-term partnership- and finally reaches a place where intimacy can feel playful again?

In Part 2 of our conversation with Tarah and EJ, we go deeper into the intimate side of long-term relationships: eroticism, desire, sexual shame, emotional safety, and the patience it can take to rebuild connection. Tarah and EJ open up about their own journey through periods when sex became tense and even frightening, and how building emotional safety eventually created room for curiosity, playfulness, and a renewed sense of intimacy.

We talk about why eroticism isn't necessarily about fantasy or sexual novelty, but can begin with something much more fundamental: feeling safe enough to be fully yourself with your partner. We explore what happens when one partner carries sexual trauma while the other experiences a deep hunger for connection, and why patience, boundaries, vulnerability, and personal responsibility are essential when those needs collide.

The conversation also tackles rejection and how differently it can land on each side of a relationship. From pregnancy and changing desire to the painful “don't even touch me” moments, we explore how learning to communicate honestly can transform rejection from a source of tension into an opportunity for deeper understanding.

And then comes one of the most powerful revelations of the episode: sometimes you have to genuinely accept that a relationship might not work in order to freely choose to stay. Letting go of the fear of losing the relationship can remove the pressure, create space for honesty, and allow two people to choose each other from clarity rather than fear.

It's a candid conversation about the reality of long-term love, and a reminder that the work isn't a sign that something is wrong with a relationship. Sometimes, the work is the relationship.

Tarah and EJ Links:

Website: https://relationshiprenovation.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/relationshiprenovationcounseling

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relationship_renovation/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfb8I3evBi7aZcVnmvN_yPw

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What happens when the person you love most is also the person who can trigger your deepest wounds?

In this episode of Sex and the Psyche, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz sit down with relationship coaches and married couple Tarah and EJ Kerwin for a refreshingly honest conversation about love, marriage, parenting, sex, and what it really takes to stay connected when life gets hard.

Tarah and EJ are therapists and relationship coaches who have built their careers helping couples reconnect, but their own marriage was tested in ways they never expected and found themselves overwhelmed by exhaustion, parenting, resentment, and a level of stress that challenged everything they thought they knew about relationships.

Their experience eventually led them to develop a deeper understanding of intimacy and the realization that sexual disconnection is often about much more than sex. They talk about emotional safety, mismatched desire, the impact of parenthood on sexuality, and why couples need to be able to talk about intimacy without turning sex into a weapon, obligation, or measure of love.

The conversation also explores one of the most powerful ideas in their work: our partners can become mirrors for the parts of ourselves we don't always want to see. Instead of asking, “Why is my partner doing this to me?” Tarah and EJ learned to ask, “What is this relationship bringing up in me?”

From attachment wounds and childhood experiences to anger, defensiveness, abandonment, and the need to feel safe, this episode gets real about the personal work that can transform a relationship.

It's a conversation about what happens when we stop trying to fix our partner and start becoming curious about ourselves, and how taking responsibility for our own patterns can actually create more freedom, intimacy, and choice within a relationship.

If you've ever wondered where the connection went, struggled with mismatched sexual desire, felt like parenting changed your marriage, or found yourself repeatedly triggered by the person you love most, this episode offers plenty to think about- and plenty of reasons to keep doing the work.

Because sometimes, the person who knows how to push your buttons is also the person who can help you discover what those buttons are connected to.

Tarah and EJ Links:

Website: https://relationshiprenovation.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/relationshiprenovationcounseling

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relationship_renovation/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfb8I3evBi7aZcVnmvN_yPw

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What if pleasure wasn't something you had to earn, save for, or reserve for special occasions, but something you could intentionally build into your everyday life?

In this episode of Sex and the Psyche, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz are joined spontaneously by producer Kim Kaplan for a conversation about the role of pleasure in our physical, emotional, and sexual well-being.

They explore the surprising connection between exercise, relaxation, stress, and sexual desire and why there may not be one universal path to getting into the right state for intimacy. Sometimes movement and energy help us feel more alive and connected to our bodies. Other times, what we need is a ritual that helps us slow down, let go of the day's stress, and create enough space for pleasure to emerge.

The conversation then takes a bigger turn: In a world where we track our sleep, steps, food, finances, and productivity, why don't we pay more attention to pleasure?

Jenni, Daniel, and Kim explore the idea of a “pleasure tracker” and what it might look like to notice the small moments that make us feel good- from a warm cup of coffee or sunshine on your face to a great workout, time in nature, a cuddle, a shared meal, or sexual connection.

They also unpack the difference between pleasure, intensity, and indulgence, and why chasing bigger or more intense experiences doesn't necessarily create more pleasure. True pleasure can be quiet, subtle, relational, sensory, and deeply connected to being present in the moment.

And then comes the metaphor at the heart of the episode: the pleasure piggybank.

Jenni describes how those small moments of pleasure are like deposits. When we regularly allow ourselves to experience pleasure throughout the day, we may arrive at intimacy with more abundance rather than feeling depleted or disconnected from our own needs.

Because sexual pleasure doesn't necessarily begin in the bedroom. It can begin with learning to notice what feels good, asking for what you want, creating boundaries around your time, and giving yourself permission to experience pleasure in everyday life.

You don't need a big moment every time. The pennies and nickels count, too.

So what are you putting into your pleasure piggybank today?

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Is 10 Seconds of Oral Sex Still a Blowjob?

How much time does it take for oral sex to “count”? Ten seconds? Thirty seconds? Does there have to be an orgasm, ejaculation, or even an erection?

In this episode of Sex and the Psyche, Daniel and Dr. Jenni Skyler tackle a surprisingly complicated question sparked by a very real-life sexual experience and introduce a phrase we’re pretty sure you won’t forget: the “Cock Kiss.”

They explore why there’s no universal stopwatch for good sex, how intention and attention can matter more than duration, and why the exact same sexual experience can feel satisfying to one person and completely unfinished to another. They also get into rapid ejaculation, orgasming without an erection, difficulty ejaculating while still enjoying stimulation, and how medications, age, health history, excitement, and infrequent sex can all affect what happens in the bedroom.

Most importantly, the conversation raises a bigger question: How do you communicate with your partner when your definition of “that was enough” isn't the same as theirs?

Because when it comes to sex, sometimes it's not about how long it lasted… it's about what happened while you were there.

And yes- sometimes it really is just a cock kiss.

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What does it really mean when we say someone is “out of our league”? And how much of our dating life is shaped by the way we think we or our partners rank in the eyes of other people?

In this episode of Sex and the Psyche, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz unpack the cultural obsession with attractiveness, status, fitness, and the idea that some people are somehow more “valuable” partners than others.

They talk about how believing someone is out of your league can create anxiety, insecurity, and even lead us to tolerate behaviors we otherwise wouldn’t accept. But they also explore the other side of the conversation: the very real reasons humans have always evaluated potential partners, and why knowing what actually matters to you can be a powerful tool.

That’s where the list comes in.

Jenni explains how she works with dating clients to identify their priorities- not as a checklist for finding a perfect partner, but as a way to get clear about what they truly want in a relationship and a shared life. Is attraction at the top? Kindness? Loyalty? Emotional safety? Financial security? There’s no right answer. It’s your list.

And having that clarity can become a kind of safety net when chemistry, hormones, attraction, and emotions threaten to cloud your judgment.

Because maybe the better question isn’t, “Is this person out of my league?”

Maybe it’s: “Does this person fit the life I want?”

Tune in for a candid conversation about attraction, dating, self-worth, red flags, relationship priorities, and finding the confidence to choose the relationship that works for you.

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What happens when your partner refuses therapy, refuses to talk, and refuses to change- but divorce isn’t on the table?

In Part 2 of our special replay from Taboo to Truth, we’re once again turning the tables on Dr. Jenni and Daniel, as they continue their candid conversation with friend and fellow podcast host, Karen Bigman.

We’re incredibly grateful to Karen for generously allowing us to share this two-part conversation with our Sex and the Psyche listeners and give you a chance to hear Jenni and Daniel from the other side of the microphone.

This time, the conversation goes even deeper into what can slowly kill desire in long-term relationships- and what couples can realistically do when they feel stuck.

Jenni and Daniel talk about how to express your needs when your partner isn't willing to budge, why stagnation- not necessarily incompatibility, can be one of the biggest threats to a couple’s sex life, and how to tell your partner you're bored in bed without completely crushing their confidence.

They also unpack the “Madonna-whore complex” and the love-lust split, explore why menopause and postpartum can become significant periods of sexual stagnation, and get refreshingly personal about what it’s like to navigate intimacy when you're both married and sex therapists.

And they tackle an important question about relationships and gender roles: Why do so many men defer to women when it comes to being the “relationship expert,” and what happens when both partners take responsibility for understanding and nurturing their connection?

It’s honest, vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortable- and exactly the kind of conversation we love having on Sex and the Psyche.

A huge thank-you to Karen Bigman and Taboo to Truth for sharing this conversation with us.

If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, go back and start there!

And be sure to check out Taboo to Truth wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow Karen Bigman:

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenbigman

Website: http://taboototruth.com

Substack: https://karenbigman.substack.com/

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What happens when one partner wants sex and the other doesn’t?

Mismatched desire- or desire discrepancy is one of the most common issues Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz see among couples, and it’s a topic they’re asked about again and again.

For this special episode of Sex and the Psyche, we’re turning the tables and putting Jenni and Daniel in the hot seat!

Our friend Karen Bigman, host of Taboo to Truth, generously invited Jenni and Daniel onto her podcast for a candid conversation about desire discrepancy, intimacy, shame, and the challenges couples face when their libidos don't match. We’re so grateful to Karen for allowing us to replay this conversation here on Sex and the Psyche, giving our listeners a chance to hear Jenni and Daniel as guests and get a behind-the-scenes look at how they answer the questions they’re usually the ones asking.

In this first part of the two-part conversation, Jenni and Daniel explore why desire discrepancy happens, what it can look like in long-term relationships, and why the partner with lower desire is never simply “the problem.” They also talk about why some men shut down or go silent when they’re struggling sexually, how shame can take over in the bedroom, and how the right words can open the door to a much more honest and compassionate conversation between partners.

A huge thank-you to Karen Bigman and Taboo to Truth for sharing this conversation with our Sex and the Psyche audience.

Be sure to listen to Part 2 for more of Jenni and Daniel in the hot seat!

And while you're at it, check out Taboo to Truth wherever you listen to podcasts. You may discover your next favorite show!

Follow Karen Bigman

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenbigman

Website: http://taboototruth.com

Substack: https://karenbigman.substack.com/

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What if someone had actually taught you how to have a great relationship?

While Sex and the Psyche takes a short production break, we're bringing back some of the conversations our listeners connected with most. In this Encore Episode, we revisit our conversation with Zach and Sally Maxwell and explore The Relationship Framework Nobody Taught You.

Relationships don't come with an instruction manual. Most of us learn how to communicate, navigate conflict, build intimacy, and stay connected by trial and error—and sometimes by making a whole lot of mistakes along the way.

Zach and Sally offer a fresh perspective on the skills and framework that can help couples better understand each other, communicate more effectively, and create a stronger, more connected relationship.

Whether you heard this conversation the first time around or you're discovering it for the first time, this is one worth revisiting.

Take another listen, share it with someone you love, and remember: a better relationship starts with better conversations.

New episodes of Sex and the Psyche return soon. Until then, enjoy this Encore Conversation—and keep your questions coming!

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Guest Information:

sally@max-wellcoaching.com

https://www.max-wellcoaching.com/

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You asked. We answered. And apparently, you wanted to hear more.

While Sex and the Psyche takes a short production break, we're bringing back some of your favorite conversations, and we're starting with one of our most downloaded episodes.

In this Encore Episode, Jenni and Daniel tackle the questions about sex, relationships, and intimacy that people are often too embarrassed, curious, or nervous to ask out loud.

We dive into small penis size, casual sex, sexual rejection, and why rejection can cut so deeply. We answer these questions with honesty, humor, compassion, and a little science along the way.

Whether you missed this conversation the first time or you're ready to hear it again, there's something here for everyone. Because sometimes the questions we're most hesitant to ask are the ones we're all wondering about.

Listen, laugh, learn...and remember: you're probably not the only one asking.

New episodes of Sex and the Psyche return soon. Until then, enjoy this Encore Conversation, and keep your questions coming. Yours might be next!

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and please DM us with your questions!

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The Department of Defense made headlines when it announced plans to test testosterone levels in active military members. The debate that followed was loud, political, and almost entirely missed the point.

Jenni and Daniel are not interested in the political conversation. They are interested in the clinical one, and in this episode they take a current news story and do what they do best: strip away the noise and get to what actually matters.

They start with the basics. Testosterone is not simply a marker of masculinity- it is a marker of health. Vitality. Mood. Cognitive clarity. The capacity to make good decisions under pressure. Too high creates its own problems. Too low, which is far more common, particularly in high-stress, sleep-deprived environments like military service, produces depression, fatigue, irritability, and a creeping sense that something is fundamentally off. Daniel's phrase for it, borrowed from their recent conversation with Dr. Rachel Rubin, says it precisely: I don't feel like myself.

But the number alone tells you almost nothing. A reading of 450 might have one man feeling like he's on top of the world and another quietly falling apart. Context matters. Individual baseline matters. And the systems surrounding that number- sleep, stress, relationships, mental health, nutrition and physical strength matter as much as the hormone itself. Testing testosterone without addressing those systems is, as Daniel puts it, throwing a pill at a very complex situation.

Jenni brings women into the conversation and makes the case that hormonal testing is not a male-only issue. She shares her own experience discovering her testosterone was in the basement despite being a muscular, physically active person, and explains why estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone together form the constellation that optimizes women's physical, sexual, and mental health. She makes the point that neither testosterone nor estrogen belongs exclusively to one gender- men need estrogen, women need testosterone, and balance is individual, not categorical.

Daniel ties it back to the bio-psychosocial model- the framework that Jenni and Daniel have built their entire clinical practice around. You can test the biology. But if the psychology is suffering (anxiety, depression, unprocessed trauma) and the social dimension is broken, (relationships in conflict, connection absent isolation growing), the biology will follow. Each system pulls on the others. Fix the sleep and the testosterone improves. Improve the testosterone and the irritability decreases. Decrease the irritability and the relationship gets better. The relationship getting better reduces stress. The stress reduction improves sleep. You pull one string and it moves another one.

They close with the thing that surprises most people when they say it out loud: the antidote to stress is connection. Not a supplement. Not a number. Not a protocol. The ratio of connection to disconnection in your life is one of the most powerful health metrics available- and it's the one almost nobody tracks.

This episode is for veterans and first responders. It's for anyone who has wondered why they don't feel like themselves. It's for women who have never been told to test their testosterone. It's for men who didn't know that low testosterone looks like depression. And it's for anyone who has been waiting for someone to say that their relationships, their sleep, their stress load, and their hormones are not separate conversations- they are one conversation, and it starts here.

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Sally and Zach Maxwell introduced eight pillars. Jenni and Daniel spent the next number of days talking about all of them.

This bonus episode is what happens when two therapists who are also married to each other sit down to unpack a framework that resonated deeply- finding the places where the Maxwell pillars align with their own clinical work, the places where they want to push further, and the places where an entirely new conversation opens up.

The first thread is about why frameworks matter at all. Daniel makes the case that most couples stumble into relationship rather than building it intentionally, and that having named categories for what you're working on is not cold or clinical. It is the scaffolding that allows the emotional, spontaneous, genuinely alive parts of a relationship to exist without collapsing under their own weight. Jenni responds with a vision of the Maxwell pillars printed on the refrigerator, a cheat sheet for the OCD brain, the ADD brain, and every brain that has ever been in a relationship and lost the thread of where the conversation was supposed to be going.

The second thread is about authenticity, and it starts with Jenni noticing something about Zach Maxwell. He is not fluffy or effusive. He doesn't do the rom-com version of showing up. And yet he is clearly exactly the right person for Sally. Daniel's answer is one of the most quietly important things he says in any episode this season: what matters is not that you show up the way your partner imagines you should. It's that you show up wholeheartedly in your own way, because a partner performing someone else's version of love is not actually giving you love at all. Your partner can feel the difference. Every time.

The third thread is the one that deserves its own full episode, and Jenni says so directly. Sex as a transaction. Not the dismissive, joyless version of that phrase. The genuinely useful reframe: I am going to offer you pleasure, and in exchange you are going to offer me pleasure. And if you can surrender to that- if you can allow yourself to be present in the transaction rather than resentful of it, something shifts.

This leads to Daniel's homework assignment built around a car dealership analogy that somehow perfectly captures everything. The narrative you bring to a transaction determines the experience you have of it. Where in your relationship are you walking in convinced you're going to get the short end of the stick? And what would shift if you walked in grateful instead?

And it leads to the line that became the title of this episode. How many women have sat across from Jenni in her office and said some version of: I feel like I'm just a receptacle. Like he's using me. And Jenni's clinical response, delivered with complete warmth and zero apology is the truest and funniest reframe she has: he can masturbate with his hand. He is choosing you because he wants connection with you. He likes you. And your vagina. And those two things are allowed to coexist.

This is Jenni and Daniel at their most themselves. Thinking out loud, finishing each other's sentences, disagreeing slightly, and landing somewhere true.

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Karen Bigman's path to becoming a menopause sex educator is one of the most unexpectedly compelling origin stories we've heard on this podcast. She started in technology. She raised children. She worked in restaurants. And then, in her early 50s, newly separated after a 25-year marriage and struggling to orgasm with a new partner, she found her way to a sexual medicine practice run by Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, where a nurse practitioner handed her a little blue bullet vibrator, suggested she try it in the next room, and Karen came back five minutes later saying "you just changed my life".

That moment is the seed of everything Karen has built since. Her platform, Taboo to Truth, is dedicated to dismantling the two most pervasive myths she encounters in her work: that sex is something people stop having at a certain age, and that it's a topic too taboo to discuss openly. Her course, Men Meet Menopause, is built on the radical premise that male partners, often the most confused and the most shut out from the conversation, deserve their own education, their own language, and their own practical tools for showing up during one of the most significant transitions their partner will experience.

In this episode, Karen joins Jenni and Daniel for a conversation that covers a remarkable amount of ground with warmth, humor, and genuine clinical depth. They dig into why menopause remains under-discussed even in 2026, the lingering shadow of the Women's Health Initiative, the male reluctance to name what they're observing, the shame women carry about bodies that are changing in ways they didn't expect. Daniel introduces the compassion sandwich, leading with care rather than observation, as the reframe that changes how every difficult conversation lands. Karen talks about the five pillars underlying sexual disconnection in midlife couples, and what it looks like when one of them wobbles.

Jenni brings in the Cheesecake of Pleasure- her clinical framework for expanding a couple's repertoire beyond intercourse as the only available flavor, and the conversation around grief, creativity, and what it means to look forward to something bigger than what you're losing becomes one of the richest exchanges of the season. Karen's concept of sex snacks sits beautifully alongside it. Both frameworks point to the same clinical truth: when intercourse is temporarily or permanently off the table, the answer is not resignation. It's creativity. It's building a palette of pleasure that belongs to this season rather than mourning the one that's passed.

Karen closes with the line that may be the most important thing in the episode: don't give up. Don't accept the myth that this is done. Don't believe that sex is only for young people or for other people or for the version of your relationship that existed before all of this. The research shows that women over 60 can have the best sex of their lives if they want. The invitation: for women navigating menopause and for the partners who love them, is to join the journey together and find out what's on the other side.

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This is the conversation that happened after the conversation.

Part one of our Deb Rubin episode covered the foundations: why sexuality is not an emergency, the three things that make kids stop talking to you, and the difference between sexuality and sexualization. This part two episode picks up exactly where that left off, and goes somewhere most parenting conversations don't.

The first thread is clothing. Specifically: what do you actually do when your middle schooler comes downstairs in something that makes your stomach drop? Deb walks us through the questions she loves. Not the panicked parental reaction, but the slow, deliberate, genuinely curious questions that keep the conversation open rather than slamming it shut. Is it weather appropriate? Does it fit? Does it feel comfortable? Is it right for the occasion? And underneath all of those: is my reaction coming from a fear, or from a responsibility?

She also names something that most parents are thinking and nobody says out loud: people make a quick snapshot decision based on how you look. Not fair. Not right. But true, and worth telling your kid directly, without judgment, so they can factor it into their own deliberate choices rather than discovering it the hard way.

The second thread is social media. Deb waited until her daughters were fourteen before allowing any social media at all. She was strict about time limits and relaxed about content, believing that her job was to manage the dopamine delivery mechanism, not to surveil everything her kids were consuming. And then, in junior year, she removed the limits entirely. Not because the concern was gone, but because she had two years left under her roof to let her daughter practice managing herself and discover, on her own, whether she needed limits at all. Her daughter put them back on after a month.

That story, (the limits removed, the daughter who reinstated them herself) is the emotional and clinical centerpiece of part two of our conversation with Deb Rubin. Because it illustrates everything Deb has been saying across both conversations: the goal is not control. The goal is critical thinking. The goal is a kid who, when left to their own devices, reaches for what actually serves them.

Jenni closes the episode with a clinical frame that Deb immediately said she was going to steal: the dopamine toolbox. When electronics are the only source of dopamine in a child's life, the consequences are significant and well-documented. The invitation, for kids and for the adults raising them, is to build a diverse toolbox of dopamine sources. Movement. Connection. Creative work. Real-world competence. Not instead of screens, but alongside them, so that the pull of any single source never becomes the whole story.

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This episode features Deb Rubin on creating a sex-positive home, the three things that make kids stop talking to you, and why there is no "talk", just a thousand small moments.

Deb Rubin is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and therapeutic parent coach based in Boulder, Colorado, with over twenty years of experience helping parents navigate the transition from childhood to adolescence. She's also Jenni's longtime colleague and friend, which means this conversation goes places most podcast conversations don't.

The episode opens with a deceptively simple question: how do parents move past their own discomfort to become the trusted voice in their child's life around sexuality? And from there it becomes one of the most practically useful conversations about sex education and parenting that Sex and the Psyche has ever hosted.

Deb introduces a framework that reframes the entire conversation: sexuality is not an emergency. It's not one talk. It's not a checklist. It's short, sweet, and consistent, a thousand small moments of curiosity and honesty that accumulate, over years, into a child who trusts you enough to tell you things you didn't even know you wanted to know.

She breaks down the three parental responses that immediately shut kids down; judgment, over-empathizing, and catastrophic thinking, and explains why the parent who says almost nothing in the moment of a share almost always gets told more. She distinguishes clearly between sexuality (natural, internal, expressive) and sexualization (external, objectifying, worth-based), and explains why conflating the two is one of the most damaging things the culture does to young people.

And she names something that Daniel articulates beautifully near the end of the episode: the difference between parenting from fear and parenting from responsibility. A fear requires you to go inward. A responsibility requires you to have a conversation. Knowing which one you're operating from changes everything about how you show up.

This episode is for every parent who has ever frozen in the moment, said the wrong thing, or wondered whether they've already missed their window. The answer, Deb makes clear, is almost always no.

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No guest this week. Just Jenni and Daniel, two married co-hosts, two therapists, and two people who are very comfortable talking about things most people avoid entirely.

The episode starts where it always does for this podcast: with honesty. A scheduling miscommunication left them without a guest, and instead of papering over it, they open with a real conversation about what rejection actually does to a person. The small sting of a scheduling glitch, scaled up to the much deeper sting of being turned down by the person you love. Because rejection, as Jenni explains, is the opposite of belonging. And belonging, at the neurological level, is survival.

From there, they turn to listener questions. The first comes from a partner who isn't bothered by her person's small penis, but is bothered by the fact that they're working through it in therapy without including her in the conversation. Jenni and Daniel explore body confidence, creative solutions, the power of open-handed poker in a relationship, and why men with smaller penises are often significantly better lovers than men who rely on size to carry the experience.

The second question arrives from a recently divorced woman re-entering the dating scene, asking whether men are biologically capable of casual sex or whether that's cultural conditioning. The answer, as both Jenni and Daniel agree, is both, and the reasoning is genuinely illuminating. Daniel brings in evolutionary psychology, reproductive biology, and a quietly stunning fact about the male body's response at the moment of death that explains just how deeply the drive to reproduce is wired. Jenni brings in the bio-psychosocial frame- the cultural narratives that reward sexual conquest, the way casual sex can paradoxically produce performance anxiety, and the attachment lens.

Which leads to the final thread of the episode: a full breakdown of all four attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and ambivalent. And how each one shapes the capacity for casual sex, the experience of rejection, and the push-pull dynamics that make relationships so complicated and so human.

This is one of those episodes that covers more ground in thirty-five minutes than most podcasts manage in two hours.

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Brooke Bralove has been doing talk therapy for over twenty years. She's good at it. And she will tell you, clearly and without hesitation, that there are things talk therapy simply cannot do.

That's where Accelerated Resolution Therapy comes in.

ART is a brief, neuroscience-based treatment modality that uses rapid eye movement, similar to what happens during REM sleep combined with a technique called voluntary image replacement, to rewire the way the brain stores negative memories, traumatic experiences, and the body sensations that accompany them. The process is fast. Often remarkably so. Single-incident trauma: rarely more than two sessions. Sometimes one.

In this episode, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz sit down with Brooke to explore one of the most underused and under-discussed tools in sexual health. They walk through how ART works, the eye movements, the desensitization, the director scene, and the brain's extraordinary capacity to store a new narrative without ever erasing the facts of what actually happened. They share clinical stories: a man whose erectile dysfunction resolved after clearing a decade-old stabbing trauma he'd never connected to his sexual functioning. A woman with six years of pelvic pain who immediately surfaced a childhood memory of being beaten- a memory that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the body's guarding response. A woman who hadn't been intimate with her husband in six years, whose desire returned after a single session of releasing the accumulated irritation that had been sitting in its place.

And then Jenni shares something she's never shared publicly before. The personal session she did with Brooke at ISSWSH. The image that had been jumping into her brain during foreplay since she was twelve. What the eye movements revealed about a memory she thought was something it wasn't. And the director scene she created, spontaneously, without planning, that left her, in her own words, feeling more alive in her body and her Eros than she had in years.

Daniel brings the evolutionary lens: why predators look around while prey looks forward, what perspective actually does to the nervous system, and the Japanese concept of Kintsugi (filling cracks with gold) as a metaphor for what ART does to a memory. Brooke talks about using eye movements before presentations, during chronic pain, and in moments of anticipatory anxiety. And she makes a quietly radical suggestion: that art as a daily self-administered practice might be one of the most accessible nervous system tools available to anyone willing to look at two spots on a wall for thirty seconds.

The motto of ART is simple. Keep the knowledge, lose the pain. This episode is the best possible introduction to what that means.

https://brookebralove.com/accelerated-resolution-therapy/

https://brookebralove.com/

https://www.instagram.com/brookebralovepsychotherapy/

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When Claire Rumore was lifted into a hospital gurney to undergo her first biopsy, she stepped aside to use the restroom first. And while she was there, she heard a quiet internal voice ask her a question: Do you want to go back to the life you had before? Is that what you want?

Without hesitation, her answer was no.

What followed was one of the most unusual cancer journeys in modern medicine. Claire was 43 years old. She had stage four pancreatic cancer — a diagnosis that typically affects older men, and that her medical team never actually disclosed to her during treatment. She went through two major abdominal surgeries, dropped to 74 pounds, lost her menstrual cycle, lost her libido, and lost the person she had been. And then, slowly, over the course of eighteen months, she found her way back. Not to who she was- but to someone clearer, more embodied, and more deeply connected to her own desire than she had ever been before.

In this episode, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz sit down with Claire for a conversation about the emotional, relational, and erotic dimensions of cancer recovery that medicine almost never addresses. Claire is the founder of Cancer and Intimacy, an education platform built on a three-part framework she developed from her own experience and her work with patients, survivors, and their partners.

The first lily pad is erotic grief, the deeply under addressed process of mourning what's been lost: The body you knew, the sexuality you had, the intimacy you can no longer access in the same way. Claire has written a free ebook on erotic grief and makes a compelling case that this experience is not exclusive to cancer. It's universal to anyone navigating major change.

The second is libido listening. The slow, quiet, inward practice of reacquainting yourself with your own body's signals after illness or loss. Claire describes learning to feel pleasure in the sheets against her skin, in the air in the room, in the gentlest forms of touch, what she calls subtle sexuality. A term she coined to describe the low, soft, sensory orientation to desire that becomes the entry point back to conventional sexuality.

Claire Rumore Website

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Jeff Abraham didn't set out to build a sexual wellness company. He was a semiconductor engineer from a coal mining town in Pennsylvania who sold his business, retired, and got a call from his neighbor, Dr. Ronald Gilbert, the urologist who invented Promescent's delay spray. One conversation, one product sample, and one phone call later, Jeff was all in.

What followed was fifteen years of building one of the most respected sexual wellness brands in the world with over 5 million bottles sold, more than 4,000 healthcare professionals recommending the product, and a mission that Jeff describes simply as helping people. Along the way, he lost his closest friend to an act of senseless violence. And he decided the best thing he could do with that grief was give Dr. Gilbert the legacy he deserved.

In this episode, Dr. Jenni Skyler and Daniel Lebowitz sit down with Jeff for one of the most candid and practically useful conversations about male sexual functioning you'll find anywhere. They dig into the clinical reality of premature ejaculation, the difference between clinical PE and the much larger group of men who simply want better intimacy. Why 75% of women don't orgasm from intercourse alone, and what that means for couples. Why men who struggle with PE often stop initiating sex entirely, and the spiral that follows. How shame, not physiology, is usually the most dangerous factor in the room. And why Jeff's answer to "what's the best thing you can do for better intimacy?" is still, always, communication.

They also talk about the rise of male masturbatory devices, why younger men are increasingly choosing not to pursue partners at all, the engineering logic behind Promescent's patented eutectic formula, and how to "put one in the bank" before intercourse if anxiety is running the show.

This is a conversation for men who have quietly stepped back from intimacy because of shame and for the partners who don't understand why. Jeff is warm, irreverent, deeply informed, and completely unafraid to say the thing most people in this space are dancing around.

Learn more about Promescent

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