psychology of sex, a talk with lori beth bisbey [video]

I'm also somebody who doesn't love casual sex. It just does not work for me. It is not my thing, I don't like it. I've never experimented in any like polyamorous, open relationships.

So that's a completely like, unknown world to me. And then to really get down to it and to get really technical with it. Sexually, I'm pretty, I guess you could say vanilla. I'm very vanilla with sex, however, being somebody who is not super sexual, but, alas, okay, still a sexual person to an extent. I am excited to be talking to a sex expert today who is not just an expert in like sex, like how the orgasm works. Blah, blah, blah, that's exciting, I guess.

But we're talking to an expert that understands fetishes, that understands kinks. And I'm very excited because there's a lot that I don't know. And, you know, maybe I have a fetish in me that I don't know about. And this is when my parents should turn off the episode, definitely my grandparents.

Basically all family, but anywho. Today we're going to be talking to Lori Beth Bisbee. She is a gender, sex and relationship diversity therapist. She's also a sex and intimacy coach and registered psychologist. She helps people discover their authentic intimate self.

Maybe by the end of this conversation, I'll have some really strong epiphanies. She has a lot of experience, she's been in this industry for 30 years. She's helped people explore sex and intimacy and recreate healthy sexual identities following trauma. She's helped people create and maintain consensually non-monogamous relationships, as well as deepen their awareness and understanding of intimacy and relationships.

She's also the host of the podcast The A to Z of Sex. I'm so excited to learn more about sex. And maybe one day, through education and through prayer, I will one day kind of have a sexy vibe. Probably not all good.

Maybe I'm just sexy in my own little way, anyway. Let's welcome in Lori Beth Bisbee. This is going to be a fun one, so sit back and relax. Love you, did you grow up a really sexual person?

I feel like there are types of people and maybe you would actually disagree, but I feel like there are some people who are more sexual than others. I feel like I'm not super sexual, I'm actually on probably the less sexual end I am, but not as much as others. Where did you fall on that scale and do you think that that impacted where you are now?

And so therefore, they become sexually precocious. So I'm certainly on the more sexual side, and I certainly always was. But what was more interesting for me was that I was different sexually. And that was the thing that led to me ending up doing what I do now. Because I knew I was different pretty young and there was no internet, I would say to people, I'm like, I'm 61 years old. We didn't have a community as far as sex is concerned, if it exists, somebody's into it, and now if somebody's into it, there's a group on the internet. But when I was growing up, there wasn't that, so you went to the library and you looked up things.

You really didn't have anybody to talk to about being different. And so I think that's how I ended up going along this path, because I was trying to understand who I was and get my needs met.

You learn that by watching. So we pass down shitty emotional management skills through the generations, isn't that nice, right? So teach them emotional management skills, teach them relationship skills, communication skills. Alongside all of this, that for me-.

Everything's contradicting, depending on who you're asking or where you're looking. If you were to listen to what they say at Sex Ed, it's giving you a very specific, very technical, very, not necessarily very pleasurable way of having sex. Then you watch porn telling you something completely different. That also can make you feel shameful in a way. Because you're like, Well, I don't look like that, and I don't really want to do that, and so that feels bad. Everywhere you look, you're finding contradicting information about what sex is, what it's supposed to look like, what it's supposed to feel like, what it's supposed to sound like, all of these things.

I think it can be very intimidating and it can make it hard for people, young people, especially, I think, to find their place in it. A lot of that, I just feel like that comes with a lot of shame, just the feeling of imposter syndrome, almost. Am I supposed to be having sex and how, and whatever. How do you help people get through that sort of challenge and find themselves sexually? Trying to sort of ignore all this noise and all these things that were planted in their head as children?

So part of that is figuring out what the messages were that they got in childhood about wrongnesses. And actually giving some better information will help with shame and then digging out the shame. So many people can hear their parents, they just internalized everything their parents said about sex and starting to educate about pleasure. And I've stopped using the term sex a lot because people argue about what the fuck sex is right. Like, what is this?

And you see this in the kink community. That's not sex, we don't have sex, it's separate from sex, and that's because they only think of sex as something that happens genitally.

It's just that because sex is so taboo. And as you were just saying, there are so many rules about what you can do and when and with whom. I just like, get rid of the word. It's like, Okay. So let's talk about how you experience pleasure, which of the different ways that you experience pleasure? Like? There's self-pleasure, there's pleasure with others, there's pleasure from watching, there's pleasure from eating. And we can broaden it out that way, and that starts to lower shame.

Yeah, like, is it bad? If you're enjoying eating something so much that your mouth is watering, that's not shameful.

So I think that's a great note. Is like, you know, for people who do feel shameful about being sexual, even in like, not even like a kink way. Like, we're not even there yet.

Like, I no longer care, you know, I'm going to have a good time and I'm going to have a good time, and that's all it is. In your 20s, you're really worried about, like, looking attractive, nobody has an attractive orgasm face. It doesn't exist.

This is where porn has a lot to answer for. Pornography is entertainment only. It's just like the movies, you know. They come and they touch up your makeup in the middle of it, they do certain camera angles to make you look better.

You don't see the people holding up the woman's leg in the back because she can't put it up over at that level. The fluffers trying to make sure a man has an erection. It is entertainment, meaning it's not real. If you don't remember that, then you can get complexes about how you're supposed to look. I mean, you know, the airbrushed vaginas, they whiten.

Whoa, that is why.

It's all these things that-.

What it is is, you cannot have an orgasm and maintain control, and the fear is about. For some, it's a vulnerability thing, for some it's a fear that they'll be injured. For some it's a fear of what they'll look like. It doesn't matter what the actual fear is, but it is this. They cannot let go of control.

So when you're masturbating, it's not a problem because you're with you, right? Nothing bad's going to happen to you. You don't care how you look, so you're fine. But when you're with a partner, you're giving up control. No matter how you feel about it, you absolutely can't come and maintain control.

On the other end of things, like, you know? Because we kind of just touched on. People who are maybe more shameful, more nervous, more anxious, maybe more like me. There's, you know, people who are more just naturally like, not shameful, just open, like, comfortable. It's easy for them. I feel like people like that, though, maybe tend to at times, let's say struggle, have a different array of struggles.

Unfortunately, societally, we are hung up on our bodies.

It's like a thumbprint, it's like one of one to you, yes.

Because people can have casual sex and have it be perfectly healthy.

And then there's some people who are like, we should just not do relationships at all. It's not meant for us, we should just all be having casual sex only. I feel like people get very hooked into their camp because it's what works for them.

And then they start saying, This is what works for everyone. What's the truth of that?

So monogamy is fantastic for some people all the time, and for some other people some of the time. non-monogamy fantastic for some people all the time, for other people some of the time. It really is very individual, but I do believe that people in some ways can be wired for it.

Like everybody, some people like to say, well, everybody has the possibility of being non-monogamous. No, there are some people for whom non-monogamy is just excruciating. And why would we want to work to make them non-monogamous, the same as we wouldn't want to work to make somebody monogamous? We want people to play to their strengths.

The only time I don't want people to limit themselves in that way is when they're not playing to their strengths. But they've limited their world because of trauma, and so they're trying to protect themselves, so they make their world smaller and smaller and smaller.

Do you think that that is somebody not in their right type of dating style, or do you think that there's more to it?

They're not talking, they're not communicating, they've had problems, whatever it is, and cheating is a way of. It's a pressure release valve.

I'll just take this over here because I'm not getting my intimate needs met here. And I mean, emotionally intimate as well as physically intimate, a lot of it is really about emotional intimacy. So it's they can't figure out how to work it through here, so they just kind of divert off.

There's a lot of cheating, there's a lot of dishonesty, even when there isn't cheating, and dishonesty really kills relationships. And I don't mean absolutely.

I don't mean you need to be.

When people talk about radical honesty like, Do I look good in this dress? No, honey, you look horrible, I mean, that's just cruel.

So it's boredom, it's people not growing together and the emotional intimacy going, and when you don't deal with the problems in the relationship, then there's sex.

Should people who experience those things, maybe being in an open relationship isn't for them, or is there something else going on?

I love that, and that's when your programming kicks in, even though you're non-monogamous. So you said something really interesting, you said someone falls in love with someone else. The whole point of some types of non-monogamy polyamory, for example, is you can fall in love with a bunch of people.

Like, one doesn't, you don't replace one with the new one. They're just two different relationships, but monogamy thinking says you can only be in love with one person. So that's a challenge for people to get past that.

Also, it's a challenge not to feel like you need to be on that relationship escalator. Like you date and you become exclusive, then you move in together, then you marry, then you have children. However, it is. And like, I'm in a relationship, so I'm polyamorous. I've got 15 years with my husband and I have a girlfriend that I've been with in various forms of relationship for about 10 years. And we will never move in together.

We will never become exclusive.

And that's great, but you have to get to a certain point in understanding polyamory to feel comfortable with that. To know that what we have is so wonderful and I love what we have and she loves what we have. And that what I have with my husband is a different kind of relationship and I equally love that.

I feel like in all relationships, there's not enough attention on figuring out the set of rules. Where does everyone feel okay?

And inside that box set are a whole set of expectations about how your life goes. And you never talk about it. Because you both have taken that movie that you've watched seven million times and so you think you know it. So I had the experience on the television show that I do in the UK, it's edutainment, so it's a retreat. And I help couples open up their relationships and so there are individuals there that they can open up with if they want to.

And I had one couple in the first season, they'd been together 15 years. And I asked this same question to everybody. So I said, So what are your conversations about pleasure like? Well, we've never talked about sex.

And I cannot tell you how common that is for heterosexual people who are not kinky, not right.

Yeah, so that's true. It's not that you need rules, it's that you need to talk about what you like, what you don't like. Yep, you need boundaries. This part of my life, I don't really want you in.

My friends are really important to me, I need time alone with my friends. So it's not just about non-monogamy, it's all relationships, but if you're going to do non-monogamy, you need really good emotional management skills and really good communication and negotiation skills and relationship skills.

But even if you're going to be swinging or something like that. Or even if you're just going to be occasionally going to sex parties or whatever it is. Or having booty calls and a partner. You really have to think through, what are the end goals for you, what do you want, what are the no-go areas? For example, in your 20s, you might be doing whatever you're doing and then you want to have a child.

Are you okay with other people around being partly parenting your kids?

And your partner's like, Well, what happened to the blow jobs you were giving me? Yeah, yeah, it's because I actually hated it, I was just doing something nice for you.

That's the I think you're going to fall in love with somebody and replace me. Yeah, right. The other one is a lack of confidence in your place in the relationship. So, I might be perfectly confident about who I am and know that I'm amazing, but I don't know if you want to actually live with me.

So I'm worried not that you're going to replace me because of me, but that actually what you're looking for. For example, I'm past having kids, right? I'm postmenopausal, you actually want somebody to have kids, right?

Then I might get jealous.

Then you can have compersion, which is compersion is when you have joy out of someone else's joy. If you can have joy in your partner's joy, that's the best. And that doesn't mean necessarily that you want to see them having sex. So that's where knowing what's good, what's comfortable for you and not comfortable for you is important. My husband is a voyeur.

My husband loves seeing me do things with other people.

It's about I want to be in the action, I'm not watching from the sidelines.

Other people it's like, it's enough to know this is your other partner. I don't want to have dinner with them, I don't want to, you know, have to have long conversations with them. I just want to go, Hey, and that's it. Others of us, I mean, my people, are all close.

That's what works for me, and so anybody who gets involved with me that can't make friends with my people. It's not going to happen, it's not going to last.

Some people aren't that emotional. There are people who actually are really happy with their own company, and they only want limited interaction with other humans. One of the big challenges of choosing to do that is that there are so many societal pressures that say this isn't acceptable. So as a polyamorous person, you can have societal pressures, but you can kind of dodge them and pass by. You know, like, bringing a partner to an event, right? Like, it doesn't matter which one I bring, but I have a partner to bring to an event.

But if you're somebody who doesn't want those relationships, you're always coming solo. And so if you have friends who are couples, they're less comfortable with you because they're worried about what your designs are. The numbers never even. I mean, that's like a trivial thing, but it actually is. It can interfere with your social life. But also, we all have times in our lives where we need more support.

And if you're only having casual relationships, you can find it difficult to get physical support from people at times of illness, and emotional support from people at times of great emotional stress. Unless you've developed really good friendships, so you're really getting it, meet there. But if you don't have those either, and there are people who don't, quite a few people who don't, then when you do find yourself in need of support, you're kind of stuck.

But then, simultaneously, young people are all, just like, cannot commit to anything at the same time. I mean, not all of them. But there's sort of this hookup culture happening where it's like no one wants to try to build anything.

They don't know who they are, and they don't know how to go about figuring it out. So right now, what happens is that people pull an identity out instead of actually doing the exploration and not giving it a label and figuring out who they are. So instead, you meet somebody and you get their 16 identity labels, which tells you, Fuck all. I can give you 10 identity labels for me right now. And you'll still have to ask me, What do you mean by that? There's a lot of looking to the world to accommodate all these different identities, but that's not how the world works.

Like, I don't care how forward thinking and how much more accommodating we're trying to be. Ultimately, there were too many individual accommodations for the world to work that way. So people don't have the skills to manage when things aren't going their way, when somebody has a totally different way of viewing the world. And so I think that's part of what leads to some of the kind of hookup culture is. They don't know how to create relationships, they haven't a clue.

They don't know how to have a conversation. We joked when my son, my son was born in 2002, and there was a period where we joked about him and his cousins. Sitting on the settee, speaking via text. It's not a joke anymore.

Y'all don't know how to talk in person, and that's really a problem, don't know how to look at your own feelings. Yeah, I mean, he does, because he grew up with a therapist who was absolutely insistent that he could label his feelings and communicate them.

And he's a really good communicator on some areas, like there are areas where it's fun and he's a boy. So that's, you know, again, a little more difficult, but he's a pretty good communicator because I work on that with him. Because I said, you don't get, you know, closed mouths, do not get fed, you have to ask for what you want.

If you don't know what you want, nobody's going to figure it out for you. Yeah, you know, I get away with talking about this because he allows me to. But he's also not big in the relationship game yet, he's taken his time.

He's taken his time. So it's not that he doesn't have an interest in sex. There's a lot of people like him in your generation, not that you're not interested in sex. You're not ready to figure out where it goes in a relationship and to figure out that pattern of how you move forward together with another human like that.

I think that a lot of that comes out of the fact that you guys grew up living your lives on the internet and social media.

Well, I've wondered this about myself, is there something in me that I'm not aware of? Or I just haven't unlocked it yet, or is it just not in there? So, anyway, just for history about me, I'm completely. I know nothing about kinks, fetishes, I know nothing for one.

I know nothing, so I'm completely starting from fresh here. You can really get into it with me. What's the difference between a fetish and a kink?

So 30 years ago, 40 years ago, anal sex, with the exception of anal sex with gay men, was kinky, right? Interesting, okay, and now it's common.

A fetish is when somebody is turned on by an activity, an object, a part of the body, a smell, a sensory experience. And they need that in order to reach orgasm.

The best sex is when you're 100 present in the room with your partner, no matter what you're doing.

So what we do? Because we're really shitty about getting rid of fetishes and kinks. I tell people you don't try to get rid of a fetish or a kink because it's really hard to do. And most of the ways that people try and do it are very conversion therapy-like. They're not ethical. So what you do is you work with the partner on getting pleasure out of their partner's pleasure. So even though they're not sharing the kink, they're still so excited that their partner is excited, that everybody's present in the room.

Other people not so much. And so there are different ways of going about it, and exposure is a great way to figure out what you might be into. So not pornography, because pornography is, and the reason I say not pornography is, there's no art in pornography.

Pornography is very graphic and so it's kind of hard to concentrate on what bit's turning you on. If you're having to see cum shots and things like that, now, if it happens to be, the cum shot turns you on, well, there it is, lucky you. But things like erotica, so reading erotica, there's a wide range of erotica out there.

Now there's a lot of really badly written erotica, but there's also a lot of good stuff. Audio erotica is great. Listening to somebody read stories and talk stories, and you observe yourself.

What does your body do? Does something strike you as hot? something else doesn't? Then maybe you decide to kind of check it out and not just listen and observe, maybe you decide to engage in self-pleasure and see what happens.

See where your fantasy goes, or go talk to a partner about it. Read stories to each other, write stories eventually, if you're adventurous. But you know, there are ways of introducing it without having to take the risk of saying, Ooh, I'm into this and the other person going, ugh.

I have on my website and my free stuff section a book called. I think it's up to 103, 103 movies that are not x-rated. Because somebody many years ago said, Well, what if you don't want to watch porn but you want to explore? And I said, Well, there's loads of erotic movies that are not x-rated. So I made a list with links and stuff of things that you can watch to give yourself an idea of what might turn you on. So you do it as an exploration, just like you might explore a hobby.

I love that, and you do it yourself and with a partner, but you do it yourself first. I have a colleague who during May is masturbation month. Her name is Martha Tower Lee.

She is a sexologist out of Singapore, Dr. Martha Tower Lee. And when she came on my show once to talk about masturbation and self-pleasure, and she goes, she has masturbation dates with herself.

She takes the whole day. Because people self-pleasure, they do it like in an offhand way, they like, take minutes or seconds. And it's like, if you treat yourself that way, what does that say about how you see sex with someone else? For me, it's like if you're not willing to take time with yourself, if you're not willing to do it in the light of day.

So you're showing that much shame and that much of an offhand attitude. Well, what does that mean about sex with someone else? What are you saying about that?

It's like, the more like. Before I orgasmed for the first time, I had never masturbated. My first orgasm was from my first boyfriend. I was like, I don't even know what's happening, I don't know what to expect.

And it was like I was so a fish out of water, I had no idea what was going on.

It's scary you're now attached to that person to bring you pleasure, you have no idea how it ticks, what it is. You might be ashamed of it because what just happened.

So the horns of the clitoris, we think, is what the G spot is, you're just stimulating from the other side. Yeah, clitoris is actually big, about five inches long, but some people the external part is big.

Other people it's tiny.

It's a lot easier said than done to tell people about those things.

Because sometimes if you say like.

Or you show I don't, I like things pretty simple, like this is what I'm....

This is what I like. That can be frowned upon at times because people are like, this is not cool, you're a loser and you're lame because you're not. You're not experimental at all, and then, on the other hand, you have people who are, like, very experimental.

And they're very much, you know, in touch with who they are in that area.

And that's really heavily judged because it's like, well, this is weird and you're a freak. So it's like, what is the way to have these conversations that's effective? and also like, how do you get better at having them? When I try to imagine what the conversation looks like, it's almost just something that....

Is almost like, light-hearted in a way, like, is that the way to do it?

You may be really ordinary right now, and if you're in a relationship with somebody for 20 years, I guarantee you're going to get experimental, absolutely.

Because the repetition of the same thing with the same person is going to make you want to try something else. Because that mystery is gone, right? But if you have lots of different people, you may always stick within your thing because it's new with every person, yeah.

Right, same thing with kinks, though, like your favorite kink. If you're with the same person for 15 20 years, you're going to move different kinks. You might get very ordinary.

You might get even more kink because the repetition with the same person, with the same thing is eventually going to be too dull. Yeah, so there's that.

You're having to introduce something and it's scary because you're already attached and all of that. But you should be talking about your sexual interests. Not in great detail, yeah.

But the things that are important to you at the beginning, because if you're not compatible, it's pointless going forward.

Like feces, like, whatever, these sort of kinks like that, or that's a fetish, I think.

You know, so people know about this, talk about it. But there's things that I think that for the average, you know person, it's like, I can't even comprehend this. Like, whether it's, you know somebody....

It's much easier nowadays because you can find....

At least you had that. We put ads in the village voice single whatever female you know seeking da-da-da-da-da.

That's right.

I want to have a conversation about sex and relationships because I am not ordinary, and I'll just say that like, I'm not ordinary. And so if we're not going to align on certain things, this isn't going to go anywhere. So I personally always started with the non-monogamy, it's like, I'm not monogamous.

I won't make a monogamous.

I've done it, but I won't do it now. But I won't make a monogamous commitment with my relationships. now, it's like, I'm not monogamous.

I am married, I am not looking for a relationship at that level because I know I'm not and I have a girlfriend, so I've got two partners.

If you're monogamous, we're not going to.

It's not going to happen. And then, as far as what I like to do in bed, like the sex that I enjoy, you know, I start out, you can say I'm kinky without saying what the kink is.

And a person's like, Oh, I've always wanted to try that. If you have a really severe kink, you probably want to bow out at that point.

Well, tell me if you think I'm wrong. But I think the reason why? There's sort of this dark cloud, if you will, societally over these, you know, over various fetishes, kinks, whatever is, I think, because some of them are dangerous.

What happens when someone's fetish is potentially?

Or kink is something that's potentially harmful to other people. Who? What then?

And so as long as what you're doing.

It's now considered normal variations on a theme. But as long as you're doing stuff with consent, and you're not harming somebody without consent, and that it's not harm, it's hurt.

As opposed to harm or yourself, then we don't consider them mental disorder at all, so that's fine, but it's a totally different thing.

When what you're doing is causing harm to another. Where they can't consent, or where they don't consent, that is a problem. That's not a sexual orientation.

I mean, you may.

The reality is, you may not be able to do anything about it. But that is, like, has to be dealt with in a different way, because that's where somebody commits sexual violence, right?

So we can't accept that. So a sadist who beats the crap out of people who say, Yes, I want the crap beaten out of me, that's fine, but a sadist who wants to go....

And beat the crap out of people and rape people who don't say this is okay with them. That's not fine. I don't care if that's your orientation.

That's a problem, and so I identify that as a problem, so we make that distinction.

Is that, well, two things? Number one is that wrong of the person to be getting turned off?

I guess you can't control that, so no.

You can't say if you don't like this thing, then you're wrong and you're not okay, and you're a bad human. Whatever you like you like, so there's that.

You know what you like already. It depends on whether it's something you like to engage in, sometimes for fun, or it's really important to your sexual orientation.

So I don't get off unless the person is dominant, period, it goes nowhere.

Anyway, mine came back quite literally the most vanilla ever, however, but not quite.

So you don't have to call yourself vanilla if you don't want to.

Finally, that's the thing I just always think, it's so funny. But for some people, they like dominance, but they don't need it all the time. Or, for some people, they like spanking. But if their partner never wants to spank them, it's not going to ruin their sex life.

So I know what I need and if you can't, kind of come into that. BAILiwick It's pointless for us to go any further.

But it's like, that feeling only closes you off.

Like, people will be like, Oh, I'm into you and we're dating and we love it, but then like, they don't, they can't, you don't feel it.

So it had nothing to do with me.

Like, you don't worry about what you look like, you know what you like and what you want. So sex is a lot more fun because it's like all the demand characteristics of being perfect and being you don't give a shit anymore. Yeah, and so it's like, you just go and you have fun.

It just adds to the nihilism of growing up today. It's like, Well, you have nothing to look forward to because of this, this and that. And also you're not going to enjoy sex anymore and you're going to look, it just doesn't end. But I really think, I mean, it's crazy because so many people that, like even my dad, for example. He's having so much fun in his 50s. He's like, I'm surfing now.

I just learned how to surf for the first time in my life. He's like, This is the best time of my life, like, I've never been happier. And I think, in reality, getting older actually comes with a lot of. It's a treacherous, horrible thing.

So there are challenges, but there are workarounds for the challenges and the headspace is so much better. And you know, I'm going to have sex until they tell me I can't do it anymore, you know, I'm gone. I have no intention of giving sex up.