Nurturing your feminine side when in your household and your relationship will help strengthen your bond with your husband. All too often, women are seeing an increase in their testosterone levels, which is making us feel less comforted and nurtured at home. Today’s guest, John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, joins me today to discuss how we can nurture our masculine and feminine hormones to create stronger relationships.
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John has been researching and coaching couples for over 40 years, and he’s sharing what he’s learned about relationships, communication, and having a healthy sex life. To start off, he explains why men are seeing a decrease in their testosterone levels as they grow older, and what you can do to combat this.
By opening lines of communication with your partner, you can help nurture their testosterone or estrogen production. John explains what happens when women feel their emotions building up, with little things adding to their problems. And how expressing your emotions and simply talking to your partner can help release that pent up energy.
Relationships are all about communication. Men are more likely to do the things you want them to do by simply asking them confidently, not complaining or nagging them. And when you can talk openly to your partner and are comfortable being emotionally naked with them, you’re in a better place to get physically naked.
Sex is such an important part of our romantic relationships. John talks us through how we, as women, can encourage a healthier sex life, and how men can prevent their own ejaculation to make sex a longer, more pleasurable experience for both partners.
Do you have a healthy sex life with your partner? How do you keep open, honest communication in your relationship? What do you do to nurture your partner’s dominant hormones?
In This Episode:
- Why men are seeing their testosterone levels lowering
- What foods affect our testosterone and estrogen hormone production
- How you can treat your partner to nurture their estrogen or testosterone
- Why doing the little things in a relationship are so important
- What happens when you have a build-up of emotions
- How you can encourage men to do more things to make you happy by requesting, not complaining
- Why women can be hesitant to share their feelings with a man
- Why you should feel comfortable being emotionally naked with your partner before you become physically naked
- How you can improve your sex life to ensure you get enough pleasure
- Why men need to prioritize women’s needs over their own
- What impersonal sex is and what it does to your relationship
- Why you have to honor your bodies’ priorities
Subscribe to Couch Talk w/ Dr. Anna Cabeca on Youtube
Quotes:
“Sex becomes the doorway for men to open their heart. Women don’t understand this because women have to open their heart first before they fully enjoy sex. So it’s the love that allows women to feel more sexually alive.” (10:48)
“Connection is a woman’s greatest need. A man’s greatest need is to feel successful. Success increases testosterone. Connection increases progesterone and estrogen, and oxytocin. Which we know, hormonally, is essential for women’s well-being.” (17:49)
“You can’t fully feel your positive emotions if you can’t fully feel your negative emotions.” (35:29)
Links
Find John Gray and MarsVenus Online
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Transcript
John Gray:
So many of the religions, they all say, "Respect the man." That's just a misinterpretation. If you actually go into the dictionary, the word respect means to honor someone's needs and also to praise them, to appreciate them. But appreciation is not respect, they're two different things. Respect is the way you treat somebody, appreciation is how you respond when somebody treats you with respect.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, that's probably one of the most well-known titles of books and our time and it was written nearly three decades ago by John Gray, relationship guru, beyond expertise and he has really worked heart-wrenchingly in the area of understanding the differences between men and women and getting us to work together, honoring our differences and our similarities at the same time. In today's Couch Talk, I bring you his wisdom and we touch on areas that I guarantee you we have not hit on Couch Talk before. Guys in this audience you are in for a treat, we spent a lot of time talking about what supports you, what you need and as well giving you the inside scoop on what supports us. We talked about male ejaculation and holding back ejaculation to increase our testosterone levels.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
We hit on the addictive nature of porn and what we can do about it, we hit on topics between the benefits of sexual health throughout our marriage and how increasing technique and communication in a healthy way helps us in the longevity of our relationship. One thing that he says, he says, "Monogamy is the gift of freedom," and teaches us a little bit deeper on how to really bring some depth and intimacy and connection into a marriage as a matter how long we've been married, as well as understanding women's role reversal and today's time and day, what that means to our energy, our feminine energy, and our masculine energy, and how we need to balance the Yin and Yang a bit.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I'm excited to share this information with you and enjoy this Couch Talk. To give you a little background on John Gray, besides being the best selling author for decades, of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, his new bestselling book is Beyond Mars and Venus. In this book John Gray explains why being a man or a woman in today's society is more nuanced and complex than ever. Yet despite the changes, he says men and women remain fundamentally different on a hormonal level and what these differences mean in today's evolving relationships is pretty astounding. I look forward to your feedback and your questions. Well, John, I've been so excited for this interview, I have to tell you, working up to it, reading through your materials and just listening to other podcasts with you being interviewed and just sharing your stories and your anecdotes. It's a thrill to have you welcome to Couch Talk.
John Gray:
Thank you so much, happy to be here.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I met you in person. It's been a few years now and it was at a marriage and money conference in Austin, one of my favorite cities with a good friend of mine, Christina Wise. I got to hear you speak on stage for the first time in my experience and just you enameled me, I just felt like so much love and compassion coming from you for couples, for women and men and understanding that I've been gratefully moved and that's why I so wanted to reach out to have you here on my podcast. Will you share a little bit about your journey for your listeners, from your first book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, how did you even come up with that and then to your new and latest book spanning another couple, two to three decades, Beyond Mars and Venus?
John Gray:
Wow, that's a big question. First of all, Men Are from Mars is not my first book, it's my first bestseller, I had two books before that. That took a while to build up these ideas and to be able to express them in a way that people could understand and accept because talk about male, female differences is quite not politically correct in many places. It sounds as if I'm saying we should be the way it used to be, where women are always cooking and cleaning and men are out in the world working and men make the money and women don't. That's not what I'm saying at all, and I wasn't saying it in that book either. I was just saying that when you're in a marriage relationship, an intimate relationship, it's based on a partnership and when it's a partnership, as soon as you bring in the element of partnership, you're dependent on your partner for certain things.
John Gray:
That's where the more traditional elements of women are one-way men are another, you'll see those differences more clearly once you're in a relationship where you depend on someone for something. If you're more independent and you're a woman, you basically have both your male and female side and if you're more independent as a man, you have your male and female sides. The problem today, over the last 25 years since I wrote Men Are from Mars, is with so much freedom to express our own uniqueness. If you're a woman, to be more masculine because it's within women and for man to be more feminine, it's within men, that's often not understood. When I say for men to be more feminine, feminine means to enjoy life more. The feminine side of us is the part that experiences, pleasure and love and doing what we love and men are doing too much of what they love and women are doing too much of their male, which is being independent, self-sufficient on their own and not feeling the need for partnerships.
John Gray:
That's our female side is a partnership and independence is our male side and what we want if we have a healthy balance, then we're interdependent. Meaning that sometimes I can depend on you and if you're not there walking, take care of myself but I'm still open to depending on you. There's a dance there that we can rise to a higher level and there's many new benefits of that, but business chaos and relationships today, that's Beyond Mars and Venus is this role reversal where men tend to go too far to enjoy their lives. They could sit on a ... watch football all day, they can play games, they can be on the video, they can ... men just playing games all day for hours. Another more challenging thing is that the availability of free porn online. To a man, for most men and particularly younger men, but also older men too, sex online, it stimulates a huge amount of testosterone and dopamine.
John Gray:
As the average American man is getting older or for the younger generation men, it's already happening, they're having lower testosterone levels so they can't experience the power or the stamina, the attraction, the juice that makes you feel like you're standing up straight, that's testosterone. You can't feel that in a normal relationship, your testosterone is too low, so they go onto porn and it would knock it up temporarily and then it brings it down even lower, kind of like a drug. It can make you go high but then it makes you go low, lower and that's what's happening a lot to the males. I'll call that, just for the point of clarity here, that's men being too far on their female side, it has its disadvantages. Women go too far on their male side, and it has-
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
One second. John, I want to clarify that because that's such a huge point. It's something that we see very often in the medical, in the medical stance looking at testosterone levels in younger males and there's a combination of things going on now that we see. We see blue light affecting hormonal production of testosterone, so we're seeing that from electronics, gaming, computers, phone use, artificial light, that's affecting creating a hypogonadism so to speak, a low testosterone. Then the well-known association but not well known that testosterone decreases from porn and that again less drive, less determination. It's initially increased, but over the long term, we can see that decrease in testosterone level. Then again, that becomes less male.
John Gray:
That's right. That's what's happening today, and less mail means that you become more female. I used each a lot in China where they understand the yin energy and the yang energy, and everyone has both the yin and yang energy. Women have more yen when they're happy and men have more young when they're behaving well, so this is the whole dance. When we're being emotional, whether it be positive emotions or negative emotions, the yin energy is rising, that's the feminine energy is rising. We can see that in the hormones, is that when women have an orgasm, for example, their estrogen levels hit the highest level so estrogen is a very yin hormone. For men, also, when they have their orgasm, the oxytocin causes the ejaculation, which increases estrogen, and they will feel a brief moment of ecstasy of oneness, of surrender, of love.
John Gray:
That very addictive experience is fantastic, it's the grace of being married and having a truly loving relationship where you can sustain that experience. Couples who don't have good communication, they get into the role reversal. They can't maintain the ability to go higher and higher through sex. Sex is to me the greatest thing based on love. We just have to see the sex for sex's sake only brings their energy down but when you make love, sex becomes a way to share your love and express your love because particularly from men, not so much for women, but for men, high testosterone lowers estrogen, so they don't feel as much emotion. In sex, their estrogen levels go up along with their testosterone, so you get this beautiful balance of male, female energy that can occur if men had the skills for bringing a woman high.
John Gray:
If he doesn't have the skills, then it just becomes a pleasurable experience rather than a loving experience and sex becomes the doorway ferment open their heart. Women don't understand this because women have to open their heart first before they fully enjoy sex. It's the love that allows women to feel more sexually alive, but for men, it's a woman's sexual response. When he feels aroused by a woman, the energy's starting to rise up to his heart, and that's what opens the doorway for him to feel his love. When men lose that, they lose the feeling of love in their relationship.
John Gray:
They don't stop necessarily loving their partner, you could have asked my parents who stayed together, “Do love each other?” “Of course we love each other.” But did they feel the love like they did in the beginning, which they felt a lot of when they were making love? No, they stopped having sex and this is so common today. This is a possibility for us, but we have to learn how to do that because when women are too far on their male side, their estrogen levels start to go low and they can't fully enjoy sex, and when men are too far on their female side, men lose interest in the women that they love.
John Gray:
Just to give the actual science of when we say that men's testosterone levels go down after porn, since we went down that alley for a minute, what happens is when a man has low testosterone due to blue light, due to feeling unsuccessful in life, due to not having a meaningful sense of purpose in life, due to not having discipline to do something really well that increases testosterone and also due to eating meats that have hormones added to them and also eating vegetables and fruits and foods that have pesticides in them, they register in the body as estrogen, they're called Xenoestrogens. That sends a message to the man's brain and says, “Stop making testosterone.” Because when estrogen goes up, the way men are designed, their testosterone production goes down.
John Gray:
What will always increase a man's testosterone levels is feeling successful and to the lower brain, if a woman undresses in front of you, you're a stud, you're the alpha. Her availability to him sexually raises his testosterone in that moment, increases the dopamine levels of excitement and passion. As an outcome of that is it desensitizes dopamine receptors and testosterone receptors, so literally now you have to make more dopamine and more testosterone to feel aroused. Why can't you then feel more aroused with your wife or with a woman you know even? Because when you care for someone and you love them, estrogen levels go higher and that lowers testosterone. Already the woman online that you don't love, you don't know, you have no experience of, there's no estrogen being produced, it's all just pure dopamine and pure testosterone and you get the drug-like levels of dopamine and drug-like levels of testosterone.
John Gray:
Then once the drug wears off, you now have a brain which has been changed, has been rewired and can only be turned on to an impersonal relationship, not too personal because your wife, you love her, so your testosterone levels start to drop because the estrogen levels are higher. You have children, it's already shown scientifically, you get married, men's testosterone levels drop, you're getting married, have children, your testosterone levels drop even more. But that's natural, that's just what's common. In my marriage, my testosterone levels in three daughters are 50% higher in my 60s than when I was in my 30s. That is because we use conscious skills to maintain a polarity of masculine and feminine in the home.
John Gray:
Outside my wife's very masculine, she runs a business, she's doing all that stuff but when she comes into the house, there's a way I treat her, which allows for her feminine side to come back. When I can help her become more feminine, that means her love for me increases than my testosterone increases because I feel successful. This is the payoff of understanding how to create love in this new world that we've created.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Well, tell us more about that. How did you treat her when she comes into the house?
John Gray:
Well, practical experience. First thing, I always, usually I would come home before her. In the beginning, it was she would be home and I would come home, whichever it is, when she arrived home or I arrive home, first thing I always find her, I don't do anything other than find her. Just that makes her number one, that increases her estrogen, that increases oxytocin that she's not forgotten. I heard so many women in counseling say, "He ignores me, he neglects me," because the guy will come home, just go sit in front of the TV, said go to his game figures that she wants to talk, she'll find him.
John Gray:
No, our job as men, if we want to increase estrogen in our wives is not to have her find us, that puts her in her male energy from pursuing us, is she is pursued by me. I find her, first thing in the morning, I wake up, she usually is making breakfast for the kids. I'd get up first and go to her and give her a hug, a hug, physical contact, not just that little hug, it'd be three to six-second hug where I full-body connection with her, not a sexual hug, just full body connection and maybe a stroke of her hair and maybe a compliment or maybe, "I love you." Then when I leave, I find her, I give her another hug.
John Gray:
When I come home, I find her, the kids would run up to me and what, you know, be playing with me, the first thing I'd say is, "Where's your mom?" After three weeks of making that change, whenever I'd come home, they'd always say, "Mom's here, mom's in the garden, mom's upstairs, mom's there." So, they're also experiencing mom's number one. So many parents make their children more important than their relationship this is a mistake. Women need extra, extra attention now that they're in their male side throughout the day. Traditional women didn't need it so much, you know, they didn't feel neglected, they spent all day doing very estrogen yin activities of cooking and cleaning and talking with neighbors and having a community and sharing in the process of parenting and mostly being pregnant most of the time feeding babies.
John Gray:
These were all very estrogen stimulating activities, nurturing activities, but today's woman's way on her male side and she often doesn't want to come home and cook and clean anyway. She wants higher level estrogen stimulation, which is romance, it's affection, it's good communication, it's feeling heard and seen. That's actually one of the key factors that's missing today, but longed for, everybody says we need more communication. Lack of communication is the problem, but nobody knows how to communicate understanding gender differences. If you don't understand the gender differences and that women have a greater need to feel seen and heard and then have a greater need to feel successful, a connection is a woman's greatest need, a man's greatest need is to feel successful.
John Gray:
Success increases testosterone connection increases for the gesture on an estrogen, oxytocin, all that stuff, which now we know hormonally is essential for women's wellbeing, not testosterone. Testosterone, they still need it, but nothing like the other ones and if a woman has high enough estrogen than her body can make her own testosterone at higher levels. If she's working all day, that makes testosterone and lowers estrogen, but if she anticipates coming home, coming into a personal life, which stimulates the female hormones, just the anticipation of that can keep her female hormones much higher throughout the day when she's being on her male side. This is learning to balance the male-female energies.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yeah, especially in today's two couples working at the same time because I think ... I look back in my relationship, I was married for 15 years, I've been divorced now for almost nine and that as the primary breadwinner and a very masculine role, as a physician, gynecologist and obstetrician surgeon, 24/7 on call. I would come home and they would ... It's just that I don't think that I ever fully got out into the feminine role, even maybe temporarily when having children and when playing with the kids. Then it's like, okay, well what, these are all these things that have to be done, just kind of a taskmaster. For this woman coming home from this very masculine role, how does she change her mindset to teach, coach in that feminine aspect again, if she's a single mom or if she has to wait, can she tell her husband to help her with this?
John Gray:
Yeah, such an important message and it doesn't make any sense at all and people will say, “Oh, it sounds sexist,” what I'm about to say to men and women if we don't understand the new challenge that we have. You can connect in two different ways. Okay, so here's, I'm going to connect, this is the woman, this is the man. Usually, it looks like this, the man connects with the woman, he penetrates into her, that's a connection. But there's another way to connect, which is where the man becomes the whole and the woman goes in. That's also connection, so the woman needs connection, she needs him to enter into her, and I'm not talking sex, we're using it as a metaphor. When he has sex with her, he penetrates her. That allows her to go into receptivity, she's receiving, she needs connections.
John Gray:
If she's not getting enough connection at home, she will unconsciously seek out connection by penetrating him. She will suddenly become very interested in asking him questions, she wants to know what he's feeling, she wants to know what he's thinking. It becomes about him and not about, so she'll either give more, do more, she will listen more, she will ask more questions. He's just sitting there happy watching the game and she says, “How was your day, what's going on?” He says, “Fine, good,” and all that. Then she feels disconnection, she feels unloved, she feels unsupported, because she's looking in the wrong direction. She needs to create a setting, I'm not talking to men now I'm talking as a woman, what can you do?
John Gray:
You've got to educate the man that you need connection and the way you do that, here's one example, many, many examples like with the hugs. My wife said, “I need more hugs, four hugs a day at least.” It's a connection, it's amazing how little things build up. Doesn't take big things to make estrogen levels start coming up, it takes lots of little things. That's another concept for men to understand, you don't just do something big on our anniversary and then ignore her the rest of the year. I talk about scoring points in terms of estrogen points. If I give her a hug that's one point, if I take her to the movies that's one point, if I take her to an expensive theater at the front row, maybe that's two points, but really one point, bring one rose, that's one point, bring 20 roses, that's one point, they're all going to die in a week.
John Gray:
Men have to be educated. Little things are just as important as big things. Men don't know that they figure if I do something big like share my income with you or I did something important that that's enough to keep you happy for quite a while, you should feel very appreciative and grateful for that. Yes, you are, but you need a lot of little things to stay in touch with the hormones of gratitude and appreciation and delight and happiness. If you're working as a man during the day or traditional male activities, you need it even more, so it's a whole new level of what do women require in relationship and she has to be conscious enough of this newness to recognize that it's going to look like I'm being needy or demanding, but this is what I need as a woman.
John Gray:
What he needs is he will do it, but he needs to be acknowledged and appreciated for it, he needs to see that it works. Communication in terms of him doing little things that say, “I love you,” the things he did when he dated you. The next level up is now the communication, which is you can connect by asking him questions or you can connect by having him ask you questions. It looks like this, how my wife educated me, I know one day she was so excited to see me, “Oh John, I can't wait to see you,” or, “I can't wait to talk to you.” I'm like thinking something great happened and always men perk up when they hear something great happens because if a woman is happy, then men feel more successful, that's just the way we are.
John Gray:
It's a little neurotic, but that's how we are. If you're happy and what makes us happy, if you're unhappy, then we become like, “Why aren't you happy, I'm missing out here.” Men get defensive, they have to learn that ... Another one of my teachings is that you can't make a woman happy, you can only help her to be happier, but she is her job. Basically, a good five days of the month, you actually can make her happier and like really happy. That's when she's most fertile, she's most excited to have enjoyed great sex. I can make her super happy, that nothing else can go.
John Gray:
There is a place that we experience where a man can make a woman happy, but really we're making her happier. She has to find a place within her, but she needs help to do that, particularly the more masculine, she is the more independent she is, the more responsible, the more she faces risk and danger. These are all the male side of us that challenged has confidence, I'm going to do this thing, competence, skill, all that in the face of danger is big testosterone stimulation has to be balanced by showing the opposite of being confident is being vulnerable and not always making sense. Emotions don't always make sense, that's the key thing.
John Gray:
Freud taught us that, which is if you have one thing that's upsetting you, it makes sense why you're upset, say you forgot your keys, so that's a 30 degree upset, but let's say you forgot your keys and you're late to an important meeting, now you've got two things that are upsetting you so you're upset's going to be bigger and bigger. Then let's say 10 things happen today, then you've got this string of things that are upsetting you, but if you're a woman and you're in a male environment, you've got to suppress all of that. You can't just be upset and let it go, you build up and build up and now we have these compounding emotions that when they get expressed are irrational, that's the way it is.
John Gray:
Nobody wants to say emotions are irrational, but emotions are irrational and I spent all, ... As a therapist, women will talk to me about emotions and they're all irrational practically, but at the end of the day, they're all rational again, she suddenly comes back to feeling happy again. We have to realize if somebody's unhappy and they talked for a while and then they feel happy, well what happened to the legitimacy of all those unhappy feelings is there's no reason really to be unhappy if you've been heard. When women feel heard, again, she's been penetrated, connection occurs, restores balance her hormones, and now she doesn't have anything to complain about.
John Gray:
Life is what it is and women have an amazing superpower to be happy in face of poop, you have the ability and men don't have that. What men have the ability to do is forget it, block it out, block it out. We're always saying, “Forget it, don't worry about it, not important to me.” We deny things in order to focus on things, to make us feel good, that's our natural tendency. Women have the ability to see all the problems and be happy or to see all the problems and not feel connected and then be very unhappy. The connection is so important for women, that's the female hormones when you just measure it. Next, what she has to overcome is here she is this competent woman and she has to reveal that, “I'm insecure. I'm afraid, I feel sad, I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, I'm annoyed, I'm irritated, I'm angry,” all these things that she would actually be very judgmental of if a man expressed.
John Gray:
She doesn't know that if she expresses it, a man goes, “Oh, she needs me.” When I talk about dating, I point out most women when they're dating, not all, but most women will say they want a man who's taller than her, they want a man who's stronger than her and most men will say they want a woman who's smaller than him and less strong than him. Why? Because a strong man, a tall man can protect a woman, if he's short, maybe she has to protect him. Now the relationship is mother to child rather than woman to man, so there's a dynamic of when men feel stronger, they want to take care of you. When you're vulnerable, it's like, “I need help, I need something.”
John Gray:
That makes a man feel, “I have a job, I have a purpose, I have a mission, I can help you, you depend on me. I have the power to make you feel happier.” I'm saying this cause often when women share emotions, they feel like, “Oh, I'm showing weakness.” Men love it because it makes men feel strong. When men feel strong, their testosterone goes up, they want to do more for you. You become like, “Oh, I have to take care of her.” As opposed to this strong woman who can do everything, it just makes men lazy, literally makes men lazy because they're waiting for, “What's the big emergency, when am I going to be needed?”
John Gray:
Then what they'll get confronted with is often complaints, which only makes a man's testosterone go down as opposed to requests, they come from a place of, “I'm a happy woman and I want more to be happier.” That's the place where you can ask for more as a preference rather than a complaint, complaints just push men down. When women are way on their male side, their emotions all day are building up, building up, building up. There's another concept besides compounding emotions that Freud explained to us, one perspective, they're crazy, they're irrational, another thing is they're valid, it's understandable.
John Gray:
If you know all the things that happened to him that day, then you can realize that it happened that way. Then the next thing that happens that Freud explained was that it gets displaced. You're holding it inside, it suddenly gets projected onto everything around you, particularly to the person who loves you the most. It gets dumped on your partner, meaning your mind will suddenly find ... Let's say you've got 100 degrees of upset from 10 different difficult things, 100 degrees of upset, and then it will find something wrong with what he did and be 100 degrees upset about that. Your mind will start starting looping, looping, again and again, looking for validation of all these feelings when really the feelings come from 10 different things during the day.
John Gray:
You add that up, two weeks and months of pushing it down, pushing it down because you don't want to feel weak, you don't want to look irrational and this logical why you don't want to look that way. One is if he did that, you would be disgusted by it to a certain extent, another one, you feel like you have to be as mother and worry about him all the time, be another problem you have to take care of. Another very common reason why women won't share their feelings is if you do, a man will just interrupt and say, “What's wrong with you? What's the point, why are you telling me this? Why don't you just forget it? Why are you doing that job anyway?” Help invalidate you and his intention is thinking that if you can just think differently, you'll feel good.
John Gray:
He's going to tell you how you should feel, which is the worst thing to happen if you're opening your heart. Men don't know how to listen, women don't know how to share, it will usually come up as a complaint rather than about an assortment of things that have happened during the day. It takes a lot of courage to share your vulnerability, and women are not taught how to do that, men are not taught how to create a safe space for women to be vulnerable. Then a real reversal starts to take place as she starts to suppress her feelings. He's a man, he wants to connect to you so the only way he can connect to you, if you're holding it inside his, to open up his hole and share what's inside of him.
John Gray:
He'll start complaining more, he'll start whining more, he'll be upset about things more, he'll get angry more. What people have to realize is if you're on your male side, a man, the only way he can connect with you is to go to his yin side, his female side. If a man's really on his female side, the way you connect with him is you want to mother him and take care of him, and then you become in a sense disgusted by him and women, repulsed is kind of the word. Their husbands will start whining and complaining and the woman will be repulsed and then feel guilty about being repulsed because she doesn't want someone to be repulsed by her.
John Gray:
She'll compensate and even ask more questions and try to be more interested when really she was like, “Ah.” Then her mind becomes, “I have so many things to do, I can't do this.” There's so many modern problems are happening today because we don't understand this basic thing that women need more connection. How do you connect with her? By affection, by compliments, by seeing her, by serving her, doing things for her and if he doesn't do things, she has to be an equal partner and learn how to ask. Ask for this, ask for this as a preference, not a demand but what I see the real power for women comes from being vulnerable, getting back in touch with what's inside and facing that. In the beginning, that's what women came to me for therapy for is that they knew I was safe, I wasn't going to judge them because most men will judge you if they don't understand how emotions work.
John Gray:
Just being able to talk about emotions will go to a deeper and deeper level and then your heart opens again and there's nothing to complain about. There may be some requests, but there's nothing to complain about. Happiness comes when women can go through a wave of what they're unhappy about without a man feeling blamed. The first step for her is to move on to her girlfriends. Find girlfriends you can talk to and share ... If you don't have girlfriends who can listen you go to a therapist. They're supposed to be able to listen, I don't know how, but they're supposed to, then you go to a girlfriend, you journal it, then you reach your husband.
John Gray:
If my wife says to me, she said, “Oh, John, I'm so happy to see you. I want to just tell you what happened today, I want to feel connected to you.” I said, “Okay.” You don't need to say anything, just listen, don't even speak. “I just want to talk about, I'm going to talk about some upsetting things, but I'll feel better later.” Like I'd have an education here. I'm like, “Okay.” Then she was so happy to tell me about all the bad things that happened that day, “I was so frustrated that making me do this, they don't appreciate me, the machine broke, I didn't know what to do, I wasted all this time trying to do this.”
John Gray:
She's telling you all this stuff and I start to want to interrupt, she's, “No, no, don't say anything. I'm going to feel better later, I just want to connect with you. I spend all day at work and you're all day at work, we're so apart from each other. I want you just beside of me.” She did this about 10 minutes, then she said, “Oh I feel so much better now and I just went, you know, I love my job, I don't want to quit my job,” because every man always wants to say, “Quit that job.” She just gave me his wonderful hug, like I saved her. She gave me this hug and, “It felt so good just to share everything, I don't have to edit anything with you. Thank you so much.” Then she gave me a squeeze and went into another room and I'm standing there like, what just happened?
John Gray:
I said nothing and she's happy. She was not happy, now she's happy, I didn't have to give any advice and thought, “I could do this, I could do this.” It turned into after many years where I could actually get turned on sexually when my wife was complaining about stuff. It was amazing because she felt free to unburden herself and I knew that it was going to help her. If I know it's going to help her without saying anything, just my presence, people talk about being present, that's what this is about. That's particularly for men to be present fully there for a woman in the moment, not trying to change or fix or anything, but for women is to be vulnerable, to reveal what's inside.
John Gray:
Ironically, vulnerability is always associated with sharing what's deep inside that you don't want to share with anybody else, that's intimacy, but also being happy is being vulnerable. When women are happy, truly happy, it means they're in touch with, “I know what I need and I have it.” When they're sharing what they're upset about, they're also being vulnerable, which is, “What I need most is safety in order to share who I am that I'm still loved.” Both sides of the spectrum is a vulnerability, it's not just sharing negative emotions, but sharing positive feelings is a vulnerability. You can't fully feel your positive emotions if you can't fully feel your negative emotions and women today, as a doctor, you know women have challenges with their estrogen levels.
John Gray:
It's basically they're having to be on their male side where they can't do things, think things, respond to things in a more feminine way. What we're teaching women today, what I'm teaching, is that the higher level of femininity now as being totally naked, vulnerable with your emotions. That should be the precursor before you become physically naked with your partner and if you can be emotionally naked with your partner then and that turns him on, you will have great sex the rest of your life, passion will already be there?
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I think that's crucial because that's what we're looking for and I love how you talk about this and in your new book, Beyond Mars and Venus and about that change, about that shift, that whole sense of we are higher ... our basic needs are met, so we're going up to higher levels of consciousness and emotional availability. But being vulnerable as a woman, especially coming from that masculine to feminine, that has to be disciplined and practiced so I am writing that one down to make sure that I check in there.
John Gray:
When you say discipline and practice, usually what it really means is you have to use willpower, that's what discipline is. It's like people who don't like to go to the gym, "Oh I have to go to the gym. It doesn't feel good to get up and go to the gym but once in there I feel better." With diet, "Oh I want to eat this junk food, but I'm not going to eat the junk food, I'm going to eat this other food, I'm going to take the time to cook the food. That's hard to do, it's not what I want to do." We have to realize, if we expect this to be something, I want to do something easy to be done, it's not gonna work. Everybody says to me in resistance, these ideas is, "It doesn't feel natural, I want to do what's natural."
John Gray:
If you're eating sugar, it feels very natural to eat more and more, but it's not the right thing. Sometimes what feels good is really good for you and sometimes what feels good is not really good for you and you have to know the difference. The way you know as a woman, you're too far to your male side is the symptoms go something like this, which is you feel overwhelmed, you feel like there's never enough time because you made choices that made your life really, really busy, that feeling of I have to, that's male side. The irony here is when women are unhappy, there's always, "I have to, I have to, I have to." When men are weak, it's like men are not willing to say, "I have to." When I feel I have to do something, it gives me strength.
John Gray:
That's where I am, "I have to get up and work, I have to do this," which becomes a problem. I'm 67 years old, my friends are all pretty much retiring now, they have nothing to have to do, their testosterone levels are just dropping. To stay alive, I have to do stuff, I make commitments so that I have to follow through. That feeling of, "I have to do," this is what keeps me young and healthy and vibrant and so forth. Even for sex, there's certain I have to do outside the bedroom to make sure she's getting the nurturing she needs to feel soft and feminine and happy, then I get what I need and the bedroom. Then once you're in the bedroom ... I have a book called Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, which teaches men what you have to do.
John Gray:
If you want your wife to be happy and enjoy sex, you have to do certain things and have to is a good word for men, not such a good word for women. When women are overwhelmed with things they have to do, that's a sign they're out of balance and generally what will put you into balance you'll have a lot of resistance at first and then it will feel good and that could be romance. That can be good communication, that could be doing things in the garden, doing things you like to do, things that are slow, things that have no risk involved with them. These are more yin feminine type experiences.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
We have talked about so many things and I want to hit on a couple, I want to go back a little bit and hit on a couple of things. While we're in the bedroom so to speak, you talked about heightening her experience in that, so we want to read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus in the bedroom, right? We want to read that book.
John Gray:
Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Mars and Venus ... okay, Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, that experience of raising her vibration because so often we hear about sexual intercourse and it's mostly like sports sex versus energetic sex, versus bringing in that hormonal connection. In the Bible it says we become one flesh, that's an energetic connection. I love that you bring up just raising the energy of the intimacy and the connection.
John Gray:
It's an energetic polarity, and the two polarities that we have, the yin of the yang, the opposites, the night and the day. In sex, there's the giving energy and there's the receiving energy and if a woman's over on her male side, she's in her giving energy. That seems paradoxical to women because they always feel like, “Oh, I like to give, I like to give.” Yes, that's your male side. It's healthy, it feels great to go to your male side if you've just received, so if I've just received something then I want to give. Then it's the giving that makes you feel fantastic, but only if you've received, but the brain goes, “Oh, I'm giving, I must've received.” A little confusion goes on because there's an association.
John Gray:
Women want to give when they feel they receive, it's reciprocation. If a woman's already on her male side, that means she's been giving all day long. It's very hard to make that adjustment to coming back to receptivity, letting someone enter into you, letting yourself feel your pleasure, letting yourself relax and not having to give. Not having to give is very feminine, you're receiving, someone's doing something for you. This is as simple as asking a man to open the car door for you when you go on a romantic date. Some women feel like, “Oh, I can do it myself." Yes, you can but what I would say to my wife is, “Honey, tonight's special. You give so much to so many people, tonight let me give to you.”
John Gray:
It's not like she stops giving, it's just learning to balance receiving with giving. In the bedroom, often a man has been ... basically, he's way on his male side all day long, he'll want to go to his female side to find balance. Sex is feminine, sex is connection, men are on their male side all day long. How do they connect back to their female side, it's pleasure, it's connecting with her. He's going to go over to his female side, literally going into her, he's coming to his female side that way. Men come to sex often horny, needy, wanting, it's about, “I want to receive.” And taking, “I'm excited by your body, I want to see it, I want to touch it and it excites me.”
John Gray:
It's a lot about him, him, him, and she's coming from a place of giving all day so she just keeps giving, giving, but she's not receiving. You start out that way, this is called polarity sex. You just start where you are, you don't try to change where you are. He gets excited and she's satisfying him, she knows how to satisfy him up to the point where he says, “Stop,” puts our hands back. That's the point where he's going to have an orgasm soon. He just puts his orgasm on the shelf, says, “There's going to be another 20, 30 minutes, just put it over there, pretty much my knees are satisfied except for the big explosion.” Now, he's going to shift gears and give totally to her, start over.
John Gray:
She's just been giving. So now she feels like, “Oh, I gave to him, now can receive.” She can more easily relax. If she just starts out giving, she sees, “I made him so happy,” there is reciprocity is, “I gave to him.” Her body will now start to open up and he takes a good 20 to 30 minutes of stimulation of her sexual parts and so forth, kissing, touching, all that and then that going down south, all those things for at least 20 to 30 minutes. If you're a surgeon all day, you might need 40 minutes, you got to understand this. Until your body gets into the rhythm of anticipating a climax every time you just ... it doesn't have to be every time, but anticipating getting what you need because the more a woman anticipates getting what she needs, the less dominant her male side becomes during the day.
John Gray:
She can be on her male side, but her yin energy is also up. For me as a man, I'm practicing balance all the time always when I'm working because I'm disciplined, I know I have a goal a Michigan and I know people love me and I love people, I do this because I want to help. For me, I can't even ... I don't even need the money, I just get up every day because I have to save the world.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Purpose-driven.
John Gray:
Yeah. My friends who work primarily for money, once they retire, they have enough money, they just go down because they don't have that momentum of why am I doing this in the first place? That's the balance of yin and yang is doing it for love and also loving what you do. That's another ... these poor guys that are guys that do a job their whole lives and they don't love what they do, they just can't wait to stop. Then they say, “Oh I love to play golf.” Now they're going to make up for all the time that they didn't play to find a balance to their hard work jobs. Their testosterone goes down and literally, the risk of heart disease dramatically goes up. Anyway, that was the sex talk is polarity, start out where he is and give to him, let him receive and up to the point where he hits a plateau where soon he'll have an orgasm.
John Gray:
Then he puts it to the side and now put the arms back and she's not allowed to give him anything, she's only to feel the breed and the field pleasure and to guide his hands where they need to be. The way you guide is with sound, you move them and you make a sound and then once you make a sound ... Here is one instruction in sex, which is if she's making a sound repeat, you can even say, “Repeat” or, “Continue.” Men just, if they get a sound, they go, “Okay, I hit the Jackpot there. Now let me go onto the next and the next.” Whereas women need repetition, as long as she's feeling excitement from something, it needs to be repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated and he needs to hear feedback and also feedback that says, “Continue, continue, continue.”
John Gray:
Otherwise, men go, “Okay, that was good. Now where do I go, where do I go?” He needs those messages until he really understands a woman's body, and we don't. This is a lot of education when it comes to sex.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
And that feminine responsibility, to seek and to express what is giving her pleasure, to know her body, to know what pleases her and being able to communicate that as well as what does it. I teach a program called sexual CPR and I have a masterclass called Helpdoctor, my sex drive has no pulse and the one thing like it was like a big eyeopening thing, but number one, and tell me if I'm on track here, but the number one thing men want that is their biggest turnon is her happiness, is her enjoyment.
John Gray:
Completely, and women are not aware of that. Her pleasure is what makes him feel successful, is the number one thing. I started teaching classes in 1979 on enlightened sexuality and it was all ... The big revelation there was, I have people talking what makes sex great for them. Everybody would talk about their sexual experiences and everybody is astounded that for men, what makes sex great is her happiness and for women, what makes sex great is this affection, his touching, his skill, his connection. Women would go, “I can be selfish in sex.” That's really what it's about, it's a time for her to shift from being, giving, giving, giving back to receiving, receiving, and receiving. The beautiful thing about men and women is when she receives, he wants to give more and more and more, that's his goal. So sex is a beautiful thing with your CPR, I like that.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Sexual CPR.
John Gray:
That's great.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Well, and the other thing is putting it simply like, as a woman, I have to think, "Okay, the three things my man needs. He needs to have a good occupation," successful, you say, "Be put on a pedestal and sex.” So, think of nurturing those needs. Is that correct?
John Gray:
Yes, yes. I put it in slightly different terms, which are the terms of trust, acceptance, and appreciation. Women need all those things too, but men need it more because when you say put on a pedestal, actually I think the woman should be on a pedestal, but the pedestal that he's on is like a statue of, look what I've done. When you look up to a statue, you're giving trust, “This is someone I can depend on.” The enlightened woman says, “I can depend on him, but I also accept him, which means he's not perfect all the time but I trusted that he's doing his best. I trusted that he deeply loves me even though it may not always look that way.” It's that sense of trust and acceptance means I don't have to always be perfect, but there will be acceptance, you'll be able to let it go.
John Gray:
The crowning thing is appreciation is that he makes her happy. Those three things are the biggest testosterone producers there are. The flip side of that is what produces the feminine hormones more is caring, being considerate, prioritizing. Not so much just accepting, but understanding, that's the validation of understanding. The third is respecting, so many the books I feel mislead people when they say, “Oh, what men need most is to respect them.” Everybody wants to be respected, but whenever you see a dysfunctional man, you'll see him demanding respect. It's like, “You must do what I say, do what I say.” Why? Then everybody does do what he says, but it doesn't help. He's like a dictator, he's like an insecure male, demanding he doesn't have to be accountable for anything, whatever he says goes right.
John Gray:
Men, when they're out of balance they'll say, “I want respect.” What they're missing is appreciation, they're insecure, they feel that they're not making a difference, so they want the outcome. If you appreciate me, then you'll respect me. It's the appreciation that feeds the testosterone, the respect feeds the estrogen in women. When you prioritize, when you validate, when you do things that you don't want to do, happily do them for her, that is respecting others. The easiest example is when I get up in the middle of the night to take care of a child who needs to be held, I don't want to get up, but I happily do it because my child needs it. That's respecting another human being and that's what's been missing for women.
John Gray:
So many of the religions, they all say, “Respect the man," that's just a misinterpretation. If you actually go into the dictionary, the word respect means to honor someone's needs and also to praise them, to appreciate them, but appreciation is not respect, they're two different things. Respect is the way you treat somebody, appreciation is how you respond when somebody treats you with respect. They're really clear, they're yin and the yang, and we don't have the clarity. Women have to prioritize their needs, not always prioritize the man's needs. The man needs to prioritize her needs over his own and then he can come back to his own, this is the bottom line. If my wife needs to talk and I need to talk, who gets to talk? She does, that's a priority.
John Gray:
Men today when we think that sex isn't, that there's no difference between men and women and what are the differences and what are our different priorities and so forth, women will start to complain then a man will tell us their complaints. I've got six and he'll ... It's like ping pong, she complains, he complains, she complains and now there's a big argument or she says, “You're not listening to me," he says, “Well, you're not listening to me.” Clearly, she's not listening to him, but that's not the time to bring that up and she can't hear what he's saying if she's not feeling heard. Emotions first, then her heart is open, then you can talk about things and you won't do it in a defensive way because you're feeling loved and supported.
John Gray:
These are like new ways of dealing with situations because we have a new challenge, which is helping women come back to their loving side, helping men come back to their confidence side is a new dance that we have to learn. It's so easy for men to slide over to having fun and women that slide over to the male side and be stressed out.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
You bring in so clearly how it's important to highlight those differences and the polarity within ourselves, the feminine and the masculine and that we need that balance. Women and men are different, we've got that established. Bringing that into our modern-day-
John Gray:
An addition that I have not fully written about, I have my basic polarity sex, which allows sex to last for a lifetime, but there's other skills as well that the world wasn't ready for when I was teaching my classes. You just have to wait for the right time to teach and I think it's the right time now. There's several books written on this, I haven't written mine on it, but it's how to have sex so that a man doesn't ejaculate, how men can learn to have orgasm and orgasm and orgasm and orgasm, but not ejaculate. Ejaculation is like the deepest addiction you could have and men have that. When a man doesn't ejaculate but learns the orgasm without ejaculation, then he wants to have sex with love every day, twice a day, and when a man has that much desire for a woman, she will have a reciprocal desire for him.
John Gray:
That's really the ultimate of keeping the impulse alive and women, and let me put it this way, if we use Freud again, which is conditioned response, people understand psychology, understand the conditioned response. I'll just say for those that don't if I go into the darkroom, the pupils will expand and then I go out of the darkroom, there's light, my pupils will constrict, they expand in the dark and they constrict when there's a lot of light. If I ring a bell every time I go into the darkroom and when I go out into the room, if I ring the bell, my pupils will open up again. That's a conditioned response, most commonly known as Pavlovian response was a dog's eating food. You ring a bell and then the dog's not eating food, but you ring the bell, the body will start to salivate. That's an unconscious response.
John Gray:
Well, sex is an unconscious response, so it's very conditioned. If every time a man has an orgasm his estrogen levels shoot up, he will not associate sex with his wife as high estrogen and low testosterone. He will start to feel tired even the thought of having sex with her after having lost his testosterone levels a hundred times or three times, whatever it might be, he's now conditioned response to, if I have sex with her, I end up feeling tired so I'll feel tired now. The woman online, I've never had sex with her before, so I have no conditioned response to not want to have sex. Men online, they see we'll go from one woman to another, to another, never the same one, they have to have a new one.
John Gray:
For a woman, she has a conditioned response. She opens her heart fully at this peak of estrogen, he has his peak of estrogen as well, causing the contractions, oxytocin. Here, this man that has the closest moment of connection and then he pulls away. She has a condition response that if I fully opened my heart to him, he will leave me. She's always on the edge of caution of opening her heart because if she goes to the high place of opening, of oneness, of surrender, of feeling this, this, you're mine, I'm yours, we're together forever, that's the feeling of orgasm, when you're in that place and then suddenly your partner goes, you now have a conditioned response of not opening up so then women lose that impulse to have sex.
John Gray:
If a man can experience and doesn't have to do it every time, but if he has the experience of many, many times taking it to orgasm without him having the ejaculation and he doesn't depart from her. It's an act of will to stop having sex, you just want to go on and on and on till you're sore the next day. You learn to regulate how much time you have sex, not because the man ejaculates and it's over. This is like a whole new thing that can really keep women's pulse going, is to know that man has an unlimited desire, ready to go at any time, but she also has ready to go because she hasn't lost him every time. This is a new concept, it takes time to teach men how to do this. It takes a big story to get to that point.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I've heard about this, that just holding back ejaculation and definitely in sports, like no sex prior to the big game, "Let's hold it back, let's get the testosterone going."
John Gray:
Can I correct that? Let me correct that just real quick. The professionals, I asked some of the professional basketball players, I said, "Do you not have sex before the game?" And they said, "Yes, but always with a whore."
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
What?
John Gray:
Because they have no estrogen with a prostitute, if it's a woman, I don't know my testosterone doesn't go down. My wife, they said, "With my wife, I'll feel like want to make friends with everybody the next day," because love is increased through sex, which lowers the testosterone.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
That's terrible.
John Gray:
It is terrible [crosstalk 00:56:42].
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
They could learn ... it's shocking, but they can learn this delayed ejaculation or just to be able to pause it, orgasm without ejaculations so that they keep raising their testosterone and as they've learned that, they'd be able to come off the porn addiction. How do you counsel men off the porn addiction?
John Gray:
It's a gradual process, it's got to give the big story of Mars Venus of testosterone, estrogen and so forth. You have to understand that the concept of impersonal sex, which is Internet porn, impersonal sex takes away estrogen, takes away the love, takes away the feeling of love and surrender. If I'm with a real woman who I care about, the estrogen's there, I have to have really healthy testosterone levels in order to maintain attraction. Online, there's no estrogen being produced so if I have low testosterone as a man, because there's no estrogen, it can shoot up really high. Then when it shoots up really high, dopamine levels go very high, so it's like taking cocaine.
John Gray:
What people have to understand, the way the brain works is if my brain has cocaine, it's a higher dopamine stimulator. Then what happens in the brain is your dopamine receptors disappear. You lose 30% of your dopamine receptors, they just go to sleep if you have cocaine and the brain now cannot experience the same level of happiness, it could before without the super high level of stimulation. The brain, in a sense, gets rewired and can only become excited if it's the high dopamine stimulation and a real woman, unless it's the first time, cannot stimulate that super high level of dopamine stimulation. What has to happen in order to cure that is abstinence, you just have to abstain because if you stop looking for higher stimulation then gradually those little receptor sites will say, "Oh, give me some stimulation and they'll start to open up again."
John Gray:
It's an act of willpower to abstain and you only have that willpower if you recognize that this is a solution to the most important thing you can learn in life. Would you like to be turned on with a big erection every day till you're 90 years old, you can do that. It's within your power right now and You can maintain attraction to one woman. Many men think, "Oh, I can't stay attracted to her because of the same thing." I'm talking 34 years and my wife, all she has to do is put her hand on my thigh or show me some cleavage and I'm ready to go. She has to dress in a different room if she's not in the mood for having sex, this is what can happen for men.
John Gray:
What happens is the brain gets rewired to depend on this high level of dopamine and a real-life experience can never produce that much dopamine. You bring your sensitivity up so now real life gives you the same level of pleasure that that high-level stimulation produced. It takes abstinence of Internet porn an abstinence of masturbation. This is where men can practice every day, not looking at porn, not looking at any kind of stimulation, and they do solo masturbation if they're having an erection and want to have sex. You can't look to stimulation, you have to wait until your body says, "I got to do it." Now you have a natural urge, then you practice masturbation for 30 minutes without ejaculating.
John Gray:
Most guys can masturbate and be done in three minutes, you get all excited. Now you're looking at your own internal desire and need for sex, you're not being stimulated outside. It will come up in boys within seven days or three days, you've got this big erection saying, "I got to do something," then you practice really light stimulation and you get to the point where you're soon going to have an orgasm and then you stop. You walk around, you do something, you become a little softer, then you go back, it'll come right back and you practice until you can do a good half an hour of stimulation and feel some pleasure, but you don't go all the way.
John Gray:
What you're doing is building up your capacity to sustain pleasure in your body, literally. Men can't hold that much pleasure, they just get excited and want to release it and be done with it as opposed to training your body to go slow and enjoy and enjoy, but not depending upon this porn stimulation or anything external. Then when you're with a girlfriend or your wife, you don't have this quick ejaculation, but you're able to sustain yourself for 30 minutes of intercourse or maybe you get 10 minutes, rest a little bit, 10 minutes, change positions, do another 10 minutes, so forth. What that does is trains the body and then your semen builds up inside and after about two to three months of that, you have so much you haven't released that energy.
John Gray:
If you can build up for two or three months with arousal every day without releasing then the stage of arousal is an orgasm. In the beginning, you've got to build up, your energy built and it plateaus and you orgasm. That's the basic Masters and Johnson thing, your arousal, plateau, that orgasm. Arousal is exciting, everything's really exciting and then it kind of comes, "Okay, this is good." After it arouses you let it come down, the next level of arousal is higher, and you come down and 30 minutes later the next level of arousal is an orgasm just like the same level of energy as you had before. You have to be able to build your body up to having this orgasmic arousal and orgasmic arousal really only comes if you've had like three weeks to three months in the beginning of no ejaculation.
John Gray:
It builds up and builds up and your pleasure is the same as... much more than a real orgasm, but you didn't ejaculate, that's a later advanced stage. It's like learning to play basketball, you're not going to hit it in the hoop every time. It takes practice, but the practice increases the pleasure if you don't ejaculate in your practice.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Then just the health benefits of that, because we're increasing. This is male increasing testosterone, decreasing cardiovascular disease, anti-aging, increasing muscle, bone health, we see that and that's the natural experience. Just for my women listening, that's why we have gel vayala as we're getting older. John is a created gel, it's an anti-aging cream for the vulva that helps with vaginal dryness with some great natural ingredients.
John Gray:
I love it, I love it.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
That one thing that is my criticism, I lecture to anti-aging groups and many groups that are just pushing testosterone versus understanding why it's low versus getting our bodies to produce it naturally. I'm very critical of that because often exogenous testosterone leads to divorce, it leads to, again, decreasing your body's own natural testosterone. So you're dependent on an exogenous substance. I mean, there's a time and a place for sure, but to be really conscientious about what it's doing to our mind as well. That sense that, okay, we can do this for a guy, but the women, if she's having vaginal dryness and discomfort and it hurts every time we have sex, I mean, we say that is why foreplay is so important, you all, that's critical
John Gray:
So important.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I think that's part of it.
John Gray:
I say a few thanks for the women. Ideally, she's lubricating before you put the penis in and before you even need the lotion. The lotion is going to heal the vagina and I'm totally into that but as far as foreplay goes, that breasts, stimulation of breasts according to this 6,000-year-old Dallas philosophy is the first orgasm. If it doesn't orgasm touching the breast, this could be 20 minutes on the breasts, many women are really sensitive on their breasts, don't even want their breasts touched and that's because they need their breasts massaged. A good 10, 15 minutes of self-massage every day, you'll find these little places that are either paying for bumps and you massage around.
John Gray:
In China, a practice women do to stay healthy and not have breast cancer is these breast massages, but once you've been massaging your breasts regularly, then when a man touches your breasts, it's exceptionally exciting. This is the beginning of lubrication down south before he goes in. I have a remedy as well for vaginal dryness as well, a form of aloe vera, a special form of aloe vera that's helpful. I want to find out what yours and recommended it if you'll email me I'll appreciate it.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Thank you so much.
John Gray:
Women need this, it's so, so important, but ideally at least before menopause when you can really develop a lot of these abilities if you can do the breast massage so that you don't even think about needing lubrication, I put on the lubrication and go in. That's way too soon, you want to let the body ... the woman's body is going to lubricate and say, "Okay, now it's time to come in." That's the best time, it's going to be most enjoyable to her to come in at that time. You've already done some clitoral stimulation, you can use lubrication for clitoral stimulation but even more, you get the lubrication. If I'm going for the clitoris, I want a first line if there's any juice in there. If there's no juice coming out, it's time to go back to the neck, to the ears, to the kissing, to the conversation, to the saying, "I love you."
John Gray:
This is where women start, is up here. Then it goes to the breasts and the breasts need to be ... feel good to be touched until you can ... Indirect nipple stimulation then gradually sucking on the nipples and kissing the nipples and all of that sucking will help produce the oxytocin, which then raises her estrogen, lubricates their vagina and now it's time to visit. Even visiting, men have to know you don't go all the way in. Four zones in the vagina, the first outside zone, just a little bit in, just the head going in and out, head in and out. Then coming out doing the clitoris for a while and then going in, going in so she has an orgasm there.
John Gray:
Then you're going to go in for the G-spot, you get a good angle going on that one, you do that she'll have an orgasm there. Then you go beyond that, there's another point you go into, then you circle the cervix. Once she's had three or four orgasms, the cervix will come down, Masters and Johnson filmed this. The cervix will come down and then when you touch that, it's like explosions of pleasure for both the man and the woman. You circle the cervix, you move like around, all kinds of things. The Chinese figured out that Americans are still just babies at in terms of our learning sexual education.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I think that's huge too, especially for women too, just to recognize though, for some it's uncomfortable, there's endometriosis, there's even postsurgical like post lip or cryotherapy of the cervix. You can reawaken the nerves, the nerves of the clitoris, the vagina, the vulva, the penis, you can reawaken sensation. You can for the cervix too and I talk about that in another podcast, but it is really critical to understand for women too, it's often the lighter touch, slower and more energetic interaction.
John Gray:
Yes, energetic. The idea is once the energy is flowing, just holding the penis inside her body will have orgasm and orgasm without him having the thrust all the time. Men always want to pound and pound, there's a place for that sometimes, but she has to be able to control him and let him know what feels good, what doesn't feel good. Often if she doesn't want to say anything and she can, if she does in a way that says, "You're doing so good, oh, I just want to hold you now inside, oh, I have orgasm just feeling your penis inside me, oh, go so slow, that feels so much better when it goes slow," those kinds of messages. Men don't have a clue, they don't understand. This is like communication.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Communication, I've ABCs of sexual CPR, acceptance, be present, communicate, ABC. I think that's it, it's just being able to, in a loving, nurturing way. It's the most vulnerable things, sexual intimacy is, in my experience, the most vulnerable thing for a couple, for a man or woman so being a really positive coach is huge. You've given us so much information, oh my gosh. Thank you.
John Gray:
One other throw in here, which I would love to hear your thoughts on, but single women often are making love with their vibrator, that's a little bit like porn. Porn overstimulates the male, a vibrator can overstimulate a woman. First, her need for a man becomes less because she's got her vibrator and second is she can overstimulate that area and a man can ever stimulate like that. Again, it's, it's conditioning your body to come back to realness stimulates. The third thing, when it comes to vibrators, I'm not against them totally, just moderate use, everything moderate is always good, is in the old days when women were hysterical, women used to have this hysteria, that was due to too much estrogen. The Western medical society, you know all this but not everybody knows this, is they used to paddle women's clitoris, to the takeaway anxiety.
John Gray:
They'd go into the doctor's office and they have a vibrator that would paddle or clitoris and she'd have an orgasm and then her anxiety would lessen, but she was dependent on that to come in again and again. The way I look at that is her anxiety, her fainting, her can't handle life kind of thing, was too much estrogen and paddling her brought her to her male side, and that then brought some balance into her life. If women today are trying most to get to their female side, maybe they don't need to be paddled to get back to their male side because they're trying to get away from their male side but to actually have a man paddle you, real finger, real-time, that puts you in your female side where you surrender.
John Gray:
Either you're surrendering to a vibrator, which isn't real surrender or you're surrendering to a man which is ... I only say this to motivate men, motivate women to get out there and find a guy to paddle you, to give you ... to be outside of you touching you. Then people say, "Well, can't you just touch yourself?" And I say, "Yeah, you can always set yourself in that, how is that different from getting a massage? You can massage your body, there'll be some health benefits, but what if somebody else's massaging you?" It's such a different experience, and so this is the reality of finding a partner. Often they call it friends with benefits, we like each other, we're friends and we learn, we can practice this stuff together, we can give each other this kind of loving attention and stimulation and get out of the whole idea that you have to be madly in love with someone in order to have sex with them.
John Gray:
You could be good friends with them, have a loving affection and this is something men can do for women as a huge gift for women and something women can do for men. We take the even intercourse out of the whole picture because that can make babies or whatever, take intercourse out and just talk about massaging each other in a sexual way is something that I believe everybody should be doing once they become adults. This is something we need as human beings to feel pleasure and our body awakens us to feeling our emotions, and women need it more than men. This is for women to come back to their female side.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Going back to the vibrator, there's so many topics there. I think we have to definitely as women pleasuring where the male partner is going to increase oxytocin and an artificial bond unless that's what you're saying when you're like we have a good relationship, we're friends, we're safe, a safe partnership and it's non-intercourse related massaging. That concept, still we're increasing oxytocin, there's a bond that's forming. For that, being in a relationship where it's not right partner or a situation you know is not necessarily going anywhere, then that may keep you from having the relationship with the right partner, so there's thoughts around that, that I have, John.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
The other part back to the vibrator is it can cause damage, it can cause nerve damage to the creditor as there over 9,000 nerve endings. Again, that's periodic, once in a while, but self-pleasuring, knowing, accepting, massaging, all parts of your body, that awareness is really important. Ariel Ofor told me one time, she said, "Anna, you got to have sex before you go on a date." I'm like, "Why?" She goes, "Well, make sure you get a good night's sleep, eat something and then self-pleasure." Or maybe ask for self-pleasure, I forget, "Self-pleasure before."
John Gray:
Absolutely.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Yes, absolutely.
John Gray:
With your body with regular touch, and my thing for women, okay, I'll just add to it, Ariel's brilliant is fantasize in your fantasy that either this man or a man is touching you, your mind is very powerful in the fantasy of it. Vibrators take that away, it does cause ... You're a doctor talking so I'll say what you said, can cause damage. I was shocked one time and Dr. Oz said it could shrink it.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Decreased sensitivity for sure, and make it harder to have that orgasm have climax on your own too.
John Gray:
Touching is all right, and also when you're touching to keep fantasizing someone actually loving you and giving you that because I'm a big believer in imagining success and then imagine it's real. That helps pull that into your life, there's no doubt about that. If you're just touching yourself and not using fantasy, it's like you're doing it to yourself and that's more of a male thing, to do it yourself as opposed to depend on someone else to bring you pleasure. It was a really wonderful conversation.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I tell you, we've hit on so much more. Let me tell you, we wanted to hit yes on monogamy and the fate of marriage and our upcoming world because I say that as married couples are like ... you know why as a single woman is like, "Oh my God, I can't wait to be married." Then when you're married you're like, "Oh my God, I got to be single. Help me, get me in, get me out. I can't live with them, can't live without them." But definitely learning these tools to have good communication, have a lifetime romance, I want to visualize myself 50 years from now, rocking on a chair, looking over the community that we're absolutely involved with and have helped and supported and raise with generations around us. Rocking on that chair, dancing, living, laughing, celebrating life.
John Gray:
And having sex.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
And having sex, absolutely, having intimacy, connection, feeling. Not just being in love but feeling in love and keeping that energy alive. That's really critical and I feel like there are so many forces in today's society that are pulling us, pulling marriages apart from media, from TV, from sitcoms, from even our friendship and our friend groups too. We know that if our friend has a divorce, the couples in that friend's group are 300% more likely to divorce too, and as well as sometimes bad counseling, but learning the skills to communicate, what are your thoughts like. Just in five minutes, the two minutes we have left, could you just please summarize what's going to keep monogamy and marriages together?
John Gray:
You said it all just then, I love your vision, but ultimately it's the good communication outside the bedroom that makes it safe for women to open up in the bedroom, it's good sexual skills in the bedroom on the man's part., it is so important. She has to guide him in all of that, but they need to be having great sex, which means that a man's not ejaculate every time he's desiring, her every day, he doesn't lose that interest. When a woman feels desired, not demanded upon but desired her body is being responsive because there's not that break every time they have sex. It's just like it desensitized as a couple from that, those beginning feelings because you haven't yet dealt the separation that will occur when people have an orgasm and then ejaculate.
John Gray:
If she's going to be abandoned every time she has sex, her body was just shut down that part of her, "I don't want to go there, it's just not where I want to be." It's learning these advanced sexual skills that I think make your dream a reality. You also have to be practical, you've got to have a life outside the bedroom, you've got to have compatibility, you've got to have good skills, you have to learn not to fight with each other. That's such a killer, that's the other side of killing the romance. That's a whole subject, but I'll briefly say that one, which is man's anger. I'll just say at 23 years of my marriage, I asked Bonnie, I said, "Okay honey, tell me how I read as a husband?" And she said, "Oh, you know, as a father to our children, I can't imagine a better father, you are the best. As a husband, you're not perfect, but you've given me the greatest gift any woman could want."
John Gray:
I said, "What's that?" And she said, "I know I can say and do things that make you angry, but every time you get angry, you stop talking, you go to your cave, you do some magic and you come out with more love. We have grown in love, every time something happens between us, you come back with more love and having learned something, I'm amazed. I don't know how you do it, but I know there's nothing I can say or do that will ever cause you to leave me." That is the greatest gift of men can give a woman, he's always growing in love and women need that if they're going to grow as women and the intimacy is going to continue to grow. That's a little thing in there about anger and what helps men to realize, "Why can't I get angry?"
John Gray:
I say, "Okay, go ahead and you can be angry but then go away, go handle your anger, don't talk." When men are angry and they talk, it just makes their anger increase, it's estrogen. When women are angry because cause they're out of balance, they can talk about it, estrogen goes back, their hormones can balance so she feels heard, she will go into balance. If a man's angry it just becomes angry and angry and angrier, he needs to come back to testosterone, not estrogen. This is testosterone, estrogen, simplistic, but it's male energy, female energy. If you're angry, you're on your female side if you're a man. Go back to your male side, disconnect, do what you need to do to feel good, successful, happy, fulfilled, producing your testosterone. Then do the most masculine thing there is that's called accountability.
John Gray:
Then look at what happened and look at how you contributed to it and what you can do differently so it won't happen again, that's masculinity. What women have to do after those, when she takes her time to go talk and share with her friends and express her emotions to come back into balance, what she has to do is come back into balance, open heart, and accept, forgive, appreciate. Forgiveness is a woman's journey of learning to accept appreciate trust, "He's doing his best, he's not perfect, but look at all the good stuff he does for me." It's finding that place of coming back to center for her, and for men, it's coming back to that place of center for them as, "Oh, what I did didn't work because it was the wrong thing to do, I said that I did this. What can I do differently in the future, how can I make a change, what can I adjust, how can I adjust to make her happier?"
John Gray:
This is a dance that we have to increase yang energy for men, increase yin energy as women. Then women can come back to their male side, being balanced and she can look at, okay, how did I contribute to that problem and he can come back to his female side and love his partner more and be forgiving of her and so forth. It's not like we're just male or female, is that we have our priorities. He's got to come back to his masculine before he can go back to his female, she's got to come back to her female before she comes to her male side, which is how she's accountable. We're all accountable for the problems we create in life if we're connected to the part of us is both masculine and feminine, which is our spirit.
John Gray:
That's why this is all happening as the world's become more conscious we're free to be ourselves. On a spiritual level, your male and female, but as a physical embodiment, women got female hormones, men gotten men hormones. You've got to honor your body's priorities and then you can go to the other side to find balance.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Those are good words, so a lot of good lessons here and tell our listeners, John, where they can get more of you.
John Gray:
They can get more of me at marsvenus.com or just Google, Mars, Venus or Google me and it will come up but marsvenus.com. There's free videos all the time, there's talks I do and there's a story there I talk about also nutritional supplements and different things you can take. I feel that there's some Chinese herbs that help women balance hormones, which are really good, I recommend those. Lithium orotate is something I recommend to stop the brain from looping, it's really, really powerful. Not that one which is prescribed, this is low-dose Lithium orotate, it has a huge impact for many women. Then other types of health issues that I talk about, little 10-minute videos so there's education. I think we have to look at the body as well as the mind and the heart, they all go together.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
I agree, mind, body, heart, keeping us together and also in the community and in communication. I thank you for sharing your wisdom today and for our listeners, marrsvenus.com, John Gray, just search, you'll find him everywhere. It has been truly an honor to have you on the show today with us. I've got to get you back so I'm going to have to bring you back and we got to hit more topics that I definitely want to hear your input on and share your wisdom with my community.
John Gray:
Yes to that, thank you.
Dr. Anna Cabeca:
Thank you. For our listeners, please definitely share this podcast with those you love and those in your community that you know need to hear these messages as well. I want to thank you guys for giving us these great ratings and I love hearing your comments and hearing your questions. I know you're going to have questions after today's podcast, so email those in. You can email to him or team or drannacabeca.com and I will have more questions for John the next time I bring him back as well. Thank you guys and I'll see you next week on Couch Talk.
