A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Conversation Starters to Help You Talk About Sex With a Partner
•Cindy Scharkey•Season 3•Episode 78
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Most of us didn’t get a lot of education around sex, let alone how to talk about sex with a partner. Just like any new language, sexual conversation is a learnable skill that gets more comfortable with practice. Use the questions and prompts in this episode as conversation starters. Designed to be used with a partner, these are great for date night, weekend walks or on your next long drive together. Learn to talk about sex - one chat at a time.
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Hello friends and welcome to our last episode of season three. To wrap up this season, I wanted to offer you some conversation prompts to help you communicate with a partner about sex. Talking about sex seems to be one of people's greatest roadblocks. When I meet with women for private consultations, this is one of their top five concerns. Talking about sex is a learnable skill. My hope in providing these prompts is that it'll give you a little nudge toward opening a conversation yourself to help you gain confidence one conversation at a time. I realize I might sound like a broken record about this, but the research is so very clear that those of us who talk about our sex life have better sex. You could use this episode on a road trip and pause and answer a question or two together, or take it along on a walk around the block, or when you're walking the dog, and talk through one or two prompts, perhaps a few on a date night. These are not meant to be done all in one sitting for sure, but over time. It's too much all at once. Take your time. You can also find these prompts written out over on the blog if that feels more helpful to you. I'll link to that in the show notes. Also, in the show notes is the link to contact me. If you have feedback about the podcast, about this last season, maybe guests you're really interested in having on the show, or if you want to set up a private consultation or have a question that you want answered on the podcast, please do contact me there. I always love to hear from you. Thank you for listening this season. Thank you for sharing episodes with your friends. Thank you to those of you who have taken a moment to rate the show on Apple and Spotify. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm delighted you're here. So, friends, if this education is meaningful to you, it would mean a lot to me if you wrote a quick review on Apple if you listen there. Reviews help others to press play on the podcast, they help guests to say yes to joining us, and sponsors to get excited about supporting our show. So help the podcast to grow by taking a moment and writing just a few sentences about why you listen and like the podcast in a review. Now let's get started. First, we want to start with something positive. So your current favorites, I call this. Two questions here. Number one, what do you most enjoy about our sex life right now? And number two, what do I do that really turns you on? Take turns answering some positive questions there that will give feedback to each other and give insight into how things are at the moment. The next section is let's do more of this. And there's three questions there. Number one is are there things I can do to make sex more pleasurable, fun, or satisfying for you? The next one is what are some of the reasons that motivate you to have sex? And lastly, is there anything you would like more of during sex? Do you see where I'm going here? These are wonderful questions to talk about what you're interested in, what you're curious about, what motivates you? So good. Such good conversation. The next section is consistency and variety. These questions are do you enjoy having sex the same way with some consistency? Or do you ever wonder about adding more variety to our sex life? How about this one? Is there something you imagine us doing sexually that makes your heart race? We talked about this with Carolyn Klein. Remember if you listen to the episode about fantasies, I'm gonna link to that in the show notes. She offered some great questions in that episode. Remember, even if it isn't something you want to do in real life, what do you imagine that makes your heart race? I love that. Here's a section about changing interests. The first one, is there anything you used to like sexually that has changed for you or no longer turns you on? Or how about this? Was there anything in the past that you were not interested in that you're now curious about? And lastly, how do you feel about the amount of affection we show each other outside of sex? Would you like to see it change? Physically, verbally, or in other ways? This is a good question. And I would really encourage you to listen to the foreplay episode with Megan Caston. I'm going to link to that one in the show notes. And here's some questions about frequency. This is such a big area of conflict for couples, and I think some of the reason is because we don't talk about it. And I think these questions can help you get started there. The other reason frequencies tend to be a real difficult area for couples is that we don't understand how desire works. So with that in mind, I'm going to link some episodes about desire and my blog about desire styles to give you more context for that. So here's the questions. Is there anything you would like to change about how often we have sex? Or how often would you ideally like to have sex? And last, how do you feel about scheduling a sex date? I'm laughing because you know I'm a big proponent of scheduling sex. So if you don't like the word scheduling, perhaps you could say, how do you feel about us setting aside time for a sexy date? Talking about frequency can really help dissolve some of that conflict around how often you're having sex. Remember my mantra, quality over quantity. Well quantity is great, don't get me wrong. But the quality of your sexual encounters, they actually will serve you more instead of focusing on how often. Here's some questions about inviting intimacy and play. What is something we can do with our bedroom space that would invite more intimacy? I have a whole episode about sexifying your space. I'll link to that in the show notes. Or you could ask, could we play more in the bedroom? And what is something that sounds playful or fun to you that we could try? You see how these kinds of questions just spark conversation and having these conversations can be really fun and build erotic energy between the two of you. Here's a few on senses and sensual touch. What parts of your body would you like me to touch more? Which of your five senses is the most sensitive? How has the way you experience sex in your body changed in the last few years? And can you tell me about it? Lastly, what are some of my body parts that you find sexy? Woo, I like those. And you know I really encourage you to focus on your senses. I will link to my blog on sensual play and ideas, practical, easy ideas in the show notes. And I'm gonna wrap up with some questions about initiation. We all want to feel desired, right? So here are some conversation starters for that area. What is your favorite way for me to initiate sex? Here's another. When you initiate sex and I say no, what feelings come up for you? Also, how would you like me to say no or not now when you initiate sex and I don't want to? These are so practical and wow, I'm just thinking about all the conversations you could have. And remember what I said at the beginning, talking about sex is a learnable skill. Most of us didn't get any good lessons on how to do this, and so just know it's never too late. You can learn to talk about sex with a partner. Likely it will feel uncomfortable at first, and the more you do it, the more comfortable you'll feel. So don't think that you're gonna jump right in if you've never brought up this subject with your partner and it'll all be, you know, roses and hearts. It might be, but it might be a little start and stop, and you know, a little bumpy at first. And I think you could even call that out and say, hey, you know, we haven't really talked about sex that much. I want to learn how to do that. I think it would really help our sex life and our intimacy. What do you think about that? I heard this nurse talk about, or I listened to a podcast, and there was a lot of conversation prompts. I wondered if we could start with one of those. As easy as that, friends. I'm cheering you on as you practice and learn how to talk about sex. Thanks again for listening this season, and I will see you as we jump into season four with some new guests, some different kinds of conversations, and more about giving ourselves permission for pleasure.
