Knotty Bi Nature
In the realm of long-term love, where time bends and stretches, where passion and intimacy evolve like a living thing, two guides step forward—Dr. Casey Sanders and Kari Sanders. Together, they embark on an odyssey into the heart of relationships, peeling back the layers of connection, desire, and vulnerability.
This podcast is a lantern in the shadows, illuminating the secrets to lasting intimacy. It’s a journey into the delicate art of keeping the flames of love not merely alight but growing ever stronger. Join these seasoned sex educators as they unravel the mysteries of passion, communication, and erotic exploration, sharing their wisdom on how to nurture desire through the years.
If you’ve ever wondered how to deepen your bond or rekindle the spark in your long-term relationship, Dr. Casey and Kari invite you to step into their world—where love isn’t just a moment in time, but a story still unfolding.
Knotty Bi Nature
Your Sex Life is A Video Game
A key to happiness in long lasting relationships is not taking things too fucking seriously. Creating games around your intimacy is a great way to achieve this. In this episode we discuss fluid sexuality and how playing games with each other can bring you closer together.
Welcome to naughty by nature.
Kari:Hey, I
know we are your hosts. I'm Dr. Casey Sanders and
Kari:I'm Carrie Sanders. I know.
So I, I'm going to go ahead and say, I have a little bit of imposter syndrome because so being a, like for everybody that knows that listens to the show, they know I'm a chiropractor.
Kari:They do know. So each time I
say like, uh, Dr. Casey Sanders, I don't ever want to give the impression that I'm like a, uh,
Kari:You're a doctor. Yes. No, you're a doctor. There's no elevation to it. You're a fucking doctor.
I lied. The fact like I went, I went to the eight years of school, you got the degrees. Yep. I was there for it. Exams. Yeah. Did all the very, very
Kari:chaos. Remember all that
did all the hard shit and you accomplished all of it. But sometimes the imposter syndrome sets in and being like,
Kari:you really shouldn't let that happen to you. You really shouldn't. You're a fucking doctor. You've worked for it. I hear you. I really do. But at the same time, like. No, because of how much work you had to put in, it wasn't any different for you to put in the same amount of work as like an MD. It was the same thing, but maybe different like conversations, right?
Yeah. Pharmacological studies, where y'all
Kari:went into like neurology,
right? Yes. Typically MDs go more of a pharmacological pharmacology.
Kari:I like that word.
I like that word. They, they study pharmacology more and we study. More on a different end,
Kari:but that makes sense though, right? Like you, a chiropractor versus an MD really at the base of it, you're receiving the same level of information. Yeah, we have to know the human body.
Yeah. So if you, yeah, we strip it down to how well do you know the human body? How well can you? Uh, describe systems within the human body. It's very, very, very similar. So anyway, and
Kari:it makes sense. Anyways, it makes sense for the split to be pharmacy, pharmaceuticals for them. And then exactly. Neurology versus
natural healing. So anyway, I'm Dr. Casey
Kari:Sanders and I'm still just his wife, Carrie Sanders. Anyways, I'm still just his wife, Carrie Sanders. Yeah. What else am I supposed
to say? I feel like you're minimizing yourself.
Kari:You're a fucking doctor. Of course, I'm going to minimize myself. I'm a hair, I'm a hair stylist. I want a
therapist that's listening to dive into that.
Kari:Please do. Yeah. Like
you're justifying minimizing yourself.
Kari:I always justifying minimizing myself every day. That's
just, I do all this, you do a bunch of cool shit. You're successful in your career. You do amazing things. And then you refer to yourself as just his wife. I'm going to take away some bucks. Don't that's not fair. We didn't agree to that beforehand and we'll, we'll get into that later with what we need, but
Kari:anyways, rude. So, um, the biggest discussion that we have today is going to be focusing around, like. Being playful with your partner, how to play with your partner, how to like, okay. Yeah, I might as well How to like
gamify.
Kari:Yes. I love, we wanna
gamify the relationship.
Kari:Can you like, break down what gamify means? Yeah. First
it's, yeah, of course. Okay. Oh, it means turning into a game.
Kari:That's it. That, no, that's it. That's fucking it. Okay. Anyways, turn your relationship into a game. It it, but it means
creating an environment in your relationship where things do feel. Like a game, like playful. I, for myself, I love video games. I know that you love video games, video game, not as much of an extent, but I know that you enjoy sitting down and playing games with us and playing games with the kids and me. I
Kari:think that I could dive in deeply into video games, but I almost have to refrain myself. Well, you were younger. I was a huge gamer when I was a kid. Um, I love final fantasy. I love the stories. I love that type of, it was like an RPG. I was so into the whole concept around it. You were big on the turn
based too, right? Like, so Final Fantasy being like, you go, I go, you go, I go.
Kari:But that was really, well, it was just introduced to me. I didn't really know gaming outside of like RPGs, but you liked huge gamer.
You liked a lot of the, the story driven like the cinematics and the cut scenes and the, All of that, right?
Kari:Can you imagine a video game, but with like the smut book concept?
Yeah, they have those. They didn't do very successful.
Kari:Well, no, I actually have no fucking clue, but I'm not surprised that it didn't do well, but damn, I'd be so into it. Oh
no, I'm certain that there's a large market for it. It's just, they don't know how to,
Kari:they don't
know how to make it without getting in trouble.
Kari:That's fair.
They don't know how to make a good like romanticy. Game,
Kari:Put my smut books into a video game.
Oh, how would that look like? God, how would that look for you though? I don't
Kari:know. I play so hard though. I have no idea what that would look.
Well, I mean, is it something where you play through the game and then sex scenes happen or are you playing, are you like playing through the sex scene? I
Kari:don't think I'd want to play. No, I'm here to watch.
It'd be like Parappa the rapper, but like, was you remember that game?
Kari:No.
Parappa the rapper, they would do dance moves and you'd have to in time. Press the corresponding button. So it would have like, say you're playing on PlayStation. It would be like circle, square X and triangle. Right. And it would be tempo driven. So like guitar hero or anything else you're having to keep in time with it. So would it be like that for a sex scene or it's like thrust thrust thrust thrust
Kari:maybe X Y triangle, right? Whatever. But like
wear out so many controllers,
Kari:I would write, I would rather earn it. Like I beat this boss. And after this boss. Boom. Big sex scene. I'm just going to sit back and watch. That's what I would want. Okay.
So this, the sex scene would be like a reward.
Kari:Yeah. Like I don't want to work for it. Casey, you have all people. No, I don't want to work for it.
You do or don't want to work. Don't.
Kari:I just want to sit back and observe it, you know?
Right. So a non interactive sex scene where you play through, you get an achievement. Now I get to sit back and watch my porn.
Kari:Absolutely. Yeah. That would be good for me as a reward based. Girl.
Yeah.
Kari:Yeah.
All right. So if we were going to look at that, then what would, what would a scene like that look like? Cause I mean, think about the romance series that we've gone through so far. Are we talking like it would be like a, a three dicks mermaid?
Kari:No, I think actually I think it would be more, um, what do they call it when they, um, ship ship things, right? So I would want a scene where. Whatever I did in the past to earn said shipping, I would want it to happen on screen.
So you can have this big RPG game, open world, where you can craft relationships with different people. Yeah, absolutely. Because they have something similar, but it's not explicit sex scene. So if you take like newer games like Baldur's Gate, which is essentially D& D on the screen, right? You can craft relationships with most of the characters in the game. And whenever you, whenever you actually get to where there's a romantic scene, it starts and then they kind of like cut back. Like you'll have like a topless character or something, or you'll see like a penis, but there's no explicit sex scenes that cut away.
Kari:Can you see a penis?
Sure. Do you have a
Kari:topless and you have a penis? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Why not? Okay. Go ahead.
Do you not know about my character? Willow on Baldur's Gate 3? I do
Kari:know about Willow. Can you describe Willow for us?
You want me to?
Kari:I kind of want you to at this point.
Well, Willow is my, my trans barbarian that I made.
Kari:Trans barbarian? Yeah. What made you think that? Trans and then barbarian
because I love
Kari:the concept.
I honestly,
Kari:I would, I would want to be a barbarian. I feel like I'm a barbarian, but I'm not a femme barbarian. So I go ahead.
No, uh, my, my, the barbarian that I created her, what, like a year ago or so me and my son were playing and we were crafting new characters. I created a barbarian that was, uh, I mean, as a trans woman, very, very masculine. Um,
Kari:Yep. Very mask presenting.
Yeah. With a penis.
Kari:Yeah.
I mean, I love her. She's, she's amazing. She kills so many fucking people. Got it like this flaming sword at the beginning and did all sorts of stuff. Um, I wish I could go further into it right now, but I'm kind of like without seeing her presented on screen that you're not going to really know about Willow, but Willow's got a happy backstory. She's done amazing things throughout her time.
Kari:So how would you feel if I. You know, 10 years into our relationship came to you and said, I would like to be masked presenting from here on out.
I mean, let's, let's go with it. Let's, let's see what happens. I know that there's been a lot of like, we've seen the discussion a lot. Um, and we've talked about this book a number of times, but, um, uh, I'm learning shame. Uh, Devin price's book, uh, who is a, who is a trans woman. And whenever. I'm sorry, a trans man. And whenever he went through his transition process, he had been in a relationship and that it ruined his relationship. Yeah. Uh, he doesn't hold, now doesn't hold resentment to the partner because of what that all entails, but it does bring up important questions of like what you're asking. How would you feel if I were to completely alter myself? Because I tend to be or even
Kari:finding myself to be my true form, but I maybe didn't disclose that
true form.
Kari:Yeah. But I didn't, I didn't disclose that to you.
Uh, I. I would support you and everything. I don't know how that would look in a romantic relationship moving forward, but I know that I would support you in it. I'd want you to be your happiest self
Kari:because at the end of the day, you definitely find yourself as like straight male.
Um, I, I consider myself a cisgender male. Um, I, I, I think I'm straight. That's been, but I also understand that sexuality is fluid. I've found myself attracted to men in the past. Um, sexual attraction hasn't gone further than a lot of the surface. Yeah. And I, I've. I've wanted to explore more of that, but I haven't been super sure how to do that because I,
Kari:because
you asked me the other day, you're like, Hey, have you ever watched do you ever watch, like, uh, do you ever watch male, like male on male porn? And like, how do you feel about that? And I, my response, I believe was like, Oh, I kind of tried to see if it, just see if it aroused me at all. And I, I didn't have much of an arousal for it, but my response to you was. It was something about seeing like a masculine face temp to take on a feminine form that I was like, this, I don't know if it was a confusion. I don't know if it was just what, but it, it didn't. Like take me along a road of arousal. Now, of course, let's keep in mind that we're watching pornography, right? It's not real life, but it's the same thing of watching Hollywood on screen. Right. So I I've made an attempt to kind of explore it a little bit, but it's hasn't gone any further than that. I'm interested in, in exploring that a little bit more and never know what I might find. I think that one of my. Favorite things that I've seen, what came from, um, Dr. Joe court, whenever he talks about, uh, sexual fluidity and how your sexuality can be fluid throughout your entire lifetime. So that doesn't mean that you realize that you're homosexual or bisexual whenever you're younger, and then that's the way you are for your entire life. You can actually dip in and out of various ways as you go through things. So it's been an interest.
Kari:I love that because it doesn't make it so like concrete. This is how I feel, so this must mean how I feel for the rest of my life.
Yeah. This is me and this will always be me.
Kari:Yeah. And that's not really how it works. Like especially someone, I think it's more
fun to explore.
Kari:Yeah. Especially as someone speaking from a, like a bisexual mindset. Like I used to think like, are you really bisexual because you've mostly been with men, but it ebbs and flows.
Yeah.
Kari:There are times in my life that I'm like, God, I, I really wanna be with a woman.
Mm-hmm
Kari:And, and then there are times where kind of, I think
you used the, what was the word you used the other day? Uh, crave.
Kari:Yeah, I as you have
a desire to crave.
Kari:Yes. And I and I am in my crave phase, I will admit. But yeah, like there are times and it doesn't make me feel less bisexual because there's a point where I'm not really craving that. Um, but that was something that even I had to kind of like figure out knowing that I was bisexual way early on in my life, like that was interesting for me to understand. And I love that the concept of like, it ebbs and flows. It's not a straight line. You can find times where you're like, really into in times where it kind of like dies down a little bit. I
think it brings up an interesting point that we try to quote, normalize. Things or we try to, I
Kari:hate normal, I hate normalizing. We,
we try to solidify things. Yeah. We, we try to label something and then say, this thing never changes. And for whatever reason, we do that with, with our, our, our fellow man, our humans that exist. And we try to say, here's what you are. Here's your label. It doesn't change whenever every shred of evidence points to the exact opposite, that everything is fluid, literally everything that we know on some level,
Kari:your diet. As, as you were like sexual orientation, right? Like there are times where I'm like, I'm super into one aspect of this in my life. And then I'm going to decrease a little bit. Like for someone that's listening to our show and you have a very straight sexual orientation. That's great, but think about it being more fluid, and that's why I brought up a diet, right? Like, think about the times that you're really, really into it, and there's times that it kind of like falls off a little bit. It doesn't make you not a, you're not an unhealthy person, it just means that you find times to like really like dive into it in times that you're like, eh, and maybe I might find myself a little bit more relaxed. If you think about that as your sexuality, It really opens up the scope of allowing you to understand that there are ebbs and flows in your own sexuality that can be altered and changed and fluid. So really,
I kind of like the way that you said that.
Kari:I can be smart too sometimes. So what kind of brought a lot of this up was the discussion of our podcast today, because
we had an idea and they were like, hold on, let's talk about our sexuality.
Kari:We kind of went a little bit, but it, I promise you, it'll still kind of dial back, but like. Understand that Casey and I have been in a relationship for almost like 15 years. We're 15 years. This
is, this is year 15 for everyone that we've said 15 years for the last two years. Let's not worry about that.
Kari:Anyways, we're, we are now it's 15 years. And our relationship. Again, just as a fucking diet, it ebbs and flows. We find times where we're like really peaked out and we're, we're really fucking for each other, and we find times that we're like maybe a little bit at a lull,
a little bit at a low. We've been at some heavy highs and some low lows. Yeah.
Kari:But the point is of what our, our show is today is like maybe you're finding yourself as a at, at a low. Here are ways to like. Increase that. Get away from it. Remove yourself from the low that you find yourself. I'm going
to, I'm going to counter that a little bit was saying you should do this whether you're at a high or a low. What we're talking about today,
Kari:but if you're at a low promise you this is gonna like,
I would, I would hope that it's hip to do this thing. If you find yourself at a low and you start attempting to do this and you're like, this isn't working, why isn't working? That's okay.
Kari:Yes, of course. It's one thing to
try. It's one thing. Yeah. We're,
Kari:we're not here to tell you this is what's going to fix things. We're saying, try this and see what works for you.
podcast about creating a, a game, gamifying your relationship. And the first question we want to, we want to answer is, well, why the hell would I want to do that in the first place? Um, big one is going to be because it's going to increase your intimacy. One of our goals here, as you know, is that we want to bring couples closer together. We want to bring any relationship style closer together and and build that. So one of the ways that we do that is by increasing your intimacy by playing games with each other. at a time whenever you may not recognize or know how to do that. That's what we're here for. We're here to give you the ways in which you can do
Kari:that.
The other next one is going to be to build morale in the relationship. If you've ever seen anything on the subject of morality,
Kari:building morale, you
understand how important it is for people to feel a sense of community, a sense of togetherness in order to help boost themselves and each other to the next level.
Kari:What was that damn movie that we used to watch? That was not the movie I'm thinking of. That's a different level of morale. Respectful, but different. No, what was the, the, uh, there were servers and they, they invented it, like, the, the Oh! Waiting! Waiting! Yeah! Right? Early,
earlier Ryan Reynolds.
Kari:Very early Ryan Reynolds. But, it was a, it was a, a movie about building morale within the company that you work for. And so they created this Penis showing game. And within this, it was literally just a way for the employees to work together, to have a good time, to build morale, because morale built up the restaurant was built it up. The customers was built up the money. They realized that on the grand
scope of things that they were employees in a job and that that didn't always appeal to everybody. So having a way in which you can connect with each other. Allowed them to feel more together, allowed them to feel more closeness in terms of friendship. So
Kari:then, like, how do you do that in your relationship? How do you build morale? What is the penis showing game for your relationship? Exactly. And the penis showing game in your relationship can show up in so many different ways.
We've explored with a number of them.
Kari:Um, we have what? I know my favorite and it might be yours, but I'm gonna have you go first. I already know. I already know what
your favorite
Kari:is. You know my favorite. Okay, fine. Can I go first then? Yeah, of course you can. So, it is fucking Truth or Dare. The most basic level ground is like every child that we're speaking to right now played Truth or Dare. Why can you not then turn that game Into your relationship and play it with your partner to build up conversations. You've never had, there was one dare that you had the other day that it was like, show me your titties in a non conventional way. Right. And so it was just a way to have a dare that was not,
you're reducing me down, Carrie,
Kari:you like my titties. I'm sorry. Should I feel bad? Well, my ass either show
me your titties and we're all good.
Kari:After we're talking with the whole doctorate conversation,
having said that, having said that, I mean, you're not wrong.
Kari:But that's the thing. Like truth or dare, we all know how to play the game and we do it through text.
Yeah.
Kari:And there we
actually don't play it in person. We make it a point not,
Kari:that's so weird for me at this point because we just, we've done it so much in a way to interact when we're not around. Yeah. That when we're not around, I'm like, don't you dare ask me that, that question which you, you're open and I love that about you because I'm temp. I'm most times the one like holding back.
Yeah.
Kari:Where you're not. And I love that. No, I, I've,
I've made a promise myself. You've told that
Kari:about anything.
I made a promise myself that if you ask me a question, I'm just gonna tell you the. Most truthful thing in my heart at that moment. And then how you respond to it. We can deal with it. We can work through it.
Kari:And I think that I love the, um, game of truth or dare because you are then deciding what you're going to ask. You're not stuck in a situation where you're going to ask something that makes you feel uncomfortable or put you out of your comfort. You're not on an
app. That's being like, ask your partner.
Kari:Yeah, you do get like the choice and it's fine to get
ideas from different sources, but ultimately. Ask the question you want to ask.
Kari:We have played truth or dare for months at this point. And so when there are times where I'm like, I don't have a question and I will go to like chat GBT and I'm like, what is a question that I can ask my partner that could open us up into a level of communication or conversation moving forward? And if you ever got a truth question that was just like out of the fucking blue,
that was as much,
Kari:but at the same time, like I'm researching it because I'm passionate about us and I'm passionate about like our game that I, I, it's made me. Focus on learning more and figuring out how I want to ask things.
Well, I'm glad that you've done that. I'm glad I'm playing truth or dare with AI. No, I'm fucking with you. I've, I've enjoyed it. We've had a, we've had a lot of fun with doing this kind of
Kari:and I've told you shit that I've never told anybody through this game.
I mean, I hope, I hope we're there
Kari:because it's just so private that it's literally just you and your partner. And I don't even know when the truth or game started, but like. Truth or dare. I'm sorry. Oh, we've been playing that for years. We didn't
have, even though I know that one of your favorite things to do is even whenever we're like, uh, started to like, if we open up a little bit, the relationship and we're talking with other people, as I remember having somebody, uh, it was a long time ago and it was on like a, an open dating app and it was like me and this person talked, it was like, Oh, I'm speaking with your wife right now playing truth or dare. I was like, of course you are.
Kari:That is my number one, like that's
your go to to get to know somebody too. Cause it's
Kari:so easy. And again, you are in control of that game, like you're playing truth or dare with someone that's great, but you're the person in control to make that ask. Yes. And I love it. It just opens up a lot of immediate conversation or openness that every relationship needs. It doesn't matter if you're two weeks in, it doesn't matter for 20 years in. It's just a level of open communication that people need.
It's, it's fun. Now, having said that, it can also bring up a little bit of discomfort in people. So one of, one of the things that we, we greatly understand, one of the things that we understand is that some of you are thinking right now, like, well, if I play truth or dare and I'm asked the truth, I'm kind of afraid to say what the truth is. I, if my partner asked me about some deep fantasies or they asked me about like some of my sexual bucket list goals or they asked me something that could have an explicit answer that I don't know if they're comfortable with, do I tell them what that is or do I refrain from it? Yeah. So the, my response to that is always is what level of trust have you built in the relationship? Do you. Is this something in the past? Like go over your past conversations. Is this something that your partner has traditionally responded to non judgmentally and positively, or are they typically respond to this kind of stuff with heavy emotional outbursts, maybe an anger or shaming you or at this
Kari:point, you are only going. To know how your partner is going to respond. You best guess how your partner is going to respond. I think we talked about like another game you can play that like allows you to put in level
fantasy roulette.
Kari:Yeah, exactly.
I think this, this might be one of my favorite games. So essentially, instead of saying, let me ask you a question. Then you answer explicitly in the deepest level. You can, what you do is you both spend time writing out fantasies. Or you spend time writing out whatever act it may be. It didn't have to be fantasy. It could be answers to questions, but you write them out in order of explicitness. So the basic ones you could label as green, the ones that are getting a bit dicey label as yellow. And then ones that are like, I don't know how they would react to me telling them this label is red. Uh, whenever you're playing the game, you are each drawing a fantasy. Or an, an act, whatever it may be. And you have the choice on which pile you draw from. What is this going to do is it's going to shift liability from the person that wrote it down to the person that's drawing it. So if I'm sitting back, I'm putting myself at the risk of hearing something that might make me uncomfortable. So as, instead of being like, okay, just tell me what it is. And then having a, a pretty core emotional reaction to it, I can actually go. All right. I think I'm going to play so I can hear something pretty intense. Let's go with a red.
Kari:But I love that because you're then in charge.
Yeah.
Kari:You get to say, like you said, what am I looking to receive at this moment? Yeah. And, and sometimes truth or dare can be tricky because maybe you're going to give someone truth and it's truth that they maybe didn't want to receive just yet. And so I love the concept of your game because it gives them like stages. like ready to repeat, which is like the ultimate level of consent in my opinion.
I'm not
Kari:going to lie. If it wasn't, you're putting the
power in and the other person's hands. Yeah.
Kari:If it wasn't you, me asking some of these truth or dark questions, I would have prefaced it with like a consent.
Yeah.
Kari:I don't feel like at this point, just questions I need to ask consent for because we've been together for 15 years, but. Again, the game that you're talking about, it kind of removes that level of discomfort to say like, maybe I'm not ready for like the red category. I want to stick to this. I'm going to stick, I'm going to
stick away from that. And I may decide I am ready for that. And I'm going to go ahead and pull one of these.
Kari:Maybe I've had two shots of tequila and I'm ready for the red, like bring on the red, you know, but, but the point of all of this, but tequila too, but like. The whole point of this is to give you a safe space. Maybe you can't sit down and just have a conversation with your partner. Maybe y'all don't align in that way. And that's fine because we've talked in the past about like relationship, uh, check ins and maybe that's not something that. Every party can sit down and comfortably do. And again, that's fine. So maybe you can utilize a game like truth or dare, or do we have the roulette? What, what, what is the game of the fantasy roulette that you can sit down and like place out what you're willing to then discuss?
Yeah. I mean, we've, we've been through a lot of different games, a lot of different ones. Uh, I've had people ask before, well, why do you feel the need to play through games and do all this kind of stuff? And I want to reiterate that it's, it's not that it's a need. It's, it's a one, the, both of us have this very deep desire to continue to grow a relationship, um, emotionally, spiritually. Sexually across all spectrums
Kari:physically. I mean, even thinking about like our workouts together, you know, like we very much focus on. How can we be together in these moments and better each other through these moments? Because again, at the end of the day, like it's just us and that's what I want. I want to continue down my path with you. I don't want to continue down my path through this other source, but that doesn't mean that our path is like the most exciting forever. Our past can be fucking boring these games in these situations that we're bringing up are just ways to like, enhance that.
Yes, they are. So again, it's not a need that we participate in this stuff. It's us consistently. Finding ways to enhance the relationship. We both put value into that in the same way that if you were in a career or anything else, you're constantly trying to better yourself. A relationship is no reason to stagnate yourself for the sake of anything. I continue to grow. That's why we always preach on continuous dating. Why we always preach on continuous, uh, opening up of, of every aspect of your relationship. Look,
Kari:like having those relationship check ins, figuring out what your goals can change, sitting down and figuring out like, what is the next five years for y'all? Because at the end of the day, hopefully you have each other and that, and that sometimes all you have, especially like us, our kids are middle aged, right? Our kids are like middle aged teenagers. Yeah, we
got teenagers.
Kari:We got teenagers. We are so close to, to, to the like aspect of it just being you and I.
To freedom?
Kari:Freedom.
Yes. I love my kids, but God damn it.
Kari:But that's the thing is like, what's going to happen when our 11 year old is out the door and it is just, and we hear that we're doing this 11 years from now trying to figure each other out. We hear that with,
with people being like, Oh, we have, we're empty nesters
Kari:and
we are, our kids are now gone. Well, what do we do now? It's
Kari:just us.
I collect that. I can't wait for it to be just us.
Kari:But think about those people that have not sat down and evaluated their relationship and figuring out where they stand. They've had distractions this entire time. It feels like they're starting from scratch. The
unfortunate side is that a lot of people that do have, they get in a relationship and have children and all that, the children as they grow up tend to be a distraction from the actual issues in the relationship. And so they will dissociate from their relationship by putting their efforts and energy into their children.
Kari:And then what happens? Then once
the kids are adults, why do you think we see people that are like, Oh, we've been together for 25 years and now we're divorced? If you look at the commonality of something like that happening, it increases over time. More modernly, whenever we look at married couples, we see it more and more often. Because I feel like, subjectively, I didn't see that a lot when I was younger. Um, and subjectively as an adult, I see it a lot more often of people saying, well, I have, you know, we have kids, they're full grown and now boom, we're getting divorced. Cause
Kari:I mean, I, the, one of my youngest memories is my grandmother and my grandfather separating and they separated because there were no more kids in the house. There was no more, there was no reason for them to stay together anymore. And so the second that that happened, separated.
So how do you prevent that from happening? How do you grow your relationship? Like you create strong foundation and that foundation like can I speak for a second as a fucking non christian? because I I'm gonna offend some people and I'm okay with that I can't stand the fact that you have these people that you have all these groups because I've seen a number of them that are like, well, what we do is we have this marriage group at church and we come in there and we talk about how you're doing it for God and you're doing it for the Lord. And if you alone, you put that first and you're going to be good in your relationship. And to that, I say that that is a wrong thing to do. I don't agree with that. I think that you're putting your reliance on divinity in order to save. The negative emotions you have to yourself, it allows you to shift liability and blame onto something that's not part of your core relationship. Instead, I would encourage people to lay the foundations early on, get into the relationship earlier, build your foundation by increasing your intimacy, your trust with each other, your openness with each other, and be able to be your true, authentic selves, sustain your own identity, avoid too much codependency, and build a fucking relationship that looks amazing down the line. Instead of blaming it on other things or relying on stuff that is outside the relationship to save you.
Kari:Yeah, I mean, my whole point with all this and then bringing up our kids being like, you know, Nestor's and all that is I don't want that to happen. I want to work on it now. I want to build our relationship so much. Because we get it. We've been through it. We've been through the younger kids, the stress, how hard it is to connect when they're little and how much attention that they need, but there comes a point where we need to figure out what's best for the both of us and what's best for us in our relationship.
Yeah,
Kari:and I think that's why we invented the penis showing game That's why we focus so much on being together because we we didn't
invent the
Kari:penis Relationship and we found ways to play with it around it. Of course like I would hate hate for us to Get to a point where our kids are out of the house and now you and I are just looking at each other like, what the fuck I would rather be the couple that's like, Oh, I can't wait to you, you, I see you and I can't wait until these kids, but that's not always the case. It really isn't. And so we do think that, like, creating. Um, games with one another and doing things to like continue to build that intimacy and to continue to build that relationship with one another truth or dare is a, is a minimal way that you can do that.
Yeah. It's a small one, but it's effective.
Kari:It's super effective. We have had such deep conversations around our simplistic games of truth and dare
Well, it's, it's one of those things where you have like this, this little injection to deal to, to deal with, uh, of a topic. So in a normal conversation you might be sitting back going like, what do we talk about now? Every relationship with being long enough, you start to run out of things to talk about, especially if you find yourselves as melding into one identity and you don't maintain your own separate identities. All of a sudden you find yourselves being like, we've run out of things to talk
Kari:about. It's got to be so boring. Yeah.
But with doing stuff like this, it allows you to explore each other on an emotional level and on a very sexual level too. If you, if you want it to go that way, we prefer our, like a lot of our stuff is sexual and we're a fucking sex podcast, right? So a lot of the things that we do has a core principle of sex. It holds a very high value. So a lot of our truth or dare stuff, a lot of our games that we play, it revolves around that. Describe this fantasy to me, like describe this act to me. How would you want to do that? Uh, and also leads to conversations because we'll do say a truth, a truth one, uh, where it's where we're talking to each other about something and it leads to a very deep conversation. Yeah.
Kari:But, but that's the whole point of it is like, it can lead you just because you play the game doesn't mean it's going to lead to something like extravagance. You can still just play the game and it be. Like you said, lead to something that's like more in depth. We've had very intense conversations after we played the game, but what it did was allow that like door to open. There have been things that I've admitted to you just through the game that I haven't admitted to you through our relationship check ins, you know?
I know you're always funny. Cause you're like, we're not playing this in person. Get out of here.
Kari:No, I will go away. No, text me and ask me and then disappear for five minutes. But the thing is, is like, that's 1 of the things I love about us most is because we're never trying to not. Advancing in our relationship. We're always trying that. We're always looking to better whatever we can.
I think that, uh, one, one more game that you can probably play together, which you don't, it doesn't have to be as much of a game, but there should be an experience, um, is heavily evidence based and is one that really is shown to provide a lot for, for relationships, for couples, for, for sexual partners has been pleasure mapping.
Kari:Yeah, we talked about this at lunch. Yes. Talk about it. I love that.
So essentially what you can do is you, you take turns. It can be a timer if you want to, or as long as you want it to last. One partner lies down while the other one uses some sort of sensory object. This might be your hands. It could be ice cubes. It could be a feather. It could be candle wax, anything. Uh, but what you do is you go head to toe, toe to head, wherever you want to start off the, on the body and you go a little small. Zone by zone, region by region, figuring out where on your partner are their pleasure zones. And every time that you reach one, you can mark it down, do this here. Um, or if they don't like it, they have aversion to it. Say, Hey, avoid this area. Somebody might be like, Hey, don't touch my left thigh. Right? I hate this. Doesn't matter why they hate it, but if it's something that they don't enjoy, you can write that down and you continue on and on and on. What's this is going to do is it's going to prevent you from falling into the routine routine of being like, all right, I'm going to be physical with my partner. All right, lay down. We're going to go from touching and kissing to oral to sex to finish. So I know
Kari:she likes lips. I know she likes necks a little, uh, you know, nipple tweaks and then, and
that's it,
Kari:and then we're done.
Yeah.
Kari:Yeah.
And so it allows you to explore more. And so you can map out, each of the partners can do that and then help save the map. Yeah. Sew it away somewhere. So then before the next time that you're going to be physical, if y'all have been dirty texting all day and we have a date night or something like that's going on, you're like, we're probably going to be pretty intense this evening. Pull it back out and be like, Oh, that's right. I forgot. They enjoy this sensation in this area. Let's explore with that So now you're not having all this work of starting something and your partner's in their head going this. This is, this doesn't really feel good. I'll pretend it feels good. I might moan a little bit and move around, but in reality, I'm kind of going, no, it's not for me. So do that with each other. Again, it's a good way to build intimacy. Plus the time that you're doing, it allows you to actually concentrate. My suggestion is don't make it super sexual. Dar don't, don't have it evolve into. Intercourse.
Kari:Yeah, no one's planning to come tonight. We're just looking at each other's zones and what we like to feel. If it leads
there, I mean, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. However, don't, don't enter in with the intention. Yeah, it doesn't have to.
Kari:And I think that's important to say is like any sexual, um, act that you do with your partner doesn't necessarily need to Need to lead to intercourse, but it does remind me that there was something that I dared you the other day,
which one,
Kari:when I asked you to try to pleasure me or touch me for the first time, as if you have never touched me before. This is, I know that we talk about relationship check ins, but you need to have physical check ins. You need to have ways that you're like, Hey, um, I'm going to lay here and I'm going to let you explore me and, and, and I, and I told Casey to explore me in a way that he's never explored me before, because I was like, and not feeling weird for trying something that he's never tried. It was very
much like, Hey, pretend that you've never done this before. And I'm a brand new body. And let's go from
Kari:there. Just try from there. But hope was again, if you're going to have emotional, you need to have physical check ins. And that means sitting down and asking your partner to explore or touch in a way that you've never been touched before, or in a way that he, or they have never touched you before. So then you can again, start to like, maybe respond in a new way. Or because I feel like we get, get kind of stuck on like what we experienced in the past and Oh yeah, that felt good. Oh, it felt good. Oh, it felt good. But now I'm ignoring other parts of my body.
Yes, we, we are typically creatures of habit. We know what feels good. So then we go immediately and doing the things that we've known before, doing the things that are pleasure or partner before, because we're like, that's a sure thing and I don't have to worry about it becoming something else. That's all good ideas. All good ideas.
Kari:It is.
All right. All right. Well, um, we've given you a bunch of information today. We don't want to overdo it. So for now, go explore some of the things. If you want to drop us a line, go on our Instagram, naughty by nature, K N O T T Y dot B I dot N A T U R E to find us. You can drop us a line and ask us your questions. Bring us in. Let us like, let us help you out.
Kari:We have little entire shows around questions. So those are some
of our favorite whenever people write in
Kari:shows, please ask us questions. Those are my favorite. We
do enjoy answering questions. So for yet another episode, I am your host. One of them, Dr. Casey Sanders,
Kari:and I'm just Carrie.
And we'll see you next time.
