Near Divorce to Sex-perts: How Susan and Tim Transformed Their Marriage

So you guys have been together for a long time. How long you've been together?

35 years.

Yeah. And, what's happened?

Like, super. I mean, it's been so long, I don't even really think about it, you know? Like, it's just. It's like how it's always been.

We've been together better than apart.

Like the vast majority of my entire adult life.

Yeah, we've grown up together.

When did you get together?

1991 30.

When we were in our 30s. He wasn't even 30. Was like 26 when I met him. Hey, we baby.

So you didn't quite, You haven't quite raised each other so.

Well when.

You had a little bit of. You had a little bit of adulthood under your belt before you started to come together.

Yeah, yeah.

And your thing. Susan, your thing is you're, you're an intimacy specialist. Like, you're like, what does it say? You're an intimacy specialist for millions of people. Is that right?

Intimacy expert for millions? Yeah. Intimacy expert for millions. When you. So. And then, Tim, what's your job? Are you also an intimacy expert for millions?

No, I do the tech.

So he does the intimacy expert tech?

Yeah. Run the servers, manage the team. Make sure the email deliverability is good. Do the finances, you know, infrastructure?

Surely you have opinions about how intimacy works.

Well, yeah, I help Susan with the what I like to call consumable quotes R&D.

Yeah, right.

So yes, I help out with the R&D.

When I, I definitely want to talk about that for a bit, but like when you guys aren't intimacy experts or, or tech experts, who are you? What's your what's your jam like independent of your of your stick?

Jesus. Is there is there a jack stick? I don't know. I think our stick is just who we are. So there's no. Stick. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure. There's any jam without the stick.

I mean, are you parents? Do you have hobbies that are, I mean, what's, what's your what's your what's a cliff notes on you guys.

Well, we have a daughter. She's a really. She's a super cool kid. And doing great. Yeah.

What she doing?

She is studying sea cucumbers and how to, help, indigenous populations that live off of sea cucumbers that, you know, harvest the fisher folk is what she calls them. And how to help if they're impacted, like in, East Africa. There's, huge demand from China for sea cucumbers. And now they're overfished. So she's helping them, you know, repopulate the reefs and have a good, healthy ecosystem and, you know, giving them, tips, techniques, ideas, setting up marine preserves, you know, all those things that you do to save the ocean.

Right on. Is a sea cucumber an animal or a vegetable?

It is an animal. It's like.

A.

It's like a slug. It looks like a slug. It's a.

Worm.

All right, I, I know, I think by the time this episode comes out, my daughter, 18, will be in Australia. She's on a gap year program that they're studying. Like she's just getting kind of like a survey of the world. And when they go to Australia, they're studying. And the reef, I think it's I forget exactly where they're going to be. But, I'll try to have her wave. Hello? Oh, yeah. It's a great way to learn about a sea slug or whatever.

She'll be. Probably be. And, it great.

Barrier Reef.

It looks like caravans. But they see cans.

I think that's on their menu. Yeah.

Because that's, that is like the that's the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. And that's where the dive ships go out. And it's a big city.

So yeah right.

Off is good infrastructure there.

She'll love it.

Yeah. It's beautiful there.

And what else you get. So you've got the one daughter and then what do you do for fun. Like what is your, what do you guys do in Encinitas?

Tim's like, fuck. Me.

Now dates.

Yeah I haven't date tonight. We're going for a swim in the ocean, having a date and probably going out for a burger.

Right.

I'm also a pilot, so I like to fly airplanes and we do bike rides. Susan does a lot more bike riding than I do. We like to swim in the ocean. I surf when I have time. I haven't surf much the summer, but I like to surf, and we like to travel, you know, go wine tasting. What else do we like to do?

We travel for work. Work is what we do. Yeah. Time. Yeah. We work like we're constantly. We're entrepreneurs and we have about 20 people and we basically take care of a giant, you know, sled of people. We drag behind us through life and make sure they're okay. And yeah, we're like mom and dad to the universe. That's what we. Are, right? No. That's all right. It suits us. We're good at it.

Well, how do you square that? Like that big sled full of a lot of people with this energy around intimacy, right? Intimacy. Is this really private? Kind of, you know, sacred, behind closed doors kind of thing sometimes. Like, how do you guys define it? How do you make sense of it for yourselves? And then your people and then also your millions. Like, tell me a little bit about your intimacy philosophy.

Don't even really think I have an intimacy philosophy.

We schedule. Sex. So we have it, and then we lie down on the bed and we see what feels like would be fun to do. And then we do it. That's what we do. And it's like, I think that's the secret. Well, we call it erotic play dates, because if we if it was sex, it would feel like another job or another thing to get off the list as someone recently said to me, duty booty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, we, we already had a lot of that in the first decade of our marriage and that, you know, we had to fix our all of our problems because of it. So learn how to have good sex together. So, you know, we just usually look for the opportunities on our calendar to get, you know, to just relax together because we're so darn busy.

And then we just see what appetite there is. We she was a lot of yoni massage and hanging out together and, you know, oral and intercourse, the same things that everybody else does. Yeah. We just don't have a lot of pressure on it. But we do schedule it. And Tim's really cute because sometimes I know what I want to do, and I have something in mind. And other times I'm like, I don't know, give me some ideas. And he'll come up with, you know, 5 to 7 super dirty things because he's a horndog and which I love. And, sometimes I'm like, well, I need to try this new sex toy. So we're going to do this thing, put this on your penis or whatever. So we'll do.

That. We do it like, he's like, what kind of new toys do you have to play with? So I would say we're very experimental, but we also have a real nice deep groove we can just fall right into. So it's very easy for us to have sex together. It's it's wildly it has a lot of wild variety, but it also has a lot of homeliness to it and comfort and, skill and mastery. So I lay down on the bed and I'm not sure if I'm really even in the mood. Mr. magic hands 99 times out of 100, you know, gets me going. So we don't have a lot of, stress over it. I would say generally, we're just easy.

Oh, man. This happens to me every time I start with a, like, a battery of questions that I want to ask. And then I then you start talking and I'm like, wait, now I have a ton of other questions. So, one is okay, so you said the first say decade of our relationship we had dirty booty or it was a different thing. It's different than it is now. Yeah. Like what what was it what was that in the first decade? And how do you how do you define it or explain it to yourselves, I guess, and then to the rest of the world who may be listening right now, like, what's the what is what was unique or characteristic of that? First, let's just call it a decade, for lack of a better phrase. At the moment.

I think it's probably what most couples do. At least that's, you know, when when I talk to other people or when I hear what other people are experiencing in their marriage. The the husband is horny, the wife is not interested in sex. The, husband does honey. Deuce bags, pleads cajoles, trades, moans. How long until it's pissed? Until the next.

Victim?

Until the wife feel so guilty, she just relents and she's like, all right, you can fuck me. Go ahead. And, you know, make it quick. And then they have sex and then, you know, the husband starts.

The cycle. Starts again. The next part. Right? Yeah. That's when.

Obviously not all married couples fall into that trap, but a lot do. And that's, you know, generally when people are asking about that, that's what their experiences. Yeah, that's what our experience was. And we almost got divorced because I was unhappy. And Susan.

I was I'm happy to. Yeah.

She didn't know what to do.

We just thought it was my fault.

Yeah, I, I.

Because you weren't interested.

Yeah. So there must be something wrong with you.

You were less interested. Yeah.

And I, you know, and when we first got together, the sex was really good. But, over the years, and then.

Our lack of skill began to fray the edges of that interest.

Well, that's actually something I want to ask about a little bit, because I, it has recently occurred to me that, like, sex is a thing that you can be good at, like, that's good at it, you can be bad at it, you can be bad at it and get good at it. And I wonder if that's, I wonder how you learned that, you know, particularly if you came out of a sort of a status quo. Woe is me. This isn't broke. And maybe we should get divorced. Like, what was this shift that you said, hey, we're going to actually try a different tactic?

Yeah, we're growth mindset. People like, if we don't, if we're not doing something right, if we're struggling with something, we think there's something we can no, and I sure the very first thing we did was looked on Amazon to see if there were any books we could learn how to have better sex. It was basically to help me have orgasms from intercourse, which I wasn't having. And I dutifully had intercourse with my husband for a dozen years, and I was like, I don't. Know, Yeah. What's in it for me?

Kind of.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he was like, well, I'm sorry, you can't, but you should still do it. That's part of the gig. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You, you you showed. Up for this. So, then we went to a marriage therapist, and the therapist was like, well, hey, this is just what happens. Tim's like, we're. Never going back to her. Yeah.

Yeah, literally. She said, well, Tim, you know, you just have to accept it. In a mature relationship, it's not going to be hot and sexy like it was when you first got together. And I'm like, she's fired.

Yeah. She's like. And then we went to another one. And she tried to convince Tim that he was a sex addict because he wanted to have. He was like, I just want to have sex every day. And she's like, you're obviously an addict. So then he had to go through that. All that shame and guilt.

I had to go to a sex addict. Like part of the thing.

Yeah, that was nuts.

I had to go to a sex addicts Anonymous meeting, and I sat in the meeting and, you know, everybody gets up, you know, hi, I'm Joe and I'm a sex addict, blah, blah, blah. And they tell their story and they would tell their stories and I heard their stories. I go, wow, those people, they they have a problem. And then it's a good thing this is for them. I just want to have sex with my wife every day.

I'm not.

I literally got up and I'm like, I'm I'm not. I shouldn't I shouldn't think I qualify.

Yeah.

I'm a therapist made me come and I am not a sex addict.

It's just that, I yeah. So then we. Went to a sex workshop because we live in the San Francisco Bay area, and they have those here. We're kind of at the, you know, crossroads of the personal transformation and sexual revolution, you know, universe here. And, we went to a sex workshop and Jiminy Crickets. We learned so many skills just in the first workshop that we just kept did we did Human Awareness Institute sex loving intimacy. There's seven levels. We did it ecstatic. Loving, which is a tantric workshops. We did, expanded orgasm, our orgasmic meditation with one taste. We did, I don't know other stuff too. And then it was like, boom. It was like a lights. Honestly, it was a very much like a light switch. The minute somebody told us what to do and we did it and it worked for like, oh my God, and I started having orgasms.

It was amazing. I started we discovered female ejaculation. I mean, it was just incredible. And, then we were like, we should have sex with other people too. That'd be really fun.

Because we were like.

We're like, oh my God, we've.

Discovered this amazing thing. And we wanted to like, tell other people about it, show other people, and.

Have sex with other people. Right. So like, we'd asked our ask our friends, you guys want to have like threesome or for us, I'm like. No, what is wrong with you Yankee Curve? Oh was it? Oh, we're like, oh. And then one of our friends, David, he's like, hey, you guys, there's a consensual non-monogamy community that might be better, a better fit for you than trying to get.

Rather than just like, surveying your neighborhood. Yeah, right.

And, we got into that community and we started going to sex parties, and we're like, this is so much fun. And so we opened our marriage about how many years in was it?

It would have been 12.

Years in.

15, 15.

Years in.

Like ten was the we almost got divorced and like 10 to 15 was one that was our kind of only reawakening and rediscovering and figuring out how to make it really good. And then, you know, after five years of that, we're like, well, was, you know, let's make this a bigger deal, more people. Exactly.

That was fun. And we've had an open relationship ever since. We are poly basically, if you, you know, if you're into the actually I think we're relationship anarchists ultimately I recently heard that.

What does that mean concept.

What it means is that every every person in the poly relationship or the open relationship or the group or the you know, whatever you want to call it, wants something different from being in that group and that instead of it being that everything is equal, you just treat each person the way they want to be treated in the construct of this collective. And I think that's a really nice way to do it. It's it's just kind of like, well, one of the, one of the, one of my 34 books and programs I've written in the last couple decades is a book called Relationship Magic. That essentially is values elicitation around relationship, and it helps you understand what it is you want out of a relationship. That was one of the biggest things that really helped our marriage. Yeah.

Was one of the keys.

Getting clear on what he wanted and what his priorities were in our relationship and what I wanted, because we're very different people. And once we started treating each other the way the individual person wanted to be treated, instead of treating each other the way we wanted to be treated, it really changed everything for us. And so relationship anarchy is kind of an offshoot of that where it's like, what do you want? Okay, we can do that with you. That's good. Yeah, fine. If that's what suits you, that suits us. Do we can work with that. So we really like that idea, I think.

All right. So what do you want? What do you want out of a relationship? What do you want?

So my number one is passion. That's why I'm in a relationship.

Is that when you fly?

Oh, no. No, that the, The thing about about the relationship is. And this is what the book is all about. Is it? Why are you in a relationship? What are the values that when you're in a good relationship, what are the values that you're getting? And so for me the number one is passion. Like I, I'm in a relationship because I want my wife to be super hot, fun, sexy, put on lingerie and stripper shoes, prance around the house for me and have sex with me. Like, literally.

Touch him and pat him like a puppy. He likes to be pet.

Like I do. I like like a puppy too. So that's my number one. If I don't have that in a relationship, I literally say, why? You know, why am I in this relationship?

So and so? He was miserable after a few years of me not wanting him.

It's true. Yes. And then, number two is fun and adventure. And Susan has always been really good at that. She's always been.

Such a no brainer.

Fun and.

Adventure. I don't even have to work on that.

Number three is honesty. I like to hear the truth. And even if it's not pretty, I just like, know what's happening. And number four is growth, which it kind of a lot of people. So Susan pushes me hard a lot of times and people go, wow, you know, you let your wife get away with that, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I like it because she pushes me. And growth is one of my relationship values. It's not the number one. Like, if I were in a relationship and, you know, it was like pushing me all the time. But she never put on the slutty clothes and the stripper shoes. It's like.

That I don't do that. Not I'm not actually. Sure that it's pushing you that sounds push here than it is. I think what I like to do is show to him his potential.

Right. Exactly.

Or I like to call him to his genius, or I like to show him what he's capable of, or show him where he can be an even greater human being. And I think that really comes from the fact that he's such an incredible person, so incredibly bright, and he has so much knowledge and he's just amazing. And so if I see a place where he can grow, I want to offer that to him because I love watching him. I love the constant blossoming of my husband, the growing into an even greater and greater and greater man. And I love watching that.

Right on then, Susan. What what what do you want? Like, what's your what do you have? You have a list. You have a top four.

Oh, God. Yeah. My number one is safety and security. I grew up okay. Really unsafe environment. And, had a lot of things happen to me that made me feel very unsafe. And, Tim is my protector. He's also the wind beneath my wings, my stable bass. He's. When he was a little kid, his family called him super safe. And they would make fun of him because he would go around, make sure the doors were locked.

I'm like, you guys didn't lock the door again. What's wrong with you?

Yeah. And they would tease him about that and that was like, that's my man. That's like, my perfect guy is the one that I always have health care. My cars are always in good repair. The doors are locked. We have burglar alarms. I just he's good. We have a safe word, you know, because I am a sexpert. So, you know, there are potentially chances where people would, you know, do something untoward, and I'll have to use a safe word or whatever, but hardly ever. People are really quite nice to me. Yeah. Amazingly nice to me. Amazingly loving to me. But, safety is my number one. Honesty is also very high up in my top four. And it was interesting because the first dozen years that we were married before we kind of went through this, you know, this cataclysmic experience together where we realized what we didn't know.

We vowed to work on it. We learned what each other wanted, and we were committed to making it happen. We did what most couples do because this is what's endemic to our culture. We we withheld, we stuffed our feelings, walked on eggshells. You know, we just did not address our shit. And when we were going through the the struggles where we almost got divorced, one of our friends, Taber, he was a radical honesty coach for Brad Blanton. And, so we were really exposed to this notion of radical honesty. That's it was a shortly before that, the Brad had come out with that first book and started all that coaching and everything. And, we were like, why don't we just tell each other the full truth? And it took us a while. It's it is so ingrained in us to lie and to withhold and to walk on eggshells and all of those things that we didn't realize how much we were doing that.

And so when we started to tell the truth, it was quite hard. But the hard part wasn't me saying what Tim was doing. It was me admitting my own, my own foibles and insecurities and, you know, the seven deadly sins of humanity. Yeah, it's. And so we just really grew to love being super honest with each other about everything. And that's what's gotten us through, everything that and expansiveness and patience with our partners journey and allowing them the time to kind of get through whatever they're going through. That's, I think, another big thing that we that we really provide for each other. So honesty and then, trying to think what my other ones are.

Used to be and.

Variety and novelty. Yeah. And and freedom. Yeah. Yes. That's right. Variety and novelty. And it's funny because you give me all these things so much that I can't remember what they are, but I like to.

Who knows what they are like. Terms like you have.

To memorize them.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like you get a list. It's your cheat sheet. Yeah.

It's your cheat to do it.

We call it the busy husbands cheat sheet. Yeah. Which literally it's you just do these things.

Just do these things and your wife will be happy.

And for other women, it's totally different.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think I, I think I found out I tell people all the time, I figured out a couple, about a year ago what the secret to a happy marriage was. And it's, it's do more things that your partner likes and fewer things that your partner doesn't like.

That's right. That's reasonable.

That's the cheat sheet. That's the whole thing. Is that the do the work of finding out what they like and don't like?

Yes.

Which is probably how sex works. Yeah. I mean, when you're getting in the bedroom and you're sort of like, I like that. I don't like that, you know, in order to have more successful sex, you have to learn and then practice doing more things that they like and fewer things that they don't like.

Yes, yes. And I put a finer sense of detail on it because this is my area of expertise and that is that a lot of the things that people are different every single day, and what you want today is not what you're going to want the next time you have sex. So thinking that you're always going to be able to do this people thing, it's boring. And so it's getting people to understand that every time your butt hits the bed, you've got to say, okay, where are you know, how are we feeling? Are we low energy? High energy? Not turned on, you know, whatever it might be. And, like, the other day, we lay down and my tummy hurt, and he rubbed some pain cream on my tummy, some topical THC pink for my tummy while we just chatted.

And then I was moved to want to touch his penis and stroke it while we talked a little further. And then that got me moving toward lovemaking. And, it's just kind of being with where you are. That's number one. And then number two is you have some pathways that work for you currently to achieve pleasure, but those are just the ones you've figured out so far. And your body has, like massive parallel processing superhighway of pleasure pathways, and you just haven't taken that exit yet and discovered that territory. And so the people who stay in that groove of, like, my wife will only let me have sex with her on Saturday at 4 p.m. with the lights off and missionary and only this, you know, like, I feel bad for the couples that get in that room and think that's how we have sex.

You know, it's just like how I thought I couldn't have. We thought I couldn't have an orgasm from intercourse. We didn't know. It was just simply learnable skill. It was just one of the one of the onramps to pleasure that we hadn't taken yet.

Do you have theories about or why do you think we don't understand? That's a learnable skill, like it feels like people settle for what they get without really understanding that this is an area that they can grow. And do, you know, like, do you know why we think that or do you agree that we think that or.

Yeah, 100% where we we think it because every thing we see about sexuality in our culture is through the male gaze. It's it's a very masculine oriented and procreative strategy. So there's porn and there's movies and television and it's all just grab a boob and stick it in type of sex.

And women are supposed to just be, like, instantly ready to go, which they're not. And men are much more often. And it's not, you know, we even have like, it's foreplay and sex and sex means intercourse. Like, no, foreplay is all the fun stuff, too. Like, everything is is sex. So all of our cultural constructs crash into all of the religious repression and the control mechanisms and the censorship and the shadow banning of an oppressed society that, frankly, wants to keep you scrolling threads, scrolling Instagram and Meta and X and Twitter and whatever, and buying things from Amazon and where whatever and consuming Netflix and Amazon Prime. And yeah.

That sounds like my weekend right now. So I'm, I'm going to crawl on my bed and yeah, hold that.

Just do.

All that. Well, it's different when you're sick. You don't have any libido, so you know, you need to get better. That's that is true. But, it's it's just it's the cultural miasma and the censorship and the fear and the and honestly, the fear comes from lack of knowledge. So, I mean, I was funny, I was just reading, secrets puts out secrets is like a sex education, organization, an organization that tracks sexual education in the United States of America.

Say the word to.

Get sick is sec U.S dot org.

And I see us talk.

Okay. Yes. And they publish an annual report card by state, by state, by state of how much education and access to healthy sexual information the students get in each one of our 50 states. And it is fascinating. And it's exactly what you think it's going to look like. You know, the A's are the blue states and the D's and F's are the red states, and the red states are red.

Okay, let's speak to that for just a second, because I know for a fact that a bunch of people who started listening to this episode have already turned it off, because they're overwhelmed by the concepts that they've never heard of before, polyamory or scheduling sex or whatever it is. They just they've clocked out. Yeah. But for those of us are still sticking around and we're learning something new and our minds are blown and we're trying to figure out how to, like, wrap our heads around this idea of sexuality. Like, how do you ease people in to new thinking? Because it's easy to come in and be like, oh, well, I'm never going to hit. I'm never going to be the thing that Susan and Tim are. But what's the what's the on ramp for folks that are a little more, reticent or hesitant to learn, for lack of a better word?

Yeah, mostly we don't talk about being poly because it's so triggering to people.

Right. And it's kind of like, you know, if, having a good, successful, monogamous relationship is like, you know, going to college. Like polys, like grad school and postdoc stuff. Sure. Most people should not they should not do it.

No, I don't recommend it. I never said, I never said I recommend it to anybody. I just said, well you know we just ask. Yeah, yeah.

No that's not my point. My point is like but it triggers as educators. Yeah. And as people who are, who have trafficked in this area, millions of people, I'm sure you've come up with all kinds of resistance. The first thing you said, I know I knew people were going to be like, nope, like schedule sex. I don't want to schedule sex. Sex should just be automatic, should be spontaneous. Like, I'm sure you've heard that a million times.

What I say is plan erotic play dates. Yeah, sex is just intercourse to people. And women don't want to do that.

That's interesting.

Pleasurable for them. That's why that's exactly how we started. Yeah. Here's, here's my strategy, and that is that the people who are going to listen to this episode, because you're going to title it something about sex words. Yeah. So all the people who are going to be triggered, a lot of the people are going to be triggered, will never even listen to this episode, although I bet it'll be one of your top downloaded episodes because people are fascinated by sexuality. So they'll listen to it, but 30% of them will call me a whore, a slut, and a Jezebel for having sex with someone besides my husband.

They won't call him that. There are no words for him, but he does exactly the same thing. Yeah, a third of them will be like, oh, you do. You boo. And all that other shit was kind of interesting. And a third of them will be like, oh man, I love these. This couple sounds really like they've got their act. They've got some. Yeah, advanced level thinkers. And I could write some something. This just kind of opened my mind. And what I do is I speak to I don't worry about the people I can't help. I can't save everybody on the Titanic. Yeah. I'm in their little rowboat with the people who want to jump into my boat and they're like, tell me. More like we're monogamous. And I'm like, good, because I would really prefer you be that. I don't.

I don't I'm not a consensual non-monogamy coach. I'm just I just happen to have that relationship with my husband because of our advanced skills and abilities to relate. And we like the dynamic of having some fun and adventure with other people. It's perfectly lovely for us. But yeah, it makes us good. It makes me good at what I do. If all I did was have intercourse with Tim Bratton for 35 years, what kind of an educator would I be? Right?

That makes sense.

So I speak to the people who want to hear what I have to say. And I love and have compassion for everyone else, including the people who call me a Jezebel, a slut, and a harlot, because they're stuck in a paradigm that I, my boat, don't float in those waters. Yeah.

What's what's hard for you guys? Like, what's what's the challenge and how do you navigate that? Seems like you, you cracked a lot of the code in terms of honesty and safety and security. But where do you run into, like, troubles?

Just how much time we have to work?

That's.

Really that's the big problem.

We work a lot, but, I mean, I don't really feel like. I don't really feel like there's any challenges. I can be completely honest with him. He's an amazing husband. I love him so much. I love him more than I ever have. Being with him my whole life has just made my heart muscles so strong. He really listens to me. Like when I ask him to help me with something. Or I think we should do less or go a certain direction or whatever. I feel deeply respected and appreciated. I feel like we're really good at understanding that both of us bring equal value to the life we're co-creating. And, I feel extremely respected. I feel like he respects me as much as I respect him.

And we're really good together. We're really good at problem solving. We even have this little thing with our daughter. We we call it Bratton. Family prevails and, happy. Like, we just have this thing where we're like, we're getting through it. Whatever happens. Because life happens. You you have illnesses, you have, major issues, you have money problems. You have all kinds of things like, we didn't escape any of that the last 35 years. We've had terrible times together. Yeah, but we just keep on keeping on together. And we have a hashtag for ourselves. It's hashtag team, sweetie. That's what we call ourselves. Okay, so we really think about ourselves as a solid entity and a solid family unit. Yeah. And I think that perspective helps. And we actually also have ten principles by which we live our lives together. Like we have these certain core tenets.

We've organized it. Yeah. And you have it. Speaking of your family and what's your daughter's name?

Taylor.

Taylor. What does she think she like on board? Is she, like, all about it, or does she have her own vision? Or, like, where does she fit in the in the my parents or experts world?

Well, we've been experts since she was a little.

It's just what she knows.

We always taught. We always told her just tell people your mom and daughter in publishing, don't tell them like we publish passionate, love making techniques in bedroom communication skills. And I remember one time when she was little, you know, Tim's been giving me these yoni massages, these expanded orgasm dates for decades. We have an expanded orgasm practice. Together. We'll have an expanded orgasm date when we get out of the ocean, and we dry off and we go in the bedroom before dinner. Yeah. And, he wears these, like, rayon fisherman pants. Tell that story about Taylor in the hallway.

So they're, Thai fisherman pants, and they're good, because I have this little tuffet I sit on. I think technically, it's called this afternoon, like, a minute meditation. And I sit on that. I put a leg over Sue's and another leg out there, and then I can get access to her yoni like that. And, So at that, it's just those pants are really comfortable to wear for, you know, doing this kind of like, it's almost like a yoga position and Taylor, we would tell Taylor, you know, hey, I'm going to give mom a massage. You know, we need a little privacy. I'm gonna give mom a massage. And then Taylor kind of started to put stuff together. And then, like, one day she saw me mountain going in the hallway, like, getting stuff ready, and I'm wearing these tight fisherman pants, and she looks at me, she goes, Thai fisherman pants her dad.

Her dad. Massage giving mom.

Your uniform. But yeah.

What's interesting, Zach, that I hear like it's one of those. And I know you have these in your, you know, in your practice as well. And I don't see people one on one. I publish mass market online programs and books. So I'm not sitting in a I'm not sitting. Yeah, I'm not a problem fixer. I'm an opportunity creator a little bit different. Okay. And, but if I had a nickel, you know how you say if I had a nickel for every time, right? I know you have the. I had a nickel scenarios. One of my top ones is if I had a nickel for every time a person said my parents never talked to me about sex. They never were intimate. They never. And I'm like, it wasn't really their job. They did try, most likely. And you gave them the biggest side of the possible. And you ate la. La la la la la la la la la la land.

And then, you know, you were oblivious to everything, and now you're playing the victim like you're coming from behind. Nobody's mom and dad did that except Taylor Bratton. Yeah. And we talked a lot. And I actually have this. I did this really fun video with, not prejudice. Who. It's on my Better Lover channel. And it's how to talk to your kids about sex and not. And I went through every stage of, you know, ways to talk to your children about sex, because people really are frustrated by it. But they have to get out of the stigma mindset and, like, pull up their, yeah, big person panties. And just like, learn the techniques your mom going to tell you, I don't know, have intercourse, you know. Yeah.

So, yeah, we're the birds and the bees and the babies and all that stuff. Maybe. But, yeah, people really, they, like, hold that, like this hard little crusty, cold lump in their psyche for em. You know, it's like, oh, God, get over it. Here, read this book. Yeah. One thing I love about a therapist, because I be like, oh, God, get over it. Yeah, not my job, not. My monkeys, not my circus.

I mean, I might have thought that 10 or 15 years ago, but like talking to so many different couples about how that works and how it doesn't work and what makes it work for them and what makes it work for other people has been a real game changer for me, and I didn't even know it until, you know, the purpose of me doing these interviews on the podcast is to get people bigger and sample, to have people go, oh, there's lots of other ways to think about it. And, and to do it and I think you guys are on to something, at least in the sense that you're able to talk about your sex and sexuality so transparently, and also that you I think there is something really important to be that's embedded in what you're describing, is that you've learned how to do this like you've studied and you've grown and you've you've actually learned, like Tim's learned about your list.

He's learned about what works for you. What does it mean? And I'm sure you've done the same. Like I think that's that's a really cool takeaway for me. And I think for our listeners. And if they want to learn more from you or from you in particular, Susan, like, where do we go? You've got a channel, you've got a book, you've got, what's going on? How do we how do we find out more of what you have to offer the world?

Yeah, I'd say better. Lover.com is where you can sign up for my newsletter.

A better lover or just better lover?

Better lover.

There you go. Better lover dog.

Lover. Dot com is where, we sent. And Tim sends the newsletters out. I write them, he sends them out. We have a team. But, that I think is the best place. If you're like, I could learn a few things from these two. Not so. So, that's where you could go to do it.

And our newsletter is amazing. Yeah. And it's free.

Yeah. You can. Read it is after I've already written them, and I'm like, I'm only gone down so good, I forgot. Yeah. You know.

There are people I wrote a bunch of stuff about ten years ago and a column for a pretty popular relationship website, and people will come back to me now and they'll be like, oh, I read this thing, or I read this thing and I'm like, that's pretty great. They're like, you wrote it? And I'm like, oh, I forget the job. Whatever that sounds. I'm so glad. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for sharing your story with us. I'm sure it will be helpful for people. And maybe you're right. Maybe it'll be one of the most popular conversations that we have available. And, Yeah. That's that's all I got for you today. And let's, let's you can think of anything else I need to know.

Well, I just have a question for you, Zach. Sir, I would like to know, in all of the work that you do, what are some of the what would you say, like the top three sexual issues or struggles that you see couples talking to you about?

Well, I think the easiest one, is this idea that, you know, once we had kids and got into the flow of life and started driving carpool and worried about soccer practice and building our career, it just stopped being a priority. And now we feel like roommates, like that's that. If I had a nickel for every time somebody told me, now we feel like roommates and I'm like, totally, I get that. I mean, I get that, I mean, I just empty nest. It might. Like I said, my youngest one is and you know, when it's not a priority, it it atrophies. And so the biggest thing honestly isn't even in the bedroom yet. It's, it's getting back into the bedroom because they never they just forgot that it was a thing.

You know, first sex was for fun and then it was for pregnancy and then it was for what was it for? That was it for now, you know, and they forget. And so the number one thing is just getting back into the room when it comes to getting back into the room. You know, I still I'm dealing a lot more with the relational side than the actual physiological side. Yeah. So it's you know, how do I get out of my head? How do I manage the list of things that I have to do? How do I balance out initiation and rejection? How do I mean, there's all that energy, but it's, you know, once, once they're in the bedroom and they're like, hey, we want to get good at this.

I refer, I'm just like, oh, you should go talk to Susan. Yeah. You know, that's the thing. Because, if you're interested in learning about how to do it better once you get back there, then it's really about finding the right resources. So glad to know of yours.

Good. Happy to get you all of my books and programs. And you can give them to your clients.

Very good, very good. Well, I will definitely follow up with you. For now. Again, I'll thank you both to thanks for being here and for braving the, braving the scene. And, yeah, it's good to know you.

Great to know you, too.