How to Talk About Sex in a Way That Opens Her With Melanie Curtin

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. So on today's episode, I am really excited to welcome my first guest to the show. So we've done over two dozen episodes now, and this is the first time I'm having someone else on, so you don't have to just listen to me yammering. And it is my great honor to have on my good friend and coaching partner, business partner, and just all around superstar Melanie Curtin, who is one of the most gifted sex researchers, writers, and somatic coaches I know and has really been spearheading how to talk about sex in relationships. And today, we're specifically going to be speaking, you guys, men, about how to talk to women about sex. And not only that, do it in a way that actually opens them up and will most likely lead to better sex and even potentially more sex, something that many men are often wanting. So why don't you just introduce yourself a little bit, Mel, and kind of what brought you to this body of work and how did you get to where you're at?

Jason Lange: Yeah. You're not just making it up, you're not imagining it.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. So that's a bit of how I got into what I got into. And I can keep going or pause for you.

Jason Lange: Yeah, well, I think that's a great frame that even in the way you started collecting that research. I think one of the cool things you're doing in one of your gifts is creating a welcoming space for people to have the conversation. So you're actually doing the thing that you're even trying to transmit to guys like this, listening to be able to do themselves, like to actually create the space so you can have this conversation and everything I think we're going to cover today, this is such an important thing for you guys to know is one of the ways you can distinguish yourself as a man is actually by turning towards these types of conversations and having a little bit of training, a little bit of capacity, you know, some things we can talk about today for how to do that. But even more than that, just a willingness to, you know, kind of receive that feedback and have those conversations that can be, you know, really vulnerable on both sides. Really, really vulnerable. But your willingness as a man to kind of open that space up can be a huge distinguishing factor in terms of creating a healthy, sustainable, long term relationship and to really do things differently than what a lot of men do do, which is kind of, you know, not all men, so obviously, but especially not men listening to stuff like this. But the kind of like I'm going to use this woman's body to get off and then roll over and fall asleep like that. That's a real thing. You know, it's a stereotype because that is a thing that can exist out there on one end of the spectrum. The other end is, yeah, I just don't know. Like, I don't know, I don't know. Am I, Is it working? Does she like this? Should I do something different? She hasn't said anything. So, you know, all that kind of stuff. I think we'll get into. But so I just really wanted to frame that, guys, that everything we're about to explore with you here today in this conversation, the more you can be the one to bring that conversation to your partnership, the more powerful I think you'll become as a masculine leader.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I think that's a good segue into my, you know, my research question of how many men are good in bed was a direct, a direct result of my own curiosity as a pretty sexually active woman. It felt to me like men who are good in bed are very rare, very rare. And I wanted to know, is it just me? Is it just my experience? Because I'm one single point of consciousness in the world and I, maybe it's who I'm attracting or maybe it's my own biases or my own, just my own experience or who I've slept with. And I was really dying to know, is this true? Is it true that men who are good and better rare or is it just me? So I asked thousands of women who have sex with men, I'm going to use that term, women who have sex with men instead of straight women because it's more inclusive. So I asked thousands of women who have sex with men how many of the men that you've slept with were good in bed. And I'm looking at a pie graph that you can't see, but essentially over half of women said 70% plus of men are not good in bed. And this definitely tracked to my experience. And basically part of the, I think part of the reality is that women's bodies are a lot more sensitive than men's bodies and we take longer to get turned on. So there's a statistic I'm going to cite that I haven't been able to find. So I'm going to give a range. But basically it's pretty agreed upon in the research that a male person, his body will become fully aroused in about seven minutes. He has the capacity to become fully aroused in about seven minutes. Doesn't mean he always will, but he has the physiological capacity to do that. Right. All the blood is down there, all systems go, Everything's happening. He is just ready. And for a female bodied person, it doesn't take twice as long, which would be 14 minutes. It doesn't take three times as long, which would be 21 minutes. It can take up to 45 minutes for her to become fully physiologically aroused. Now, I'm not saying that every sexual encounter needs to be 45 minutes. What I'm saying is what Repeatedly came up in the research again and again and again, which is my experience as well, is that men are going way too fast and. And they're using way too much pressure. Too much, too much pressure. It's too rough. That's how women would describe it. Too fast. And the reason that's important is that as a woman becomes aroused, you can actually touch her with more pressure and it will feel good, but at the beginning, it's too much. So it's not even that he's necessarily doing something quote unquote, wrong, but what kept coming up was too much, too fast, too rough.

Jason Lange: Pacing.

Melanie Curtin: Yes, pacing. And it was really poignant. Sometimes in the. In the research on the men's side, you know, they would say something like, I know I move too has too fast because I'm hungry, because I'm too hungry. And they would talk about the experience of deprivation. Essentially, when I asked about sex problems for a lot of men, the. The problem was I don't get enough of it. I feel deprived. I'm starving. That came up. That word came up a lot. Starving or thirsty. And I know that's sort of a slang term, but I think it comes from a real feeling of need and lack. And that feeling of need and lack and hunger doesn't show up on the women's side when it comes to sex problems. What shows up is it hurts. The number one sex problem for women is it hurts. And that is a huge contrast to men, because with the very rare exception of sometimes a woman has used teeth during a blowjob, men really didn't talk about pain when it came to sex. Many, many, many, many women talked about pain, myself included. So, you know, a man being too rough with his fingers would actually bruise my clitoris. And that's not fun, right? And so now in a sexual encounter, what I would often find is I'm into the guy, right? Like, I've gone on a few dates or a date. I'm into him. He's attractive. I want it, right? We're kissing, we're making out. And then as it's progressing, I'm trying to protect my body because he's too fast and it's too rough, Especially with his fingers. Especially with his fingers, but really with everything. And so I'm simultaneously trying to enjoy myself, but also trying to protect my body from pain. And that's not a fun experience.

Melanie Curtin: Yes, and I'm glad that you brought up that, that thing about what makes a man good in bed, because I think there's such, there's such a disparity between what men think makes a man good in bed and what women think are actually reporting that they crave. So for example, when I asked women about the men who were best in bed, less than 3% talked about penis size.

Jason Lange: Hear that again, gentlemen. Less than 3%.

Melanie Curtin: 97% of women did not talk about penis size. It doesn't matter that much. 0% mentioned a man having a good body and less than 5% talked about the man staying hard for a long time. So to be great in bed, you do not need to have a huge cock, you do not need to have six pack abs, and you do not need to be able to stay rock hard for hours. That's not true. It's just not what women are talking about. But 70% of women mentioned one characteristic that I go over in the course in depth because that's what they're actually talking about. This is what we really want and it's really not about the size of your cock. And you know those that the you're talking about the feedback. And it's a little bit like at work, I think it's easy for a manager to think, oh, my employees will tell me if something's not working, they'll let me know. That's very different than the manager going to the employees and saying on a regular basis, I always want to know if you're ever uncomfortable. I always want to know if something's not working for you. I always want to know if you are not feeling valued in any way. Always. I want to know that's going to come across differently and that person is going to have different people coming through their office door and letting them know than just the passive. I've never mentioned it at all. I just assume my employees will let me know. So there's being open to feedback and then there's actually eliciting feedback. And you know, I think that the, a critical part of this is actually knowing, knowing a few things like you said, Jason, like just this conversations, like knowing what a female body is like, which is. It's a lot more sensitive than you. It takes a lot longer to warm up than you do. It requires presence, right? It's like the things that turn on the feminine are your attention, your presence. And that is not really pictured in porn as there's such a focus on the body parts rather than the quality of attention that's on me. And women repeatedly talked about, for example, when they talked about the men who are best in bed, one of the things that surprised me was a lot of them talked about, you know, he would put attention on me during the day. So whether it was text messages or affectionate glances during the day, if it was a more established couple or, you know, in dating scenarios, it was the attention he put on me before we got together that night. And it hadn't even occurred to me when I was putting together my own list. But it makes a lot of sense because that's all sort of warming her up, right? That's all kind of revving the engine and getting her going and then coming back to that. You know, the male body can become aroused in seven minutes. So a man doesn't need attention during the day for him to be. You know, some men do, but a lot of men don't. A lot of men can just in the moment, they're like, let's do this. And women's bodies don't all work that way. And for a lot of them, you know, exquisite sex is actually not just about the time between the sheets, but what happened before then. And the quality of attention that I'm receiving from you, both sexually and non sexually before the fact is hot. Like, that's part of the actual physiology of turn on for women.

Jason Lange: That's such a key. I think for guys when, you know, when you talk about the 45 minutes piece, there's like, oh, that means sex is going to have to take a long time. And what's important to know is that whole Runway doesn't just have to start with that encounter. Right? Actually, the. I don't remember. Maybe it was you. I don't remember where. Who delivered the metaphor. You know, guys like metaphor. We like. We like machines. And I heard the one thing of, you know, male genitalia and sexuality you can think of like a blowtorch on a woman's sexuality. More like a slow cooker crock pot. Like it's got. It's gotta warm up a little bit. Now, the key is that doesn't have to just mean in the sexual act, right? In the normal. What we'd Consider foreplay of. I've got, you know, I'm kissing her and taking off her clothes. It can start way earlier, just with the energy and the presence and the connection and attunement that that all is part of that Runway that I think it's just really important for guys to know and not something we always want to take responsibility for as men. You know, as, as a man, I can get it. Sometimes I feel lazy. And it's just like I just want to have sex right now rather than spend a day kind of connecting and warming you up and romancing. But that it really makes a difference. It really makes a difference. And the thing I keep wanting to have guys realize is it'll actually lead more towards the type of sex you do want to be having.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah.

Jason Lange: The more you put in that time and work with her pace.

Jason Lange: Totally. I. I think what you just shared, that eroticism doesn't require hard penis.

Melanie Curtin: Yes.

Jason Lange: Or even for either partner to have an orgasm.

Melanie Curtin: Yes.

Jason Lange: Be told there's so much to explore there that I think is not always known to men, where we're like, hey, we have a penis. You touch it and, like, do your thing versus, like, there's a whole body we can explore with each other. Touching, kissing, energetics, eye contact, breath, voice, you know, all these different powerful things, but that it doesn't require. You know, I think that one of the kind of paradoxical ways I have certainly experienced and other men I've talked to have experienced losing presence in the bed is being so concerned with staying hard or being so concerned with doing it right so she'll have an Orgasm. We're not actually connected.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Like, there's no actual connection. And that's what she misses.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah.

Jason Lange: That, you know, that can be just as big a problem.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. That came up in the research around faking it. Because I asked women about faking it, and I asked them why a lot of it was, it's not working. What he's doing isn't working. It's not going to get me there. But I feel like he'll feel like a failure if I don't get there. So I fake it. Or I want him to feel like he won. Like, I want him to. I want him to have the experience of, like, he won. He's winning. He's. He, you know, he won, which is generous on the one hand and also sad to me. I find that sad because it's like that it isn't actually, you know, that pleasurable, what's going on. But there is such a pressure for her to feel like she has had an orgasm so that he feels like a man or so that he feels like he succeeded. And that's. You know, I've had a lot of really pleasurable sexual experiences where I didn't have an orgasm. And it felt like it was because we were just exploring and he wasn't attached to feel it. I can feel when a partner's attached to me having an orgasm. I can feel that. It's like there's this sense of this has to happen in order for me to feel like I did it right. I can feel it. I can feel that pressure, and it's not that comfortable. Whereas I can feel when a man is like, this is awesome. I'm having a great time. I'm not in a hurry. This is. Your body is amazing. We're just here. That feels great. And probably I'm more likely to come from that, right?

Jason Lange: Totally.

Melanie Curtin: But that. No, I think that that part about faking it is very related to this conversation. Because, you know, if she felt safe enough to say, like, I'm tired, it's just not gonna happen tonight, that would be much better than feeling like shit. If I say that he's gonna collapse and it's gonna be worse, or if I say that twice, he's gonna go away like, I'm fucked. I have to kind of hide my sexual truth because I don't want to lose this relationship. So I think it's all, you know, tied together. And when you look at the men who are best in bed, you know, one of the fun things in the course is I have the Word clouds of the actual responses from women. So you can see the big words and the small words. And one of them in the men who were best in bed was time. Right? Time. He took his time. Time was a huge word. Cause it was like this sense of savoring kept coming. Women didn't use that word. But it was like, I felt like we had all the time in the world, or he took his time with me, or it was just obvious that there wasn't that sense of like, okay, we're doing it. I've got to stay hard. I've got to get hard. I've got to stay hard. I've got to, you know, do this jackhammer thing. And then, you know, and then I've won. Then I've. I've done the. I've completed the thing. I've checked it off the list. I did sex. Well, like, that's not actually how. How it works for women.

Jason Lange: And that. That's just another great lens, guys, to highlight the connection versus outcome, I think, is another way to think of that. If you're focused more at the. On the outcome than the connection. So gotta orgasm. Gotta get her to orgasm, whatever that may be, that's what's gonna be missed. But if you're focused on the connection of, hey, it's feeling really good for us to be here right now, and that's enough, you know, how else could we feel good right now? What else could we explore? The possibilities are actually limitless when that's where you keep your focus. You know, that's the kind of amazing thing about this shift, which includes communication, which includes presence and attunement in bed and in a willingness to create us to know how to create the safe space to kind of invite that feedback and elicit that feedback from a partner who it could be incredibly vulnerable for her to share. You know, I think that's another thing that's good for some of you men to know is it's quite possible some of your partners have never had the opportunity. And so even you may ask once and they may not be quite ready yet, doesn't mean you shouldn't ask again. To keep making it clear that, hey, there's a safe space here, you know, if ever anything's not working, I want you to let me know. No, you know, I love to know what turns you on. That even if you ask, you know, or frame this conversation or invite it, it may not happen right away because there's like a lot of trauma there for. For some women and a lot of Uncertainty. And that's where it's just you kind of got to gently keep opening the door.

Melanie Curtin: Yes, I talk about that in the course, about sort of holding the pose. So saying, I always want to know. I'm an open door. I always want to know. And then repeating that, right? It's not going to happen the first time, might not happen the second time. And then you got to back that shit up if she tells you. Actually, it kind of hurts. Like, the way that you rub my clitoris is like a little too, too much right on it. If you could go like up or down or something, you need to say, thank you for telling me. And if it stings, you can say, oh, it stings a little to know that. And thank you for telling me, but you better back that up because if you say, I always want to know, and then she tells you and you sulk or you pout or you somehow punish her for telling you, man, you're fucked. Like, she's not going to tell you again. So it's okay if it stings and you can say, oh, ah, I noticed that stings a little to hear and to think about all the ways I've not done it right in the past. And thank you for telling me. I really want this to feel good for you. I really want this to feel good for you. That's, you know, part one of the course is all about that of like, here's how you get into the pose and then you hold the pose because you are the masculine, you are the oak tree, you are holding the space. That is how you help your feminine partner relax and open.

Jason Lange: Holding the space is just another way to think about presence, guys. So as you get present with her, she'll open. And having tools like Mel's course are going to be what makes that easier for you. It's going to help that be easier for you. It's going to give you some confidence in leading those discussions. And so, yeah, where can guys learn more about you and your course, which they should all sign up for. Jason Lange: Nice.

Melanie Curtin: Dear men. All one word. Yeah.

Jason Lange: And Definitely check out her show. I mean, she's done hundreds of episodes at this point, thousands of hours of material. That is a game changer for so many men. We hear from every day that that's what they're finding out in the world and is kind of the water in the desert for so many men that have never had anywhere to talk about this stuff and to have a woman on their side. I know. I think that's something that. That's really unique. I've seen about how you work with men is like, hey, I'm actually your ally in this. Like, I want you to have good sex. Like, I think not a lot of men are used to having a female champion their sexuality.

Melanie Curtin: Yes.

Jason Lange: All this, everything you're teaching is just in service of that.

Melanie Curtin: Yes. And I just. I'm so passionate about sort of reassuring men like, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have a perfect body. You don't have to be hard for hours. You don't have to have a large cock. I'm telling you, I've done the research. That's not what it's about. So anyone can do this. You got this.

Jason Lange: Yeah. You can do it, guys. And it just starts with a little bit of awareness. So definitely check out Mel's podcast, the Dear Men podcast. Check out her course, please her in bed. And then if you want to work with us deeper, you can check out the free training here on our site. And we love going into this stuff from top to bottom, head to toe, inside out that, you know, sex is just one piece on the full range of what it means to be a masculine leader with. With presence in the world. So definitely check us out. We'd love to work with you and Mel. So great having you on. Thank you so much for the just relentless service and dedication you bring to so many men.

Melanie Curtin: Thank you, Jason.

Jason Lange: Real honor. Till next time, Want to work with Mel and I. Check out our free training at Evolutionary Men webinar, and then follow the instructions at the end to book. Book a call with me and we can talk about what's going on in your sex and love life and whether joining our intensive men's group coaching program is right for you.