| Becky,
I'm writing this story to you on the eve of celebrating a decade of being in business with my husband, helping lovers create more sensual and passionate experiences... To have more ecstatic moments of pleasure together.
It is our purpose, our passion to help you...
Become a better lover.
Over a decade ago my husband Tim and I - because of some breakthrough sexual experiences together - were compelled to start a company to help people have more intimacy and passion in their love lives too.
Tim and Susan Bratton
Co-Founders, Personal Life Media
We struggled with our sex lives after only a few years of being married... In addition we witnessed the majority of our married friends growing further and further apart... We asked ourselves, why?
Why does monogamy have to become sexually monotonous?
We did marriage counseling. It helped with some of my lingering childhood traumas. We did personal growth workshops which helped us with our relationship maturity. But what really taught us how to connect passionately and intimately were the sex workshops we attended.
With all that effort, we rekindled our passion well beyond the initial courtship or "honeymoon phase." We realized that as a married couple, your sex life can be absolutely INCREDIBLE... if you just know what to do.
We were inspired to start Personal Life Media.
We wanted a company that helps people with their sex lives, to achieve the kind of intimate passion that every person craves... but often feels elusive.
That's our business... Helping people tap into their desire, to explore their desire, to understand their desire, and to take the steps necessary to achieve and have the things that they want in connection to themselves and their lovers.
It all started about a little over a decade ago when Tim and I had been married for nearly a dozen years, and we had devolved into being nearly platonic. Our sex life had disintegrated into a very boring connection. We would basically rub our genitals together and get off.
We definitely weren't passionate.
He wanted sex with me, he wanted me, and I didn't desire him often. I wanted to want Tim, but I didn't want him.
A lot of women feel that way about their husbands, and a big part of the reason this happens is that for most men, when you put a penis into a vagina, it feels pretty damn great for them.
But, the opposite is not true for women.
When you put a penis a vagina, it doesn't always feel great for her, especially when it becomes repetitive, and intercourse doesn't offer a lot of variety.
For a man, it always feels good. (I don't ever want to say "always" and "never," but generally, it feels really good for a guy, and for women, the conditions have to be right.)
For women, our desire is very contextual. Our arousal is predicated on feeling safe, protected - we have to feel trust, we need more emotional connection to our lover.
The space, the temperature, the location, how we feel about our body, whether there's adequate STI and pregnancy protection, where we are in our cycle... There are so many conditions that are mental and emotional to our desire, as compared to men.
Again, I don't like to generalize, "Women are always this way, men are always that way," because in actual fact, we are all every masculine and feminine trait along the spectrum at different moments in our life. When I speak in generalizations, I cover what's most common based on a decade of communicating at a deeply private level, one-on-one and with hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
In the case of Tim and I, he really wanted to have sex with me, yet he was so angry with me from all the rejection.
I would give him what I call "mercy sex."
For a lot of couples, mercy sex is the only kind of sex they have for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years. She submits and he basically masturbates inside her. She makes him get it over quickly, with no desire... She doesn't WANT him. And this crushes his spirit.
At the time, I didn't know why I felt like that when I knew I loved him. Sex just got boring for me. Now I know so much of our attraction is fueled by our "love hormones." And you have to counteract their natural decline with learnable sexual skills.
Add to my waning desire for intercourse the fact that I couldn't have an orgasm from penetration and naturally I just pulled away.
As I stopped wanting frequent sex, we became more and more distant. We were raising our child together and co-habitating, but the passion was long gone.
We decided that instead of getting divorced, we would go try to get coaching, marriage counseling, therapy... whatever it would take to rekindle our passion if possible.
We'd go to sex workshops.
And we did all of those things.
Our first marriage therapist told us that sex naturally recedes in a long-term relationship. We never saw her again.
Our second therapist said Tim was a sex addict because he wanted sex once a day.
Wrong again.
But she did unearth and address the sexual abuse I'd suffered as a child. And though you can never heal from sexual abuse, you can "get right with it." You can recognize when it's controlling you and put it in it's place.
So that was a step in the right direction.
But we were looking for passion.
So we persevered on our pursuit of personal growth.
We attended a bevvy of workshops including, "Unleash The Power Within," "Life Mastery" and "Date With Destiny," with Tony Robbins, and "Orgasmic Meditation," and "Ecstatic Loving" Tantra classes, to the "Human Awareness Institute," where we attended multiple levels of sexuality personal growth workshops.
At those events, we'd have to take off our clothes in a room full of people, and do different exercises with each other to learn about our sexual selves and desires... We pushed ourselves to do a lot of very edgy things that most people would never do.
In founding our company, we wanted to bring the insights and breakthrough experiences of personal and sexual growth workshops to people anywhere in the world who were struggling like we did.
Most people simply give up on their desire, or it just becomes this pattern where it's "good enough." "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." "We're managing."
Yet, there are many, many people, the people whom I call the "sexual seekers," who are like Tim and I.
These sexual seekers are the ones who say, "It's not enough. I want more. This isn't the way it should be. I want to figure out, what the path to passion is in my monogamous relationship."
"I want to feel a passionate desire for my partner that keeps building on itself, deepening and expanding, year after year together."
After we took all those workshops, and put ourselves through all that emotional stuff - everything from walking through hot coals at a Tony Robbins event to having people shine a flashlight up inside my vaginal canal to demystify our own genitals - we wanted to share how we learned to have great sex again.
If you can overcome walking across hot coals to get to the other side, you can sustain a lot of fear about anything and make it through.
Your brain has an incredible amount of resiliency to manage your body's wants and desires. Your mind and body connection is so powerful. If you work your mind... if you LEARN new techniques... you can train your body to have deeply intimate sexual experiences with your partner.
One of the first programs we offered is Expand Her Orgasm Tonight (we just call it EHOT) by the marvelous Dr. Patti Taylor. Dr. Patti taught us how to give ourselves expanded orgasmic experiences.
Then we filmed a step-by-step technique video to go along with Dr. Patti's instructions so anyone, anywhere in the world could experience the bliss of expanded orgasms.
Having this Expanded Orgasm weekly practice of genital stroking was what allowed me to go from a one-and-done orgasm (which I barely eked out with a vibrator) to being able to come for 45 minutes straight.
When a couple wants to have more orgasmic pleasure together, Expand Her Orgasm Tonight is the practice we recommend. Doing this together transforms both partners in myriad powerful ways.
Men and women are both multi-orgasmic. Men and women are both able to go into an orgasmic state, and then stretch the moment of orgasm for very long times, and stack that orgasmic pleasure, so that it gets even more and more delicious, and lasts even longer and longer.
All it takes is training your body how to feel the sensations from the strokes, and then connecting your mind to the sensation. People call that, "creating new neural pathways." It's the same as learning any body-mind technique like a golf swing or cooking. You have a "set up" or a recipe you follow and then you naturally get better at giving and receiving orgasmic pleasure.
I always say, "Knowledge is power and it's the same in sex. The more you know, the better you get. The better you get, the more sex you have... it's a fortuitous cycle."
We got better.
We didn't get divorced... ruin our daughter's family life... but yes, we were SCARED a lot of the time. There was a lot of fear.
It was scary to admit we didn't know enough to keep each other turned on.
Getting naked in sex workshops and doing very intimate exercises with each other and in groups was nerve-wracking.
Even walking across hot coals at Date With Destiny, thinking, "Cool moss, cool moss, cool moss," shot me through and through with sick fear.
I went to a David Deida workshop once that was extremely edgy, because one of the exercises we had to do was randomly pick a partner and look in their eyes, and say, "I want you to want me," until that person believed it was true.
You had to convince a total stranger you desired them.
And unfortunately for both of us... The guy randomly assigned to me had a bad eye. One of his eyes looked off to the side.
That was an extremely difficult workshop experience for me, because I didn't want the guy and I couldn't actually look him in both eyes. He never felt convinced I wanted him, which made us both feel badly.
At the time I wasn't sure what the value of that exercise was. It was embarrassing, painful and I felt sorry for both wall-eye guy and myself.
The breakthrough learning was that everyone wants to be wanted.
Everyone wants to be wanted...
Husbands often ask me, "How come I always have to initiate sex in my marriage? Why can't she ask me for sex instead?"
He wants to be wanted.
He is afraid to ask and be rejected.
When you talk about desire, you have to think about rejection, in addition to fear.
Rejection, fear and desire are a "love triangle" of emotion, all wound up together in a Gordian knot.
Your own insecurities and desires go hand-in-hand. Many people wrestle not just with their sexual desires, but what they want most in a relationship.
People follow, "The Golden Rule."
Which is most often expressed as, "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." Essentially this means, treat people the way you want to be treated.
But in relationship, that doesn't work beyond the niceties of morals and manners...
So we created another little book for our sexual seekers... Relationship Magic. What this downloadable workbook does is help you go through a simple process that tells you what it is YOU most value in a relationship.
Is it Security you want? Passion? Spirituality? Family-focus?
Once you know what your partner values most in a relationship, you can get up every day and focus on providing that. And they can, in turn, focus on your top relationship values.
That's "The Platinum Rule." Treat your partner the way THEY want to be treated, not the way YOU want to be treated.
This is one of those simple exercises that helps couples and even singles understand what they desire.
A lot of married men end up reading our email newsletters because it's up to them to keep the desire alive in their marriage. Women can, over time, give up their sex lives more often than men, when their desires are unmet by their partner.
Yes, women "cheat," as equally as do men.
While others take a different tack. They try to learn how to turn their partner on.
Instead of cheating, divorcing or being miserable... many people also come to us to see if our sex technique programs will get their partner to enjoy sex and want more.
What I have found, especially with men who come to me through one of our most popular programs called Revive Her Drive is that they think their wife is "broken."
In that program, I teach men how to reestablish polarity in their relationship - how to become the masculine man that she craves and desires.
They come into the program thinking, "I've got to fix her libido. She doesn't have a libido. Something happened: menopause, she had kids and got busy, she's too stressed out, she's depressed, she got fat..."
Yet they go through that program, they realize, "Oh, wow. A big part of this started with me not being the man she wanted to have sex with."
They started out thinking they were going to fix her sex drive. They go all the way back to the fundamentals... doing the relationship values in the Relationship Magic workbook, and they realize, "She's not getting her relationship needs met, so she's not interested in having sex with me."
It's a big epiphany for many men. And I'm glad we create that breakthrough perspective for them.
I appreciate that so many guys are able to reach the point where they find us and work the steps in Revive Her Drive in their desire to have intimacy, connection, and passion with their woman.
Desire is your life force.
Desire is your vitality, it is your zest, it is your appetite for life, it is your curiosity, it is your creativity.
It is your learning of new things. It is your being open and aware. It is your senses taking everything in. It is your energy.
Desire is your appetite for life.
What happens with people is that they get their desire suppressed because they get exhausted, they're ill, they have been abused, they've been shamed, they've grown up in religiosity that makes them feel bad about their desire, they have depression, they have a mood spectrum disorder, they have poverty, money issues worry them... Their job drives them crazy, their kids suck them dry...
You get through all these things that are life, and what goes? Your vitality goes. You eat unhealthy food. You literally don't eat enough vegetables, and you starve your mitochondria to the point where you don't even want to have sex any more.
A lot of people think it's menopause that kills women's desire. "Okay, well, my testosterone's low, or her estrogen's low." In reality, women throughout the eons have had great sex after menopause. When your estrogen dips, it dips in the short term. But in the long term, your body, if you keep your tissues from atrophying, will continue to actually enjoy sex even more as you get better with age.
Atrophy is the killer of sexual desire, not lack of hormones.
That's another reason why Expand Her Orgasm Tonight was one of our first programs.
When you rub a woman's genitals with warm oil to pleasure them, you bring blood to her tissues. Bringing blood to genitals through stimulation with hands, tongue and penis keeps her tissue and his tissue in good working order.
Expanded Orgasm is a genital stroking technique that gives women expanded orgasmic pleasure. And it keeps tissues from atrophying, so it's a great practice for couples to keep them close and intimate.
Vitality is sexuality.
Tim and I ended up getting all this sexual education training and it completely turned our sex lives back on.
We would have sex, and be like, "Oh my gosh, that's the best sex we've ever had."
Then, we'd have sex again a few days later, and say, "Oh my gosh, that's the best sex we've ever had."
Then, we'd have sex again, we'd be like, "Holy Moly, THAT is the best sex we've ever had!"
I call that phenomenon of continually improving sex, "The Upward Pleasure Spiral."
You too can get on an upward pleasure spiral... Once you reverse the downward diminishing of your libido, and you start to crank it back the other direction. And how do you do that?
You do that by learning techniques and learning communication skills. When I talk about Personal Life Media, I say, "We're a company that has advanced sexual communication skills and orgasmic mastery techniques."
Many of our orgasmic techniques programs are as much about touch and massage. I'm a huge proponent of penis massage, and vulva massage. Genital massage keeps you turned on and your tissues in good order. Playing with each others genitals keeps you limbically connected and calm.
Sensual massage is the foundation to a deep and trust-filled intimate connection.
And that is how it can be for you if you get one of our online programs and learn sexual communication skills and advanced orgasmic mastery techniques.
That is it. 10 years later, 20 programs, over a quarter of a million customers delighted, and Tim and I have never been closer or more intimate.
Sex is a practice-makes-perfect, use it or lose it skill.
Our sex life continues on the trajectory of the upward pleasure spiral. And so can yours.
Now it's not a straight line with sex always getting better and better. There are times when sex is not getting better and better, it's just good. You have times where you just are resting in your experience of what you have, and then if you allow it, new desires will bubble up.
What will happen is, you'll start feeling good. Things will be going more easily in your life and you'll get more time to play with each other. In those moments, if you can go inside yourself and say, "What do I really want? What's really turning me on right now?," you can call to your desire and your desire will answer.
Imagine drawing a line from the left which represents no sexual experience to the right which represents the masterful lover.
Now imagine all the people you know. Where do they fall on that line?
People are at all different places on that line of how good they are in bed, or how experienced they are in bed, or how much pleasure they get out of their sex.
A lot of people say to me, "I don't even know what I want. I just want our sex life to be better."
"I don't want a ten minute sex session once a week where she basically lets me masturbate inside her and she doesn't even take her nightgown off."
Or, "My boyfriend treats me like a porn star. He just watches too much porn and he isn't present with me during sex."
It's common for many men and women all across the gender spectrum that they want MORE, but they don't know what they want.
A big part of that is going internal to yourself in the moment.
Here's another thing. Especially for women, because we're on hormonal cycles, what we want one moment is not what we want the next moment. What we wanted yesterday is not what we want today.
That's a big thing that I teach guys, because they will do something that works, and then they'll just keep doing that. Then, she's like, "Okay, but that was yesterday."
You have to find out what her body wants today. Does she need her belly massaged before you even touch her Yoni? Does she need a neck rub or a foot rub before she can relax?
Do you feel spunky?
Kinky?
Just want to lose yourselves in each other?
There are so many ways to have sex... so many desires to be fulfilled as you mature.
Where there is trust, there is surrender to desire.
Part of creating trust is knowing a fair amount about sexuality. Knowledge empowers.
We all want to be wanted. And that starts with loving yourself.
As RuPaul says, "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?"
Loving yourself makes other people want to love you too. Put another way, nobody wants to love someone who can't even love themselves.
Getting in the other person's world is important, but here's the trick of it. The trick of it is making them feel good about themselves makes them want to be with you.
Making your lover feel good about themselves makes them want you.
Yes... acknowledging, appreciating, empathizing... When you fall in love, often you fall in love with someone because they make you feel great about yourself when you're with them.
At a sexual level, I offer a free little ebook that helps people feel more desirable. It's called, "How To Be Instantly Hotter and Sexier in Bed." I like itty-bitty ebooks that give you a magically profound transformational experience in 10 minutes or less. That's my thing. I challenge myself to create sexy sex ed info that's like, "Whoa, something big just shifted for me."
When you feel more desirable you are better able to have a deeply intimate connection.
When it comes down to it, we're all alone on this earth. One of the fundamental things that makes us feel that that lonesomeness goes away for a while is connecting in rapture with your lover.
You can, in those moments together, feel tethered and connected, in a way that you haven't since you were attached to your mommy through your umbilical cord.
When you are in a passionate, intimate moment, where the world falls away, and the two of you are literally feeling a connection to each other where two become ONE... That is oneness.
Sex becomes a spiritual experience.
Because not only can you connect with each other... When you connect with each other in a rapturous moment, you actually connect with God. You can feel your connection to all other living beings. You can feel, in a palpable way, through your orgasmic rapture with each other that spirit touches you.
There are many paths to touching God, whether that's prayer, or being a whirling dervish, or taking Ayahuasca, or having enraptured sex. They're all paths to Source.
That's one of the reasons that sex can be so profound, and so profoundly nurturing. It can ground you back into yourself. Sex can make you feel like you are not alone, that you are, in fact, not only connected to your lover, but connected to all other people, all other beings, dead or alive, connected to spirit or source.
Sex is a nurturing reward. And it's a reward not only for yourself.
And we've been in the sexual reward giving business now for over a decade.
It all started with Tim and I wanting our connection to each other back. And it continues with you...
With Love, Respect and Appreciation,
Susan and Tim Bratton and the entire PLM Team
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Susan Bratton
Dr. Patti Taylor
Sloane Fox
Tallulah Sulis
