Love Bombing, Energetic Sex and Thinking Off

 

“Love Bombing, Energetic Sex and Thinking Off”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

Samantha:

I was living in London, England. I had just broken up with my partner and we were together for five, for five years. I was fresh out of a relationship. I didn’t know my head from my ass. I didn’t know what I was doing. 

And I worked at a hair salon. I managed this high-end hair salon. It was like the most prestigious hair salon in London. It was like a really rich area. Lots of prestigious people there. And there was this little bar down the street from the hair salon. And I was there for an after work drink. 

And the relationship that I previously just got out of, although I was in love with him, like he wa– he like never really had a like great job… And my mom was always saying to me, like from such a young age—and I don’t take this story on as my own but I definitely did in this moment like—”you need to date someone who can fully take care of you.” 

So when I met this guy, he was like dripping in Chanel. And I’m like, Oh, let me fulfill my mom’s dream right now and date this person. 

August (narration):

When that handsome, charming man approached Samantha Skelly at the bar and started talking about all of these businesses he owned and seemed taken by her, she was abuzz with pheromones and fantasies. 

Plus, she was still feeling vulnerable from her breakup – a time when someone else taking care of her seemed dreamy.

Samantha:

It was like that princess syndrome. He was like the warrior that comes to save the day. That was that moment. I’m like, Yes, I’ll go on a date with you!

There was a park by my house called Clapham Common. And he’s like, “Let’s go for a picnic in a park.” I’m like, “Great. That sounds amazing. Like let’s do that.” 

And so I got all ready in the morning. I walked to the park and he was there and he had the red flannel blanket with the wicker basket and the bottle of champagne and the strawberry and I was like, Whoa! Like this guy’s pulling out all the stops. 

Like I was lucky if my ex took me to Burger King, you know? I was like, Wow. This is amazing. He was European…that very like suave-y type of like. You know, like the soccer players in Europe, very romantic. It was that vibe. And I was like, Okay, I can get down with this. 

August (narration):

Samantha said that the whole date seemed idyllic. They spent hours talking, eating strawberries and sipping champagne. He asked her about her life and seemed genuinely interested in her thoughts and dreams. He seemed like a “different flavor of gentleman” than she had dated in the past, she said, someone she could even see a future with. 

Shortly after that, though, this rom-com like experience turned into the setup for a Lifetime movie.

Samantha:

He was like, “How adventurous are you?” I was like, “I’m so adventurous.” And then we played -oIt was like a game of truth or dare. And we were going back and forth and like, adventurous in how much we will tell the other person about our past life or our relationships or breakups or whatever. 

And then he was like, “Okay, I got a dare.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, what’s the dare?” He’s like, “I dare you to come to Paris with me for dinner.” And I was like, “Accepted.” [laughs softly]

So we packed up the picnic. And he’s like, “Okay. I bought tickets for the little train thing.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” 

I went home, I changed, I packed a little overnight bag. I’m like, This is great. And it was fun until the dinner when I was getting grilled about the potentiality of being his wife and if I could handle—basically, if I could handle it. I’m like, “I’ve known you for six hours, Franco. What the fuck?” [laughs]

August (narration)

The scariest part of this ordeal was what Samantha felt in her body – a knowing that something was very, very wrong. And given the dramatic change in his demeanor, the shift from charming to seemingly manipulative, red flags were flying.

I asked Samantha if she was familiar with the term love-bombing, when you’re bombarded with superficial charm by someone who’s manipulative, only to learn their true colors later, once you feel emotionally hooked in.

She told me she’s heard about it and she, too, has heard stories like this—but they don’t usually move so quickly. Literally within hours, she said, he became pushy and manipulative, demanding answers about the wife she would be for him.

She said it was a rapid story unfolding before her eyes.

Samantha:

…and I kept thinking to myself, Is this actually happening? Did he, did he actually just say that? Are we actually here?

And then my sort of like signals came on of like, I gotta friggin’ abort mission right now. I gotta figure this out. 

I need to escape. How the fuck do I get out? I’m in Paris by myself. How do I get out of this situation? And so I was, like, planning my escape route. And I was fearful that he wouldn’t let me leave. I was fearful that he’d be like “No, you’re here with me. You have to stay with me.” 

August (narration):

But she knew she had to try. So she stood up and said, “I gotta go.”

Samantha:

And I think I had enough discernment in my voice to be like I’m good. I’m going to grab a taxi and I’m gonna find another hotel.

August (narration):

Thankfully, she did. And later on, she could see more clearly why she was especially vulnerable to someone with iffy, and potentially harmful, intentions back then. If he had done more than scare her, of course, it would not have been her fault. Still, she said the experience taught her a lot about the importance of taking care of ourselves during times of heartache or loss.

Samantha:

I think there’s this interesting phase after you go through a really gnarly breakup where there is that like, it’s almost like you have like a love hangover. And you’re like, Oh my gosh, I need to feel this way again. 

And so you make decisions out of alignment, and you make decisions coming from the wound versus your true self, your knowledgeable self. And that’s what that decision was coming from. 

It’s like I want to be loved. I want a man who can take care of me. I’m so upset this relationship ended. I have so much like shame and guilt, because I told the whole world that I was gonna marry this person. And now look at me. I’m single as fuck, and I’m like, uuh! 

Like I was in such a like state of like fear and down on myself that I was so malleable to other people’s agendas, yeah? And so it’s so important that when we are in those phases where we break up with the person and we’re feeling vulnerable to really nurture and nourish the part of ourselves that is feeling vulnerable so that we don’t make decisions like that because we want love. Because love is so addicting, you know?

August (narration):

Today, years and lots of personal growth later, Samantha is the founder of Pause Breathwork, a company on a mission to decrease human suffering by using the breath for healing.

And in some ways, experiences like that date inform her work with clients. She told me that so much of what she teaches involves self-consent – 

Samantha:

– being in consent with ourselves. And that was a moment where I was not in consent with myself because I was disassociated. I was in my head. I was thinking of something else. 

And so, so much of the work that I do is embodiment work. Getting in our body so we can really discern the difference between a yes and a no so that we have the self consent to make decisions that are in alignment and not out of a place of wounding or distortion. 

August (narration):

If that sounds helpful to you, Samantha offered this as a good place to start.

Samantha:

There’s stages of emotionality, right? And the first stage is emotional retraction where we’re just numb, we’re tense, we’re in denial of the feeling. And then the stage two after that one would be emotional knowing, like, “Okay, I now have awareness of my emotionality and awareness of my numbness, my tension,” whatever it is. 

And then there’s emotional intimacy, where we can actually like feel into the emotion and understand like, “Oh, wow! There’s so much going on on such a cellular level.” And there’s all sorts of, you know, sensations happening. And then there’s emotional maturity, where we’re embodied and we’re integrated.

So we can’t go from numbness to emotional maturity. We gotta go through the, gotta go through the phases and so much of it is just we have an emotion. Are we going to resist it or accept it? That’s the first stage of it, because we have to feel in order to heal.

August (narration):

I love that: “We have to feel in order to heal.”

You can learn more about that and how to use your breath for healing by downloading her company’s app at pausebreathwork.com/app.

Indeed, breath is powerful. Some people even have orgasmic experiences by synchronizing it. That’s basically what happened for GS Youngblood some years back – which ties into a listener question we’ll get to in a bit here.

GS told me his hottest sexual experience ever was more energetic than physical. It took place less than a year after he was separated from someone he had been married to for about 10 years. He said that marriage “ended in a bit of a ball of flames.” A painful ending. Sexuality had been sort of shut down in that marriage, and now he was in an exploration phase.

GS:

We had a common friend who was a dating coach here in San Francisco, and she put a mixer on and she hand-curated 12 men, 12 women and brought us together and with meaningful interactions. And there was just a way about her. 

August (narration):

GS was matched up with a bunch of people at the event, but she was the only one he felt compelled to call afterwards. They started dating and about four months in, they had that energetic sexual experience.

GS:

This is the funny thing is – I’ll speak for myself but I kind of think this is true for a lot of men. It’s like the more important the person becomes to you or the, the more like, what more of a match there seems to be, I personally don’t feel any need to rush the sexuality. I’d rather savor it and develop something underneath that, if I feel like, Wow! This one’s really special so why hurry. So we were not having, we chose not to, and I should, probably, even led a little bit more by me, for many months, actually. 

But that gives birth to the story here is we were clothes on. And I remember, you know, we were in front of the fire. And, you know, I was on top of her. 

And this is—I think our experience was in line with what people pursue when they study Tantra, of like a real union between two people. And it comes through the breathing, of course. Like I think everybody sort of, at least mentally, gets that, whether you’ve experienced it or not is a different story, but comes through the synchronization of the breathing, of the eye contact, of just total presence in synchronization. And it’s not something I’ve had an experience of with other women up to that point in my life. 

And there was something magical about that night where we both had near orgasmic experiences. And again, clothes were on and there wasn’t even a lot of like genital rubbing necessarily, other than bodies rubbing against each other. But it wasn’t like she was stroking me through my pants or something. Like literally, it was energetic. And if I’d tried to – If you’d tried to convince me that was possible six months before that I would just sort of laughed and said, “Haha, nice woo-woo stuff.” 

But part of that was I think possible because we didn’t have the intention to be sexual so it wasn’t like this like biological drive to get there, to get somewhere. So we were able to rest in what is and that is part of what unlocked, um, I think the synchronicity of that experience where – We both remember it to this day. I mean, we both still talk about it; this is many years ago. And it was powerful. It was powerful. 

August (narration): 

When he shared that, it made me think of what Dr. Ian Kerner talked about recently on the show, about every sexual experience having a story arc: a beginning, middle and end. GS said, yeah, this felt that way.

GS:

Well, it definitely crescendoed up. It wasn’t like we just just showed up in the same room and then sparks flew. You know, it was over time. I mean, I think there was probably a 20-minute warm up to a quote unquote climax. It was definitely—I don’t want to use the word effort because it has the wrong connotation—but there was a buildup, a conscious build up of the breathing, of the presence of just feeling even the slightest movement of her body or the shudder and vice versa, like the really feeling into the other. 

August (narration):

Because there was nowhere to get, he said, he was able to open up to those sensations even more. No words were were exchanged – 

GS:

But there was a hell of a lot of heavy breathing. [chuckles] Yeah, a lot of synchronized breathing, a lot of eyes, you know, speaking with the eyes, speaking with the sounds one makes.

August (narration):

After some build up came what sort of felt like an orgasm, like a full body, energetic “climax.”

GS:

I sort of distinctly remember having, it was like an all over body shudder. It was in some ways like an orgasm. It wasn’t ejaculatory… This is not the kind of the non-ejaculatory techniques that some men do. It wasn’t consciously trying to do that. But it was just like, Whoa! And my whole body shook, and I think I had some vocal expression as well. 

And she was in that same state. It was a point after that shudder that we sort of came out of it, and we’re like, “Oh, my god. What was that?” Not just the the last moment of it but the whole thing. We were both like, “Whoa, that’s. That was powerful.” 

August (narration):

Today, GS works as a men’s coach who specializes in “nice guys in relationships who want to feel more in their power.” And he tries to pay some of what he learned in that experience forward.

GS:

So this is one of the things I coach guys, to play with the energetics. Most guys will sort of snicker a little bit. “Oh, ‘sexual union.’ Don’t give me this woo woo stuff.” It’s like, no guys. Really, honestly, there’s so much to be played with in the energetics of it.

August (narration):

He said you may as well try it and see how your partner responds. If you want to give energetic sex a go, GS suggested this:

GS:

So at a high level, I’d say go find a Tantric workshop. You know, a reputable one. There’s a lot of pseudo-Tantra out there so maybe sift through that. But, sort of what you can try tonight, get two stools, sit across from each other, be about at least 24 inches apart. Don’t make it a staring contest. And don’t make it like you need to mindread her. 

August (narration):

What you want to do, he said, is hold eye contact while feeling as though you are in your own body. GS teaches embodiment exercises to help people learn how to do that.

GS:

If all you can do is just kind of breathe and just feel the rise and fall of your breath. But don’t let it be a staring contest. Don’t let it be a mind reading exercise. It’s “I see you, I’m with you. But I feel myself.” So that’s part one. 

And then part two is synchronize the breath. Some of the ways to do that is if you both consciously breathe.

August (narration):

He recommends using Ujjayi breath is also sometimes called ocean breath, whisper breath, or snoring breath. You breathe in and out through your nose and constrict your throat to make what really does sound like snoring. Apparently your inhales and exhales should be equal in length, according to experts. 

So GS suggests doing this together and working to synchronize your breathing – so you inhale and exhale together.

GS:

So synchronize the breath and just do that for about two or three minutes. There’s no goal, other than synchronization. 

August (narration):

GS said his own first experience with synchronized breath as part of energetic sex really shifted things for him moving forward.

GS:

I was more committed to this kind of synchronization work in energetics and leading us into that and, and, and maybe before we were to get into bed, per se. So I became very committed to it because I’d seen the power of it. 

August (narration):

You can learn more from GS in his book, The Masculine in Relationship, which he described as a blueprint for how men can be more in their masculine power when they’re with a strong woman, or sign up for his mailing list at gsyoungblood.com to learn about his upcoming offerings, including an upcoming embodiment course. 

I received a question from a member of my Girl Boner patreon community that ties into energetic orgasms, but of the solo play variety:

Is it really possible to orgasm with just your mind?? I heard the episode where someone had one in a car by accident and I want to do it on purpose. So far daydreaming/imagining has not done it. 

I love this question, and the topic fascinates me. 

If you’ve ever had what I call a “sleep-gasm,” or along the lines of a wet dream, you’ve essentially experienced orgasm without physical stimulation: aka a think-gasms, thinking yourself off, a mind-gasm. And yes, some people with a vulva do so when they’re wide awake. It’s been known to happen for some penis havers, too.

*****

Hear my and Dr. Megan Fleming’s thoughts and tips for this listener by streaming the full episode up above or on your favorite podcast app!

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