Turning Herself On, for Real: Rena Martine

“Turning Herself On, for Real: Rena Martine”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Rena: Most of us don’t walk around just like, okay, I’m in the mood. The analogy I like to use here is people who have spontaneous desire, that’s like having a sweet tooth. And then there are people who have responsive desire, which is no, I don’t crave sweets out of nowhere. But if I see someone eating a cake on TV, or if I walk past a bakery and I smell it, yeah, that’ll make me want one.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Rena Martine has learned a lot about desire over the years, both as someone who struggled to find relationships and her career life fulfilling, and as the women’s intimacy coach and author she is today.

I met Rena at a live event I was part of earlier this year. She walked up to me afterwards with a huge, warm smile and handed me a book that matched her hot pink hair. It’s called The Sex You Want: A Shameless Journey to Deep Intimacy, Honest Pleasure, and a Life You Love. And it had me from page one, especially these bits:

[sexy music]

“I’m about to pay for sex. I’ve sent child molesters and rapists to prison for life. I’ve been called to crime scenes with brains and organs spilled onto sidewalks… But I’ve never hired a sex worker. Much less a dominatrix… Never had a woman bring me to orgasm… I have a feeling she’s planning to change that today.”

Rena’s sexuality journey started in a home that, unlike many, did not hide all-things-sex.

Rena: It’s really hard for me to say when I started learning about sex. I’ve known about sex for as long as I can remember.

I was given pretty much carte blanche when it came to TV and movies, so I understood that sex was this thing that felt good and that people wanted to do and that was this driving force when it came to a lot of decisions that people made in their lives. But I didn’t really understand what the function of it was and how it really worked. So I definitely had this curiosity.

But not backed up by any sort of birds and the bees talk that I was getting from my parents or anything like that.

August/narration:

So fairly sex-positive, but not totally helpful. She said she basically had early exposure to sex, but without emotional accountability. And that made for some…unique experiences.

Here’s one example. She was in high school at the time and had started watching some porn.

Rena: Because I was a very curious, hormonal preteen and teenager who knew that my dad had a porn collection. And so I would use a bent paperclip and hack into this filing cabinet he had where he kept all his porn VHSs.

So I had seen blowjobs. And at that time, you know, I didn’t look like the women who I was seeing on screen. I was kind of like this chubby, awkward girl. But I figured if I knew how to give a blowjob, that boys might like me for it. So I was unhealthily giving blowjobs to boys. And some of the girls who were in the grade older than me found out.

So one day after school, I was waiting for my mom to come pick me up and a group of those girls kind of cornered me and got in my face and called me a slut. And my mom pulled up, sees this group of girls yelling at me and antagonizing me. I get in the car and she’s like, “What’s up? What’s wrong with those girls?”

And I said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. Just drop me off at my friend’s house, because we’re going to go shopping for homecoming dresses.” And then a little while later, I get a page from my mom, because I had a beeper at the time.

So I call her and she’s like, “I’m coming back to pick you up. I’m bringing you home. We’re going to have a talk – me, you and your dad.” And right then I just knew. Because my mom, she’s French, she’s no nonsense. This scrappy woman. I knew right then that she had gone back to the school and confronted those girls.

Which is exactly what she had done. And those girls did not hold back and they told my mom, “You know, your daughter’s a slut. She’s been getting blowjobs to all these boys.”

So the most awkward conversation of my entire life ensued with me sitting down with my parents at home and them asking me to give them the names of every boy I had given a blowjob to.

August: What do you think the reason was for knowing who it was? Why did they want the names?

Rena: You know, it was more my dad who was pushing this because my parents had been pretty loosey goosey about me having friends over, me going out with, with boys and girls and kind of being in coed groups. And I think because of my dad’s background, he’s former law enforcement and then much of my upbringing, he was a private investigator.

I think he wanted to know like, have any of these boys tricked me? Are any of these boys guys who I’ve allowed into my home and I could have done better, right? Like was this happening right under my nose? And so it was more about him than about me if I had to guess.

August/narration:

Rena went onto college, a refreshing change from high school. And sexually, she got busy.

Rena: Yeah, I was having a lot of pretty great sex, to be honest with you. I was having sex with guys, experimenting with sex toys. I was having sex with women, you know, doing things that I wouldn’t say are on the standard menu of what you would think in terms of like PIV and that’s kind of it.

August/narration:

She went way beyond penis-in-vagina.

Rena: And so I felt like I was blossoming in a lot of ways.

August/narration:

While she didn’t realize it yet, Rena was on the path to becoming a district attorney, working in sex crimes.

Rena: It’s funny. If anything, I didn’t want to go into law because I come from a lineage of law enforcement folks in my family.

I went to college thinking I was going to be a music journalist. That’s what I loved in high school. You know, I had a column with the school paper. I loved music, was very involved in the local music scene here in LA.

And that was my plan. And freshman year of college, I took an elective class. It was a criminology class. and I was obsessed. Absolutely, obsessed with all of the theories and explanations as to why people deviate.

August/narration:

Her personal history played a role, too.

Rena: Being a survivor of sexual trauma, wanting to figure out, is there a way I can help people.

I switched majors, went into sociology with an emphasis in criminology and I thought to myself, okay, well, what can I do with this? I knew I didn’t want to be a cop, that’s for sure.

So, becoming a prosecutor, becoming a DA and specifically focusing in sex crimes. That’s what I wanted to do. And I happened to need to be a lawyer in order to do that.

August/narration:

Rena’s studies took her to the U.K., where she met a man she would end up marrying. She remembers the day they met well: She had arrived in London early for her study abroad program.

Rena:

And I was just partying like a maniac for like three straight months. And I went down to Brighton . And that first week I was there, I was sick as a dog. I think just, a summer of sin caught up with me.

August/narration:

Cabin fever, anyone. Soon, that would change.

Rena: It was a Saturday night and I’d finally started feeling better and some of my dorm mates were like, “Hey, Rena, do you want to go out?” I said, yeah. I was super into the kind of 60s mod music scene at the time. And I knew of all the events happening in Brighton.

So I said, “I want to go to this thing. It’s probably not your kind of music,” but they’re like, “Sure. You know. You know the town will come out with you.”

August/narration:

So they go to the event. And Rena, stood out from her friends, who were:

Rena: Pretty kind of mainstream girls who are trying to figure me out because at the time I did not look like a very mainstream girl.

August/narration:

Rena sported a short dyed black pixie cut and wore a vintage A-line 60’s dress, paired with pointed flats. Her dorm mates were curious, and started scanning the room on her behalf.

Rena: They’re like, “So, what’s your type? Is he your type?” And there’d be guys walking through the door at this club. “Is he your type?” “No, not really.”

And then this guy walks in and I’m like, “That is my type, right there.” Tall, good looking, stylishly dressed, like just a gorgeous man. I was like, so my type, but that guy is so out of my league, too.

So I just kind of had my eye on him… He met up with a few friends and then was standing alone.

August/narration:

She thought:

Rena: He’s probably waiting for his very gorgeous girlfriend to arrive.

August/narration:

But, he wasn’t.

Rena: He just started dancing on his own.

August/narration:

She walked up to him, admiring his vintage macrame tie.

Rena: I picked it up and I looked at it and I was like, “Oh, nice tie!” And then I let go of it and he was like, “Yeah, it is, but it’s kind of fraying a little bit at the bottom.” And I said, “Oh, I could fix that.” And then I just turned around and kept dancing on my own.

August/narration:

Now he had his eye on her. Connection, made.

Rena: I ended up going back to his place with a friend of mine. We smoked pot and listened to music. And he was a grown up. Like we were 19, he was 30. He had a really nice place and a really good job. And I said to him, like, “I can’t stay the night here because I’m on my period and I did not bring any tampons with me. You have white sheets and like I just even if we don’t do anything sexual, I’m gonna bleed all over your bed.” And I will never forget this.

He’s like, “Look, I grew up with sisters. I have white sheets because I can bleach them and run them in really hot water. Stay the night. First thing tomorrow morning, I will go to the shop on the corner and I will buy you tampons.”

August: Aw…

Rena: Yeah, I know. And so that was our first air quotes date, if you can call it that.

August/narration:

A few days later, Rena went to her first day of classes and sat in the required course, “Intro to British Culture.” During the class, her phone kept ringing. She answered to say she couldn’t talk, but the friend cut her off, saying:

“Your country is under attack.” Planes had flown into the Twin Towers; it was 9/11.

Rena hung up, called her dad and put him on speaker phone. The other dozen or so students huddled around her while her dad recounted what was happening.

Rena: It was such a tumultuous time. I mean, I was studying abroad with a lot of American kids and students who had never left the country, never left home before. And now they’re far away. They’re scared.

August: A few sobbed uncontrollably. Most of them didn’t have UK cell phones yet… Several ran out of class to call their families on campus pay phones.” It was chilling, she said, and she’ll never forget. Or the ripple effects.

Rena: My then, soon to be husband, he lost his job because, a lot of British companies were working with American companies. So the economy collapsed.

August/narration:

In other words, she said, they’d just before this big storm happened.

Rena: And I think, we bonded because of that, because it was just a scary and uncertain time. And we became pretty inseparable from that point forward, like moved in together very quickly, spent every day together. He came home with me to meet my family multiple times. I met his family.

August/narration:

By that time, Rena had shifted gears academically. She was studying criminology and knew she’d head back to the states for law school.

Rena: I remember calling my parents up and saying, “Okay, we’re gonna get married so that we can stay together. We’re just gonna do it on paper over here in England. I’m gonna come home. He’s gonna move to the States and then we’ll have a wedding eventually.”

And my parents were like, “Okay, Rena.” Then they called me back about an hour later. My mom said, “Honey, I was talking to your father and he just doesn’t like the idea of walking you down the aisle at some point knowing you’re already married. So how about this? We’ll plan a wedding for you here in the States.”

And so we put together, it was a really beautiful wedding with over a hundred people, but I was a child bride, August. Like I was 20 years old.

August: Oh gosh.

Rena: And I wasn’t one of those girls who always dreamed of getting married. It was a practical decision on my part, but it was a really beautiful wedding.

August/narration:

Like most relationships, the couple’s sex life was a journey – one full of adventures and some misadventures.

Rena: The whole time we were living in England together, which was just shy of a year, no issues with sex.

We were having a lot of fun, almost had a threesome once, but he was too drunk and he ended up throwing up right before, like in the room. And then this poor woman who we were with started crying and was like “It’s because he saw me naked and he thinks I’m ugly.” I know, I know it was so bad…

August/narration:

Overall, though, they had a blast during those early days. In some ways, it felt like a romantic vacation.

Rena: The schooling system in the UK is different than it is here. There was a lot more independent study going on. So I just had a lot of time at home while he would go off working.

He would come home and I’d have dinner made and my only job was to kind of play house for him and with him. I didn’t have a ton of responsibilities. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have very much I needed to do.

August/narration:

Their dynamic and sex life changed a lot once they moved to Los Angeles.

Rena: When we got back to LA. I had my last year of college to do here. And just, you know, life stressors. This wasn’t a year abroad where everything feels like you’re kind of living in fantasy lands.

August/narration:

And the new relationship/freedom abroad sexiness diminished. For other reasons, too.

Looking back, she sees she had him on a pedestal and the role reversal — with him being more dependent on her in a country he didn’t have residency in — felt odd. Rena was in a caretaker role for a man she’d looked up to, and too young to understand what was going on.

They ended up getting divorced. But the complexities around role reversal weren’t the only things at play. A part of Rena’s identity was sort of hidden from her for a long time. And it fueled a pattern of infidelity.

Rena: My first high school boyfriend, the boy I had sex with for the first time, I cheated on him with one person pretty consistently. Every relationship I had after the husband I just mentioned, including my second marriage, there was some, some form of infidelity there, whether it was a repeated thing with one person or just like a here and there thing with other people.

August/narration:

Ten years after her first marriage ended, with her DA career in full swing, Rena got married to another man. She thought she would stay loyal and true this time – no sex outside of the monogamous relationship. But, it just seemed she just couldn’t.

Rena: I got to a point where I was like, you know, on paper, my life is really good and why can’t I stop doing this? What’s wrong with me?

August/narration:

She met with a therapist and confided:

Rena: I can’t stop cheating on my husband. You have to fix me. Help me.

August/narration:

Gradually, through a lot of “heavy [emotional] work,” Rena realized something life changing.

Rena: She helped me see that I wasn’t broken, that I was just different, that I’m just not wired for monogamy. And that’s why it’s been so hard for me my whole life.

You know, not everyone’s wired to be heterosexual. People aren’t necessarily the gender they were assigned at birth. That’s how I feel about my relationship to non monogamy is that that’s how I’m built. And in some ways, it’d be a lot easier if I weren’t built that way, but I am. And I’ve learned to celebrate that and embrace the opportunities that that gives me too.

August/narration:

Those epiphanies through therapy unfolded six years ago. And it helped kickstart sexual exploration of a new kind, where Rena could openly be herself.

At the same time, her legal career in sex crimes was feeling increasingly less right for her. So she started prosecuting other types of cases, but she said the work became just a paycheck. She longed to help people. Maybe she’d ride it out 12 years to collect a pension, then become a therapist.

Rena:

If I could help one woman the way my therapist had helped me, I figured I would have meaning again.

August/narration:

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

Rena: And after I had baked all the bread and watched all the TV and was just left to sit with myself, it dawned on me, you know, I don’t want to stay miserable in a job that’s just okay, I want to start helping people sooner than that.

So I got a coaching certification and I became trained as a life coach, started working with clients and very soon realized I am a much better coach than I would have been a therapist.

August/narration:

Given the lockdowns, people had a lot of time on their hands…

Rena: …a lot of people wanted to work on themselves. Because of the timing, my business boomed and I was in a place where it was feasible for me to give up a lengthy, very stable golden handcuffs career with the County of Los Angeles and go out on my own as an entrepreneur.

August/narration:

Finally, Rena was turned on personally and professionally. And cultivating a career that does feel meaningful.

Personal turn-on is something Rena works on with coaching clients. She dedicated a chapter to it in The Sex You Want. In it, she shares a personal experience about sexy plans she was not exactly up for.

Rena: So it was a Friday night and I was supposed to go to a Skirt Club event.

August/narration:

You may recall Skirt Club from a past episode. On their website, they describe their mission like this:

“Our goal is to be the catalyst for each woman to become the mistress of her own life.” And they really center LGBTQ+ and bi-curious women, at a range of casual and upscale events.

The one Rena attended wasn’t a full blown sex and play party.

Rena: I didn’t actually know what it was going to be because I hadn’t been to any of their events before. But it was more like a bunch of, you know, bi-curious women who would make out , and do pretty PG-13 types of things.But it was supposed to be a sexually charged environment where physical contact was on the table.

August/narration:

Beforehand, though, Rena was more like on the couch.

Rena: I was cozy at home. I live in Echo Park. I’m one of those pain in the ass people who hates going west of La Brea.

August/narration:

A very LA thing, by the way. And this event, which she already had tickets for, was west of La Brea.

Rena:

It’s in West Hollywood, like Sunset Strip, West Hollywood on a Friday traffic. I’m at home, my cat’s next to me. I’m wearing my cozy bathrobe and I’m like, I don’t want to like, I just can’t even get into the mindset.

This is the furthest thing from what I want to do tonight. It was December. It was like, chilly out.

August/narration:

Yes, it gets chilly in LA. So Rena started texting with a colleague.

Rena: And she was teasing like, “Well, me and my wife, this is normally our bedtime. Like I couldn’t even think about going out to a party tonight. But, if you just change your mindset around this and give yourself some stimulation that you already know gets you in the mood, maybe that’ll help.”

August/narration:

Maybe she had a point. Maybe Rena wanted to feel turned on by the idea of going out…and could encourage herself to get there. It seemed worth trying.

Rena: So I went through my lingerie drawer and I pulled out some lingerie. I started picking my outfit for the night.

As I was putting my own lingerie on, I thought to myself, Oh, I wonder what the other women are going to be wearing. And I started fantasizing and projecting into the future and thinking about that. And that was really all it took to snap me out of it.

And of course, I’m not going to feel sexy and turned on and in the mood if I’m in my cozy bathrobe. Like no, that’s not what it’s designed for.

And I had a backup plan, like, okay, well, if the lingerie doesn’t work, I’ll watch some porn, right? Maybe I’ll bring my toy out, get myself in it. But the lingerie did the trick. And I had a great night!

August/narration:

At the event, Rena met lawyers, teachers, advertising execs and poets. In her book, she describes an encounter with an attendee named Kiki, who’d recently opened up her marriage. They chatted, then kissed, then made out.  At one point, Kiki whispered in her ear, “I want you to bite my tits right now.” So, Rena did.

She had gone from not wanting to leave her robe to having fun in far less.

Rena sees scenarios like the first one in her coaching practice a lot. And while it’s perfectly cool to choose cozy chill over sexy-palooza, there’s a lot you can do to turn up the heat if you want to feel turned on and just don’t.

If you tend to have more responsive desire than spontaneous — which is more common, especially common with increasing age or years into a relationship — you’re probably not going to feel automatically aroused, not without some effort.

Rena: Most of us don’t walk around just like, okay, I’m in the mood. And so the analogy I like to use here is people who have spontaneous desire, meaning they crave sex out of nowhere. That’s like having a sweet tooth. And then there are people who have responsive desire, which is no, I don’t crave sweets out of nowhere. But if I see someone eating a cake on TV, or if I walk past a bakery and I smell it, yeah, that’ll make me want one.

That’s responsive desire. So our goal here when it comes to sex, if your concern is I’m not in the mood, I can’t get myself in the mood, it’s what could get you in the mood? What could replicate the smell of the cookies in the oven, sexually speaking?

August/narration:

Those questions can be especially important if you’ve had a lot on your plate lately. You want to feel excited about sex, but life gets in the way. Rena often uses an exercise to help couples navigate that.

Rena: I was actually working with a client recently who said “My husband and I, like we have date night and he’s excited and he’s like, Oh, we’re going to have sex later. We’re going to have sex later. And, it’s just, it feels like this pressure for me and I don’t know how to get there.

I’ve been working with her and her husband for a while and I had a session with her just one on one. And we went through an exercise that Emily Nagoski, who wrote Come As You Are has in her book, this accelerators and brakes exercise.

August/narration:

Rena included in her book, too. You basically list out positive and not-so-great sexual experiences then break them down into characteristics — like physical health, body image, your moods, the setting. It’s meant to clarify what sets the stage for your desire.

Rena guided her client through it, going through what she called an “investigative hunt.”

Rena: And it turned out historically the things that got her in the mood were a lot of flirting, a level of uncertainty whether sex would actually happen or not, and some dirty talk. All things that we were missing in this scenario.

August/narration:

Together, they came up with a few experiments to try out.

Rena: One of them was, all right, on your next date night day, sex is actually off the table. But your only job is to flirt with each other as much as possible.

And you, wife, if you change your mind and you want to have sex later in the night, cool. But as far as your husband is concerned, sex is off the table and you guys are just gonna practice flirting with one another without an end goal in mind.

August/narration:

Or, Rena suggested, they could try what’s also known as stranger date role play, or having a mini affair with your partner. For that…

Rena: They were gonna plan a date and show up to this location separately and either pretend like they were meeting for a first date or pretend like they were two strangers bumping into each other at the bar and getting to know each other again. As cheesy as it sounds, she was very, very excited about that.

August/narration:

Rena’s tried and enjoyed this practice herself, too.

Rena: It’s silly. It’s playful. But it allows you to look at your partner through new eyes. It allows you to remind yourself what it feels like to have someone who’s genuinely inquisitive and curious about you.

August/narration:

And for that client, it worked.

Rena: Taking those individual components, and allowing her to replicate those in a relationship that has a lot of well worn grooves, to get herself into the mood was key.

August/narration:

Whether you try out a stranger date or not, we can all turn ourselves on — sexually and otherwise, by focusing on what’s felt good in the past, versus solely on any stuck-ness you feel.

Rena: This is not a prescription for everyone, but it’s an invitation for you to go back and think of a really, really positive sexual experience you’ve had.

Really think about it and try to break down all the elements, all the ingredients that made it really good. And then figure out which of those you can replicate.

August/narration:

She said this works well when you’re feeling a bit down about your body or appearance, too.

Rena: If you find yourself not feeling sexy, not feeling good in your body, ask yourself, when was the last time I felt sexy? And really remember that. And again, try to pluck out some of those factors and replicate those.

August: That is beautiful. And I love the fun you’re bringing to it because I think during sex challenges, sex no longer sounds fun and that’s kind of the point for a lot of folks, right, is to have fun. And it becomes this dark, heavy, homework or task on their to-do list. list.

Rena: Yes. It’s play. I mean, it’s one of the few ways we get to play as grownups.

That’s what I remind, especially parents, because they tend to be the busiest of the clients I work with. Like how important is play to your kids? When’s the last time you played? What does play mean, right? and inviting them to see sex as a form of play, as a form of connection, as something we do just because it feels good,

August: Yeah. Ah, so important.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

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[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

Rena’s book, The Sex You Want, has gleaned some sweet reviews. Emily Morse, host of Sex with Emily, said it includes “hands-on practices to rinse out any shame you’ve got about sex, and replaces I with a life that reflects the sexual person you already area.”

Regena Thomashauer, who wrote Pussy: A Reclamation, called it a “gorgeous, pink-carpeted pathway out of shame, guilt and self-doubt.”

Here’s what Rena shared about it:

Rena: I want you to know that this book wasn’t written from an ivory tower, that it’s supposed to feel like a conversation between two friends over a reasonably priced bottle of wine. It is story driven. It is a book of lessons illustrated by way of stories, my own and my client’s stories, because what I found is that one of the best ways to resolve shame when it comes to sex as women is to hear from women like us, not clinicians. Not people who are taking a, you know, a clinical or detached approach to this.

And that’s what I want folks to walk away with, that this book is different for that reason.

[acoustic chord riff]

August/narration:

Learn more about Rena at renamartine.com, and follow her in Instagram at @_rena.martine_.

If you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify would mean so much to me. I’d also love it if you’d share links with your friends. Thanks so much for listening.