Why You’re Mismatched in Bed: The 4 Erotic Personas (and How to Sync)

Ever feel like you and your partner just aren’t speaking the same sexual language? You’re not “broken,” you might just be mismatched. In this episode of Talk Sex with Annette, I sit down with Nicholas Velotta, Head of Relationship Research at Arya and PhD researcher at the University of Washington, to unpack the Erotic Persona Framework—the 4 sexual archetypes that explain why routine sex fizzles, why desire misfires, and how to finally sync with your partner.

We cover:

• 🔑 The 4 Erotic Personas—Romantic, Director, Adventurer, and Connector—and what actually turns each one on.
• ❌ The real reason routine sex kills desire (hint: it’s not frequency).
• 💡 How to spot mismatches before they wreck your connection.
• ❤️ Practical ways to bridge differences and reignite passion—tonight.

This isn’t another tired take on “low vs. high desire.” It’s a brand-new framework backed by research that will change how you see yourself—and your partner—in bed.

👉 Take the Erotic Persona quiz here: https://bit.ly/4n85sPT

Find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annettebenedetti/
Join me on TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@talksexwithannette

🎧  Check out my Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@talksexwithannette.

You can find my spicy site here. ht

Use code EXPLORES15 for 15% off all Womanizer Products at Womanizer.com.

Get 30% Off Sex Toys & Lube with code EXPLORES30
at thethruster.com: https://bit.ly/3Xsj5wY

Get 15% Off The Life Saving, Erection Enhancing Tech Cockring By Firmtech with my code ANNETTE15 at: https://myfirmtech.com/annettebenedetti

Get 15% Off The Life Saving, Erection Enhancing Tech Cockring By Firmtech with my code ANNETTE15 at: https://myfirmtech.com/annettebenedetti

Get your intimacy questions answered, enjoy erotic audio readings and more.
https://talksexwithannette.com/talk-sex-with-me/

Chapters

• 1:29 Introducing Talk Sex with Annette
• 2:27 Meet Nicholas: Relationship Research Expert
• 6:57 Understanding the Four Erotic Personas
• 19:19 Combining Personas and Bridging Differences
• 26:13 Why Sexual Compatibility Is a Skill
• 45:55 Three Practical Takeaways for Better Sex
• 1:10:34 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

Do the sex?

Speaker 2: 0:47

I'm Annette Benedetti, host of the podcast formerly known as Locker Room Talkin' Shots. The show has a new name, talk Sex with Annette, but at its core, this is still your locker room.

Speaker 2: 0:58

It's where we strip away shame, get curious and speak the unspoken about sex, kink, dating, pleasure and desire Around here, nothing's off limits. Pleasure and desire Around here, nothing's off limits. These are the kinds of conversations we save for our boldest group chats, our most trusted friends and, of course, the women's locker room. Think raw, honest and sometimes unapologetically raunchy. If you've been here from the beginning, thank you. And if you're new, welcome to my podcast, where desire meets disruption and pleasure becomes power. Now let's talk about sex Cheers.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Today's Talk Sex with Annette. Topic is which erotic persona are you? The four sexual archetypes that explain a whole lot. Routine sex often gets blamed for low desire. But what if the problem isn't how often you're having sex? It's that you and your partner are speaking completely different erotic languages. That's what today's guest is here to unpack.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Nicholas Vallada, head of relationship research at ARIA and a PhD researcher at the University of Washington, helped develop the erotic persona framework for archetypes that explain what truly turns you on and why your partner's idea of hot sex might completely miss the mark. For you. We're diving into the romantic, the director, the adventure and the connector how to know which one you are, what shuts you down and how to bridge mismatches so you stop fighting about sex and start having more of it. Before we dive in, I want to remind you that I'm over on OnlyFans and there I'm sharing my sex and intimacy how-tos and my audio guided self-pleasure meditations, and I am now offering one-off coaching, intimacy coaching advice meaning those one simple questions that you want answered quickly but you don't want to commit to a full coaching regimen you can have taken care of over there.

Speaker 2: 3:04

You can also find me on Substack doing a whole lot of the same, minus the coaching, and you can find me in both places at my handle at TalkSexWithAnette. You can also find me on Substack doing a whole lot of the same, minus the coaching, and you can find me in both places at my handle at TalkSexWithTheNight. You can also scroll down to the notes below this episode and find links everywhere you want to find me there and I'm looking forward to seeing you Now. Nicholas, will you take a moment to tell my listeners a little bit more about you?

Speaker 1: 3:26

Yeah, thanks for the lovely introduction. So I come from an academic background where, at the University of Washington in Seattle, I started really looking at sexuality and becoming a sexologist. And when I went down that route I really found my most interest in the relationship between sex and the people that we're having the sex with, like the idea that sex isn't happening in a vacuum, that there are relationships, no matter how committed or non-committed, attached to those sexual encounters. And that's really when I started becoming more of a relationship scientist and looking at intimacy writ large, with sex as a major component of it.

Speaker 1: 4:14

And after I was in my grad program for a while, I got approached by our co-founders at ARIA and they had this really interesting idea about creating a marketplace for couples wellness, about creating a marketplace for couples wellness, and there was something inherently exciting for me around the idea that I would be pairing my research abilities and my career trajectory with the profit incentive of bettering the most amount of relationships with the most effective technology out there, and I couldn't resist that that prospect. So here I am four years later, moved myself from Seattle to New York, and we're thriving as a company and we're actually just had our first IRB approved, research approved, and so that should be coming out here pretty soon too. Looking at sort of the empirical data that we have at ARIA, looking at the effects of a digital intervention on sex and relationship satisfaction because of struggles that they're experiencing within their relationships around desire and sexual connection and enhancing their relationship.

Speaker 2: 5:35

So this episode is going to be super helpful to most all of you. I want you guys to stay to the end because this is going to give you another framework for looking at your sexuality and then how it has been interacting with and connecting with your partner or your partners or your past partners. If you're single right now and hoping the next time around it's going to go better, like me.

Speaker 2: 6:01

So stay to the end, folks. I'm always going to give you those takeaways. I am ready to just dive into this topic. So let's talk about sex and the erotic personas.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Oh wait. So I did a Diet Coke, so we get the ASMR moment here.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Let me hear it because I haven't had one for 24 hours. So for all of my friends out there who give me shit about Diet Coke, I just want you to know I found a bestie in my, my, my Diet Coke obsession. However, I'm on coffee. It's morning here, so cheers, let's talk to the DC girls. All right. So first of all, I just want you to explain this. This is a new, newer framework that I'm hearing about at least, so can you explain to my listeners what it is.

Speaker 1: 6:56

Yeah, I think that we have popularized things like attachment styles and, to an extent, love languages although I can get on the soapbox about my complaints around love languages although I can get on a soapbox about my complaints around love languages but those things gave us languages to speak with our partners in very practical ways as well, as sort of these insightful moments of what is going on in the interiority of our relationships, not only between my partner and I and our behavior, but also what might my internal landscape look like and feel like right now and what do I need to make that internal landscape compatible with my partner. So, taking that as a very revolutionary development in relationship science for a lot of people in couples, therapy and reading self-help book, et cetera. I at ARIA was faced with as the head of research, trying to understand eroticism and how to give people the same result that these other personality and psychological assessments gave them, but now over something that is so under-researched and there is very little that I could just create an entire framework around that already existed. So I went to a board of experts everyone from sexologists to clinical therapists to embodiment and certified tantric workers, the gambit. And after having these focus group sessions where we would discuss what the most useful frames to perhaps build a framework out of for eroticism was.

Speaker 1: 8:52

We took off to the races and started actually measuring people on different scales and, through collaboration with these experts, we at ARIA developed the erotic personas. Erotic personas, and these are clusters of traits that tend to form together but are not exclusively correlated with each other, meaning it's a spectrum. So you're going to score across all four types of the personas and those personas are going to tell you a lot about where you source eroticism as well as maybe, where eroticism struggles to grow around certain behaviors or mindsets or kinks, etc. So really, the erotic personas is a personality assessment, quote unquote for your erotic style, what you need, what you don't really want and where you could maybe grow and bridge desires with a partner.

Speaker 2: 10:27

I love that. I love that. First of all, framing it as a personality assessment I think makes it make sense to most people, because most of us have been put through whether for a career or just trying to figure ourselves out personality assessments. But what I really like about what you just said and what I want my listeners to hear is it not only tells you kind of where you're at and maybe quote only tells you kind of where you're at and maybe quote your strengths are in eroticism, but I think it also gives you hope if you are struggling with a partner, because it's telling you opportunities of growth and change.

Speaker 2: 11:08

And one of the things that I find frustrating with a lot of the approaches to sexuality is it's like and relationship styles and stuff like that. It's like you're this, you're this and you're this and this is why you don't get along with other people, and it leaves people feeling hopeless. Well, you know like, okay, I'm this thing, now I guess I just have to find a partner that fits it. But it sounds like with these erotic personas which we're going to get to, you're saying that not only do they map out kind of where you're at, but also where you can grow and change so that you can connect with a partner who might be a different persona than you.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Yeah, there is really good data on other similar assessments Again, something like attachment styles, for instance. You know, I think that when in the 60s it was developed, we really thought it was a one and done and that some of us were secure and the other ones fell to the wayside and just had tumultuous relationships. And, as we've seen, especially across longitudinal research, about a quarter of people are changing their attachment to style at any given moment. So that tells us that our deepest connections with people, our brain, how it's been wired to perceive intimacy and attachment changes based on experience, based on self-growth or development, or even perhaps further trauma or negative experiences too, unfortunately and there is no reason why our relationship with sexuality and therefore also previous experiences and dynamics and ingrained patterns that we have in our sexuality. So it makes sense that something like sexuality as well changes across your life course.

Speaker 1: 13:38

And if you have had the experience of more than a decade of sexual experience, I'm sure you have seen shifts in how you engage with sex. What you want out of sex, the people you tend to find sexy maybe has broadened or been changed as well. Your comfort with asking for what you want All of these things combine and create a erotic persona for us and so, as you go across your life, have different experiences, age, etc. You're going to relate not only to others differently but to your own sexuality differently, and that's really what this erotic persona framework gives us the ability to understand and monitor across our life course, and in a very nonjudgmental manner.

Speaker 1: 14:34

I think that's was a very important part of developing this framework, because we see, for instance, the unfortunate sort of almost like animosity our culture puts on something like an anxious attachment style or something like that, when there's nothing inherently good or bad about having a certain relationship with intimacy, although some are easier to navigate with certain other attachment styles, et cetera. The same is true with eroticism. You are going to find people who immediately understand what you are interested in in sex, at least that night, right. And then you're also going to find people where it takes a bit more communication and bridging to get there. But there's nothing saying that because this person wasn't immediately a fit doesn't mean that they're not going to become an amazing sexual and erotic partner for you. And that's what erotic personas really give us is this language to bridge our desires, to understand our own desires and also see how they change over time, also across relationships.

Speaker 2: 15:51

So this should give you all hope. For those of you out there who are feeling hopeless either in a relationship or coming out of a relationship, this is going to be great advice for you and give you hope, moving forward, that you can have the kind of sex you want with your partner. So I would like to now list out these erotic personas and what each one of them means, so I'm just going to let you lead the way through each one.

Speaker 1: 16:22

Yeah. So I'll start with the director, because it's perhaps the easiest to understand out of the erotic personas for somebody who's unfamiliar with something like this. I would say the director focuses on spontaneity, physicality, visual stimulus has an understanding of eroticism that is a little bit more quote unquote, straightforward in the sense of what we've been raised or acclimated to, understanding what Western sexuality looks like. So these folks also tend to prioritize things like orgasms and they're probably more likely to say that they tend to show affection or love through physicality. And so sometimes the shadow side of the director and every single one of these have a quote unquote, shadow side. The challenge that comes with being predominant in that style is that you can sometimes prioritize the linearity of sex that you assume should happen, like the, the procession of events Once I'm aroused, then I become desire. I'm aroused, then I become desire, desirous of somebody, then I am ready to have sex and it's a build up, and then I climax and then that's the end and then maybe there's cuddling or something. But it's a very like specific, step by step path that sometimes the directors tend to be very like tied to in their sexuality. So the next one that we can cover is the romantic and they're more focused on intimacy, connection, and I always say like, my keyword for them is context, and what I mean by context is they aren't just going to at the drop of a hat out of nowhere necessarily like they're the least likely to, out of nowhere, want to have sex. They're far more likely to take into consideration things like the quality of their relationship at that moment in time, their mood state, how stressed they feel in general, whether or not they feel supported, whether or not they feel good in their body and their esteem. These folks also tend to really focus on verbal affection and affirmation because it's a context cue and context can be high context which are visual. But if you're very contextual in your sexuality, you want the easiest access point to know when somebody loves you or appreciates you, and that's hearing it. So whether it's love letters or messages throughout the day or you know again, just the verbal affirmations of you're beautiful, you know like you're going to kill it today at work, etc. That's really going to stoke the fire of the romantic.

Speaker 1: 19:30

And there is also a sexual desire framework there that, since we've gone over the director and the romantic, both of these adhere closely to the romantic, being a responsive form of desire, again, having sort of context involved in what makes them desirous, whereas the director tends to be more closely associated with something called spontaneous desire, which is more of a I don't know why I'm turned on right now, maybe the wind blew a certain way or I saw a sexy image so those two also have not only their own sort of personality traits attached to them that cluster together, but also modes of sexual desire that have been studied for many years. Then there is the connector, which is the rarest of the personas At Aria we only see around 8% of our user base are connectors and they focus on sensuality and stimulation and they're similar to romantics in the sense that context is very important, but more so for the connector. Context has to regulation of the environment. Is their body overstimulated just from the day? Are they tense, are they deactivated and really low because there isn't enough stimulation? It's all about finding the right level of stimulation for these people, whether it's visual, audio, physical taste etc. But yeah, they're definitely the rarest and also the hardest to conceptualize, in a survey as well, and so a lot of times what we see are people going between romantic and connector, sort of finding which one they more closely are over time. Because when they're answering, you know, they may interpret their need for an environment that is friendly to their eroticism as well. I need to feel safe and secure, which is a very romantic thing to have right, but in reality they're interpreting this like stimulation based need in their eroticism to a more emotional, relational need in their relationship.

Speaker 1: 22:08

And the fourth and final is the adventurer. They tend to be most interested in novelty and kink. They are the types of people who would say you know, my interests are versatile, I want to explore a lot, I'm very open minded when it comes to new sides of sexuality. They are also, you know, I think, the ones with this shadow side to them. That's a little bit surprising. Where one?

Speaker 1: 22:39

If there's not enough novelty in their relationship if that's not, it's kind of funny.

Speaker 1: 22:45

But if novelty is not a habit in their relationship which is a paradox that I often talk about.

Speaker 1: 22:51

But this is the, this is the truth for them If it's not a constant thing that you're working on with your partner, then they tend to have very high struggles with their eroticism, because they need that sort of newness, that freshness, that tension built into their relationship, of trying something new, and it's a very self-expansive model of sexual eroticism where you tend to see trying something new with your partner as becoming closer and growing together with your partner, so it's not just a sexual thing but also a relational thing for them. And another shadow side of that can be the cause sometimes of not having novelty, which is the sexual people pleaser aspect of being an adventurer. You like a lot of things and maybe your partner has a dominant way of enjoying sex, and because you like that, there's nothing wrong with that. You allow them to take the lead. But it compounds over time, and so it's really important for adventurers to develop a very healthy communication style with their partners around sex so that it never becomes one person's dominant style of sex at any given moment.

Speaker 2: 24:11

What is the connector's shadow sign?

Speaker 1: 24:23

shadow side. Yeah, so the connector is. Oftentimes it's the overstimulation or understimulation coming in there, and it's really really hard to communicate that with somebody who doesn't understand how important sort of your nervous system reactions can be to sex and relationship closeness. So oftentimes what I hear from connectors is, thank God, one that I now understand how to talk about this, because it's been just a struggle right. Like I don't know how to describe that.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Like when I'm home and I can still hear my kids or I know that there's like a gross smell, that kind of wafts over here every once in a while.

Speaker 1: 26:04

I can't set it aside and I don't know why that is, and my partner really wants me to like get out of my head. But it's not so much getting out of your head, it's very much like your nervous system is so attuned and activated to stimulation that it's true in your case that this isn't you being in your head so much as being in your body. Like you actually are very attuned to your body right now and actually what needs to happen is a conversation in order to connect your head and your body a little bit better and start regulating that nervous system, both through external things like taking care of the things that are triggering your nervous system, or also by making sure that you take responsibility for getting yourself into a relaxed state. Like a lot of these people, the thing that they need is a very peaceful walk or a really sensual bubble bath, these types of things, listening to an album that really grounds them. Those are the things that connectors can do to start getting them closer to the mindset that they would want for sex.

Speaker 2: 27:16

So, as you were walking me through the different personas, I thought to myself oh, at first I was like, oh, I'm totally romantic. And then I'm like I'm definitely an adventure that resonates with me. Can you be a combination of these personas? How does that work?

Speaker 1: 27:41

does that work? Yeah, absolutely. I almost like interrupted you. I was so excited that you came to that. But yeah, it's a spectrum. So, for instance, we don't see a lot of people score super highly in romantic and director. Some people do, but those are two very different forms of eroticism. On the other hand, we see a lot of romantic score with adventurer, a lot of directors score with adventurer. We see a lot of connectors with romantic high scores. Sometimes we do see directors with connector, just because it is like a. It's a very like clear sensorial path for a director of what to expect in terms of stimulation. So sometimes there's some intermingling there. But really the core associations oftentimes are romantic adventurer, director, adventurer or connector.

Speaker 2: 28:29

Romantic I can see that. I can see it because I've got a little bit of like connector in me, but I wouldn't say that's the strongest. But definitely romantic and adventure Like I'm. Like which one would I be? I think I'm kind of both.

Speaker 1: 28:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:43

So this system then allows for someone to relate to more than one erotic persona?

Speaker 1: 28:53

Yes, yes, so there is no intrinsic incompatibility between the personas. What is true across the board, whether or not you want to use this framework to understand it is that sexual compatibility is a skill set that you develop with your partner that you develop with your partner.

Speaker 2: 29:22

So if you want to period, I mean first of all, has anyone ever said that on my show?

Speaker 1: 29:26

No, that's insane, that's crazy, let me say it again?

Speaker 2: 29:28

Will you say it again for me? Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Your sexual compatibility is a skill set that you develop with your partner. It's not a personality trait, it's not something inherent to you or them and irresolvable. So when we're talking about it in the context of our personas, one thing that I am very sort of like orbiting around in this conversation is their utility as a language and their ability to frame the same concept just in different lenses that have overlapping keywords, languages, et cetera, so that you can see how these traits relate to one another. And with our app, aria, we actually help start putting together these curated journeys. Essentially, that in a lot of ways, are built out of the necessity to bridge your personas with a partner, and that is something like understanding a romantic, for instance, paired with an adventurer. An adventurer may be really down to have that very emotional, mind-body-s connected sex that's going to trigger a romantic eroticism. But over time you know they're looking for something different, just to throw in some spice or whatever, and the romantic may sit there and be like well, is this a rejection of our closeness in sex? Like, do you not want to have this connective sex? Instead, what the erotic personas can do there is say no, actually your closeness that you developed in this sexual play is an asset as you go and explore something new with your partner. It lays the foundation for both of you to try something new, be explorative and integrate things that you like into whatever style of sex you're having at a given moment, right. And so a lot of what we're doing here with the personas is less about saying you know, here's your persona, learn what you like, what you dislike, and you know, learn what your partner likes and dislikes, and that's it. It's very much the next step, as the most important factor here, which is now, what do you do with it?

Speaker 1: 32:10

And that is, I think, one of the things academia in general has really, you know, oftentimes fallen short of giving us is, you know, they give us really great theoretical groundings and sociological evidence, etc. But then we're like okay, so is there, is there a way for us to like make our relationships better from that? Finding outside of these like very macro level concepts and the personas grounds, grounds a macro concept of a generalized psychological framework into. Here are behaviors, here are play styles, here is language, here are exercises that you can go through with your partner, here's erotica that you can read, that's personalized to each of your personas, so that when you're both looking at, for instance, bondage, one of your erotic stories is centered around how it's a romantic sensual acquiescence of control you know narrative while the other person maybe has a little bit more of the kinkier power play of it all. But you're both looking at the same play style and therefore can tap into it through your different erotic personas.

Speaker 2: 33:24

It sounds like this framework offers a way to reframe the differences into opportunities to come together. That was a great example. So a romantic might feel jarred when their partner is like, yeah, we've been having some romantic sex for a while, I'd like to throw in a spanking scene, right. Or a bondage scene is a great example and the romantic person is like what Don't you like making love? You know what I mean. And this offers a reframe. This can still be super romantic and this is how it would play out.

Speaker 2: 34:08

Bondage can be romantic. You know, handing over control to someone you trust so deeply that you'd allow them to restrain you and do X, y and Z can be seen as romantic. So it offers a reframe. So, instead of automatically going to the clashing which I think a lot of us do in relationship oh, you want something different than I do. Oh, you don't like what we've been doing, you're rejecting the sex we've been having. Rejecting the sex we've been having, it can be reframed to oh. This is a way we can expand and still honor what turns each of us on.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Yeah, and I think it's a world that we simply have not been given language to have these types of healthy conversations with partners.

Speaker 1: 35:04

I mean, to be fair, we don't have like words or a lexicon around a lot of aspects of our relationships that we should have. But the problem when it comes to sex is that sex as a source of pleasure is stigmatized in our Western culture still, and you know I often get the refrain but like, sex is everywhere, like, etc. And I'm always like, ok, well, what type of sex Like? You see one version of sex that tends to happen in popular culture over and over and over again, and really what people need is to see themselves in sex and see their own sort of like desires and journeys with comfort in sex. And that's not going to look like the guy pushing a woman up against the wall and her instantly just like wanting him and him wanting her, and it's uncontrollable. And they start having sex and within five seconds, all of a sudden there's a you know, shared climax between the two of them or something like that, right?

Speaker 2: 36:16

So I just tell you that doesn't happen. That almost never happens. You cannot just push a woman or a vulva owner up against the wall, shove it in and suddenly we climax. Very few of us. Yeah, I mostly watch that and I'm like ow, ow ow yeah. That's what I think too.

Speaker 1: 36:34

I'm always kind of like I mean to be fair like maybe I don't know, they're the exception, right, maybe they're the ones out there that just have a totally different arousal mechanism than you know the vast majority of people with vulvas. But you know it's not realistic for most of us. Is all that I'm saying. And then when you talk about sort of like sex education or conversations around sex in family systems, even early relationships, et cetera, sex is like this dark corner of a room that you know is there and you like to go into but you're never putting like a source of light in. You're just kind of like going into it.

Speaker 1: 37:18

It's clandestine, it's kind of a mystery and some of that is fun, like that is why a lot of people describe the early days in a relationship as so erotically charged, because you simply don't know anything Like the tension is high.

Speaker 1: 37:46

The discovery value of having sex with a person is high at that point in your relationship sacrificing your ability to get what you want, talk about what you want, see what sort of problems you're encountering and how you can maybe find ways that benefit both of you in this scenario and increase pleasure for both of you as you change in your sexuality. Yeah, I mean the, the idea of being able to not only converse, bring light on, maybe even reverse or reframe ideas around sex in general, at a personal and macro level. These are all really, really helpful assets that the erotic personas is able to start giving us, and it's even better that the fact it's even bettered by the fact that they have such a solid ground of practical advice attached to them so that you can start taking action on it rather than having to go to sessions or workshops or some sort of like therapy for it.

Speaker 2: 38:59

Right. I think that people oftentimes just give up as soon as things start to get stale and they try a couple of things but they can't move that little measure forward and then they're like we're just not sexually compatible and so it's like, all right, they let it die on the vine and move on to the next person, and then the next person, and then the next person. One thing that I like that you just said too, is you talked about our sexuality changing, is you talked about our sexuality changing and I feel like people don't realize that that your desire changes and develops and evolves over time, especially if you continue to educate yourself. And when I say educate when it comes to sexual education, I'm talking about pleasure based sexual education, which you accurately pointed out is something we have none of. We get none of. Our families and our schools don't teach us pleasure-based sexual education. It's purely reproductive, biological and reproductive. It's all around making babies, which most of the sex we have is not done in order to make babies. Right, the vast majority of it.

Speaker 2: 40:23

So as you start to learn more about pleasure-based sex and explore whether that's through, you know, reading articles or podcasts or you know, watching ethical porn, whatever it is your mind opens up and you're like, you know, I was stuck in the world of wanting to be spanked for so long. It's all I read about and digested. And now I'm like that's kind of like that's fun. But now I'm interested in X, y and Z and similar to what I'm attracted to, right, I used to when I first realized I was queer. I'm like, oh, I like masculine men and feminine women. And now I'm like I just like it all Because I'm growing, evolving, expanding and changing and I think that offers a lot of hope for people.

Speaker 2: 41:13

Right, because if you enter a relationship and you come up against sort of a sexual wall, know that by educating yourself and learning more and exposing yourself to more, you can move that sort of stopping point forward and create space where you might be able to connect and grow as a couple. And it sounds like that the erotic personas are giving you tools to do that. Right Language also scenarios it sounds like that you can play with together and learn from and grow, and so you don't have to just dump your partner and try and find someone else who's fun for now, right, a really common example that people have, because the only quote, unquote pleasure-based sexual education that we get is porn.

Speaker 1: 42:13

And what the porn industry is incentivized by are people who are willing to spend more and more money on their subscription services or their OnlyFans, etc. On their subscription services or their OnlyFans, et cetera. And the people who are willing to spend money tend to be people who want more of this kink or a more extremified version of this kink, and so porn is incentivized, in the essence, to hypercharge any sort of kink out there and to somebody, for instance, who maybe is not inherently super kinky, they're gonna go into a porn site and see something that is an extremified version of that sort of play and they might be really like averse to even considering themselves in a scenario like that right and on the other side of it. You know, I think that some people also develop extremified versions of kink because it's the model that they're given and they continue to pleasure themselves towards. So, on multiple ends, the best pleasure-based education we have is not really teaching us much about nuance in any sort of exploration, and what we get at with a persona model is understanding that all of these play styles have so many different hues and gradients to them and you have to understand what the core of that play style is for you and how that relates to your erotic needs.

Speaker 1: 44:08

So, again, like the spanking, I think that there are really kinky ways to get spanked, obviously, but there are also really like sensual stimulation based ways to get spanked. And so somebody who's like a connector right like have a really relaxing evening and then start pleasure mapping with things like paddles and like rollers and, you know, floggers with different textures and sort of like fuzzy things etc. And you start kind of using a spanking motion with those items and you find which ones are the most, you know, sensual to the person being mapped and it becomes a very erotic thing for somebody who may, in another setting, think of spanking as far too stimulating, very much associated with pain and maybe just too kinky for them too.

Speaker 2: 45:10

So let's talk really quickly about which erotic personas struggle the most when they're in relationship.

Speaker 1: 45:21

It's a really interesting question. I don't think that the erotic persona is going to tell you in itself if you're struggling. I think the dynamic between you and your partner is very likely to impact this. For instance, in the recent research that we're about to come out with here's a preview of what we found. But those people who felt like exploration was a burden, like oh my God, now I have to figure out how to like master this thing, you know. Or people who felt resistance from their partner, not just you know, anxiety, but like I don't understand why we want to do this, like this is silly or it's. It feels like you just aren't happy with what I'm giving you, or something like that. Right, they're the least likely to report successful encounters after trying a new play style. It's not surprising, it's very intuitive, but it's not tracked onto their erotic personas. It's really the dynamic of can we have a really the dynamic of can we have a communication and good faith and open mindset oriented approach to exploring new things together?

Speaker 1: 46:58

And unfortunately, you know, I I tend to bucket people into four groups when you're trying to change something like erotic play, which is one, it's really scary because you're worried that your partner is going to feel rejected or that they're going to have their feelings hurt, which is, you know, not what you're trying to say in this instance, and there are ways to frame it in ways that your partner doesn't have to feel like they've been a an erotic failure for you, or something like that too. It's really scary to try and put into words what you do want. Maybe you don't really know what you want, necessarily, and you're trying to figure out how to express that. You're not quite where you want to be with your partner, but you, you think that this is a good place to go, but you're not quite where you want to be with your partner, but you, you think that this is a good place to go, but you're not really sure why. There's another issue with you're just scared to create change in the relationship. In general. Change is scary, it's uncertain, but that's like the premise of exploration and vulnerability is like if you knew the outcome, it wouldn't be exploration and vulnerability, right? So you have to be able to embrace a little bit of that risk factor, right?

Speaker 1: 48:15

And then the fourth category of people are those who see change as a risk to the entire stability of a relationship. They may see it as if I change something, then everything changes for us and therefore I need to just keep status quo. And that's a little bit different than the other group which is like I'm scared to take risk with my partner because that's a, that's a risk aversion in sort of just like the context of sex. But other people have a much broader scale version of that, where it's an entire risk to the relationship solidarity. So there's that.

Speaker 1: 50:16

And I think oftentimes in that group too you find the people who are like we don't discuss this topic, like this topic is scary to discuss, and I think that if I bring up my desires or needs, I'm going to be shamed or put down for them. And that's oftentimes why people think the relationship is at risk if they bring it up in a broader sense, because it's no longer just a conversation around oh, let's try something new, even though it might be scary. It's like, oh, you're going to think I'm a different person, like you're going to treat me differently, and that's that's terrifying for a lot of people. But, as we kind of have covered throughout the conversation that, I think it's self-evident that, like, if you come in with something like a curated, you know, like a curated, you know, a night of play or sort of like journey with your partner that's based in bridging those different erotic personas, then it should alleviate a lot of that for you.

Speaker 1: 51:28

It should take that emotional labor of figuring out all of these different aspects to why you may struggle with sex with your partner or may not struggle, may just want to try something new with your partner too, right, and it makes it entertaining, easier, educational, but fun, and a building, uh, a building block for you in your sex life as well as your relationship. So, yeah, I mean like back to your original question there, it's like it's not that an erotic persona is the issue, it's how are we encountering and engaging with sex and our needs from sex in our relationship, and is there one of those four narratives happening that's preventing us from getting to the next phase of our sex together?

Speaker 2: 52:18

I think people oftentimes go to different frameworks, like the erotic persona or attachment styles or whatever it is. They figure out how to define themselves. Then they define their partner and they're like see, we're not compatible. That's what the problem is and that's an absolute falsehood, right? What you're saying, and I completely agree with and I think is helpful for people to hear, is that it's not the style, it's not the persona and the differences between them that causes the problem in the relationship. It's what you decide or not to decide not to do with them. If you're like okay, we're different and I'm not comfortable talking about it, or it feels like too much work to take on learning about it and figuring out how to bridge it.

Speaker 1: 53:20

that's where the problem lies and that's where things break down yeah right and there was so a part of our research as well looked at these personal narratives of people exploring one of three experiences with their partner, which ranged from more of a kinky bondage scene to a wax play scene to a sensory mapping scene, and we call our experiences scenes from sort of that kinky culture. But but when we looked at those who found the most success in exploring, it was people who just took on the opportunity as a new experience, regardless of whether or not it ended in a mind blowing orgasm. You know, and it was really those people who are based in this theory of self expansive relationships, right, and in all of the narratives that they gave. So I had about 180 interviewed narratives from these people right and 100, and I believe it was 30 something. So a vast majority of the narratives brought up aspects, practical applications of self-expansion theory and again, that is the idea that you grow through new relationship experience, that you better your quality of relationship through trying and experimenting with your partner and you also.

Speaker 1: 55:11

A part of that is the self and you also a part of that is the self you discover new sides of yourself that you can emphasize, how this scene was able to expand their vision of the possible, their vision of the wanted and their vision of the good. Anxiety, the idea that, yeah, be a little bit nervous, but in a good way, you know like you're about to try something new and weird, maybe even and some of the narratives were like we laughed we didn't really have the most like sexual experience, but it was very fun and we just had like a great time together and we can't wait for like the next experience, type of thing. So it's really about that openness as well as that openness paired with the idea that you're you're bettering yourself in your relationship, even if it's not something that ends up being in your regular rotation, right.

Speaker 2: 56:28

Right. Or even if it ends up not being sexy because you end up laughing about it, that still is intimacy, that's still sex and that's the goal. Right Is to have this great experience, even if it's like that was weird. Now we have something we can talk about and laugh about and reflect on. We're not going to do it again, but we'll try something else, right, yeah?

Speaker 1: 56:49

Actually, I do want to say in that same point it's fascinating because people will come into Aria and say that they want playfulness.

Speaker 1: 56:59

That's one of our number one things.

Speaker 1: 57:01

People say that they want to experience through their scenes and the reality is then, like you know, a lot of those people get scenes and engage and don't really understand what playfulness means when you're engaging in new types of play, right, and so it's this fascinating dialectic really about language and embodiment in that sense, where we may say, because intellectually we know we want play, which is associated with fun and whatever with our partner, but when we encounter things that require us to really tap into that playfulness, it can turn into anxiety or reproach, right, and the people who find success are the ones who, when they encounter, for instance, those nerves associated with playfulness or novelty in general, they check in with themselves and they actually move forward in a way that is able to harness the nervous system's reaction into okay, I'm going to giggle now and we're going to be okay with me giggling, because it's a release of this frenetic energy inside and also I'm not upset, I'm not angry, I'm just like there's a lot of nerves going on right now and if I have a space where I can express playfulness with my partner, whether it's again through like laughter or it's sort of like a joking tone during sex or like, maybe even like a, an inversion of something that you're doing, where, like somebody's trying to do like a power play situation and you're new to it and so you kind of, like you know, give them flack for whatever it is that's going on, right, and but it's really about finding that version of play in the new experience, because I think we all want, theoretically, a partner who we can let our guard down with and turn a fuck up into a fuck.

Speaker 1: 59:04

Yes, you know. So, yeah, that's another thing that we do see at ARIA, with those who kind of succeed quote unquote in finding a very fun experience through exploration and those who struggle the most.

Speaker 2: 59:19

I love that. So, for my listeners, before we check out, I'm going to ask you, as I always do, to give them some takeaways. They're here listening probably because A they've struggled in the past or they're struggling now in their connection. They want to learn more about who they are as erotic and sexual people. Let's just give them like three takeaways from this conversation that they can utilize tonight or the next time they're with their partner, or whatever it may be, to start improving their sex and intimate life, their relationship Because in my mind it's all the same. From this conversation about the erotic personas, what can they start doing right now to use it and what they've learned and start maybe moving their relationship with intimacy and the person they're with in a positive direction or more expansive direction?

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

Yeah, number one I would say if this elicited a reaction of I want to understand me and my partner better erotically, definitely go take the erotic persona quiz. It's going to help you and it's going to give you some language there as well as play styles to try with that fit with your framework. I think another really important thing that you can do, as I've expressed, one of the biggest assets here is the language value that having a framework gives you is opening a conversation around what you found interesting, curious or insightful about your erotic persona, and opening that conversation with curiosity around your partners and really lean into that conversation. I think that oftentimes we turn that into kind of a clinical conversation of well, this is what I'm like, here are my symptoms and the prognosis as it stands, but I think eroticism is so much more built on that tension and that interplay of energy. So as you go into this conversation, feel so free like, so, so free to like, lean into the sexy little tidbits that like. Come up and maybe even have some sort of like erotic encounter from that conversation, because it's so charged with sort of like your desires and needs from each other, right, and then I think that the third thing would be to start reframing novelty as something that is spontaneous in your relationship by planning novelty. And it's that paradox I sort of mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1: 1:02:14

But a lot of people will say that planning something takes the excitement out of it or the erotic value out of it with their partner. And that's just not the case. And I can prove that to you by asking you if you were excited and erotically charged when you were dating your partner. Because dating was nothing but planning logistics, all of those components that it takes to put something on a calendar and schedule it. And what were we expecting?

Speaker 1: 1:02:48

We were expecting an erotic experience. We were expecting a romantic experience. We were expecting to probably have sex as well. Like that is anyone who wants to say that you know, we just all of a sudden started having sex after you planned a date, it's like. So I think that if you are to implement sort of a resurgence of date night logic into your relationship, it will over time create a routinized novelty and that is the best antidote, like anything out there. It's the best antidote to sexual monotony period. End of sentence. That is like any couple who tries that it's going to increase something for them. Now it's not everything that you need, but it's definitely a solid starting point. But yeah, those would be the three suggestions on my end.

Speaker 2: 1:03:57

Those are all great. Those are all great. And sometimes the eroticism is in the actual planning. Like, think about when you're planning on going on a vacation and every time you guys share a new thing about the location you're going to, you get really excited about it. And that is the same thing you can do with sexual adventures and your time together. Make it fun and not work right.

Speaker 2: 1:04:19

So I think those are great pieces of information, Also for my listeners. Of course, I'm going to drop the link to that quiz in the notes of below this episode so you can go and take it and learn something more about yourself. More information is always better, right, it's always better for you. So at the very least, getting that information is going to help you in one way or the other, whether that's understanding yourself or your partner or what's happening between you. Thank you so much for this conversation and for giving me and my listeners a new way to look at eroticism, sex pleasure, both our own and in relationship. Can you tell my listeners and viewers where they can find you if they would like to find out more?

Speaker 1: 1:05:08

Yeah, absolutely so. If you're interested in the erotic persona framework specifically, there is Aria's website, which is ariafyi, so go there if you want to try and take the test. If you just really vibe with me, then that's great. I am on Instagram as mindonlove so you can always check me out there and I also have a personal website that you can scope out if you want the nitty gritty of everything I do and that's also mindonlovecom and low desire.

Speaker 2: 1:05:51

You are a full sexual ecosystem and once you start to learn the language, you're going to be able to engage in erotic relationships in a much more fulfilling way. Today's episode just covered a new language, if you will, and gave you access to another way to talk about sex with a partner or even with yourself, as you're exploring your own personal intimacy intimate life with yourself. So I hope that you got a lot from it and I hope you'll go and check out that quiz, because I know that I am going to, so maybe I'll report back and tell you what I found out, but thank you so much for joining me today and having this conversation. It was very enlightening.

Speaker 1: 1:06:36

Oh, it was my pleasure to speak about pleasure.

Speaker 2: 1:06:41

It's a great job to have, isn't it? Yeah, and to my listeners, until next time I'll see you in the locker. Cheers, cheers.