Welcome to “Love and Sex Today.” I’m Dr. Doug Weiss and I am excited about this new post. In my last post, Volume One, we talked about the three tips to having great sex. Now in Volume Two, we are going to have a conversation about optimizing your brain for sex. I know our first two shows are about sex, but that’s okay with most of you I’m sure. And if you did what I told you in the last post, the three tips of having great sex—eyes open, lights on, nurturing conversation—you’re already hooked. You know that you can have a crazy, incredibly satisfying sex life, and I want you to have that. It’s why we do “Love and Sex Today.”

On Loveandsextoday.com, there’s a free chapter from my book, “The Ten Minute Marriage.” If you subscribe, you can make a comment on iTunes, and one person will be selected to win an hour conversation with me. We can talk about your life, relationships, or anything you want and I will look forward to doing that.

But I want to get right into the topic today, because having the best sex is a great topic. We will continue by learning how to optimize your brain. How would you like your brain to actually work for you, especially when it comes to sexuality?

How it all started

Before I can walk you through some really good things here, I need to explain how this conversation got started. About 15-20 years ago, the neuroscience field opened up and began to study how the brain responds and operates.

Now when I’m talking about your brain, I’m not talking about your soul. I’m not talking about your emotions. I’m not talking about how you intuit. I’m not talking about how you think. I’m not talking about the software programs that run in your brain on a non-stop basis. None of that. I’m talking about the gray matter. I’m talking about the thing that sits between your ears and works as the hardware system. I’m going to talk about the hardware, how your neurological brain works. I can tell you it’s amazing. It’s its own field. You can get a Ph.D. in this stuff because the field has grown so amazingly. There are some basic things I want to tell you about the brain that will increase your desire to follow through with the things I mentioned in my last post, like keeping your eyes open.

How to optimize your brain during sex

Now, let me explain to you sexuality neuroscience and how to optimize your brain during sex.

When you’re having a sexual encounter, your brain cannot distinguish between real and imaginary, whether it’s with a real person or with a fantasy, altered-state person or object. If I were to show you a football and have your brain wired up, your brain would light up in certain parts. If I were to give you a real football it would light up in the same place. If I were to say, “Now, imagine a football,” it would light up in exactly the same place. Your brain literally cannot distinguish between the real football and the imaginary football.

Now, take that to sexuality and you have people who are looking at pornography. They’re looking at hundreds of different bodies, different eye colors, hairstyles, body types, ages, situations, circumstances, and possibly story lines. They end up having sexual encounters from a neurological standpoint with all these people. It’s like having different rules for each engagement, so your brain is constantly connecting to that particular porn voice, or that particular fantasy voice, and oftentimes fantasy voices are compensation voices. Maybe you don’t feel attractive, so they tell you that you’re handsome or beautiful. Maybe you don’t feel wanted or significant, so the voice in the fantasy world speaks to that part in your heart that’s really hurting. So I understand why people do these things.

This neurological attachment to object relationships, to fantasy symbols that someone might have an orgasm with, can become huge. Here is what happens. When you have the orgasm, male or female, you get a whole bunch of endogenous opiates, endorphins, and many other things that hit the excitement center of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, and boom, you get a powerful chemical experience like you’ve never had before. I mean sex is better than anything you can do, all right? You can run a marathon, but you’re going to get more chemicals in your brain from a sexual encounter. Sex is good. It’s powerful. It is the chemical enchilada. Here’s what happens though. Imagine your brain, is being flooded with, let’s say blue fluid, and it puddles up in the front of your brain. Then whatever you’re looking at, real or imaginary, your brain literally glues to, hungers for, craves and wants to repeat that act again.

Now, let’s go back to Psychology 101 some of you had in high school or first year in college. They make you take those courses and you learn something from a man named Pavlov. You know they trained these dogs so that when they ring the bell, the dog will begin to salivate in expectation of getting food, which it was trained to get once the bell was rung. Now, take this to sexuality, okay? You’re looking at porn or the fantasy you’re attaching to that— ring the bell, feed the dog, ring the bell, feed the dog, ring the bell, feed the dog.

I work with sex addicts all the time, and they’re still triggered by some of the things they looked at many years ago. They’ve attached to that particular body type, or color, or features. So anytime they see those features, they get an arousal in their body because they’ve conditioned their arousal template to that particular stimulation. You know I work with guys who’ve done this and it fed into their other desires. This can create fetishes. This can create hunger for anything you want, anything. If you want to be attached to purple cows, you can. If you have a sexual fantasy about that and you start having self-behavior towards that, you will create a sexual desire because it is a result of this bonding that happens neurologically.

Many of us in high school knew those couples that didn’t fit together, but if these couples are having sex, they’re attached to each other. Even though they argue and hate each other and it seems like they’re an unlikely couple, their sexual bond is happening and it gets people into a lot of negative relationships. In our culture sex is now promoted as such an easy thing to do, as if there’s no psychological or physiological attachment. All science tells us sex is one of the most bonding chemical neurological things you can do and you’re going to have attachment. You’re going to have hunger for whatever it is you did, so if you do a one-night stand you might be hungry for that person again, but they won’t be in your life. Sadly, many people have conditioned their brains to all kinds of things. If you’re a guy and you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Man, almost anything can connect me,” well, you might need to recondition your brain and then condition your brain.

So, lets’ talk about reconditioning first and then we’ll talk about conditioning.

Reconditioning

If you want to change what you’ve been doing in the past, here’s a simple trick. Every time I talk to you, I want to give you a tool, something you can actually do today. That’s why I call it “Love and Sex Today.” I give you something you can do today. Get a rubber band, put it on your wrist, and every time you catch yourself kind of lusting after someone, scanning someone, rubbernecking, checking somebody out in an inappropriate way, take that rubber band and snap it on the inside of your wrist. In about 21-30 days, you’re going to find you’re not doing that near as much, because your brain is now— ring the bell, spank the dog, ring the bell, spank the dog, and you’ll stop objectifying everything that looks like causes that. So if you struggle with lust and objectifying, it’s because your brain has been trained to do that. You’ve rewarded your brain to do that. Now it’s doing it all the time, looking for stimulus to get that arousal template going.

You can recondition your brain, shut that down, and then apply what we talked about in the last post with your partner when you’re being sexual—have your eyes open, talk to them, and attach to them. Maybe you have three or five, or ten thousand hits on the fantasy web pages in your brain. You’ve created attachments, but if you stop reinforcing that, the neurological pathway will start to reduce from the lack of reinforcement. If you’re connecting in a relational sex pattern with your partner, you’re going to create this strong appetite for your partner. The connection to your partner will increase and the desire for the fantasy object things will decrease.

You can optimize your brain by having relational sex with the person you’re committed to and connected to. Not only that, the sex you can have with the real person in the relational way will accelerate you optimizing your brain. Once your brain becomes singular in its attachment, it stays that way. My wife Lisa is the only person I want to have sex with. I notice there are attractive people around, but I don’t want to have sex with them. I want to have sex with my wife. She’s awesome. She’s beautiful and I am so neurologically glued because of the attachment that we’ve had on a repetitive basis for thirty years. Ladies, let me just tell you a secret, it doesn’t matter what you really look like, if he’s looking at you during sex, he’s connecting to you. It doesn’t matter what you weigh. It doesn’t matter how big this is or how small this is, he’s attaching to you.

So, if you’re in a marriage, say for ten or fifteen years and he looks at you and goes, “You are so hot,” and you know you’ve gained weight, you’ve got stretch marks, stuff like that. You might say, “Oh, gosh, you don’t think I’m really beautiful.” No, he really does. He is neurologically conditioned to you and your body, so you don’t have to worry about that. If he’s looking at you during sex, he’s bonding to you during sex. You don’t have to second-guess your body. We probably need to do a whole other podcast on women and the body shame they have because there’s supposed to be some kind of idealistic thing. Listen, men don’t care about that. If they’re attaching to you and they’re looking at you, they’ve optimized their brain. They’ve connected to you, your eyes, your body, your scent and they are connected to you. So when they say, “Hey,” thirty years from now, “you are so hot,” they could pass a lie detector test on that because their conditioning is to you, and that attachment is real. They have optimized their brain. They have cut a uni-focused sexuality to one soul and that is you.

So you can relax and enjoy yourself. You don’t have to worry about what you look like, or what your weight is, or anything like that. Just enjoy yourself, because if somebody’s optimized their brain towards you and you towards them, and you’re having relational sex on a regular basis, your brains are optimal. You’re having great sex and you’re reinforcing it exactly the way we’re made— to attach at that deep level on an ongoing basis with another person. It’s so satiating. You want to make sure you are optimizing your brain and you’re having relational sex. If you need to get the rubber band, get yourself one and move towards reconditioning your brain. Go ahead and go for that. Do that. It’s life changing.

Now, I want you to go to loveandsextoday.com, subscribe there and then post a review on iTunes. Our team will select one person a month who comments. They will receive a conversation with me. We will speak on the phone and discuss anything you want to talk about to see if we can help you in some way, move your life or business or relationships to another level. And that’s why we do this. We want your lives to go to another level. We want you to have that connection. You deserve to have incredible relationships. If you’re struggling with anything, as far as addictions, you’re welcome to call the Heart to Heart Counseling Center at 719-278-3708. We’d love to help you if we can. As always, I want you to have the best sex and love today.

If you want to learn about this topic in detail along with other great insights on marriage, check out the Ten-Minute Marriage

The Ten Minute Marriage