Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want

Laura Jurgens, Ph.D.
  • 5.0 (30)
  • Sexuality
  • Updated Weekly

Formerly The Desire Gap Podcast Most people who feel disconnected from their desire, their pleasure, or their partners have spent years assuming something is wrong with them. It isn't. The disconnection is real — but it traces back to what most of us were never taught: how to be in our bodies fully, how to connect to each other authentically, how to know and ask for what we need without guilt or shame. Culture shapes that — the broader culture we inherit, and the family we grew up in — and it can be unlearned. Pleasure, secure attachment, and authentic desire are your birthright. You can learn what you were never taught — and unlearn what got in the way. Dr. Laura Jurgens is a somatic sex and intimacy specialist, Master Certified Intimacy Coach, American Board of Sexology Certified Sex Educator, and former research professor whose work sits at the intersection of nervous system science, attachment theory, and genuine embodied pleasure. Every episode delivers the somatic, body-based tools that generic relationship advice and most therapists miss entirely — because desire, pleasure, and connection aren't fixed by talking more. They're fixed by giving your body and your nervous system reparative experiences that shift you out of your past.  This show covers: getting out of your head during sex · low libido and what actually helps · somatic and nervous system approaches to intimacy · desire discrepancy and mismatched libido · secure attachment and relationship repair · sexual shame and body disconnection · how to talk about sex without fighting · ADHD and desire · the orgasm gap and why it exists · reclaiming pleasure on your own terms. Whether you've tried therapy, books, date nights, or just quietly wondering why intimacy feels harder than it should — this show will help you understand why those things don't move the needle — and what does. New episodes weekly. Start wherever you are. Free resource: Get Out of Your Head — A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guideWheel of Erotic Emotions: https;//laurajurgens.com/wheelFor deeper analysis and the research behind desire, arousal, and attachment -- plus a chance to ask me questions, subscribe to my Substack here:  https://laurajurgens.substack.com/

  1. 6d ago

    The Worth Wound:: Why You're Attracted to People Who Don't Want You

    I used to break up with the good ones. The kind, available, clearly-into-me ones. Not because I got bored. Because it made my skin crawl. I knew it was bad for me, but I didn't fully understand why I felt that way until I learned to feel worthy, twenty years later. This is the final episode in my series on attachment wounds and how they shape desire and relationship dynamics. Today's is the worth wound: the belief that love has to be earned. We talk about how this impacts relationships and, among other things, turns intimacy into performance instead of presence. In this episode: Where the worth wound gets built in childhood, even in loving families, and why high-achieving or scarcity-driven households produce it so reliablyHow it shows up differently in the body: sexual numbness or pain in people with vulvas, erectile difficulty or hypersexuality in people with penises, both tied to performance anxiety Why being fully wanted by someone who's clearly into you can feel like an ick instead of a relief, and what that reaction is actually protecting you fromThe two erotic pathways this wound creates, why playing with them can be healing if you know how to ask a partner for the right stuff, and how to tell which one your fantasies are runningHow this wound plays out in long-term relationships: testing partners, over-functioning, and the black hole dynamic where nothing your partner offers ever feels like enoughThe two-part practice for healing it: soothing the inner child parts that hold the not-enoughness, then practicing being instead of doingThe sentence most worth-wound carrying people crave from themselves and their loved onesYou are not required to perform your way into being loved. That was never the deal, even when it felt like it was. You get to just be wanted. Topics: feeling unworthy, attachment wounds, dissociating during sex, feeling numb during sex, performance anxiety men, people pleasing Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  2. Sep 7

    How to Say No to Sex Without Rejecting Your Partner

    She wanted more sex with her husband. She flirted. She invited him to bed. She was not subtle. And he had an entire set of moves for avoiding it. Staying up working late. Taking a very long shower and hoping she'd be asleep by the time he came to bed. Acting harried, a quick peck, roll over. He almost never said no out loud. He told me directly that he was avoiding saying it because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. He thought that was the kind version. It was so much worse than a no would have been. Because what she was receiving, night after night, was not "not tonight." It was "I don't want you." Here's the punchline, straight out: a no and a rejection are not the same thing. A no is information about this moment. A rejection is the withdrawal of connection. Most of us have collapsed them into one thing, and it's costing us. In this episode: Why a no is just one piece of data about right now, and a rejection is something you do with your body and your attentionThe two reasons people overstate their no: not feeling entitled to say it, and never having seen it done wellWhat the nonverbal rejection dance does to a relationship over time, and why invitations eventually stop happening altogetherA four-step way to say no out loud and stay connected while you do itWhat to do if you're the one receiving it, because this is not a one-person jobWhy the desire for an orgasm and the desire for connection are different wants, and what happens when you conflate themOther ways of connecting, and why most of my clients turn out to want to feel wanted more than they want sex at any given moment (regardless of gender)You can say no as often as it's true. A no is a gift of trust. It's the rejection that does the damage, and those are two completely different dances. This episode will show you how to separate them.  Topics: sexual rejection, saying no to sex, desire discrepancy, mismatched libido, responsive desire, feeling rejected by partner Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  3. Aug 31

    The Freedom Wound: Why You Say Yes When You Want to Say No

    Picture someone who says yes to almost everything. They're helpful, they're loyal, they always show up. And yet there's always some reluctance. A headache. A tiredness. They take forever to get out the door. Underneath all that yes is a wagon load of resentment about being asked in the first place. This shows up in bed exactly the way it shows up everywhere else. They think they want intimacy. They say they want it, and they probably mean it. But when the moment comes, their body does something else. If you ask what changed, they may genuinely not know. This is episode four of the specific attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and it's about what happens when a small child's no was not allowed. Around age two to five, we're supposed to discover that we get to decide things for ourselves, at least sometimes. When that gets squashed, or love is conditional on compliance, life turns into a series of obligations. The autonomy that never got a legitimate outlet goes underground into slowness, procrastination, and quiet resistance. A lot of people with this wound have to be allowed to say no before they can find a yes. Not as a preference. As a requirement. In this episode: Where the freedom wound comes from, and the two very different directions it goes depending on whether compliance actually earned loveWhat it feels like from the inside, including the pride in enduring and the fury about having had to endureWhy procrastination and slowness are the body's protest response, not a character flawWhy welcoming a partner's no is one of the most erotic things you can do, and why it's non-negotiable for this woundThe paradox of chosen restraint, and why submitting to control you selected can feel like freedomWhy dragging your partner into anything is the worst available strategy, and what to do insteadHow to start telling the difference between an obligated yes and a real oneThere is nothing wrong with you. This was a wise strategy for a small person who wasn't allowed to have preferences. You're allowed to have them now. Topics: sex feels like obligation, people pleasing in relationships, resentment in relationships, saying no, attachment wounds Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  4. Aug 24

    Penis Size, Performance Anxiety, and What Women Really Want

    A man came to me because his marriage was close enough to over that they'd both used the word divorce. Underneath the resentment and the withdrawal and the fights about everything else was this: his erections came and went. Sometimes they softened partway through. Sometimes they didn't show up. That is normal. It happens to men at every age. But he was so ashamed of it that he avoided sex with his wife for ten years. She had guessed, and she had told him more than once that it did not matter to her. He did not believe her. We solved it in about four sessions. None of the actual problems were about his penis. They were about the shame, the silence, the misdirected anger, and the avoidance. This is the third episode in my body shame series, and it's the one for people with penises. I'm giving you the real numbers on size, hardness, and duration, because they are nothing like what porn taught you. Then I'm going through each specific worry with a fix that gets you both more pleasure and less anxiety. In this episode: Where penis shame comes from, and what porn does to your subconscious when you don't get better informationThe actual average erect length, from clinician-measured data on over 55,000 men, plus what's normal variation (hint: 3" is as normal as 7")Why 85% of women are satisfied with their partner's size while only 55% of men are satisfied with their own, and what to do about size, regardless of yoursThe single change that solves lasting-longer anxiety better than any technique, and why stopping sex when you orgasm is the real problemWhy 75 to 80% of women don't orgasm from penetration alone, and what that means for where your anxiety is aimedHow performance anxiety physically restricts blood flow, and why you cannot will an erection into existence by worrying at itSpecific fixes for size concerns, a genuinely small penis, erections that fluctuate, delayed ejaculation, aging, and lower desireWhat women consistently report actually caring aboutYour penis was never the problem. Don't spend any more years of your life creating unnecessary misery because of shame about it. Topics: erectile dysfunction anxiety, penis size, delayed ejaculation, premature ejaculation, how to last longer, what women want in bed Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  5. Aug 17

    The Trust Wound: Why Being Vulnerable Feels So Dangerous

    I used to chase accomplishment hard, and I dismissed soft skills and people skills entirely — mostly because I had no idea how to do them. I'd put on this dissociated charm self when I met new people, which wasn't connection at all. It was a disarming move. If I could charm you first, you couldn't get to me. Underneath all of it was a deep fear of being publicly rejected. A close colleague of mine has the same wound and it looked nothing like that from the outside. Hers came out as passive aggression, eye rolls, indirect judgment, the quiet withdrawal of approval. Underneath: a deep fear of humiliation. Two different flavors of the same armor, both doing the same job of not letting anyone get close enough to make us feel small. This is episode three of the attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and it's about the trust wound — what happens when your openness got used against you, and you concluded you'd never be in that position again. The paradox at the center of it: the erotic emotion people with this wound most often crave is the exact thing they've spent their lives defending against. In this episode: Where the trust wound comes from, and why humiliation specifically drives manipulation as a coping responseThe two developmental paths, depending on how old you were when it happenedWhat it feels like from the inside, including the constant low-level tracking of who has power in a roomWhy the powerful poles — revered, dominant, worshiped, unattainable — show up as the obvious turn-ons, and what's often underneath themHow this shows up in relationships: guilt tripping, triangulation, passive aggression, and pseudo-connectionWhy the vulnerability play that can heal this needs serious aftercare, and what happens if you get droppedWhat actually changed for both me and my colleague, including what she discovered was a real turn-onVulnerability is not the thing that makes you vulnerable. Look around at how many people are working to avoid it. It isn't making them any safer. It's just keeping them from being known. Topics: fear of humiliation, why is it so hard to be vulnerable, passive aggressive relationship, invulverable Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  6. Aug 10

    Is My Vagina Normal? Undoing Vulva and Labia Shame

    Around 40, I realized I felt disgust about my own g******s. I'd been carrying middle school bullies' words about female bodies in my head for more than thirty years without ever once questioning them, and it wasn't until I started trying to reclaim my own sexuality that it smacked me in the face. It's very hard to feel pleasure in a part of your body you feel bad about. If any of that lands, you are in extremely good company, and I want you to know it is not personal, not yours alone, and not permanent. This episode covers where female genital shame comes from, why it's more layered than penis shame, and the exact four-step process I used to repair my own relationship with my vulva. Plus the myths worth dismantling on the way: that vulvas are dirty, that porn vulvas resemble real ones, and that "vagina" is the right word for the parts that actually give you pleasure. A scope note: this episode addresses cis women's experience specifically. Trans people with vulvas face distinct and important challenges with genital shame that deserve dedicated coverage, and I'm working with a trans colleague on a collaborative episode on that. In this episode: Where vulva shame comes from, and the strange contradiction at the center of it — women are the only sex with an organ that exists purely for our own pleasureWhy middle school is so often where genital shame gets installed, and what's actually going on for the boys doing the installingThe dirty myth, and why calling a vulva dirty makes about as much sense as calling a flower dirtyWhy porn vulvas aren't real-world vulvas, and how to normalize the actual rangeVulva versus vagina, why the distinction matters for your pleasure, and how to pick language that works for youMy four-step repair process: acknowledging the harm, normalizing through exposure, mirror work, and a daily gratitude practiceThe eviction exercise — identifying whose voice is actually in your head, and taking away their voteThere is no downside to loving your g******s. None. And on the other side of that shame is considerably more pleasure than you currently have access to. Topics: vulva shame, genital shame, body shame, labia, women's pleasure Resource Links: https://www.labialibrary.org.au/labia_gallery/  https://www.all-vulvas-are-beautiful.com/ https://www.thevulvagallery.com Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  7. Aug 3

    The Dependency Wound: When Care Was Never Something You Could Count On

    One partner wants sex constantly and can't understand why they're being refused. The other has quietly stopped wanting it at all and feels like they're constantly being pestered. Most people assume these two have opposite problems. Often times, they don't. They have the same challenge underneath, but they are coping in different ways. We're going beyond the standard "anxious or avoidant" here. Most of us learned early on whether care was something we could count on, and when the answer was unreliable, we did what smart, adaptive human children do: we picked a coping strategy and got very good at it. There are two main choices children make — pursue harder, or stop needing. Those two roads lead to very different adults, very different ways of existing in relationships, and very specific erotic desires. This episode will help you understand the challenges, drawbacks, opportunities, and desires that come from each path, and how to work with those to have better connections, easier relationships, and a more satisfying sex life. This is episode three of the attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and the second one on specific wounds. In this episode: Where the dependency wound comes from, including causes that have nothing to do with bad parenting and everything to do with circumstances that made consistent attunement hardThe two survival strategies it creates, and what each one actually feels like from the insideWhy the under-dependent's deepest erotic craving is often identical to the over-dependent's, just buried under years of pretending it isn't thereHow both patterns land on a partner, in and out of bedWhy over-dependents and under-dependents are drawn to each other, and why that match can go sideways fastWhat movement actually looks like for each, including the single most important thing an under-dependent can do before they quietly shut someone out for goodYour needs are real. Both sides of this wound are just different ways of coping with the same early experience, and you can learn to count on care being there. Topics:  anxious avoidant attachment, my partner never wants sex, sex feels like obligation, mismatched libido couples, desire discrepancy Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

  8. Jul 27

    Body Shame and Your Sex Life: It's Not Your Fault, and Only You Can Fix It

    Body shame is pervasive, especially for women but increasingly for everyone, and it gets in the way of much more than how we feel in a swimsuit. It gets in the way of presence, pleasure, and our capacity for real connection. This is the first episode in a series I'm doing on body shame. If you've ever been so in your head about how you look that you couldn't stay present with a partner, or with yourself, this one is for you. I walk through where body shame actually comes from (spoiler: it's not truth, or you, that's the problem), the business model built on manufactured insecurity, the medical misinformation and racial history behind our cultural obsession with weight, and why shaming yourself has never once helped anyone change. I also share the exact steps I used to move from shame to neutral to genuinely loving my body. In this episode: Why body shame kills presence, pleasure, and desire, and why underconfidence itself isn't sexyWhere body shame really comes from: family, culture, diet culture, and a patriarchy that built this by design, not by accidentThe advertising strategy behind manufactured insecurity, including research on exactly when women feel worst about themselvesDebunking the medical myths: why BMI was never built to measure individual health, and why weight stigma itself, not weight, is the real risk factorThe racial history behind fat phobia and Eurocentric beauty standards, and how that bias still shows up in medicine todayWhy shaming yourself has never once helped you change, and what your inner rebel is actually trying to tell youMy own story of hiding my arms for years, and finally wearing tank tops without a second thought"Point positive," the whitewater kayaking principle I now use to retrain my brain out of shame spiralsThe exact steps for shifting from shame to neutral to genuinely believing you're lovable and attractive exactly as you areTopics: body image and sex, overthinking sex, get out of your head in bed, fatphobia, health at every size, mindset work for body image Resources mentioned: Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, by Lindo Bacon, PhD  https://lindobacon.com/health-at-every-size-book/ Send Laura Fan Mail Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide More links: Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/ Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

See All (139)

5
out of 5
30 Ratings

About

Formerly The Desire Gap Podcast Most people who feel disconnected from their desire, their pleasure, or their partners have spent years assuming something is wrong with them. It isn't. The disconnection is real — but it traces back to what most of us were never taught: how to be in our bodies fully, how to connect to each other authentically, how to know and ask for what we need without guilt or shame. Culture shapes that — the broader culture we inherit, and the family we grew up in — and it can be unlearned. Pleasure, secure attachment, and authentic desire are your birthright. You can learn what you were never taught — and unlearn what got in the way. Dr. Laura Jurgens is a somatic sex and intimacy specialist, Master Certified Intimacy Coach, American Board of Sexology Certified Sex Educator, and former research professor whose work sits at the intersection of nervous system science, attachment theory, and genuine embodied pleasure. Every episode delivers the somatic, body-based tools that generic relationship advice and most therapists miss entirely — because desire, pleasure, and connection aren't fixed by talking more. They're fixed by giving your body and your nervous system reparative experiences that shift you out of your past.  This show covers: getting out of your head during sex · low libido and what actually helps · somatic and nervous system approaches to intimacy · desire discrepancy and mismatched libido · secure attachment and relationship repair · sexual shame and body disconnection · how to talk about sex without fighting · ADHD and desire · the orgasm gap and why it exists · reclaiming pleasure on your own terms. Whether you've tried therapy, books, date nights, or just quietly wondering why intimacy feels harder than it should — this show will help you understand why those things don't move the needle — and what does. New episodes weekly. Start wherever you are. Free resource: Get Out of Your Head — A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guideWheel of Erotic Emotions: https;//laurajurgens.com/wheelFor deeper analysis and the research behind desire, arousal, and attachment -- plus a chance to ask me questions, subscribe to my Substack here:  https://laurajurgens.substack.com/

Information

You Might Also Like