Over four seasons, the podcast has taught me things no textbook, qualification or client session ever could. <\/p>\n
Because I haven\u2019t just talked about sex. I have had to live it, examine it, laugh about it, occasionally cry about it and then turn up to a microphone and tell my pal Hayley Sproull and the whole world about it. <\/p>\n
Here are five things Sex.Life has taught me. <\/p>\n
1. I am braver than I think I am<\/p>\n
The first season took me to a secret sex school in rural New Zealand. There was genital gazing. Nude exercises. Sacred spot massages. There were moments where I wondered what the hell I had signed myself up for. <\/p>\n
There were things I never thought I could do, or would do, because it was so far out of my comfort zone. <\/p>\n
I remember being confronted with exercises where there was nowhere to hide behind my professional title. I couldn\u2019t be \u201cthe sexologist\u201d standing safely on the sidelines explaining the theory. I was Morgan, in a room, having a real, bodily experience. And even though I was terrified, I wanted to do it because I felt I could only take my clients as far as I had gone, in a lived experience. <\/p>\n
That has become one of the great gifts of Sex.Life. I\u2019ve discovered I can be scared, embarrassed or uncertain and still do the weird and sometimes wonderful thing. <\/p>\n
Sometimes courage is not feeling confident. Sometimes it is by being curious and trusting that there is growth on the other side. <\/p>\n
2. Sexual empowerment isn\u2019t about being up for everything<\/p>\n
Season two was me asking: what else is out there? <\/p>\n
I went to a swingers\u2019 party with a man I nicknamed Cowboy. I visited a sex club. I explored kink and primal play. I put on a Mexican wrestling mask, got on a mat and wrestled a man three times my size (yes, this lands somewhere on the sexual spectrum). <\/p>\n
This is when I learned you don\u2019t have to like something just because you fantasised about it. Sometimes things are best left in fantasy land. <\/p>\n
At one point, I found myself surrounded by people dressed as dogs, cats and squirrels and thought, no one should ever feel alone in their desires. <\/p>\n
If you like it, there is someone else out there that feels the same. Some experiences I expected to love were underwhelming. Others surprised me. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned being sexually empowered doesn\u2019t mean saying yes to every opportunity, fantasy or experience that comes your way. <\/p>\n
Sometimes the most empowered thing you can do is realise, \u201cactually, that\u2019s not for me,\u201d and trust yourself enough to walk away. <\/p>\n
Sexual freedom isn\u2019t about having no boundaries. It\u2019s about having the freedom to choose what feels honouring to you. <\/p>\n
3. Intimacy isn\u2019t just romantic <\/p>\n
One of the most delicious things Sex.Life gave me was my relationship with Hayley. <\/p>\n
When we started, we were two women with very different lived experiences, sitting behind microphones sharing about sex. But she quickly became the person who didn\u2019t leave me hanging out my dirty laundry by myself. The ridiculous stories. The awkward stories. The stories that made me cringe. The things I wasn\u2019t sure I wanted to admit out loud. She met me on every level. <\/p>\n
I have revealed some wild things in this podcast and she has never once recoiled. Yes, sometimes she\u2019s shocked and will laugh at me, yes she\u2019s always got a great question (\u201cwhat did the room smell like with 50 nude people dancing around in it?\u201d). But mostly she says, \u201cme too\u201d. Which has been healing. <\/p>\n
Sex.Life has taught me some of the most intimate relationships in my life haven\u2019t been created through sex at all. They\u2019ve been created through vulnerability and friendship.<\/p>\n
4. I\u2019ve learned how my sexuality was shaped <\/p>\n
Season three changed the game for me because instead of asking, \u201cwhat sexual experience should I have next?\u201d I decided to ask, \u201chow did Morgan become Morgan?\u201d <\/p>\n
In all areas of my life, I was successful and achieved what I wanted. My love life, however, felt like a blindspot and with my work as a sexologist I know there are many factors that shape how we relate intimately. Especially the foundational shaping from our family of origin. <\/p>\n
So I went back. To 13-year-old me. To the older neighbour I had a massive crush on. To hiding in a wardrobe to spy on him. To skipping school to find out his name. To developing a sudden and highly suspicious passion for rugby. To the first kisses, the awkward teeth mashing, dry humping, teenage obsession and the desperate intensity of believing that one particular person might hold the key to my entire romantic future. <\/p>\n
Underneath the comedy of a girl mowing the lawns in jandals, denim shorts and a crop top to get the attention of the \u201chot neighbour\u201d was something more tender. <\/p>\n
I started to understand how early we begin learning what it means to be desirable. Who gets chosen. How we perform. How we pursue. How we attach. What we think love is supposed to feel like. And how much of our adult sexuality can be traced back to societal conditioning through movies, magazines, religion and what was normalised in the home we grew up in. <\/p>\n
For me, I was always able to enjoy being in my body, nude beach swims, nude jumping on the tramp in the rain, there was nothing to hide or be ashamed of. <\/p>\n
It was always a safe space to ask mum questions about bodies and where babies really came from. It made me feel like we were all allowed to enjoy our bodies and everyone was different and that was okay. <\/p>\n
There was never any judgment, which has shaped me to be open-minded and non-judgmental. It helps me hold a safe space for my clients. <\/p>\n
Going back through those stories didn\u2019t make me cringe at my younger self as much as it made me want to give her a hug. She was just trying to figure it out and all she really wanted was to be loved. <\/p>\n
5. I don\u2019t have to earn love<\/p>\n
The biggest thing I\u2019ve learnt is that I don\u2019t have to become a more polished, perfect or desirable version of myself to be worthy of love. This sounds obvious. I know. But knowing something intellectually and believing it are different things. <\/p>\n
Putting my personal life, my body, my sexuality and my quirks into the public domain has meant becoming familiar with the parts of myself I might once have tried to hide. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m passionate. I\u2019m opinionated. I overthink. I can be ridiculous. I have big feelings. I can be impulsive. I have insecurities. I sometimes say things before my brain has caught up with my mouth. For a long time, I believed love was something you earned by being a good girl, sexy enough but not too sexy, successful and not \u201ctoo much\u201d. <\/p>\n
Sex.Life has challenged that idea. <\/p>\n
Putting yourself out there, I discovered you cannot control what people think of you. Some people will love your honesty. Some will think you\u2019re too much. Some will think you\u2019re hilarious. Others will wonder why you would tell the world that you can play two recorders out your nose at once. <\/p>\n
But you cannot make yourself universally likeable. And eventually, you have to decide you don\u2019t want to try. I don\u2019t think you\u2019re making enough change in the world if everyone likes you. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned to love the woman who is a little weird, a little chaotic, deeply curious and occasionally too much. <\/p>\n
The most liberating realisation has been that I don\u2019t have to earn love by performing a more acceptable version of myself. <\/p>\n
And perhaps that\u2019s what I want most for listeners of Sex.Life too. Not that they become better at sex. Not that they become more desirable. But they realise they are already worthy of being loved exactly as they are. <\/p>\n
Morgan Penn is a sexologist and the co-host of Sex.Life. Season four is available weekly from iHeart radio and other podcast platforms. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over four seasons, the podcast has taught me things no textbook, qualification or client session ever could. Because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5263,95,1558,6186,21048,156,3011,8287,305,187,89855,6451,130,11212,4977,111,139,69,1118,1523,1840,3800,79501,4693,309116,309117,11555,223,20110,9880,1316,25152],"class_list":["post-630499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-all","tag-and","tag-been","tag-changed","tag-couldnt","tag-entertainment","tag-four","tag-friendship","tag-have","tag-hosting","tag-intimacy","tag-knew","tag-more","tag-morgan","tag-my","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-over","tag-penn","tag-podcast","tag-realised","tag-seasons","tag-sexlife","tag-sexologist","tag-started","tag-the","tag-thought","tag-view","tag-when","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}