How to Re-Ignite Your Sex Life (Special Guest: Pat Stedman)

A few weeks ago I was listening to the Mad Mamluks – shoutout to Mahin, SIM, Sheikh Amir, and Mort.

They had a psychologist on who is a relationship consultant.

The topic of dead bedrooms came up.

I don’t want to take anything away from the guest – it was a good discussion and there was some good advice given.

However, I felt like they didn’t really nail the issue.

The problem is, we tend to neglect the fact that the female has her own sexuality and sexual arousal.

We tend to think of lust and desire as something solely male, as opposed to male and female.

When that happens we look at sex a certain way that’s not correct.

The other thing (and it’s morally a good thing) is that most religiously observant Muslims don’t have sexual experience outside of marriage.

So, when we’re talking about sexuality I think it’s important for us to understand it as it is, and only then apply our moral framework to it.

In order to do that, I decided to invite a dating and relationship coach – Patrick Stedman.

Pat and I follow each other on Twitter and I am a reader of his blog, which is where I got the idea to have him on.

He got into relationship coaching because he had a poor track record interacting with women until he took the time to learn the skills he needed.

His work paid off – his own romantic life improved considerably and he’s helped a lot of men improve their own.

He’s married now, and his skill-set carries over to the relationship he has with his wife.

This is great for us because he’s relatable and he understands the relationship dynamics in a marriage.

Show Notes – How to Re-Ignite Your Sex Life

Marriage is Dating on Hard Mode

When you’re single and dating, women are fungible.

You don’t necessarily have to have your mindset completely right because if you mess up, there’s always another girl around the corner.

It’s also easier to maintain the frame because the girl is aware you’re not committed to her.

When you’re married, you don’t have as many options to walk away.

You also have to up your game because you can’t fake relationship competence over a long period of time.

What is Frame? What is Frame Control?

You can look at Frame in many layers.

On a macro level, Frame is a shared set of assumptions about how the World works.

On a micro level, an individual can control the frame and dictate it to others.

For example, on a macro level, we could say the mainstream media controls the frame because they control the news cycle and what subjects are on the minds of their viewers (this is not necessarily the case in 2017.)

On a micro level, for example, the person others look to as an authority figure controls the frame.

This is very important in romantic relationships because women are naturally submissive, even though cultural conditioning (Feminism) has created cognitive dissonance in many women.

There’s a reason why women are the most miserable they’ve ever been (read: the happiness paradox.)

So, when you’re in a relationship it’s very important you control the frame because

1) that keeps her interested in you

2) it allows you to start to have the dynamics you want.

If you lose the frame she’s going to rapidly lose attraction for you.

In Islam, the frame is pre-set by the religion – the man leads and the woman follows. Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? Does it prevent men from fully realizing their frame control?

It’s definitely an advantage.

Pat has a concept he calls the 3 pillars of attraction.

The first pillar is “Pre-selection,” which includes traits like wealth, fame, social status, physique.

Things that, when a girl sees you, will make her automatically fall into your frame.

You can lose the frame if all you have is pre-selection and don’t have any of the other requisite traits – she’ll think you’re a paper tiger and fall out of attraction.

In a cultural or religious context, if it is understood the woman submits to the man, this is a huge advantage because it gives every guy a pre-selection boost.

The one downside to this and Pat still thinks the benefits outweigh the downside, a lot of guys will not know how to keep the frame because it’s set for them.

They go into the relationship with the idea that, “oh, the girl’s supposed to follow me,” but they don’t understand interpersonal dynamics.

They might have superficial control over the relationship but psychologically they don’t have that control.

And because they think they are supposed to be in control they get cognitive dissonance themselves.

So, you will sometimes end up with overly macho, aggressive, almost angry men because they don’t actually have control and they think they’re supposed to have control.

The most common problem is the man letting himself go and the wife losing attraction

A really good way to look at it, think about a military unit.

The enlisted men are supposed to follow the officer.

If the officer is s***, you’ll have bad morale and the enlisted men are not going to really follow.

They might even become passive aggressive towards the officer.

You see this story play out in some war movies – in some cases, the officer may even get fragged.

The point is, they’re not satisfied with the leader and they don’t respect him but they have to follow him.

This is similar to the situation in a Muslim marriage because in the West such men would not have the leadership position in the first place – they’ll just get walked all over.

If the women are supposed to follow men but the men don’t know how to lead, it’s going to be a very toxic relationship.

The real advantage here is learning how to lead well.

Transactional thinking, turning sex into a commodity, is a mistake

This is a problem with a lot of men, in part because men are very logical.

“If I do this, then you’ll do that.”

However, that’s not how leadership works and especially not how it works with women.

You have to pay as much attention to quality as much as quantity.

You can’t negotiate desire.

When you commodify sex, it because transactional and loses the meaning entirely.

Pat says this is a big problem in Western culture.

But you realize when you date different girls, and this is something Marx Baxter and Jack Murphy discussed on Mark’s podcast, is that sex is much more than just getting off.

There are lust and passion, but there are also ego and self-worth – a clear majority of guys want there to be more than just physical thrusting.

The two problems with transactional sex

1) It kills the emotional element – if you had sex with a 9.5 but she just laid there like a dead fish it’s kind of soul-crushing. You’d much rather have a 6 who was really into and wanted you badly. Guys tend to lie to themselves, “sex is like pizza, even bad sex is good.”

2) Even worse than the first. If you’re married, that’s who you’re sleeping with. She has leverage over you. She wants sex too, but her mechanisms for how she wants it are different from yours. Physiologically, the guy wants sex on a regular basis. If the girl realizes that, she knows she can extract value out of it. How a girl goes about doing this will depend on her own level of Game.

If you start to make sex transactional, you are going to have to pay more and more.

So, a lot of guys in the West fall into the girl’s frame.

The girl trains the guy to give her whatever she wants in exchange for sex.

Even if the relationship didn’t start that way it can easily go in that direction.

So, don’t even entertain it.

You need to be willing to control your libido and if she goes down that route just say, “I’m not even going to have sex with you.”

Is a relationship like a car? Do you have to keep filling the gas tank up?

This encapsulates the frame of a lot of well-meaning Muslim men when it comes to their sex lives.

Here’s something interesting.

Back in the day, most things didn’t require money – people just had relationships with each other and they’d do things for each other based on that relationship.

Modern society has tried to commodify the entire human experience – each interaction has a dollar value.

Tinder is a perfect example – it’s a marketplace for sex.

For a relationship to be high quality, there has to be a give and take, but it’s the give-and-take of the tribe.

The health of the relationship depends on each doing what makes the other happy.

You should want to make your wife happy, but your frame shouldn’t be I need to make her happy to get what I want.

And ideally, it’s because your wife is doing the same.

What are the top 3 things we should know about women in the context of a sexual relationship?

Don’t overcommunicate

Think about the frame.

Don’t ask your woman “why don’t you want to have sex with me?”

Your frame communicates “needy child” and you lose.

Also and often, women don’t even know what they really want.

She might tell you what she thinks you want to hear and you won’t get much use out of her answer.

If you do have to ask her, control the frame.

Ask her, “what’s going on?”

And don’t do it in a sexual context – don’t do it just before initiating sex.

Women want high-status men

Understand female sexual psychology.

Muslims have a big advantage in the sexes being generally segregated.

One of the problems in the secular West is the sexes are completely desegregated.

There’re pros and cons to both but it’s clear in the West men aren’t allowed to be men and women aren’t allowed to be women.

Women are inherently hypergamous.

This means women continually want higher and higher status men, and particularly, higher status than them.

The degree to which a woman will be hypergamous will depend on her culture and personality, but every woman is.

How is this relevant to men?

You always have to be improving your sexual value.

The problem when we get into relationships is we get complacent and stop improving ourselves.

In a proper cultural context you’ll get the veneer of a submissive woman, she’ll cook and clean and have sex with you dutifully, but ask yourself if that is what you really want?

So, increase your sexual value relative to her.

Show her you want her, don’t show her you need her

And then show her you desire her – women love to be desired.

The key is when you show her you desire her don’t show her you need her.

Your value as a man should always be sub-communicated throughout the relationship – that she is very lucky to have you.

You want her, and you want her now, but she’s got a good thing.

That’s the key to maintaining frame and the key to maintaining her craving for you.

Caveat: be dominant, not domineering

Don’t be overt and in-your-face about your high status relative to her.

This is a tightrope.

You need to show your higher value but you also have to maintain trust.

If she doesn’t feel secure and feels like you’re going to treat her like crap, she’ll shut down emotionally.

What’s the best way to improve my sexual value? What gives men the best bang for their buck?

The most important thing is physique – physique is a huge force multiplier.

Pat turns away potential clients who are overweight or obese.

Such men are much better served by focusing their energy and money on improving their health and physical appearance.

Women are also visual creatures.

While status and frame are huge, when it comes down to making yourself sexually appealing nothing beats staying in shape.

So, instead of hiring a relationship coach fatties need to hire a personal trainer.

Business side-discussion

Pat’s attitude to his potential clients is good business.

Turning away potential clients until they are ready for him develops preeminence in the mind of his clients.

This is something Jay Abraham talks about.

He is investing in the relationship first by helping them achieve what they need.

And that keeps them coming back to him for more because they know he has their best interests in mind.

Strength Training helps with Presence

Especially if you’re someone who’s contemplative or an introvert, lifting weights will teach you to be present in the moment.

And that helps when you’re demonstrating your desire for your wife.

You don’t have to be with her as long as you’re fully present with her and not distracted.

Think about this – what’s going to happen to a man in the wild if he’s lost in his head?

He’ll get eaten.

A guy who’s always lost in his thoughts creates a lot of sub-conscious anxiety in the girl.

Because of this, she’s going to test his frame a lot.

(Nabeel: A Frame Test, also known as a S*** Test, is when a woman says or does something to elicit an emotional or verbal response from you.

It’s a way to determine your composure or self-control aka your frame.

If you maintain frame, you pass the test. If you lose frame you fail the test.)

If you are fully present, this has the opposite effect.

It makes her feel safe, desired, and valued.

Lifting is good because it gets you out of your head and able to experience your environment.

Meditation or prayer also helps.

Find a way to check in with yourself if you find yourself falling into your thoughts.

Here’s a mantra you can use if you find yourself tuning out of an interaction.

Say to yourself, “there’s no place else I’d rather be, there’s no one else I’d rather see.”

The importance of Confidence

Pat has a hilarious post on his website about DJ Khaled and what we can learn from him in dealing with women.

He was writing a post on how to talk to women and in research that post, came across a video by DJ Khaled called “how to talk to women.”

Pat has a lot of respect for DJ Khaled even though he says negative things about him.

Khaled is not the most intelligent person out there but the one thing he has that 99% of people smarter than him don’t have is a complete sense of deservedness.

Most of the issues guys have with confidence comes down to what they think they deserve.

DJ Khaled thinks he deserves everything – he’s the best and he repeats it over and over again (great marketing, by the way.)

Look at all the collaborations he has – he doesn’t really do anything except have the balls to develop relationships with all these star artists.

He creates this vortex of “we the best” and people can’t help but fall into his frame.

He’s like Donald Trump but Trump is probably aware of what he’s doing. Khaled, maybe no so much.

The point is DJ Khaled feels like he deserves it – deserves to be a multimillionaire, deserves to be famous, deserves to have beautiful women around him.

He has a complete lack of self-doubt, and that is something that is really important for men.

A lot of men who do a lot of dating and chasing women focus more on pick-up techniques and neglect the mindset and confidence.

For Muslim men, the mindset is more important – what’s going on under the hood.

Many guys will have parts of their psyche fighting against each other.

If they get into self-improvement they’ll vocalize, “I want to have a great wife,” but part of them will think, “I don’t deserve a great wife.”

It’s very important for guys to break down and resolve their cognitive dissonance between these two parts.

This is the thing Pat focuses on the most with his clients.

DJ Khaled’s frame is rock-solid – everyone falls into is Frame.

People will sometimes fall into his frame and they don’t even understand it.

They’ll say, “I don’t know what I follow his Snapchat but I’m addicted.”

Check out Khaled’s interview on Hot 97 (embedded at the bottom of this post) – watch Laura Styles reaction to him and you’ll see exactly what Pat’s talking about.

Pat’s Seduction Special Moves

Some background: One of the big mistakes guys make with women is being afraid of silence.

Society has conditioned the guy to lead the courting process and persuade her to be with him.

The problem is, some guys don’t know when to shut up.

Especially if the guy is a good conversationalist or is good at making women laugh.

What happens if he keeps this up is the frame starts to change from, “this guy is attractive and I like him” to “this guy really wants me to laugh at his jokes.”

And that starts to kill the attraction, and she may not even be conscious of this happening.

Really, you don’t need to talk that much.

What matters waaaaaaay more is your sub-communication and your body language.

So, you can start of an interaction and be chatting for five minutes…

Then flip the frame in your mind.

You are now screening the girl.

You are trying to determine whether this girl is going to add value to your life and live up to your standards.

One of the best ways to do this is to pull back from the conversation.

And this is the move…

Give her strong eye contact (eye contact is very important, it’s a dominance play) and a little bit of a smirk.

A smirk is a mischievous, mysterious look.

She doesn’t know what you’re thinking – What is he thinking about? Is he scheming? Is he thinking about me?

So, you just sort of sit there and allow there to be pauses in the conversation.

Just allow the tension to slowly build and then you say, “so….”

And you let it hang there, you hold the space.

This is the moment where girls start to get the tingles (i.e. she becomes sexually aroused.)

Because you’re sitting there, looking at her with intense eye contact and a smirk, and all the pressure is now on her.

It’s super powerful. Pat say’s it’s worked extremely well for him in the past.

The key is to maintain composure and self-control even if you are feeling nervous about the silence.

Understand, whatever tension or anxiousness you’re feeling is quadrupled for her.

Even if you’re married it still works.

She might get used to it a little bit, but it still works.

It’s a playful reminder that you’re a benevolent guy but you want her and you’re in control.

What’s going on in her head, is she’s developing this whole narrative behind the silence – it’s called “the hamster.”

Combined with the already present sexual tension, her mind automatically goes into arousal mode.

You don’t always need to be overtly sexual with a girl.

The “so…” move does everything you need i.e. generates sexual arousal, while maintaining propriety.

The more she has to think about it the more she falls into your frame, and then it’s like you’re playing the game on easy.

Bonus move

When you’re going in for a hug or a kiss, pull her towards you rather than you moving towards her.

Wrap your hand around the small of her back towards you.

Your body language lets her feel your strength and sub-communicates your dominance.

You’re literally pulling her into your physical space, into your frame.

Where can You Find Pat Stedman Online?

Twitter – @pat_stedman

Website – Pat Stedman: Dating and Relationship Coaching

Free men-only Facebook group – The Dynamic Men

Pat’s got a book coming out on Texting in the near future, so keep an eye out for that.

Resources

Articles mentioned during the show:

• 5 rules for great sex in a relationship

• How to talk to women: DJ Khaled dating advice

• Talk Like a Man by Kitten Holiday

• The Desire Dynamic by Rollo Tomassi

Highlights of DJ Khaled’s Hot 97 interview:

For training and nutrition info, weight lifting programs, and personal training:

• Alexander Juan Antonio Cortes

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