How to Talk to Children About Sex – Transcript
Sex and children! How do we talk to our children about sex? This is one of the topics I get asked about all the time, and this question becomes even more crucial to couples as they begin to do this work of orgasmic enlightenment. They see and feel the changes in their own relationships and their lives, and they wonder, how can we present a different view of sexuality to our children than we got? How can we make it so that they don’t have to go through all the deprogramming that we have had to do?
Something magical that I find happens all the time is how once people hit a certain level of transformation, they become walking, living ambassadors of this work. It’s the well-fucked-ness in motion, and it’s usually inadvertent. They just begin to put themselves out in the world so differently that people see changes in them. And they might not know what the changes are, but they get asked, “What are you doing differently? There is something just different about you.”
And then the couple, or the single, will begin talking about it, and they usually can’t stop talking about it! I laugh when people come to my in-person retreats— they often tell their friends and their family that they are going on a vacation or a yoga retreat, and then they come back and are glowing and well-fucked and transcended and they share, “Well, actually we went to sex camp or orgasm school,” and they want to tell everyone.
What often happens first with the children of parents who are better connected and having holy fuck–style gourmet sex is that they notice something different about their mom and their dad. They are happier. They fight less. They’re more easygoing. They spontaneously begin making out in the kitchen. The house just feels lighter and more joyful, and this energy is infectious.
The couple is the center of the home. They, as parents, are the epicenter and the fuel source. Everything radiates out from them. If they are in sync and connected, their children, their business, everything is fed by that flow. But if they are at odds and defensive with each other, that same energy inverts on them and causes all sorts of unrest and disruption in their lives.
Their children often wear this as belligerence, fighting more, being defensive, just like their parents. Yes, you are that powerful. Your choices and your energy matter. They affect everything that you do, especially your children.
When the parents are in harmony, the family is in harmony. Often behavioral issues that have not responded to everything from medication to therapy—even though I don’t recommend medicating children—evaporate when the parents come together. Your children are the symbolic representation of your relationship. Yes, they are their own beings, but they are infinitely and fully born out of you. So what happens in you, happens in them.
The other thing to consider is if you are not educating your children and modeling a healthy sex life to them, someone else will. That will be porn or the cultural messages of shame and violation and unconsciousness or the school messages of “sex will kill you and get you pregnant; now off you go!”
I know that many people carry a history of sexual abuse and because they are so worried about transferring any of that energy to their children, they avoid the topic of sex entirely and they hide from it.
All this does is reinforce on a deep level that sex is taboo, shameful, and something to be scared of. Instead, you lead the way. You model love and bliss and the truth of sex, which is that it is a massive energy source and a portal to the divine.
This means that to do this cleanly, you need to do your own healing work around sex, and then you can be a clear channel for the truth of what sex really is and what a magical, powerful, ecstatic union actually looks like because you live it and it emanates from you every day. That is what you teach your children.
Today we are talking to Mark and Amanda. They have six children between them, ranging from age seven to 22. This is the second marriage for both of them, and so some of these children came from before them.
But not only do they have six children—they run their own successful business, and their sex life is off the charts and better than ever. I have interviewed both of them separately as All Stars because they have some great, epic, and hilarious stories to share. And I have brought them back again to address this topic of sex and children.
These guys really are the Well-F**ked All Stars of the year.
Welcome to our epic Well-F**ked All Stars, Amanda and Mark, yet again back to share their well-f**ked wisdom.
MARK: Thank you, Kim.
AMANDA: Hi!
MARK: Thanks very much.
KIM: So today, we are talking all about how we talk to our children about sex. You guys have some amazing stories that you have shared as I’ve been talking to you about your evolution and your experiences in general, and you had all these amazing stories about how you now model your sex life or your intimate relationship to your children, what they observe, and how you talk to your children about sex.
Has there been a difference since you elevated your intimate relationship in terms of how your children see you and react to you, versus before that happened?
AMANDA: I would definitely say yes. We’ve always been very openly affectionate with each other, so it’s never been a hidden thing. But I think the kids pick up on a lot more respect around the intimacy that we share with each other. What used to be, “Ew! Oh my God! Yuck!” is now “Oh, they’re kissing again!”
And the younger ones, if we’re being loving and affectionate with each other in the kitchen, like to come and wedge themselves in between us and jump in the middle, which is a really nice, sweet thing.
KIM: It feels good! They’re naturally drawn to that.
MARK: They are. They love getting in the middle of it, and if one’s in it, they’ll call out to the other younger sibling. “Hey!” And then we’ve got kind of a four-way sandwich happening.
KIM: Hey, it’s cuddle time! Let’s go.
AMANDA: [Laughs] Definitely. And in terms of when we’re sexually intimate, it’s not that they know exactly what we’re doing, but they know that we’ve gone downstairs. Our bedroom is separate; it’s downstairs from the rest of the household. All that’s down there is our bedroom. I have a 16-year-old who still lives at home and says, “If you’re downstairs, I’m just never coming down,” like that’s the end. [Laughs]
The younger two will stand at the top of the stairs and say, “Can we come down?” [Laughs] “Not today. Not now!” [Laughs]
MARK: That’s also been a little bit of an evolution because I think over the last two years that we’ve been doing the work, obviously the intimacy has climbed significantly. As Mandy says, there wasn’t ever not a lot of intimacy, but there’s certainly a constant simmering connection now.
In the early days, they would come down when we were being intimate, even before we started doing the work. And our responses would be what I would describe as culturally driven. “Quick, get out! You don’t want to see that.”
And then as we’ve done the work, they still have come down and interrupted us and we’ve just intimately paused and said, “No, guys, Mom and Dad are connecting. We’ll be up in a second.” Usually they’re coming down to say, “Can we watch something on TV?”
AMANDA: I think they know they’re going to get a yes for whatever it is that they want. [Laughs]
MARK: It’s pretty much like they can ask for anything. [Laughs]
AMANDA: Fuck, yeah. [Laughs] A funny story—we were on holiday, and Mark and I were trying a more decadent sexual act when our nine-year-old daughter came in and had a full conversation. I kind of was lying there with my legs open; he was on top of me, and it was just—
MARK: It was a full-blown—
AMANDA: So we answered all the questions and then said, “Okay, can you go out now?” She couldn’t tell what was going on.
MARK: For her, it was probably a lot like, “Are they cuddling again, only without clothes on and lying on the bed?” But she was comfortable enough to have the conversation that she wanted to have, which was not, “Can I watch TV?” It was something nine-year-old-ish. We answered all the questions and then she said, “Yeah, okay.” And off she went.
Yeah, that certainly evolved over the last two years, and now we don’t seem to get interrupted. They know that we’re connecting regularly and—
AMANDA: I think it’s also evolved from a gentle exposure of intimacy around the house. They used to say, “Ew, stop it,” which actually was because they wanted to see us kissing, but they would pretend they found it yucky.
Mark and I discussed it, and we decided that rather than stop doing that in front of them, we would gently expose them to it more so that it isn’t gross. It’s not yucky. With the older ones, we have conversations. “You can either see us being loving and caring and affectionate with each other and intimate, or the other option is angry, unhappy …”
MARK: Under-fucked. It’s really, really important, I think, for that evolution that we’ve taken. We’ve always tried to be quite open and honest with the kids about a lot of things. But certainly we’ve exposed them to it in an appropriate and loving way. Because we both had previous marriages, we learned that at the heart of everything, all that children want is for their parents to be together and loving.
Even though they, as teenagers or as young adults or even as tweenies, don’t show that, and they certainly don’t communicate that, when you get past all of that, a lot of the challenges and the damage that get done in the family unit with stepchildren and children are born from them just wanting their parents to be together.
From that we’ve kind of learned, all right, we have a relationship now that is, for us, never going to change in a negative way. For the children that are with us in the house now, we’re just giving them everything that they need to see around that. And their sense of security can be very high.
KIM: I think what a lot of people get caught up on is that they think that because there’s so much current abuse of sex and misuse of sex, the safest thing they can do is to protect their children from that. Never let them know that they have sex and never talk about it, never go there, maybe outsource that educational responsibility to the schools. And if they have to have that conversation at some point, “Okay, we’ll get prepared and we’ll do it,” [laughs] versus constantly modeling a beautiful, healthy, loving, and sensual connection that they can feel palpably.
The example of you guys kissing in the kitchen and your children gravitating toward that, like that’s an energy that feels good—it’s also constantly reinforcing, even if they don’t consciously understand it, that their parents are in love, their parents are together, their parents are happy, and they provide that safe and powerful container for the children to grow within.
Those are the messages that are constantly being reinforced to our children when they see that loving connection expressed, rather than, “We can give a kiss on the cheek to say goodbye, but we can’t really show deep affection, because that’s dirty.” That’s our own internalized stuff around sexuality and the taboo of sexuality, rather than us knowing that we are the examples. We are the leaders. We are the teachers, and they absorb that either through the conversations that we’re having or just by our actions alone.
MARK: Yeah. True.
AMANDA: Our son is now 21, but when he had his 18th birthday, we had a party here at the house. Mark and I were hanging with the 18-year-olds, and there were quite a few.
MARK: Chaperoning.
AMANDA: Yes. And we ended up dancing and having a couple of drinks with the kids that were 18. Our son told us after the party that he had friends that said, “Your parents are so cool; they’re so amazing,” because of the affection that we showed each other and the way that we danced with each other.
Yeah, even my 16-year-old will say, “It’s different in other people’s houses.”
MARK: Our youngest, who’s seven, was playing in the street last night and I got home about 6:30. I was in the car, and Mandy didn’t know I was home, but she came out to see what the boys were doing. Our son was playing with a kid in the street.
I was on the phone, so we connected visually, and we’d had a really good simmering day. We’d just had a lovely day, texting on the phone and stuff. A couple of overwhelming moments together.
Then I got out of the car, and we kissed and connected in the street. For us it was normal, and certainly for our son, it was absolutely normal. But the boy that he was playing with, we heard him say to our son, “Do they do that every day?”
AMANDA: Every time.
MARK: “Do they do that every time?” And I don’t know about Mandy, because we knew that he’d said that, but I had an instant reflex to disconnect and think, “Oh, I’m making him question or be uncomfortable,” which is those cultural norms. And we didn’t. I think I pulled back, and either Mandy didn’t let me, or I got control of my own self, and then just came further in for a kiss.
There was nothing overtly sexual about what we were doing; we were simply having a passionate kiss. We hadn’t seen each other all day, and we’d been simmering, so we kissed, as we do every day, multiple times.
I think, in one of our other chats, Kim, we talked about cultural norms, about sexual taboos and stuff. And we’re not sitting here suggesting that sex needs to be had on the street. It’s still the intimate, monogamous thing that it is for us, and sensual, but it’s open and transparent, exactly as you described. It’s that energy.
Our boys generally just have so much energy. They’re walking up the street parkouring off rock walls; it’s just insane. And they go to skate parks and ride bikes and surf and do all this sort of stuff, and I think some of that comes from us. Some of that comes from that confidence and level of comfort in the sexual intimacy and our connection.
But certainly it was odd for the young man in our street, who obviously wasn’t seeing that every day.
KIM: And that was just a kiss. That was a surprise, a kiss.
AMANDA: Yeah, it was a kiss.
KIM: And that really struck him as unusual.
AMANDA: Yeah.
MARK: Yeah. It was funny for us, but—
AMANDA: Yeah. Because then we chuckled, but it did make me think that’s not his normal.
MARK: We know that.
AMANDA: Our little one didn’t even look up from what he was doing. They were smashing rocks, so he said, “Um,” and then went back to what he was doing. [Laughs]
MARK: To be honest, he would’ve known what was going to happen when I got out of the car. They try and get to me when I get home from work before I get to Mom. They’ll run up and give me a cuddle, which I love, and then they’ll say, “And there’s Mom.” And they’ll often say, “Isn’t she beautiful? Doesn’t Mom look beautiful?”
Even this morning, Mandy came up to make the kids something to eat and our son said, “Oh, Mom, you look so gorgeous.”
AMANDA: My dress is backless, and he was tickling my back, and I said, “That’s really nice. Keep doing it.” And he said to Mark, “Come over here, Daddy, and feel her skin. It’s so smooth.” [Laughs] It was like, “Take your time, boys.” [Laughs] It’s nice.
I think it’s just the overflow of being open to loving and affection in relationships. It helps the whole household get on board with that as well.
MARK: And it’s different for all ages. Obviously, the seven- and nine-year-olds are in a certain place, and the 14-, 15-, 16-, 17-year-olds are in a different place. But as challenging as I think teenagers can be—and they are challenging—I can certainly step back and look at that relationship that Mandy has with our 16-year-old and say it’s unique. It still has all the challenges around teenagers’ frontal lobes developing and emotions running incredibly high, but Mandy has taken the time to connect with our daughter around sexuality, telling her about loving herself in a way that can be intimate, not dirty, getting to know herself and understand her body before she decides she wants to give it to someone else or anything like that.
AMANDA: Well, she’s 16, so she’s very intrigued with sex and all things boy and girl and everything in between. [Laughs] We sort of did VKF together. I shared as much as was appropriate for her age while I was doing that one.
KIM: And by VKF, to clarify, you mean the Vaginal Kung Fu Jade Egg Salon?
AMANDA: Yeah, the Vaginal Kung Fu.
MARK: Can I jump in and just say in reality, it was probably similar for our daughter to what it was for me to begin with? Obviously, we’re at a point where we’d like to give the kids as much of this as is age-appropriate. But at the same time, our 16-year-old was knocking on the door. She was asking, “What are you doing? What’s happening?”
AMANDA: She was intrigued by the personal stuff, yeah.
MARK: Yeah. Seeing what was happening.
AMANDA: Interestingly, her cycle started for the first time while I was doing Vaginal Kung Fu, so it was the perfect timing to share in terms of that salon. If I knew that from starting my cycle, I would have had a very different attitude toward my cycle altogether. That has evolved over time anyway, but it’s helping her to love herself and lean into that part of life.
And then also, as Mark was saying, just expressing to her the healthiness of getting to know yourself intimately and personally, so that you know what you like and what you want and what feels good to you before you begin sharing it elsewhere.
I kind of embarrass our 21-year-old a bit. We were at the park on a Sunday afternoon and I said, “What are you going to do for the rest of the afternoon?” He said, “I’m going to go home and just watch a bit of Netflix.” And I said, “Oh, you’re going to Netflix and chill,” and he said, “No. I’m going home by myself.” And I said, “Babe, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of self-love.” He said, “Oh my God!”
But it’s true. Get to know yourself. I’m a big proponent of self-love.
MARK: Yeah, she is. [Laughs]
KIM: People ask me, “How did you talk to your son about sex?” And I say, “Well, I never really had to have the big talk. The big conversation. Because it was always an open conversation.” Whether I was having conversations or doing Q&A calls or webinars in the living room, and he’d be in the kitchen making smoothies or whatever, none of that was ever censored.
It’s not like you’re giving each other oral sex in the kitchen while you’re making dinner, but you’re not hiding the love and affection and sensuality between you. That’s always in the atmosphere and the ethers, and they’re just surrounded by that.
If there ever is a question, I always tell people, jump on it. Use that as an opportunity to share. But really, a lot of it comes through osmosis. And the energy of it is an open invitation. There’s a perpetual energy of nonjudgment. You can ask anything, say anything, and we’re here. We’re available for that.
It sounds like that’s what you’re saying whenever your children ask a question— you’re fully open and available for them.
MARK: Yeah.
AMANDA: And we do actually just bluntly put it like that. Sometimes they pull away, and we will have a meeting with them and let them know, “We’re here. You can talk to us about anything.”
The oldest is 22 and the eldest teenager is 16. In between the 22 and the 16, they have exposed us to enough that we really can’t be shocked anymore. [Laughs] They’ve done enough things over their teenage and childhood years that it’s like, whatever. Sometimes I will jokingly thank them because they’re preparing me for the younger kids again, for the nine- and seven-year-old.
I’ll say, “What I’ve done with you guys might not be what I do with these guys at the bottom end of the age group.”
MARK: And it’s definitely not. Even outside of doing your work, I hope we all try and evolve, to do better as people and parents, or as individuals, as couples, and then as parents. But without a doubt, we’re not parenting the same way that we parented our 21- and 22-year-olds.
AMANDA: We were stricter.
MARK: We were stricter, yeah. We were younger, obviously, and stricter, and we had fewer skills and tools, and we were less connected.
AMANDA: It wasn’t the same sex that we’re having now, for sure. It’s in our toolbox; sex is a massive part for us to work through blockages and difficulties and then be able to come back and share ourselves differently with the children. And we share all aspects. Their education, their work, their business, their playdates. There’s a large spectrum from seven to 22. There are a lot of different things going on in the family all the time.
KIM: I think it was in the original interview we did with you, Amanda, that your daughter said, “You guys are always doing it; you’re always going at it.” How did you respond to her? [Laughs]
AMANDA: That actually came about because she had a friend over and the friend said to me, “When we’re at school, if anyone ever wants to know anything about sex, we ask her,” my daughter, “because she’s the most knowledgeable.” She was sitting there, and she laughed and said, “Well, it’s because you guys are always doing it. It’s hard not to know.” We talk about it because of the VKF as well, and I was sharing the breathing techniques and breast massage and self-love. Talking about yoni eggs.
MARK: It’s like what you said before, Kim—you’re not planning to have conversations with your kids, necessarily. What you’re doing is creating an open environment where there’s a language of love there anyway. And you’ve got an environment where any of the children can ask the question, and particularly with Mandy, they’re going to get a straight answer. Not a rude answer, not an overtly sexual answer. They’re just going to get an honest, straight answer.
Our daughter is young and inquisitive.
KIM: What are some examples of questions that she’s asked?
AMANDA: Well, she wanted her breasts to grow. She said, “They’re too small. I want them to grow bigger.” And I said, “Where your energy goes, your breasts will go. I can teach you these breast massages that I’ve learned from Kim, and you can do them every day.” So she’s actually been doing the breast massage every day, and she has been very happily blossoming. [Laughs] That’s nice for her.
MARK: I know she asked about ejaculate and how it tastes.
AMANDA: Yeah. She directly asked, “What do you do? Because I don’t want to swallow.” That was another really nice conversation about how, when it’s the right person, it won’t bother you at all; accepting him into your body will not be an issue. There are techniques that you can use that mean you don’t have to swallow. But also, he doesn’t need to know that you didn’t swallow because wouldn’t that be offensive if you were doing that for a guy and then you said, “That part’s gross”?
MARK: In the scheme of things, that would lead to not doing it. How I would explain it to my boys, if I was asked, is that it’s appropriate but not necessary for a woman to swallow ejaculate, and if she’s not, you want to ask why. Not in a criticism kind of way, but “what am I not doing that’s allowing me not to be received by you?”
If the woman responds, “Oh, that’s disgusting; I just wouldn’t do it,” I tell my boys to simply say, “Well, I think we need to understand in a loving way why? Why wouldn’t you do that? What is your blockage around that?” Because ultimately, not 16-year-olds and probably not 18 or 21, but if you’re in a relationship with someone who you truly, deeply love, I’m not suggesting that everyone has to do it, but swallowing your partner’s ejaculate and living on a come diet or whatever is a beautiful thing.
We’ve created that setting of love for our children. We have all the challenges that normal couples have, obviously, but we’ve created a cauldron of not being able to get enough of each other’s sweat, love, and energy. The essence of each other. Yeah. But I can see the cultural norms around those responses being—
AMANDA: Well, in terms of cultural norms, the 16-year-old did say to me that she thinks we have sex an excessive amount. And it was almost like she was frustrated. “It’s excessive, Mom.”
MARK: It’s abnormal.
AMANDA: It’s not excessive. It’s for us. We’re not planning to have any more children. That is pretty much exactly what I said to her. We’re not planning to have any more children.
MARK: We’re not? [Laughs]
AMANDA: No, we’re not. [Laughs] We have all this creative life-force energy within our two bodies. And if we’re not going to create a child with that energy, we can still use that energy and put it out into the world. If we keep that energy flowing in our systems, then we can rev that up in the morning and go to work and use that to create something amazing during our workday.
And she said, “Yeah, but you don’t need to do it every day.” [Laughs] But then I likened it to workouts. I go to the gym because that gets my endorphins going; it gets me going through the day, and then I feel like I can take on the world. I said it’s the same with sex.
And then she said, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to have sex every day. I don’t think I need to do that. Maybe two or three times a week.” So I said, “Well, that’s fine.” I mean, she’s only 16, so these are just conversations and ideas.
But I said to her, “When you get married, that’s the person you’re going to have sex with for the rest of your life. That’s the only person you can have sex with. If you don’t desire to have sex with the person you’re married to, you might as well just be friends with them. What’s the benefit of being married to that person? You want to find someone that really lights your fire, that lives within the same passions of you, that you’re working together to help.” Mark and I now say our motivation is for each other. He wants to help me feel better, and I want to help him feel better. It’s that yin and yang, and we just keep pushing and pulling each other along.
Yeah, and I was able to communicate that to our daughter; if you’re not using that life-force energy to create a child, you can use it for something else. But also, if you’re waiting three days to have sex, you’ve already simmered out. Then you have to rev everything up again. But if you keep it going, it really is the yin and yang and that spinning wheel that never stops—and things happen in your life that are so beautiful. As a result of keeping that energy flowing, that creative energy is just continually flowing through you.
MARK: Fortunately, from being Anami fans, we’ve lived it. We’ve done the extended sex dates and seen what happens from that. We’ve done the sex weekends, and oh my God, we’ve seen what happens from that.
AMANDA: We love sex weekends! [Laughs]
MARK: Yeah. Yes.
AMANDA: They’re so good.
MARK: Well, it’s that energy that you were talking about. It’s hot.
AMANDA: And the kids know too. They’re really supportive of us taking that time out.
MARK: And that’s been a change. That’s definitely different to what was sort of clinginess.
AMANDA: When they were annoyed that we were going away without them.
It used to be, “That’s not fair. You guys are going to go away and leave us with Nan and Pop or with my sisters.”
MARK: Yeah. Or their older siblings.
AMANDA: Now we’ll go and have all the fun.
MARK: And they’ll be having a glorious time with their grandparents and siblings. But there’s so much positive energy that comes back. We’ve talked about it once before, but we had a three- or four-week absolute external glow from our first sex weekend.
AMANDA: Sex date.
MARK: Yeah, sex weekend. It was three or four weeks. So now they’re locked in. It’s an overnight, and then an all day. We’re making sure we get that near enough to 36 to 48 hours as a minimum of—
AMANDA: Alone together time.
MARK: Yeah.
AMANDA: Just to be sure, we do still take the kids on holidays as well. [Laughs] We haven’t booked them out and not taken the kids.
MARK: They don’t miss out, no.
KIM: What you’re saying, though, is that they’re feeling the energy of when you come off these extended sex dates. And that glow, that bliss, whatever, feels really good. So even if they can’t articulate, “Oh, they’re coming back, and they had lots of sex again,” they do register that something really positive is coming out of your time away. Whether it’s like your connecting time within your home or you going away and coming back, on an unconscious level, they register that something really amazing and beautiful is coming out of that which benefits them.
There’s a shift, as you’re saying, in them supporting these activities, even if they don’t fully understand the mechanisms.
And I love that you use those opportunities to explain the mechanism. Like the way you talked about describing sex to your teenage daughter as this energy source, this power source, and this is how we fuel our lives and create our lives. What parent has that conversation with their children? Very rare.
I think another thing that you shared that I heard is that a lot of the dominant messaging around sex is casual sex; having sex with people you don’t really care about that much is really normalized. That was the messaging I would’ve received coming into my adulthood. “You have the freedom to go and do these things.” As though it’s really this moral judgment that is holding people back from free sexual expression.
Then realizing that okay, yeah, you can go out and have random, casual, meaningless sex, but that’s not the best use of that energy. From a strictly energetic standpoint, not a moral one, is this experience rejuvenating, blissful, ecstatic, transcendent, transformative? Does it make you a better person and does it change your life? That’s always my barometric question.
And if not, then you’re “doing it wrong.” Meaning there’s something about who you’ve chosen and the way you’re having sex, if it feels guilty or shameful or negative or fleeting. That’s a negative use of that energy.
But I think that some of the dominant messaging of the culture is that casual sex is totally fine and good and all the cool, liberated people have it. And so to convey a message that’s more about the conscious use of that energy as creative power is wonderful. Because to me, that’s really the essence of sex, the truth of sex. And it’s just been marred and obscured by all of these other cultural taboos and myths and misinformation.
MARK: It probably led to that environment where you’re saying, “In theory, casual sex is okay,” but it’s not giving you, as you say, the life force. And that comes from all that cultural bias.
As parents, I think the reason we’re talking in the way that we do to our kids is so that they do have a different perspective. I mean, the last thing we want is to have our children going out and having casual sex or irresponsible sex.
We want them to find someone they truly can connect with and start laying the foundations. If they’re intimate at 16 or 17 or 18—and I’d prefer it to be later—whatever it is, that’s not likely to be the person they’re going to spend the rest of their life with. Generally, people don’t fall in love and spend the rest of their life with their 16-year-old or 18-year-old partners.
But if they’ve got this foundation of understanding what we’ve now learned sex and intimacy and that energy is all about, if they can start at that age, that will redefine their lives, their challenges, their opportunities, their connections, their relationships. Not just their intimate relationships, but if you can start being a well-fucked human being from 17 or 18 or 19—whew! The effect that would have.
AMANDA: When you understand the deeper meaning of a well-fucked person. [Laughs]
MARK: Yeah. That cauldron of positive, connecting energy.
AMANDA: And that’s why I really encourage all the older kids to get to know themselves. Because if you know yourself intimately, it’s just so much healthier and easier to meet someone that’s on your level. But if you don’t know who you are yet, I think you’re not sure who you’re actually looking for anyway because you still don’t know who you are.
I have had some very cool conversations with the older three about how, when you do have an intimate connection with someone, you get to take some of that person with you, because you have this energetic exchange. When you’re going to have an energetic exchange with someone, a sexual exchange, it’s not just about protecting yourself with condoms and protective sex. It’s also checking what you want to share. Is that energy something that you want to take with you into the next week or the next month? A little piece of that connection with that person will stay with you for life. It will reset something in your body, and your body is talking to you all the time.
MARK: I know you’ve been petitioned to do things for children or for younger people, and this kind of information and knowledge surely would arm our children to then not be in relationships which are not equal, where they are being dominated by a partner.
And I don’t mean abused, necessarily, but—
AMANDA: Toxic.
MARK: Yeah, toxic. And that can be both ways. That can be, “I’m with an under-fucked woman, and she’s nagging the living shit out of me.” That’s toxic. So address it, deal with it, work on it. But even from a young age, knowing yourself, knowing what your energetic exchanges are providing, surely gives you the tools and skills to say, “Well, God forbid my partner hit me; that’s not okay. I’m out.”
Do you know what I mean? It’s kind of core fundamentals—you don’t know your partner until you know your partner, and then they potentially do the wrong thing. And you can’t be in that relationship. You know what I mean? The knowledge and the energy won’t allow you to be a part of that.
AMANDA: And if you know yourself well enough, you’re strong enough to let that relationship go.
MARK: Correct.
AMANDA: Because you’ve done the foundation work on yourself.
MARK: Yeah.
KIM: Well, I think this is a really great argument for why it’s so important to be open and transparent and truthful about sex. When we grow up in an environment and live in an overall cultural worldwide environment of so much obscuring and misrepresentation about sex, I think our own internal compass gets waylaid.
When we’re then in a relationship and we’re trying to work our way through it, our intuition is fucked. It’s not even accurate anymore because we’ve taken in all of this stuff, this programming, around sex and intimacy, and it’s really difficult to hear our own inner voice and truth.
So I love that this whole message is that as parents, we model that, and the more that we have done our own personal work and our own personal block clearing, both individually and as a relationship unit, the more we are much more clear channels for that truth and for the true power of sexual energy to exist and emerge and funnel out from us. And we’re also showing that to our children. We’re trying to get them back to their own internal center of who they are and what sexual energy is for them and in them.
My definition of well-fucked is somebody who is truly owning and inhabiting their sexual energy. They’re clear on what that is; they’re using it consciously as a creative power and an energy source in the universe. It doesn’t mean that they’re having lots of humping, right? [Laughs]
MARK: Right.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah. [Laughs]
KIM: It’s not like having lots of partners or having sex all the time. Sure, they might be having a lot of sex; you guys have a lot of sex. But it’s the way that you’re having sex and the way that you’re using this sexual energy. And that’s what we’re looking to cultivate in our children.
If they have that foundation, then they can go out into the world. And the examples you gave, if they are exposed to toxic people or they start to enter a toxic relationship, then they’ll be much faster to eject that. It’ll be so anomalous to them that they will just eject it and walk away from it very quickly.
But people who grow up with so much programming—parents are a walking interference field. If the parents have not done their work intimately, sexually, all the shit, the unresolved trauma, and the baggage that they have is just sitting in the ethers. That is what they are passing on to their children. That is their genetic material, their gift to their children.
Their children will be in this fog and haze, and then when they step out into the world and into relationships, they’ll be operating at a massive deficiency because they’re bringing in all of this interference. They’re a walking interference field and unable to connect with their own truth and so much more easily able to get stuck in toxic, damaging relationships that are only going to reinforce all of these negative beliefs and ideas and experiences that they are wearing and living.
AMANDA: And as you often say, you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it. I’m very open with it, and Mark is too, but we often say to the older kids—actually even to our younger two—with regard to their friendships at school. “Just be really honest. Just say what you want. And if that person is not into what you’re into, if they don’t want to do what you want to do, then you don’t have to stay with that. You don’t have to be with that.”
But also, especially to the older ones, “Don’t portray yourself to be something that you’re not to try to win that person over, because that’s not truly who you are.” I know the 16-year-old recently had a boyfriend; they’ve since broken up, but she didn’t like to eat in front of him because she wanted to appear, I don’t know, smaller or daintier. I picked up on it and said, “Why don’t you eat?” And she said, “I just don’t like eating in front of him.” And I said, “You don’t want to be that girl. You don’t want to be the one that can’t eat in front of her boyfriend.” But also, he might not find that attractive either. Maybe he finds a girl who eats a big burger attractive as opposed to someone who takes little tiny bites.
MARK: I know I do. I find a girl that eats a burger—
AMANDA: [Laughs]
KIM: More your style.
MARK: That’s just like, make me a burger at home! [Laughs]
AMANDA: But yeah, it’s just about honoring your truth and being who you really are. And then you can more quickly move through to the positive step, or you can realize that you’re not right for each other.
MARK: Something you said before, Kim, I just want to add to it. Mandy and I can’t validate your work enough. For us, the life change has been enormous.
AMANDA: It has, yes.
MARK: I say a complete thank you. And that’s why we’re so comfortable coming on and talking to you about these things.
You said before that, as parents, we carry around a lot of shit. Mandy and I have our own shit, and we’ve absolutely, in years gone by, transferred it to our children in various formats, whether that’s a sexuality or a sexual energy thing or whether it’s our own childhood upbringing and things like that.
I talk to people in our network, in our circles, who are open to things that we’re doing, and we say, “These are the things that are being transferred to our children now.” We’ve got this open, honest connection, leaning on and into one another. We lean on each other all the time. If I’m stressed, Mandy will help me. If she’s stressed, I’ll help her. And usually that’s around sex. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about helping and leaning in and loving your partner.
You say things to people who have a degree of openness, and they say, “Oh, that can’t be right.” One time Mandy was at the table and was struggling to communicate with someone in her family, and I said, “What you probably need is my cock in your mouth, and that’ll clear your throat chakra.” And she said, “Yes.” And we went downstairs.
My friends said, “No, that doesn’t seem like it would happen.” I’m not making the point about my friends not believing that, because it sounds like, “Dear Playboy, this happened to me …” But no, [laughs] I have a serious point.
We know that our negative shit transfers to our children. And fortunately, I didn’t have exposure to chronic alcohol or anything, but we know that for parents who are alcoholics, often the children will become alcoholics. We know, if we’re open, we can see all the negative stuff transferring like that—bam. We know that happens out there in the world.
AMANDA: And in reverse too. Sometimes the kids might be funky, misbehaving, playing up at school, something’s going on. We will look at what’s happening for them, but we’ll also look at what’s happening for us. Okay, is there something we need to shift? I talk about the yin and yang between us, but there’s also us as a unit that shares with the children. If something is not right between me and Mark, it often shows up in the children.
MARK: But if we know the negative will transfer, why would it be so odd to think that the positive doesn’t do the same thing? I mean, you and I know it. And obviously a lot of well-fucked couples know it. But we only know it because we’ve done the work and—
AMANDA: And continue to do the work.
MARK: I was just going to say—you took the words out of my mouth—
AMANDA: Sorry. [Laughs]
MARK: You’ve got to do the work. This is not some bullshit romantic couple—
AMANDA: It’s not an eight-week makeover.
MARK: No, no.
AMANDA: It’s not do this six-week course and you’ll have the perfect body. It’s not that.
It’s learning the tools and then using them all the time and keeping the communication open. And when you do that and you have this clean slate of a relationship between the parents, it is a really open family unit. I feel like all our children feel like they can come and talk to us about anything, really.
MARK: But we still have all the parental challenges of kids.
AMANDA: Please don’t think it’s a smooth-sailing, easy ride. [Laughs]
MARK: Our youngest will sulk when he doesn’t get what he wants. Our next youngest, who is a beautiful girl, wants people to play the way she wants to play all the time. Not that that sounds like a big challenge, but if there are lots of challenges, you’re so much better equipped. They all still happen. Mandy put it perfectly before: when there’s something showing up in the kids, we address it, but the first place we look is between us.
It’s not always something between us. But it’s taught us to say, “Okay, is there something going on between us?” And if there is, then we fix that. We connect on that. We alchemize.
KIM: Yeah. I think the children are the expression of you guys, and you are the center unit of the family; your energy is the epicenter. What happens within you reverberates out, either negatively or positively.
AMANDA: I was just going to say, doing the personal work on ourselves has taught us to be able to use that kind of language and help the kids to look within themselves as well. The older kids now journal. Our oldest son carries some crystals with him. He’s done a few self-help courses and 30-day challenges of his own. They’re all really into their fitness and looking after their bodies now.
MARK: One of the things that’s also changed for us in terms of parenting is now we don’t try and solve each other’s problems. And that’s transferred to our parenting. We love our children more than anything, and if they’ve got a problem, we’re strict and we’re disciplined, but at the same time, you want to solve that problem.
At a certain point, if I come home stressed, related to work or finances or something like that, if I don’t communicate that, Mandy can love me through that for a day. And if it carries for a second day, she can generally love me through that.
And then for the third day, get the fuck over it. Fix it, talk to me, and let’s alchemize on it.
AMANDA: And do the internal work.
MARK: It’s the same for the kids. As a male parent with male children, if my son falls over, and I don’t think it’s significant enough for him to cry as a young child, I’ll say, “No, come on, mate, suck it up. Let’s go. Let’s go.” And all I’m teaching him to do there is just push that emotion down. Now, he might have had a fall, and completely unrelated to that fall, he’s got emotions that are coming up.
Completely unrelated, but here’s the avenue for him to channel that emotion and get it out. Now I just say—and it’s 100% from this lovely woman that I’ve got that skill now, “What are you feeling, mate? Is your scraped knee that sore or is there something else going on?” “No, it’s the knee. Actually, no, it’s something else. I don’t know what it is.” And I’ll say, “Great. Just let that out. Let that out.”
AMANDA: And usually whatever crying noise they’re making, we’ll make it with them to help—like when you’re birthing, and your doula will come along and do the same moaning with you. We’ll do that sort of thing with the kids. If they’re sobbing inside, we’ll say, “Oh yeah, that’s it, let it out.” Just [sigh] and yeah.
MARK: It shortens it.
When I look at what we’ve done in the past, where I’ve said, “No, no, suck it up. Suck it up,” 15 or 20 minutes later, they might be [sighing and crying] again because they haven’t been able to experience the emotion. And it might legitimately have been super sore, but we all know that there’s always other stuff going on in our bodies and our minds than what’s probably showing up.
AMANDA: Yeah. I think it’s because you make us work so hard through our blockages. We’re now looking at our kids and trying to provide the least blockages [laughs] to have to work through.
MARK: As parents, you know you’re going to fuck it up, so you’re just trying to pick them up.
AMANDA: But it’s the little things. “Yeah, just feel it. Just go with it. Feel it. Let it out.”
MARK: Then you ask, “Do you feel better?” And they say, “Yeah. Yep!” Off we go. That’s been a beautiful shift.
KIM: I love that. You were sharing, Amanda, about doing pole-dancing classes And that your 16-year-old daughter has been doing them with you.
AMANDA: Yes, she loves it. She was playing up a bit at school, and she’s just reached an age where she wants to pull away, but she still likes me. So she’s a bit too cool, but she also still really loves mom.
I was trying to come up with ways that we could do something together, and I really wanted to try pole dancing. And I just said to her, “Look, I really want to try pole dancing and see if I like it.” And she said, “Oh my God, I would love to do that. Can I come with you?”
So that’s become a weekly thing that we do together.
It’s really fun!
MARK: It creates an incredible energy for them.
AMANDA: In the first lesson that we went to, there was this pivotal point in the class. As a result of doing The Well-F**ked Woman, I have learned to care way less about what I think of myself, and I really don’t care about what other people are thinking of me. Because I now actually realize no one is thinking anything. They’re just looking at themselves. But I used to judge myself quite heavily.
So we went along to this class together and we were both really nervous, not knowing what it was going to be like. And we got there and there were women with heels that were 10 inches high, wearing these little booty shorts and crop tops while we were both in our athletic yoga gear. [Laughs] And no heels.
There was this point partway through the class where we both looked at each other and I said to her, “I could either cry, because I feel like I really suck at this, or I could just have a chuckle and keep going.” And she said, “If I start crying, I won’t stop.” And I said, “Okay, so we’re just going to laugh and keep going.” So we did.
MARK: Did you have that conversation in the class?
AMANDA: We actually had it after the class; we did have a little chat, but it wasn’t about crying during the class.
MARK: I was going to make the point that interestingly, too, individual women, one 16 and one slightly older, had an identical experience in terms of getting to a point in a class where they felt they weren’t doing it as well as they wanted to, and they could’ve gone one or two ways. They could’ve leaned into the negativity and cried and then never gone back. Or they could’ve just said, “You know what? It’s day one. I’ll have a chuckle at how silly I think I look, and then I’ll just keep going.” Which is so much better.
AMANDA: We were trying to learn this spin around the pole. I looked at her and said, “Do you get it?” And she said, “No!” And we both laughed and said, “Okay, we’ll just keep going.” And that was the moment.
It was after the class that I said to her, “I was about to start crying. I felt really hopeless.” And then I didn’t. I laughed and kept going. And now we go every week.
MARK: And they’re amazing at it.
AMANDA: We come back, and we think we’re so good at it. [Laughs]. We ended up getting a pole at the house, which has turned out to be her fitness routine. That’s her fitness activity. We’ve always tried to encourage her to do something.
MARK: We encourage all the kids, really, to stay active.
AMANDA: She’s probably been the most challenging to get moving. But the pole has taken away all challenge. She absolutely loves it, and I think it’s a really good age to get into something that’s getting into your body. You have to really be in your body, but it’s also so fitness driven. It’s really hard fitness work. So I’m selling pole dancing now. [Laughs]
MARK: Pole fitness.
AMANDA: Pole fitness. But emotionally and sensually, I think it’s a really nice activity for her to be doing at the moment, and we can share it and just have fun.
MARK: It does both those things. It gives Mandy and our daughter another connection point, but also, when she does it on her own, she’s getting to know her body. It’s a sensual dance, so it’s an energy that, when used correctly, is just alchemizing her own positive energy.
She’s a different young lady when she’s done pole dancing for a period of time. So it’s good.
KIM: Different in what way?
MARK: Less teenage-y for a period. She’s not on her phone; she’s not on social media. And she’s energized. She’s physically done activity, so she’s got endorphins and dopamine, and then she’s also done it in a sensual kind of way—
AMANDA: Sensual, yeah.
MARK: And I’m sure she feels that she looks good doing it, because I’m sure she does.
AMANDA: She does.
MARK: I’m, of course, not allowed to go in and watch. Ultimately, she looks great. So she will come away from that—
AMANDA: Feeling great.
MARK: Yeah. Mandy came home the night before last after doing a class, and I was sitting on the lounge. Normally, I’m at the desk doing work, but I was sitting on the lounge. She just came in the door, jumped up on the lounge in my arms, and said, “Oh, this is awesome!” Our daughter felt the same way, I would say. It just blew Mandy up in the most positive way.
AMANDA: It did feel good. If I can articulate what Mark feels is teenage-y, it’s the lack of communication, the kind of stereotypically speaking, the grunting, just looking at your phone bit of attitude. When we do something together like pole dancing or Mark playing soccer with the boys or playing Frisbee or having a game of cricket in the street, any of those connected activities as a unit, or one on one, when the phone gets put down—they open up and they blossom, so they’re less teenager-y, talking, smiling. Their eyes are open; their heads are up. Embodying themselves, I guess.
MARK: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I mean by less teenage-y.
KIM: Do you have any other specific stories you might like to share about your children and your sexual energy or them asking you things or walking in on you? Anything that illustrates additionally what we’ve been talking about?
AMANDA: The seven-year-old, my son, thinks women are beautiful, and I think that’s from Mark showing him how to treat women. He’s always been very big on chivalry. It is definitely not dead, so he’s always taught the kids to open the door, put the jacket on your lady, pour her drink, just the little things that are really romantic. And they’re really nice, coming home with a bunch of flowers or taking the kids in the street with a pair of scissors and stealing flowers from the neighbors to bring them back to Mom [laughs]. Very romantic.
I really notice it, especially in our youngest one. With me, he will be very touchy and say, “You’re so beautiful, Mom,” and, “You’ve got such soft skin,” and he just really appreciates feminine beauty.
MARK: I kind of hadn’t noticed it until Mandy was talking about it, but he and I have conversations about Mandy—
AMANDA: And things like who he’s going to marry.
MARK: Yeah. And how beautiful we both find her and how lovely she is in all the normal mom kind of ways. Mom’s a great cook and Mom does everything so well for us and Mom loves us so much.
AMANDA: He put on my Mother’s Day card, “You are my most favorite person in the whole world.” He’s just really open-hearted and loving. I’m sure lots of moms get those messages.
MARK: Yeah. And all moms deserve it. By osmosis, the kids are framing up what they’re looking for in their life partner. Even though we’re not pushing that at all, those loving conversations are creating that framework. Their expectation of what a relationship should be like is that it should be open and have lots of loving kissing and connecting.
When it’s important, we will ask the kids to be quiet so we can finish a conversation that we’re having, and for those awesome parents out there that have young kids, you know how hard that is, because you’ll get interrupted every second of every day by your kids asking for stuff. And we do get interrupted, but they’re seeing this. They hate being asked to just wait a second, but sometimes the conversation and connection are more important at that time.
AMANDA: That’s what has to come first, yeah.
MARK: We’re teaching them that. They get 95% of the attention and then sometimes 5% has to be on us. That wasn’t who we were two years ago, five years ago, seven years ago, nine years ago. We’d say, “Okay, yeah, hold on. What do you need, darling? What do you want?” And that’s sending a connection message to one another. As much as we love those little people, from time to time, this comes first.
AMANDA: And maybe in terms of disciplining, sometimes when one child is more annoyed at one parent than the other, I will use language like, “Please don’t speak to my husband like that.” We create a real respect for each other, but it’s not, “Don’t speak to your father.” It’s, “Please don’t speak to my husband, to my love, that way.” And that has really helped them to see a different respect for each other. But it’s not just Mom and Dad.
MARK: Yeah. It’s kind of validating that role.
AMANDA: Yeah, it does. Our 21-year-old boy, we work with him, and as a result, we get to have some really fun times all throughout the day. He’s the only one that comes to the office with us, so we get to spend a bit more time with him than the others.
I don’t know if he’s said he wants what we have. Has he actually verbalized that?
MARK: No. I don’t think he’s actually said that. The kids go through stages, and certainly teenage years are tough because they’ve got all this stuff going on for them, finding out who they are. And then they roll through that.
I think the beautiful thing is that all of our children, to degrees, admit openly, or even to themselves, that they see the value in what we have. And our 21-year-old has probably the most openly said, “What you have is kind of the right thing. You guys are not perfect; no one’s perfect, but what we see you guys doing is the right kind of relationship. It is the right kind of connection.” And so we just keep doing the work because all you’re doing is leveling up to another level and leveling up and leveling up.
Again, the relationship is not all roses. There are still all the challenges. But they’re looking at it thinking, well—
AMANDA: Yes. All of them have at some point said our relationship is different to other ones they have seen, whether it’s friendships or ones they’re exposed to personally.
And sometimes they say, “What you have doesn’t actually exist in the outside world.”
MARK: Yeah, yeah. Like it’s not normal. But we know it does exist.
AMANDA: And then we try to express that it can be normal. You can have it. It’s achievable. It takes work, and it takes work on yourself so you can find that person that is your soul mate. And then even when you find that person, you still have to keep doing the work. Like I said before, it’s not an eight-week course and then you’re done. It’s continual.
MARK: You absolutely have to maintain the focus on it. We let our connection dates and our extended dates slip in the last six or eight weeks. We haven’t changed how frequently we’re connecting or having sex, but certainly it—
AMANDA: We got busy, so they were shorter.
MARK: Yeah, we got busy, and they were shorter. And we just noticed we weren’t connecting in certain interactions. It wasn’t massive, but it was definitely there. We reverted back to locking in connecting dates during the week and locking in extended sex dates.
We’re doing Sexual Mastery for Men again, but this time together. I know that’s a men’s course, but it’s great for Mandy to see what I’m doing and—
AMANDA: It’s great for Mark too. [Laughs]
MARK: It’s good for us both. Because I’m getting feedback on the other side of it. Obviously we get feedback during Sexual Mastery for Men from you, Kim, which is great, but with Mandy doing it, I’m getting to see both sides of it.
I’m not saying everyone has to do that, but that’s just us circling around and doing that work again.
KIM: Excellent. I love you guys’ commitment. The proof is always in the pudding.
AMANDA: We love your work! [Laughs]
MARK: We really do, yeah.
AMANDA: Even this morning, we set the kids up with some paper craft activity. I got snacks and food and made them hot chocolate, which is something special, and we’ve been talking this whole time and we haven’t heard, “Mom,” which is just another level of respect that they understand. The youngest is seven. It’s different to when they were two and four. We would not have been able to have this conversation.
MARK: Well, we wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation without being interrupted.
AMANDA: Yeah. [Laughs]
MARK: [Laughs] More than likely. Which still would’ve been okay.
AMANDA: I think that just also illustrates the respect that we’ve cultivated because I asked them to not interrupt because this is an important meeting that we’re having. There’s probably paper everywhere [laughs] and food, but …
KIM: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
MARK: No, no. Just do the work.
AMANDA: And thank you for the work that you keep putting out.
My Friday mornings are my favorite because that’s when your podcast comes out for me. It’s Friday morning in Australia. I like to go for a run, and you fill my whole hour. I love it. So keep doing that.
MARK: And we always get something. There’s always something that we pick up by listening and circling back around. So again, yeah, thank you. I don’t think it’s easy work that you do in terms of communicating what you’re putting out there. Thanks for your bravery and thanks for doing it for us.
KIM: My pleasure. Thank you so much for letting us into your world and sharing all of this so you can be a wonderful example and inspiration and beacon for other people to really show them that these are the fruits of your labor and these are the reverberations that it has. We’ve already talked to both of you about your overall lives and careers, but I really wanted people to see the impact that this kind of beautiful, gourmet sex relationship has on your children as well. So thank you.
AMANDA: It’s really achievable for anyone. That’s probably my biggest message. It’s not made up. It’s work, but it’s doable. Anyone can do it.
MARK: Anyone can do it. It’s like anything. You just have to start and then do the work.
AMANDA: Trust it.
MARK: Do the work.
AMANDA: Thank you, Kim!
KIM: Very inspirational. I love these two. They are such great examples of how their connection really spreads out and feeds every part of their lives, including and especially their family and children.
All of my salons teach the concepts that we have been speaking about, from clearing space between them to harvesting and using their sexual energy as a creative power.
My Sexy Mama goes deep into all things holistic pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. We cover everything from conscious conception to conscious parenting. You can check out my free video preview series at KimAnami.com. Look for Sexual Savant Salons and then click on Sexy Mama.
