She Can Come for Hours. We Talked About It. — Susan Bratton on Beyond Monogamy

Let me just say upfront — I've had a lot of great conversations on this show. But this one? This one had me walking away from the mic thinking, "Why the hell didn't anyone teach us this stuff ten years ago?" Susan Bratton is the intimacy expert to millions of people, a bestselling author, the founder of Personal Life Media, and she's been in the lifestyle for over 20 years. She's not the kind of person who read about this stuff in a textbook. She's out here living it, testing STI kits on first dates, scheduling expanded orgasm practice sessions on the calendar, and fluid bonding her way through a genuinely incredible life.

I've been excited about this episode for a while. Like, genuinely. And it delivered.

How a Bad Sex Life Became a Career

You might think someone who calls herself the intimacy expert to millions was born knowing things the rest of us didn't. Nope. Susan spent the first chunk of her marriage avoiding her husband. She'd never had an orgasm from intercourse. She described herself — and I'm quoting here — as tired of being a "dumping ground." Her words. Perfect words.

They did therapy. It helped with some things. But what really changed everything was when she and Tim started going to sex workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area. Someone told them what to do, they did it, and it worked. Susan started having orgasms. Then she wanted to learn more. Then she wanted to learn G-spot stuff. Then female ejaculation. Then Tim started learning male multiple orgasm. Then — naturally — they wanted to start inviting other people into their world.

Their friends said "ew." Their FRIENDS. Told them they were disgusting. At which point a wiser friend gave them the advice that I think changed everything: "You can't just f*** the muggles. You have to find your people." And they did.

That's how a woman who hated sex became the person millions of people go to for advice on how to have more of it. Go figure.

On Dropping the Labels and Just Being "Open"

One of my favorite moments in this episode was when Susan talked about how she and Tim just stopped labeling their relationship structure. Poly, ENM, CNM, swinger, lifestyle — they said screw it and called it "open." Open to whatever happens as they move through life.

Pris and I could relate to that. We came into the lifestyle with a list of rules the size of a legal document. We had a rule for everything. And then life happened, and we screwed up, and we did reparations, and we figured out that the rules we thought would protect us weren't actually the ones that made us feel safe.

Pris's take on this was one of those moments I love: "Nope, we're not doing that. Don't put your mouth there." And she wasn't wrong! We just had to live through it to figure out what we actually needed.

Susan called it "the intoxicating desire for control that you actually never have." And look, if you've been in this lifestyle for more than six months, you know exactly what she means.

The STI Testing Protocol That No One Talks About Enough

This is the part of the episode I really want every lifestyle person to hear. Susan is the Chief Advocacy Officer of ProDX Health — the main testing company for both the adult industry and the poly and swinger lifestyle. And she has a protocol that she's followed for 20 years without wavering.

Here's the short version: if someone wants to become sexually active with her or her partners, they get tested. And not just any test — comprehensive testing through ProDX, which tests for things most labs never check for, including Mycoplasma Genitalium. Yes, that's a real thing, and yes, it can be antibiotic resistant, and yes, one of the antibiotics used to treat the resistant strain can rupture your Achilles tendon. I did not know that before this conversation.

The standard she holds is 90 days of abstinence from other partners — or those partners get tested too. Why 90 days? Because some STIs have incubation periods of 60 to 90 days. A 30-day test can give you a false clean. She's learned this the hard way.

She also laid out the concept of being "fluid bonded" and "screened in." Once everyone in a partner group is tested and clear, you're fluid bonded — you can be together without barriers because you've done the work to know you're safe. It's not a casual thing. It's a system. And it changes how you think about trust in the lifestyle.

I told her right on the mic — I want to do a whole separate episode just on STIs. The stigma, the science, the real-world management of it. And she's going to connect me with Dr. Randy Klink, the founder of ProDX and one of the world's leading viral experts on STIs. That's a future episode. Stay tuned.

Expanded Orgasm — What It Is and Why You Should Care

Okay. This section. I'm going to do my best here without turning this blog post into a full seminar.

Most of us think about orgasm the way we were taught — there's a peak, you go over the edge, you're done, there's a refractory period. Susan pointed out that this model came from Masters and Johnson studying male ejaculatory orgasm. It was never meant to describe what human bodies are actually capable of.

Expanded orgasm is a clitoral stroking practice that takes the "one and done" and stretches it. Multi-orgasmic. Extended. Stacked. She and Tim have been doing it for decades and they have a date for it scheduled on the calendar for tomorrow. I'm not even joking. She said that out loud on the show.

The practice comes from a lineage that goes back to Dr. Patty Taylor and the Moorehouse community in the seventies. It's also known as extended massive orgasm, orgasmic meditation, and other variations. Susan's take is the couple-based version — one partner stroking the clitoris with very light touch, the other receiving, and the whole thing building into states that she described as "ecstatic co-creative bliss." Her words. I'm using them.

She gives a lot of this away for free. If you want to start learning, go to expandherorgasmtonight.com. There are free reports there including one called "The Power of Peaking" that she says is so simple it's almost ridiculous that no one teaches it.

Biohacking Your Sex Life — The Part That Got My Attention

Sexual biohacking. Susan said she's been moving away from that term a little because it's gotten co-opted by people who don't actually believe in science. But the concept is solid: using regenerative and optimization therapies to keep your sexual function healthy as you age.

We're talking nitric oxide supplementation, hormone therapy, vacuum erection devices, acoustic wave treatments, red light therapy, platelet rich plasma, stem cells, exosomes. All of these things sit at the intersection of longevity medicine and keeping your sex life working the way it's supposed to.

Her point was this: for every 10 years that you can keep having what she calls "orgasmic intimacy," you add years onto your health span and your happiness. She calls it extending your sex span. And we are, as she put it, "built to have great sex until we're 100 years old" — it's the food supply, the chemicals in the water, the sedentary lifestyles that are working against us. Not age itself.

Veto Power — Toxic or Just Smart?

This came up because Pris and I talked openly about how we use veto power in our relationship. In the poly community, veto rights get dragged pretty hard. A lot of people call it toxic, controlling, a violation of autonomy.

And then there's us. Pris vetoed people during our poly years and she was right every single time. I was so deep in NRE that I couldn't see what was obvious to everyone around me. She'd say "that person isn't good for you" and I'd say "you're just being a jealous wife." And then time would pass and I'd realize she was right.

Susan validated this completely. She said she has right of refusal in her poly too — if one partner is with someone who seems untrustworthy, dangerous, or not showing up well, the others get a say. It's not about control. It's about keeping the whole unit safe.

The way we've structured it now is loose — I still value Pris's read on people above almost anyone else's. Not because she has veto power, but because she's usually right.

What Susan Is Working On

She just released a new book called "The Alchemy of Intimacy" at 10intimacy.com. She described it as the 10 rules that have helped her and Tim get through anything together — and she said it's particularly good for poly people. There's also a 20-question guide in the book you can use with your partner to make your relationship stronger.

She's also speaking internationally (Barcelona, Sex Tech Berlin), updating her penis pumping guide, running a business mastermind for sex educators and experts, and writing newsletters and Substacks. The woman does not slow down.

The Takeaway

This was one of those conversations where I kept thinking, "I needed this ten years ago." The work Susan is doing is real, practical, and it comes from someone who has actually lived through the messy, beautiful, complicated reality of non-monogamy and come out the other side with a genuinely great sex life.

Go listen to the full episode. Then go check out expandherorgasmtonight.com and 10intimacy.com. And if you're not getting regularly tested, please go look at prodxhealth.com.

You can find everything — episodes, blogs, events, merch, and our anonymous confessional — at www.beyond-monogamy.com.