Cosmic Matchmaking: Follow Your Pleasure, Find Your Power

0:00Welcome to Skin and Soul. I'm Guenem Carstley, a transformational body, sex, and soul coach, and I'm inviting you on a bold, unfiltered journey into the heart of our humanity through the lens of arrows. This is where we strip away the shame, dive into the unspoken, and embrace the wild, raw truth of our desires. Together we'll crack open the taboo, uncover our deepest intimacies, and awaken the pulse of our sexual essence. Because real transformation, it's messy, it's thrilling, and it's oh so delicious. Buckle up loves. Skin and soul beyond the pale starts in three, two, one. Let's go. Hi there. I'm Guenem. I'm your host to Skin and Soul beyond the pale and welcome. Now there's a moment in Violet Lang's story where she standing at an airport gate to fly to the man that she thought was her future. And instead she lets the plane leave without her. Years later, she had a dream of a man that she had never met, and three weeks later, that same man walks into her lucid dreaming class.

1:04This man would become her husband. And she will tell you that she doesn't believe that there is just one soulmate. She's a Harvard MBA, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, who chose pleasure as her work. She's now known as the Cosmic Matchmaker, which I love that title, and underneath all of it, one provocative possibility. That finding love is less about making ourselves desirable, and more about refusing to leave ourselves to be loved. Never again giving ourselves away. So welcome Violet, and I do believe you've got yourself on mute. Yes, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for the warm welcome. And I just want to start by saying, because I really just want to have the girl chat with you. There's so much that I've found, I think we have a lot in common. And from just experiences alone moving through life, but the one thing that we don't share is that I am not a dating coach.

2:05I don't, I myself do not date. And so I love this topic and just talk to me about what it means to be a Cosmic Matchmaker. Mm-hmm, my pleasure. Yeah, I feel like we're given all of these cultural narratives that are disempowering, especially for women. You know, we get told there's just one, and you just wait. And when you wait long enough, they finally show up. Or, you know, if you're just look a certain way or act nice enough, it's all this conditional love that's teaching us that we're not lovable as we are. And that we don't get to actually inhabit our bodies and have it our desires and inhabit our life. And so Cosmic Matchmaking is my version of the antidote to that, which is that you can shape your destiny. You can connect to your soul blueprint as it lives through your body and through your pleasure. And you can call in a beloved or many beloveds. And it doesn't have to be something that we're just waiting on fate or that we are conforming to a social script in order to receive love and pleasure and belonging.

3:17Now, you met your husband three weeks after dreaming him. Yeah, I guess that's because I had a, I mean, I've had an experience of dreaming of someone, but I was, I was really young. I was seven and I remember later on meeting this person. And, and it was just the flash of memory came so quickly, which brought in that idea of a soul love. And I also believe that we have many soulmates. But I wanted to know your thoughts on, you know, in terms of your, you're, I want to say your one soul love, but just that there's people that are meant to come into your life for either lessons or for a life. Living love. Absolutely. That's another myth that we just have one person. I think we have many soulmates. And I want to also share for people listening that are more in the spiritual stuff like twin flames versus soulmates and twin flames. We're kind of burning each other up. We're going through initiations and our transformations and a soulmate to me has a little more harmony and a little more ease of course still the level of desire and pleasure and growth edges.

4:26And all of that, but there's like a resonance like that soul level of resonance. And so I love that you also have met someone that is like a soulmate, even though when you were much younger through a dream. I was dating someone casually at the time and I wasn't sure it was going to be a good fit because my heart just kept feeling a little bit crunchy. The person I was dating was really sarcastic. So I was in this kind of exploration, the spiritual exploration of should I keep dating this person. I know I want to be a mom. I know I want to be in a relationship. But even though this person seems perfect on paper, my body is not feeling the way that it wants to feel. And that's one of the things I teach my clients all the time is it doesn't matter what check box they are, you know, ticking. It doesn't matter if they're perfect on paper. How is your body responding in the moment? Do you feel emotionally safe? Do you feel turned on? Can you speak your truth? Do they respect your boundaries? Like all of these real life things. But to make it all so short, when I had this dream, I woke up from the dream laughing and my heart felt really warm because then my dream this man approached me.

5:30He said Joe, the guy was dating at the time. Joe's a 10, you're a 100. What are you doing with this guy? And so I was like, oh my god, okay, duly noted, a woke up laughing. I did not think it was a real person. And then three weeks later, I go to this event on lucid dreaming. And at the very end, this man approached me and I say to the woman I'm standing next to, holy shit, I had a dream of that guy. And because it's an event on lucid dreaming, she didn't think I was about to get crazy. She was just like, wow. And I didn't tell him right away. Oh, we had these like spiritual sparks that were flying. I kind of knew instantly, okay, in this lifetime, we're working on sex and money, like second shocker type stuff. And there was like a sense of being at home. But because I had dated long enough on the dating spin cycle for eight years after a sexless marriage, I knew that he wasn't, you know, Inquitations, the one or like a soulmate until we were much deeper. So I didn't tell him right away.

6:30I had a dream about you. Like that came out a little bit later. And we do have this cosmic love story, but we have a very human love story as well. Yeah, I think there's the distinction between the human love story and the cosmic one because they can live in my experience in very different realms as someone who's very energetic. And I do really well within that realm, but then coming into flesh and being is a whole other game. And you do talk about, okay, it's one thing to find your person. And to be that, you know, to look for the person that feels right, which I think is the right way to go. Because when you have to answer these questions on paper, for instance, I never would have met my wife on paper ever. You know, there was nothing about what, you know, what she would have written down in terms of she's like, you know, she was a golfer and so on. And just completely different personalities and so on. And yet in life, somehow it worked. At least and for for a good long time.

7:30So it's always interesting to me what is on paper versus the energy between and I don't know how you feel, but I always think of how do I want to feel in a relationship? How do I want to be? How do I want the relationship to grow? How do we want to interact with each other versus the person does this and checks off all of these things, which is. Yes. This is a lot of times. So what are you makes it the cosmic when you when you teach women? Yes, well, I'm helping them align their energy fields. So clearing their energy fields of heartbreak or you know, residual trauma and such as the energy field that's also in the body. I work with Yoni eggs and cervical ones and other tools like that too with my clients, but it's about clearing this lead. So I work with them about transcending these cultural narratives and finding a higher love, you know, finding a spiritual view on love. And that's more empowering than just, yeah, check the box dating.

8:33And I'm also helping them recognize that they are becoming the match for the love of their life and not waiting on someone to show up. And that's a very rational match by living in alignment with their truth and also by playing with their different polarities, you know, I used to teach more about like masculine feminine and now I teach more what I call full spectrum or flux for fucks like be in the flux and the flow of who you are becoming as a soul and as a person. It's about your range. It's about the light and dark. It's about the sacred and the sexual and it's about bringing your fullness to dating and like this very full contact way. Instead of oh, I can't share my desire because what if I accidentally pushed them away like no. So express yourself because that I mean, and I come from that honestly, if just having suppressed so much, which I think is so common that that I don't want to say just women, I think men do it as well. If we get to a place of just shut down, thinking this is how we entered the relationship and we're never going to grow and God forbid somebody sees me in a different light and I get rejected.

9:42And so I'd rather either just keep things status quo or tear it all apart. So how do you find now being with your husband for five, I don't know how many years ago. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, we have been together 11 years and we've been married almost 10, nine, sorry, almost nine. And how do you find the transition has been from this from meeting the dream, literally the dream man. I love it. The dream man into who the relation who he is in relationship now with you and how the relationship is in the flesh. Yes, I think the biggest thing that's happened is trust. You know, we had this cosmic trust love story and that's one way of trusting trusting universe trusting spirit. But we didn't have the lived embodied foundation of trust where you rupture and repair where you go through cycles where your intimacy isn't as hot because of various things going on or your trauma coming up. And then you rebuild it and it's actually more refreshing to like a few times a year now we look at each other and we're like, that was actually the best sex of our relationship or the best sex of our life.

10:51But that's more fulfilling than just like expecting the honeymoon to continue. So it's like the trust, the integration, laying the foundation. And that has led to like greater capacity and greater ease. So how do you tell women who are just starting who are longing for that? Because I think most of us long for the relationship that lasts right not just something that that eventually fizzes out because I've, you know, we start off in the rosy color glasses and everything is hunky dory and the sex is amazing. And then all of a sudden that the lenses start to come off one by one and we start to see each other and the wounds come up. And so how do you distinguish between even, you know, I think for particularly probably for a lot of women that are looking at their cosmic soulmate from a place of wounding to start with right. So when they're looking like that sense of familiarity, that sense of distinguishing between the wound and familiarity versus oh, this really is a potential soulmate that I can see and vision.

12:02Yes, two things, one of which is patterns of attraction and the second of which is your fault, they felt sense like some added experience as you're going through dating. So patterns of attraction are almost always encoded based on our earliest imprints. And then they follow us through our relational history from childhood all the way up to up to our adult self. And oftentimes, like you said, we are chasing familiarity out of an attempt to heal an old wound. And usually that has us over indexing either on our head, like we talked about the beginning dating from a checklist or on our heart, overgiving, like being too emotionally generous, holding too much space for the other person and not getting our needs met or on our body, right. And I've done all three of these where I've over indexed on one of these places. And what usually happens is at the same time we're toggling between dangerous and safe. And with someone who reminds me of this template for my childhood and it's a little dangerous but very erotic or I'm just so unsafe, who I know is good for me, who my friends say is really nice, but like it doesn't really feel a good fit.

13:06Exactly. And so one of the first things I do with my clients is we understand, well, what's your condition? You know, what did you learn about love sexuality and relationship from your parents? And what did you learn about what it means to be whatever your gender or sexual orientation is like from your parents or from your culture. And once people see that, they can just be like, oh, I don't want to create a relationship that was based on what my parents thought was good or my religion thought was good or my culture thought was good. That's not what sex means to me. And so we create like a new kind of intellectual scaffolding. And then I talk about dating cat. Your catnip is the thing that you feel inexplicably drawn towards that you are hoping will heal this cycle, but that you actually can change by embodying yourself. So what I mean by that is my dating catnip forever was the creative type who is very aloof and very kind of avoidance and moody. And what I wasn't doing as I wasn't owning my own creativity. I was wanting my partner to bring that to me.

14:08And I wasn't owning my own bitchy mystery. I was like, you know, leaning in and overgiving. But once I was like, I am the queen of bitchy mystery. And I am the creative goddess of eternal flow. Then I was like, these people are not even that interesting to me anymore because I had kind of taken the medicine. I was hoping to get from them and brought it into my own existence. And the other thing I really love doing is because I'm really big into psychological fantasy is teasing out with people like, OK, well, what are your fantasies right now? What's the deeper texture that you want to receive from that? And the deeper texture for me is oftentimes I would have fantasies about like voyeurism, you know, I'm with my partner, but other other men are watching. And I was like, well, I want to be really seen. I don't want to be the one seeing the other person like holding space for them, seeing their soul. I want someone who can see my fucking soul too. So this combination of like reversing or dating catnip looking at the deeper texture of your fantasies and then understanding the cultural and familial conditioning that are all part of it. Can quickly change our patterns of attraction and we show up differently. It's not that it ever goes away.

15:14Even now I can go to a party and feel drawn to someone and be like, fuck, I'm not dating catnip, you know, like that's the thing. But I notice it. I laugh and I, you know, remind myself that I embody those qualities. And then the second part is that when we are dating after we've done this deep patterning and deconitioning work, we have to be in our bodies enough to notice, oh, there's that pull. Oh, that's my catnet or like, oh, there's a part of me that wants to put all my energy up into my heart and head and disconnect from my body because that feels safe. And I'm afraid of being judged instead of I'm going to be in my hips. I'm going to be sassy. I don't care if this person rejects me. Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of the both end of those two parts of the process. Okay, now I have to ask you about your bitchy mystery. Because you said, bitchy mystery. And I think I heard it somewhere and I was like, what bitchy mystery do do tell. Yes. So I love working with archetypes with my clients when we're changing their dating catnip is like, what is the archetype that would communicate viscerally this new energy that you're bringing into yourself.

16:25And that's part of this like flux, right? It's like we're always in flux. And so how can we become even more full. And so for me, the bitchy mystery is if someone says, oh, how was your weekend, the past me would have said, oh, it was fun. I did this thing. I went to coffee with a friend. I had brunch. The bitchy mystery was like, I don't know. It was glorious. Winky face, you know, or oh, I had some, I had some adventures, winky face, like give way less, give way less information. Or the bitchy mystery is if someone shows up on a date 20 minutes later, I wouldn't even wait that long. But if someone shows up 10 minutes late and I'm pretty functional. And so just feeling, oh, no worries, I understand traffic saying like, oh, that doesn't work for me. That doesn't feel good. That does not feel good for me. You better make it. You better make this up to me. You know, like being a bit of a diva. I love that and coming to that though, you know, going from a place of overgiving, wounding, and then owning your stuff.

17:26And I'm going to say your process of self love full embodiment and getting, you know, being able to balance your masculine or your full spectrum, where you can take care of your own needs and really understand. So what does it feel like in your body when you realized, oh, I know what it is I'm missing. Oh, I know that this is not the other because I think a lot of people don't understand the idea of, oh, I'm projecting that over there. But rather that it's, it's all here all the time. Yes, in my body, the somatic cues were actually pretty simple. When am I leaning in like literally my heart is over my putteris instead of on top or behind it. And when am I bubbling up like living from my heart up. So when I brought my energy down to my hips, which you can just do by like little hip circles or like little pelvic floor squeezes that shifted things when I actually pushed my heart backwards and like focus on back apart.

18:26I talk about this all the time with my couple's clients is because in almost every relationship, one of the partners is living front of heart and the other partner is living back of heart. And then one person is constantly chasing and the other person is constantly like stonewalling and drawing. So anyway, like we both need to be able to access front of heart and back apart. But when those things happen with my hips and the back of the heart, then I felt like I was sitting on the throne of my own sovereignty. Then I was able to really show up clear and aligned and still of course like have pleasure and have sex and it doesn't mean that I'm just so contains that there's no engagement. But my patterning required that I was more yeah in my hips and leaning back. However, I also worked a lot with people who identify as more avoidant and their patterning is actually like the gushing flowing like goddess of honey that can like flow and move into every situation with sweetness and that wasn't my thing, but for some of my clients, that's the sort of archetype they need.

19:26Or yeah, and then even just pulling back like you said a little bit right isn't isn't being avoidant. It's being in your center just like being too far back and having to come forward can feel very exposing. I actually think that oftentimes because I'm a leaner forward. I'm a forward leaner. It's like this right the hearts like there. Yeah, and and it learning to come into alignment is just as exposing in a in a strange way because doing this can be very forceful. You can feel the other person kind of retreat, which is also a safe place to be then when two people are incredibly present is to me that delicious alive place where you're just sitting with the other and everybody's open and it's. It's amazing a scary shit, but it's it's so good only it's not one person overgiving or running away. Yeah, well, even in just the visual of you showing that with your body when both people are aligned and centered there's a vessel there's a space for the third thing, which is the relationship as an emerges versus when we're always kind of chasing or leaning or moving.

20:37We're controlling that flow of love and life. So in terms of dating because I like I said I don't date I tried dating I've tried the online dating I shouldn't say I've never dated but it's for me it's always been a yes no very very quickly. And so learning to play in the space of oh I get to know somebody and getting on to dating sites has always been. I don't know a bit of a wheel and I heard you say oh the best ones are hinge which again I was really really really hinge of all things okay. What is some something that you might give us advice for the 40 plus moving into dating who's been there done a lot of it probably been into in relationships long term relationships for most of their lives and then having to enter the space of doing it again. Yes I love that question because I have worked with so many clients in their 50s 60s and even 70s and some of them have been okay I'm willing to use the apps and that's been an exploration and they've even met their partner like their spouse there.

21:48And other people have been like that is just not for me and I do not push it if it's not something that they're wanting to do. But what I find useful about online dating is it is a structured way to learn regulating your nervous system pacing a conversation being discerning seeing how someone really shows up without the kind of in the moment real time like chemistry nervous system overwhelm you know and I work with a fair number of clients to identify as neurodiverse and I do too so. There's like a way that we can be a little bit more reserved and be a little bit more of an observer when we use the apps, but I always say that your profession communicate three things little bit about who you are in the most sensual way possible like the five senses what lights you up tech to lead like what your actual kind of visceral day to day life is that's the first thing the second thing is what are the qualities you're looking for in a partner not necessarily like how much money they make or what their build is or. You know how old they are but like how do you want to feel in connection with that person like I want to be with someone that I can feel relaxed or excited or leads me on adventures or whatever and then the third thing is what are you looking for in relationship because we all might say we want a long term relationship but what that actually means can be very different.

23:07And when you when you do those three things and have pictures that just communicate like your essence, then it actually can be quite successful I do have quite a few clients that meet their person on the apps. But I also have clients with apps like Tinder and field and it doesn't just have to be like hinge or bumble or one of those kind of mainstream relationship apps. And on the other hand, a lot of my clients are like you know i'm so intuitive and i'm so fast knowing that I just need to meet the person in real life and so then I help them kind of identify places of high potential whether that's. I need to be able to meet up events or event right places or going to a different neighborhood and like following your pleasure and your instinct and. I've had clients that meet because the person holds a coffee shop door open for them, which is like this random kind of meet cute i've also had people meet a volunteering events on a yoga retreat in Italy like just so many so many cool different ways i feel like the universe wants us to love it wants us to open the channels for love so the more channels you have open that works with your nervous system.

24:15The better but once you've gotten the insight like using the apps or something you know going to a certain event don't keep going to a single single's event hoping things will be different once you've gotten that insight then pivot into something else. Yeah and what does it mean to you to show up as love. I mean love is different for every single person but to me showing up as love is a combination of radical authenticity along with deep care deep care for self and deep care for other. And flowing the radical authenticity and deep care through your body or allowing it to express through your body. Beautiful i love that because then when you know yourself and and you're open that's when we attract. The most incredible people in our life and for me it's always been an accident it's always sitting down or just meeting somebody ice I always said like i'm that person that will be driving in the car will either hit me or I will hit the other person I hope not but. Something along those lines grocery store just run them over I don't know.

25:17In terms of in terms of meeting people because the thing you know having those opportunities nowadays becomes less and less. And the one thing I dislike so much about the the dating apps is how much gets hidden behind there the lack of representation. I know I have friends of mine who literally make a career out of online dating. That's too much. It's just this this like grand hopefulness which I admire and like I said I don't I don't coach on on dating whatsoever. I look at that world as a skill unto itself to be able to show up with your flirtation and to be yourself and to be open to be able to give and receive and have very very contained boundaries and. And a lot of it is very time consuming to be able to show up again and again and and there's a beauty in it too because you're always meeting new people so in terms of meeting someone organically.

26:17Yeah what are some of the things that people where where people meeting people organically these days. Yes well before I get study doing a say that the the ritual preparation is the same whether you're on the apps or whether you're going out. It's really like feeling good in your body and having that balance within your heart and knowing your dating catnip and you know kind of where you're likely to fall into something or rush too fast or whatever your own kind of personal thing is. But in terms of meeting someone in real life I always say don't do something just because you hope you're going to meet a partner like for most of my clients on myself the strategy doesn't work if a strategy worked you'd already be you know that would have already happened for for most of us so it's less about strategizing and more about. What would feel fun what would light me up and where would be places of possibility with the type of person that I'm looking for so I didn't go to the meet up event on lucid dreaming where my husband. And hoping to meet a partner actually just wasn't even in that headspace when I showed up because of various reasons but looking back and like oh it was like a nerdy spiritual event that is just so my thing and so I in hindsight like knew that I would meet school people there.

27:34One of my clients met her partner at an art gallery opening she's not super into art but she's very into local things she's a writer and she talks about like local breweries and so her being in the local scene is really important for her and she met someone who's also in the local scene just by kind of expressing and. Showing up in not more open place and making it summer complicated that it needs to be when she met her partner she said all that happened is they walked into the room they looked at me and I held eye contact for two seconds longer than I normally would and they came over and said hi and then we had a conversation and because of the work that she had done with me she's like can I see it in my body I see it in my pleasure I knew to pull back my energy at times and blah blah blah so. I guess what I'm going with all this is it's it's really about going where you're going to feel good in your body and there's a potential to meet someone who has similar values or vision or interest but similar to you like I have met people I dated in the line at DSW shoe store like I have met people at a gas station when I pumping gas and someone comes up and ask me out and it's because in those moments i'm just feeling good in my body and i'm feeling open and so that's why I just want to kind of say that it doesn't.

28:49really matter where you are it's about who you are and and how you are when you're in those places and I also love giving the universe little challenges so it's like hmm i'm ready to have a sexy experience universe video and a ring me like it's a little bit of a treasure hunt and i'm going to go out and see how much pleasure I can have I call these pleasure quests I like assign my clients pleasure quests like sometimes we go on a pleasure quest I don't care if it's to like you know whatever a new neighborhood or to an art opening or but my rule is. no like movies or live performances or things where you can't interact with someone and the other rule which I know women don't always love is no shopping not that you can't have a pleasure quest for shopping but we're not like trying to acquire something that's not the type of pleasure it's like the embodied experience i for myself started doing this many years ago maybe 15 years ago when I lived in New York City I had a random like Tuesday off work I was like i'm going to walk Broadway from the upper west side all the way to battery.

29:49Park and just see how much pleasure I can find and now it's become kind of like a way of life and so a lot of my friends do meet people they date when they're on a pleasure quest. I love that because when you're out and just being yourself is when you're open I find being in Spain people are just lovely and anybody is just willing to talk to you and with my dog and with i'm with a friend of mine. And people are so easy and it's so lovely when you're open to just start talking to someone which is not from where I came from in many places people can be tend to be more a little bit more close but being in spain I find people are really open and they're willing to talk so it's it's yummy. On those pleasure quest. Okay so having said that and talking about connections and opening and you know catching glimpses and staying that two seconds longer because it requires you to stay in the body. Going back to your husband because I think it's such a great story that you dreamt about him before meeting him.

30:52What part of that is not the one soulmate. Well you know I believe that we have romantic soulmates we have like kindred soulmates some of my clients are poly and they have multiple romantic partner soulmates i'm a monogamous person so that's not for me but I just don't want anyone to feel limited if heaven forbid their partner dies or they get divorced or something you know happens that they can't they can't explain I mean so many of my clients come to me. Because they have already had a long term relationship and they want something different this time or they want something that lasts longer and it's too. Damning and like judgmental like to scarlet letter or something to say like okay well you already had one love like you you that was it so I believe we can have money soulmates. And I also think it's important to remember that even in relationships that we're not like oh my god I have to do everything I can to keep this person and like the hyper vigilant and over function that's like of course I want to be with my husband another 10 30 50 years.

32:01But if I think this is the only one then that means I am trying to regulate his energy oh you better not be flirting with that person this thing better not be coming on and I don't want to. I don't want to be controlling I just want to trust a flow of life and the flow of love I feel like working record I just say that all the time but yeah I will just say one other thing though from his perspective that makes it kind of cool for both of us it being a cosmic web story is that the night that I had the dream about him where he came to me in the dream. He was on an Iowaska ceremony and this whole intention he's like I want to be met like I want to be fully met and sick of dating people that can't really meet me that aren't deep that aren't passionate that aren't smart you know we were living in LA at the time and it was like I'm just like dating super facial people is what he had said and then that is the night he had the dream and the reason he approached me at the event is because he said well when the speaker was talking about lucid dreaming being like a psychedelic and asked who here is done Iowaska you and I were the only ones who raised our hand in the room I was like really you were sitting behind me so I didn't know that so there's like all these threads that were connecting us and and that's why I just want to reiterate that I do think there's people that we are meant to meet I don't that you can miss your destiny but I know for sure had I'm not done the work to integrate my head heart and body to notice my dating catnip and to get out of my own way and heal some of my sexual trauma.

33:25I wouldn't have been able to turn that meet cute in that cosmic love story into a real relationship and so it's about being prepared being prepared for the opportunity is that arise. Well I think also there's different soulmates that will come along for different gross so depending on where you're. Right you'll you'll your resonance will attract a different type of soulmate I just love that you dreamt it and that you you know you had this experience before meeting and that he had his own experience because that that stuff you can't make up and it's stuff that you just can't foresee and that is the stuff that magic is made of even that you know I've had in the past when you didn't have so much internet dating and I'm. The internet didn't exist a friend of my mom's was doing letter writing and she you know she met her and she had a love that she was with for many many years and then and didn't want to give up on love which is the other thing is is why give up on love right.

34:25What person you divorce or whatever happens or the person passes away that there is someone else that there is that the like you said the cosmos wants you to be happy and to and to live in love whatever that looks like and and she and her story was that she you know just randomly out of the newspaper they were writing to each other I think they wrote to each other for. A year you know those days when they actually took a while and but they met and they got married I mean it was and it was after they'd never seen each other was you know. Wow. So the magic is real I think if you're willing to open yourself up to it and and to work on it and so looking at wounds because I know again you know we have a similar kind of trajectory in terms of healing old wounds and and coming to the world. That place of feeling good within yourself so when you were healing your wounds and being able to look at them what was some of the processes that you went through for yourself.

35:30It's a painful. Yes, there were many different parts of the journey so I'll try to keep it concise but the biggest one was healing from my childhood sexual abuse and really recognizing that. My body did not just exist to please someone else that my boundaries were important that it didn't owe anyone sex and that on the other hand when I felt flooded or dissociated I didn't have to actually completely pull away through doing the work it could be more present it could move the energy that didn't have to disrupt. The sexual connection so is about finding that balance between hypod and hypersexual because I would be hypersexual when I was dating and then what's it turned into a relationship because my sexual abuse was from a family member in a weird way they'll further the relationship went the more that my sex issues would come up and I know I'm not the only one with that. That passed and that issue so it was some out of experiencing therapy working with you need eggs developing the felt sense and getting a really strong vents this real sense of my know as well as understanding like my anatomy my genitalia what my pleasure was like my giant blueprint so I was a whole journey about healing from the sexual abuse but then the other part was the emotional journey because I was raised in a household with a lot of narcissism.

36:53I would find myself attracted to people with really big personalities but then I would be the empathetic kind of enabling one and this is a little hard to admit but I had to realize well there's a there's a subtle flavor of narcissism within me that I need to be seen as a good one that I need to be seen as the caring one that I need to like have this persona validated by the outer world like all your suffering so much and it's not fair because you're such a nice person you know so there was there was a way that I was. I was feeding into those dynamics and then I would choose partners were more the enabler and I was more kind of like the aloof narcissistic ones was just this pattern that kept toggling back and forth and by finally claiming like no I can be that the chemistry I can set those boundaries that's also when I started realizing I know my yes not just sexually but emotionally and that there's some phrase like if you're not the villain in someone's story then you're not fully living.

37:53You know like being willing to be the villain in someone's story which really started when I got divorced from ex husband because I initiated the divorce he did not want that and it was a big rupture with my family and and how I thought of myself because I was raised in a pretty Christian household so. What do you think through all of that healing what changed in your view towards men. I think I started seeing them as actual people I know that's so dehumanizing but I had either been seeing them as like these dangerous monsters who were total scum or I was seeing them as like pushovers who should give me everything I wanted because I'm. To eating them a benefit by being with them I would kind of it's not the right terminology but I'll just use it I was kind of like dating down like dating people that I knew could not match me or meet me but I didn't think would leave me because I offered a lot more than they offered me and it was creating this power dynamic that was unhealthy and not sustainable based on my own insecurity and needing to be with someone that I felt like I was somehow better so that they wouldn't leave me so I would feel more safe but then I would feel more.

39:04I would invest less than that I would push them away and I would just all the things. So then now as you're with your husband and these do those elements ever show up and what does that look like in the dynamic. Yeah that's a great question I mean I do have to notice when I'm in my head and dehumanizing him and that can happen in very subtle ways from like I do so much work around here and he hasn't loaded the dishwasher in four days and like whatever those domestic disgruntled meant things. Gardener but I decided to make my body desirable. I was there that everyone gets in to and then realizing all that I just actually what I'm longing for is not that he does the dishes, I'm longing to rest. Why am I not giving myself rest, why am I prioritizing a cleanhouse overtaking care of my body and following my pleasure but has nothing to do with my partner my resentment is about my disconnect with myself. I'm responsible for my own pleasure, then I can see him in his humanity too. It's like I'm divorcing myself from my own humanity sometimes and focusing on being perfect and

40:04performing and being productive. And then again, that kind of puts me in my head. Or the other pattern is like I said at one point in the conversation, trust issues. So the perfect example is just a few weeks ago, I went down to his office. I was feeling kind of amped up about something. I'm sure he could feel my nervous system because as soon as I walked into his office, he shifted his body a little bit. There was like this little wiggle. And I thought, oh my god, he's hiding something from me. He has his computer screen open. There must be like an email from someone and I had this whole story. And then luckily I didn't just attack him with all that. I noticed like, oh wow, I'm being really hyper vigilant. He was being a little shifty, but I can be curious about that. I didn't have to like make meaning about what that is. And what I really need to own is that I showed up nervous. I showed up off balance. And there's a part of me that was looking for something he did wrong in order to justify being mad at him. So what I really needed was actually to move my anger and anxiety from something earlier and that it had nothing to do with him. But I was walking

41:09around with this charge of anger and anxiety and then projecting my trust issues onto him, trying to find a reason to be mad at him to justify moving my anger. Like it's so fucked up. No, but that's great awareness because most people don't have that awareness. They're just like, you didn't take out the garbage and you never do this and I'm run or even though it has nothing to do about the garbage and we do that. We're just throwing things on. And so how do you think in terms of flipping to the other side how he shows up differently? Like, you know, I don't know if he shared with you how he shows up differently and how he spurs your growth and vice versa. Yes, we talked about this all the time because he's also a relationship coach and a dating coach and all of that. A little less focus on the dating than I do, but he grew up in a family where there was very little emotional expression and where there was a lot of neglect. I grew up in a house where there was a little more abuse, although there was some neglect by my mom and he grew up more in like a fully neglectful house. And so he would just move through the relationship with this wall,

42:12this wall over his heart that was based on survival, but it would freak me out and then I have to like throw the grenade at the wall. That's how we talk about our relational dance is I would throw the grenade at the wall to get a response in order to feel safe because I couldn't feel him. And then it would yeah, it would obviously not go very well. So his work has been to show up more relaxed and to show up more open with me to share his inner world. So I don't have to provoke him in order to be able to feel him. And it's also been like at the same time less defensive. So if I bring something to him, hey, I did just yesterday, like why are you commenting on where my social media post I'm in this middle of a launch and I'm feeling really vulnerable. And he's saying, well, it's because I've been really busy and you know, it comes to me with the logical reasons. His work has now been to say, yeah, you're right. You want to be seen and supported. And I haven't been doing that. I haven't been going the extra step to actually comment on your social media post. And I see how much love you're pouring into this and how beautiful it is that you're willing to

43:14be seen in your vulnerability because I know you don't really love social media. So like I call him out on his defensiveness. He calls me out on my trust issues. Like we kind of know we have these relational dances and patterns that still come up even though we've been working on this stuff for a long time. But the difference is now within 10, 15 minutes, we can clear the charge and come back into connection whereas before us and then to be like weeks that we'd be in this my every sentiment and conflict. I'm dying here. Okay. I want to just say something. Maybe it's because I'm yeah, no, I'm having a full-on like allergy attack or something. Oh, sorry. And it's impact me because I'm just like, oh, that's that, you know, to have that awareness and from the masculine to have that awareness where there's that beauty because I mean from the feminine or the female, I mean, I'm definitely the one who, you know, has thrown cannons against walls just to get an emotional response. Yeah, you have that right? Most women at all. It's just to get it's like, is there a human in there and that is something I can relate to

44:14absolutely, you know, the objectification of the other and just being like, you're not really fine. I need my needs. I hope I need to have this self-awareness of, oh, this is not the other. It is so me. Yeah, yeah, sorry about that. Okay. Oh, that's okay. I wasn't sure if you got something in your eye or what happened. Yeah. Yeah, we're there. Oh, it's good times. Um, beautiful. Okay, so I'm going to ask you, I'm just going to transition. Okay, starting. So, okay, let's move into, I have 10 questions. I ask everyone. Please, don't James Lipton's 10 questions, but these remind. So here, what is one truth, your body has always known that your mind took years to catch up to. Okay. But I'm not highly sexual being. You know, I didn't even touch myself in self-tusher for the first time until I was 27. So it was, I was a late bloomer with that. Um, but yeah,

45:18I'm a highly sexual being who gets turned on by a lot of different things and, and that's okay. And my mind doesn't have to understand it. I can just feel it and let it move. Hmm, thank you for that. What is the most intimate moment you've ever had had nothing to do with sex? Hmm, that is a great question. Probably on my second date with my husband when he asked me, he has really good questions that are open-ended. He says, what's been hard for you in your life? And in that moment, I chose, even though it was very early on in our dating, to tell him about the sexual abuse and incest and feeling neglected and shut out by my mom and just the kind of, hate, the pain of my childhood. And then after that, of course, I had to like go to the bathroom and cry my eyes out and come back and I was still crying and he was like, oh, it's okay. Like, I love knowing this about you. Like, it really helps me know more how to love you. So it was a beautiful moment where I really chose to lean in and pull the bandit off with my vulnerability. Thank you. If you could be remembered for one sensation, what would it be?

46:21Hmm, yeah, it's this bubbling of energy from my lower belly up to my heart. And I guess it's a sensation. It's also kind of an act, but I have this uncanny ability to go, I'm hands in knees, like in a cat cow position and breathe into like the womb of the earth. And really anywhere I am in the world, I can have an orgasm just from the energy of the earth, like flowing up to my body and then I'm going to my orgasms back to the earth and we're like, orgasming together. And so that's that's a sensation I'd like to be known for as my earth orgasms. Yeah. So if pleasure were a language, what would your first word be? It wouldn't be a word, it would be. Sound. If your erotic life had a title like a movie or a film or a movie, sorry, or a novel, what would it be called?

47:22It's so cheesy, but what's coming to me is it just keeps getting better. Hmm. I like that. Thank you. What is one thing that you have never said out loud that you wish someone would ask you about? The hard one because I'm such an open book. I have always wanted to be more creative, kind of go say about my dating cat, now. So I would really like it if people ask me about my artistry and my creativity because it's not something I really show to the world. It's not an identity. I've not fully claimed my artist as an identity or an archetype. Okay. Thank you. What is what part of your erotic self are you still afraid to bring to the light? Hmm. Yeah, I think my like full on dawn. I can bring my devotional where I'm like giving the person the thing that I think that they need an order to open them. But just my like bitchy kind of, oh, it's not called, you know, the type of kink where you're kind

48:30of shaming for good, like humiliation, you know, I cannot bring that part of me yet. I like bitchy mystery. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's, yes. Yes, I would say, um, yeah, bitchy mystery with even more edge. Thank you. What dies in you when you pretend and what comes alive when you don't? Hmm. When I pretend I can almost feel like my throat and my heart chakra like wilting. It's like this fountain. If a fountain gets turned off. So I think what dies in me is just my essence, my connection to the fullness of my essence. And when I'm not pretending, it's just expansion and radiance and allowing and lay. I'm a very playful person, but I can also be really serious. So. Thank you. Finish the sentence when I leave this life, I want my skin to

49:36remember. Yeah, ecstasy and whimsy and deep pressure that communicates. I've got you, but I will never hold you back. Thank you. And if your soul has a scent, what does your smell like today? I'm a mix of rose jasmine and lavender. Thank you. So now I get to circle back to the quote to what you said around what no one asks you about, which is your artistry. So tell me something about your artistry that you would like to be seen in. That feels so intimate. Thank you for asking me that. I think I would like to be seen for my ability to move color. Like I've got synesthesia. And so sometimes during sex, I'll be like, I'm like tasting purple right now

50:38because you're hitting my cervix in this certain place, you know, but I feel like there's a way that I would like to express that, you know, through a certain medium like paint or something, but I do express it in the way that I dress, the way that I decorate. I'm not like an interior designer, but I really experienced the world in color. And I would like to be seen for the beauty, the beauty that I make through color in my life and the different seasons of my life, how that changes. I can look back and be like, oh, my 20s, that was my red chapter, you know, and then I had my green chapter and then my blue chapter and kind of like in a new phase as I'm relaunching and rebanding post part of them. But yeah. So what does purple or what does what does that taste like in your mouth? It tastes like, you know, there's like pastille that are like a lavender pastille or like a little hard candy, but when I, but it's funny because it tastes like a pastille that's lavender, but I see

51:44wisteria. So it's as if you could taste, it's as if you could taste wisteria, but that it tastes like kind of like a sweet lavender syrup. I love that. I love the crossing of wires. It always fascinates me. I'm a, I get, you know, I'm highly energetic. So I feel before I touch, in fact, the touch for me is almost, I don't want to say it's the, it's the downward spiral because that's not true, but it's, it's certainly touch without any forewarning is, right? It's like touch that comes without warning, can, can jar my body very quickly. And so the greater space there is for that tension to build. And so I'm always in love with this like, oh, yeah, color, color, it's flavors, all those juicy senses, senses. So if you got to play in your favorite senses in terms of your own intimate play, what's your

52:47favorite sense? It's really taste. I mean, I, I'm a shapeshifter, but I have a strong sensual and energetic for my blueprint. And the, the taste just like puts me over the adj I mean, even if Jason are making love and I like kind of bite his shoulder or suck his thumb or just like, even just with myself, if I'm going to be self-pluduring and I have a raspberry or some chocolate or like, it's, it's the quickest route to relaxation for me and the quickest route to, yeah, connection to my pleasure and my body is to feel that on my tongue and then my, I can even fill my mouthwatering right now just like, yeah. Yeah. So how important is it to know your arousal system? I think it's very important. That's also something I work with with my clients is because I'm definitely a full yes to consent, but I think that there are times where we're an instinctive know that we could actually be a maybe, but we just have our conditioning around it. So I like

53:48helping people understand, well, that helps you go from a no to a maybe, even if you don't have any sexual contact in that moment, but then it helps prepare you to be a yes the next day or later that week or something like that and then how do we go from a maybe to a yes. So we kind of have to know those, you know, Emily Nagaski, like, what turns, what's our gas pedal and, and how do we, yeah, how do we add a little bit more energy when we want to be a yes? Right. And how do you keep that dating within that container in that long term relationship, the flirtation, the tension, the polarity? Yes. Yeah, we talk about that all the time my husband and I, because he's a sexual blueprint, he's a meat potato is just like showing me your boobs and let's get it on and I'm so much more than that. And so we, yeah, we talk about like how can we, how can we show up like the other person once? And I find most people sexually or not, they're showing up as they want to love and be loved,

54:50but they're not necessarily showing up as the way that their partner needs it, right? So I wouldn't instinctively think that like getting naked, that's just not how I feel turned on when he gets naked, but I know that that's what he needs. So I can incorporate that a little bit more and vice versa with him, which is then that myth of, you know, that when you're not sexually perfectly aligned, like, oh, that person isn't matching me as an energetic shape shifting or, you know, that not two sexuals getting together, that then, you know, the relationship is doomed because they're all of these beautiful bridges to bring people together. So thank you for hi, guys. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I know we're coming to a close, but I'll just say, I find that when people have the same blueprint or too much the same of anything, it's really hot and having the beginning and it doesn't have a lot of longevity because you aren't forced to like grow and develop and broaden your horizons because when you have difference, it actually encourages both of you to become more full and more full. And the path is just kind

55:50of never ending because the variety and combinations are so unique. Mm-hmm. It gets more exciting that way. Difference is yeah, the way to go. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I want to make sure people know how to get in touch with you. It's violetlang.com. And then it was at violet love slang on Instagram. Yes, on Instagram. It's at violet love slang. So my first and then love and then slang. There isn't e at the end of slang. And then my website is horribly out of date, but you can, I have like programs that are just not all linked to my website. So anyone who's listening that wants to learn a little bit more, you can find me on Instagram. You can find my podcast. It's just called bold love and soulful sex, where you must just email me a violet, a violet like.com. And I am going to be doing something around dating and sexuality in the early part of next year. Beautiful. Thank you. And just I don't know if you can think of it, but give me something bitchy mystery. Well, if you, I don't know if you can see, but

56:52I'm, I'm turning around and I'm slipping my hair and saying, I know you want more. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. To everyone else, it's a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you next week. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Skin and Soul with me, Gwynem. Join me Fridays at 10 a.m. PST on Transformation Talk Radio. Catch the podcast anytime on your favorite platforms. You can follow me on Instagram at louvology ready to take the next step. Book a compatibility call with me at GwynemCarsley.com.