Sex Therapist Secrets & Orgasm Rock Bottoms | Vanessa & Xander Marin

Sex Therapist Secrets & Orgasm Rock Bottoms | Vanessa & Xander Marin

Licensed sex therapist Vanessa Marin and her husband Xander join Ned for an extraordinarily vulnerable conversation about the rock bottoms that transformed their relationship and launched their mission to help millions of couples reclaim intimacy. Vanessa's personal rock bottom began years before she met Xander: despite training to become a sex therapist, she couldn't orgasm with a partner. For years she faked it, delivering Oscar worthy performances while feeling increasingly disconnected from her own body and resentful of partners who never noticed. As a couple, Vanessa and Xander experienced the rock bottom that most long term relationships face but rarely discuss openly: the spark died. What began as undeniable chemistry and passion gradually faded into takeout on opposite couches, gross pajamas, and the sobering realization that neither could remember the last time they'd had sex. Xander was drowning in 70 to 80 hour work weeks, coming home at 10 PM to find Vanessa already asleep. Despite being in a relationship with a sex therapist, they weren't talking about their sex life at all until Vanessa finally confronted him with an accusatory question that sparked a major fight. All their conversations about sex became negative, creating a dangerous association that sex was a scary topic to avoid. Even couples therapy couldn't fully help them. Vanessa reveals the dirty secret of the therapy world: most marriage and family therapists receive just one unit of training on human sexuality, learning basic anatomical terms and nothing about how to actually help couples reconnect sexually. Their therapist helped them communicate better emotionally but had no practical tools for rekindling sexual intimacy. Once they began discussing sex openly and shame free, everything shifted. This episode breaks down the essential communication frameworks every couple needs. Vanessa introduces the two options method for discussing pleasure and orgasm, eliminating the deer in headlights feeling of "what do you want?" She explains the bristle effect, that visceral recoil when your partner touches you because touch has become exclusively associated with sexual expectations. The antidote: rebuilding non sexual touch through rituals like the 30 second hug (when oxytocin releases) and nightly makeout sessions with tongue that are explicitly decoupled from sex. They even made a rule: no sex allowed after making out for the first month to break the association. The conversation tackles initiation, the minefield where 87% of couples hate how sex starts in their relationship. Xander explains why men resort to juvenile tactics like boob honking: plausible deniability protects against the vulnerability of constant rejection. Vanessa reframes male initiation attempts as "I want to feel close to you right now," helping women understand that what looks like horniness is often a clumsy attempt at emotional connection. Their solution: the morning sex talk, where couples discuss whether they want to have sex that day and problem solve logistics together rather than springing a pop quiz initiation in the moment. They normalize that every couple has mismatched libidos and reframe the question from "am I horny right now?" to "am I open to getting turned on?" This shift removes the pressure to feel spontaneous desire and focuses instead on whether you want the experience of sex, the feeling during it, and the closeness afterward. Vanessa's course has helped thousands of women experience their first orgasms or learn to orgasm reliably with partners. Their book Sex Talks: Five Conversations That Will Transform Your Love Life offers the practical roadmap they wish they'd had during their own rock bottom. Find them on Instagram at @vanessaandxanders and explore their guides and courses at vanessaandxander.com.

Divorce Rock Bottom: Her Mom Had a Stroke & Marriage Ended | Gabriella Pomare

Australian family lawyer and author Gabriella Pomare joins Ned for an essential conversation about rebuilding family life after separation. Five years ago, Gabriella experienced her own devastating rock bottom: navigating a messy separation with a one-year-old son while simultaneously watching her mother suffer a catastrophic stroke that left her paralyzed and without memory. Despite being a seasoned family law practitioner, she discovered that professional expertise doesn't insulate you from the raw grief, anger, and confusion of divorce. That double trauma became the catalyst for a profound realization: separation doesn't create broken families. It creates opportunities to rewrite the family story with intention, maturity, and collaboration. Her new book The Collaborative Co-Parent offers a practical roadmap for parents navigating the impossible terrain between ending a marriage and raising healthy, emotionally secure children together. Gabriella introduces her four pillars of co-parenting communication: listen, pause, reflect, and respond. This framework helps parents regulate their own triggered emotions, filter every decision through the question "would my child be proud of this message?", and slowly transform high-conflict interactions into functional partnerships. She emphasizes that collaboration doesn't require being best friends or taking family vacations together. For some, collaboration means simply being able to exchange text messages without explosive conflict. For others, it's attending school concerts side by side or sharing holiday dinners. The definition varies by family, but the core principle remains constant: put the child's wellbeing at the center of every decision. The conversation tackles the hardest moments in co-parenting: driveway handoffs where tension is palpable, introducing new romantic partners, navigating holidays, managing the impulse to make children into confidants, and the ongoing grief that resurfaces unpredictably even years after separation. Gabriella shares her own rock bottom moment as a co-parent: a Christmas Day five years ago when she let anger about her ex's new relationship prevent their son from spending time with his father. That moment of recognizing her own failure became the springboard for everything that followed. She breaks down why the family law system often fails families, how courts can't address the emotional trauma of separation, the myth of parental rights (children have rights to relationships with parents, not the other way around), and why slowing down prevents years of expensive litigation. As both a practitioner who sees the worst-case scenarios daily and a parent who has lived through the confusion herself, Gabriella offers a rare dual perspective. This episode also explores the concept of accountability as the essential ingredient for moving forward. Both parents must take responsibility for their role in the relationship's end and the hurt caused, not to assign blame, but to get on the same page about the past so they can build something new. Gabriella emphasizes that separation isn't failure. It's an opportunity to reclaim power, rediscover individual identity, and create a life aligned with your actual values rather than performing an increasingly hollow version of partnership. For anyone navigating separation, struggling with co-parenting communication, introducing new partners into blended families, or simply trying to understand how to protect children from adult conflict, this conversation offers compassionate, practical guidance. Gabriella's book and her free communication resources are available at thecollaborativecoparent.com, and you can follow her on Instagram at @thegabriellapomare.

My Rock Bottom

Marnie Breecker, from Helping Couples Heal, interviews Ned.

What's Your Enneagram Type? Understanding Your Rock Bottom | Courtney Smith

Fortune 500 consultant and celebrity Enneagram coach Courtney Smith joins Ned for an illuminating exploration of the ancient personality system that reveals why we get stuck, how we create our own crises, and what it takes to break free. Unlike typical rock bottom episodes focusing on one person's story, this conversation offers a practical framework for understanding your own patterns—whether you're the perfectionist leaking rage, the helper who can't stop giving until they collapse, or the achiever chasing external validation while feeling hollow inside. Courtney breaks down all nine Enneagram types and their unique pathways to crisis. Type One (The Reformer) obsesses over moral perfection until hypocrisy or bitter loneliness forces a reckoning. Type Two (The Helper) gives endlessly while denying their own needs, leading to depletion or empty nest identity crises. Type Three (The Achiever) conflates worth with performance, facing rock bottom when reputation crumbles or retirement strips away their identity (think Michael Jordan's crisis after his father's death, or Tom Brady's difficult broadcasting debut). Type Four (The Individualist) actually seeks suffering, believing depth comes from darkness, until they realize pain without purpose is just misery. Type Five (The Investigator) retreats into intellectual isolation, discovering too late that detachment erodes the mastery they sought. Type Six (The Loyal Skeptic) outsources authority to institutions or relationships, suppressing their own needs until explosive consequences force them to reclaim self loyalty. Type Seven (The Enthusiast) chases novelty and pleasure to outrun pain, hitting bottom when they can't escape grief or realize they're trapped in the "fun guy" persona. Type Eight (The Challenger) mistakes intensity for aliveness, using anger as cheap fuel until health crises or consequences force them to confront vulnerability. Type Nine (The Peacemaker) self erases to maintain harmony, leading to passive aggressive explosions or the ghost like realization that they've disappeared entirely (Michael Phelps' journey exemplifies this pattern). The episode takes an unexpected turn when Courtney analyzes Ned himself, identifying him as a Type Six with a Seven wing based on his public journey. She points to the language of betrayed trust in his original rock bottom episode, the pressure cooker dynamic of trying to hold everything together while acting out, and his courageous authenticity in the aftermath. The conversation becomes deeply personal as they explore how loyalty to external structures (marriage, work, public image) can lead to betraying yourself first, setting up the larger crisis later. Courtney emphasizes that personality starts as an adaptive survival strategy—traits and perspectives we develop to get our needs met—but becomes a trap when we mistake these patterns for our true identity. Rock bottom happens when the costs finally outweigh the benefits, when we can no longer deny our role in creating the crisis, and when we're forced to take responsibility instead of justifying, defending, or rationalizing. The path out varies by type, but often requires doing the opposite of your ingrained pattern: perfectionists must accept their flaws, helpers must become selfish, achievers must embrace authenticity over image, individualists must take action instead of wallowing, investigators must tend to their bodies, loyalists must trust themselves, enthusiasts must sit with discomfort, challengers must accept vulnerability, and peacemakers must risk conflict. This episode offers essential insight for anyone feeling stuck despite knowing what they "should" do, anyone whose greatest strength has become their biggest liability, or anyone ready to understand the hidden beliefs and motivations driving their behavior. Courtney's book Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness and her Substack "What We're Really Up To" offer additional tools for this transformative work.

Are You Gaslighting Yourself? Nir Eyal on Limiting Beliefs | Rock Bottom

Author and behavioral designer Nir Eyal joins Ned to explore the hidden beliefs that keep us stuck—whether it's the diet that never works, the dream trip that never happens, or the chronic pain that won't go away. Nir's journey began with a devastating personal rock bottom: 30 years of yo-yo dieting, clinical obesity from childhood, and the shame of being the kid who never took his shirt off at the pool. After cycling through every diet imaginable—low fat, vegetarian, keto, intermittent fasting—he discovered the real problem wasn't finding the right diet. It was his limiting belief that there even was one "right" way. This realization unlocked a deeper truth: perseverance and adaptability matter more than intelligence or luck. But there was another rock bottom moment that changed everything. While spending quality time with his daughter, Nir checked his phone and missed her answer to a simple question. When he looked up, she was gone—he'd sent a clear message that his device mattered more than she did. This pattern of distraction extended to every area of his life, and he realized he needed to become "indistractable." His new book Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results introduces a revolutionary framework: beliefs are tools, not truths. Through a powerful four-question process adapted from Byron Katie's work, Nir demonstrates how to identify limiting beliefs, examine them from multiple angles, and develop a "portfolio of perspectives" that unlocks motivation instead of destroying it. This episode covers essential concepts everyone needs to understand: why motivation isn't a straight line but a triangle (behavior, benefit, and belief), how all human behavior is actually pain management, why distraction comes from internal triggers 90% of the time (not your phone), the difference between traction and distraction, and how chronic pain often has nothing to do with physical damage but everything to do with fear-pain-fear loops. Nir also breaks down the real psychology of addiction (it's never just about the substance—it's the person, the product, and the pain), why to-do lists sabotage productivity, how making a $10,000 bet helped him finish his manuscript, and the liberating mantra that puts everything in perspective: "It's all prom." If you've ever felt stuck despite knowing exactly what you should do, this conversation offers practical, science-backed tools to finally break through.