I’m sitting at a restaurant talking with sexual intuitive Susanna Brisk, when the owner comes over to our table to check on us. Within moments, she blurts out that she hasn’t had sex in 20 years — she’s celibate.

“You don't even masturbate?” Brisk asks casually.

“No.”

It’s a revealing first impression for a stranger we've known for all of nine seconds, but Brisk says things like this happen to her all the time.

“That's the thing about being A Sexual Intuitive®," she tells me (you bet your ass she trademarked it). "People have always felt comfortable telling me their deepest sexual secrets, since I was probably 15 years old. They have always just come up to me and said, 'Um, I've always wanted to be pegged. Bye. Have a nice day.'"

This is actually quite common for someone like Brisk — she's an empath; someone who can tune in to what others are feeling without them having to say it in words (a phenomenon psychologists call "emotional contagion.") Yet, while her ability makes her extraordinarily sensitive, she's learned how to harness it and now directs it toward helping people discover themselves sexually.

Brisk started practicing after her blog Malibu Mom gained a huge amount of traction. Gradually she transitioned to writing about something she didn’t see written about a lot — how women who were mothers could also be highly motivated by sex, and how the ones that weren’t could get more in touch with their own needs. 

“It started as like a mommy thing, and then I just blogged through my whole divorce, basically," she says. (Her blog is now the site RealSexDaily.com, but all the older, more personal and wild blogs are still up, if someone is motivated to find them.)

Over a weird vegan meal in the aorta of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, Brisk shared with me what it’s like to have sexual intuition, how she uses it to help people realize their fantasies, and gives us some invaluable life advice on how to live the sex life you’ve always dreamed of.

What does it mean to be a sexual intuitive?

Although I can sense what people's needs are, I don't just meet with somebody and say to them, "This is what you're into, so just go for that. Okay. See you later. Have a nice life!” I guide them through what to actually do with that information.

As it turns out, using the intuition I have is, in a way, the least involved part of my job. People have to feel comfortable sharing stuff they’ve been carrying around for a while. Once they are, it's up to them to identify what they need to me. The real work comes from steering someone towards feeling okay with who and what they are sexually. Then we work on how are they can transmit that idea to somebody else they’re already in a relationship with, or how they can go about finding a partner (or partners) to experience those things with.

What’s it like to be able to sense these things about people? Is it ever obtrusive?

It’s a gift and a curse. I feel people’s needs in my body and what they’re going through. It's not always that pleasant, frankly. Like most empaths, I have a lot of sensory issues. I saw a meme the other day that really described it — it was three people in full hazmat suits, and it said, "How empaths walk into Walmart.” That’s the closest possible way I can describe it.

For many years, I took antidepressants and mood stabilizers because I felt I needed that to be “emotionally stable” and block these feelings out, because at the time, I didn't understand what to do with all this extra information I get when I am talking to people, or in their presence, how to protect myself energetically. But doing that covered up a lot of my nature, reduced my empathy, and make it so I couldn’t feel the needs of whoever I was with, so I made the decision to stop once I realized I could use it to help people.

Tell me more about that. How did you realize you had a talent for this?

People responded to the frankness of the blog, and I was aware that I always had a very open-minded attitude to sex, but I had not expressed my own sexuality fully in quite a long time. I was not current and up-to-date with my own needs, and hadn't been for over a decade.

Then one day some years ago, I was at a barbecue. It was after my separation, and I was talking to this guy. He walked away, and I go, "Wow, he's cute." This woman said, "Yeah, all the women like him." And I go, "Well, I don't know about all the women, but I just had a conversation with him, and I could already tell whether he's dominant or submissive, if he's into BDSM, whether he dates strippers, if he's looking for a relationship, if he wants a commitment, and, by the way, he has some mommy issues." And as I'm talking, everyone's turning around to look at me, and I blushed red, which happens only twice a year, so it was quite a feat.

I go, "Doesn't everybody do that? Can’t everyone figure out everyone’s sexuality within five minutes of meeting them?"

And she goes, "You're a sexual intuitive." She named it, and doing that, almost defined what I was meant to be doing.

It was like one of those moments where the hair on my arms stood up. It was literally like time stopping because I had been looking for something; comedy and performing just weren’t doing it for me anymore. I knew immediately that was it, so then I started working on the trademark.

Are you ever wrong?

Whatever it is that I see when I look into somebody, where I can read them or whatever, they are sometimes not ready to hear about until I've spent 10 hours with them picking the threads of the shame that they've been holding, of these dark fantasies, or of some kind of trauma or abuse that they've experienced. They're not going to hear it. They’re just going to be like, "Oh, yeah, I'm not really into that." That's why I work on helping people feel okay with themselves first — you have to be comfortable in who you are to accept what it is you really want.

I could tell you that I'm never wrong, because it's very rare that I'm totally off with somebody, but it's really not important. What's more important that I see in people, I believe, is their potential. So I look at someone and I go, "Oh, wow. I can see the scope of where you could go with your sexuality."

What types of people come to see you?

I don't attract one kind of person, but I do always say that without the Mormons, the fundamentalist Christians, and Orthodox Jews, I would be out of business. I can say that in 95 percent of cases of people I work with, something has been implanted in them by religion at a very early age that tells them sex is shameful. They’re told they’re not allowed to have a sexuality because they’re, for example, a female, or a so-called “good boy.

That, or they realize early on that their sexuality falls so far outside what they see in Target catalogs as the acceptable tableaux of what it's all supposed to look like, that they understand immediately, even as a child, that sex is not for them. This happens a lot with people who are trying to understand their gender or sexuality, and have not seen examples of the way they express themselves in the media, so they feel a lot of confusion and shame about who they are

I try to show people the gray of like, "Okay, you don't just have one choice or two choices. Like either you're the Target catalog, or you're rolling around in excrement in a dungeon." There's a lot of places between that, you know? And especially now, with everything we know about gender. Choices are limitless.

Dang. So beyond intuiting these things about people, how do you help them get through these things and interpret their gut feelings about their own sexuality?

Well, most of my job is listening. It's holding space for people until they can hold space for themselves, which is kind of, in a way, a bad business model, because I'm the opposite to most therapists. I don't want to see you for 10 years. I mean, if it takes you that long to unravel what got “raveled,” then that's fine, but my intention is to hold space for you until you can hold space for yourself.

Every person that I work with, I have a completely custom approach. There are people that I work with that are very woo-woo, who I can talk to about energy and all kinds of very esoteric concepts, and I can go there. I love that. I love to speak in that way, because for me, the physical reality is not my favorite reality. I see a lot of strata under that, and so I love to coach people who are also in that world. However, I also love the challenge of coaching super-science-based people and figuring out a way to show them in the physical world what I'm trying to allude to that they're already feeling anyway, but need proof to trust.

Let's do an example. Take someone who's been married for 30 years and they just can’t go on. They haven’t been beaten, they’re not unsafe, it’s just that there’s a voice in their heads that says something drastically needs to change. That's a gut instinct that needs attention. But, before they throw a bowling ball at their life, they might come and see me and we'd parse out what that voice is and where it’s coming from. What's the need that’s not being met? How can you fill yourself up first, and then figure out how someone can fill you up as well?

It's possible to get most of your needs met most of the time. That’s one of my taglines, and I really believe that.

Alright, let's get into some life advice for our readers. How can you tell when you’re in the right sexual relationship?

Things mature over time. Our desires are constantly evolving. That's what so exciting about the whole adventure of sex and love. If you can find somebody to mature with you, and really recognize how you deserve to have your needs met, and that they deserve to have their needs met … everyone wins.

What does it take to get to that place where you are ready to get what you need sexually? Not everyone feels so safe going there, and if they did, you’d be out of business.

The first thing is self-awareness, but not just general self-awareness. I’m talking deep self-awareness. I always tell people to get to that place through the concept of mindful masturbation. You can jerk off 10,000 times — most of us have done our 10,000 hours, and we've done a good job with that — but how many of us have really been mindful about it? And understood, okay, what is it actually that’s arousing me right now? Why is it arousing me? Mindful masturbation is all about exploring your own erotic potential using your fantasies as a guide.

However, you don't have to analyze "why" something turns you on in a psychoanalytic sense, like I have to figure out that Daddy spanked me when I was seven and that's why I'm into submission. Take that sort of analysis out of it. Fantasies are not that cut-and-dry. Rather, focus on what is it about the fantasy that turns you on … not what childhood memory it may or may not be attached to. That’s the reason why I'm not a traditional therapist, and I don't think a lot of traditional therapists are able to talk about sex. It’s its own category. It’s so individual.

Are you saying that, in your practice, you don't analyze the source of people's arousals? That you run with that feeling, and see what you can do with it, but it doesn't really matter at what point it started in a Freudian sense?

Yes. Absolutely. That is anathema to what I do. I don't like the analysis. Traditional psychoanalysis in identifying the source of something, in sexuality it doesn't give you a place to go. I mean, it's good for awareness, for sure. But then what? I work with your desires as you have them. "Oh, I get aroused when I see women wrestling." Okay, let's work with that. It's not like, "Who in your childhood wrestled? Was your mother a wrestler?”

I think what is useful to know is the why, as opposed to the origin. Is it the fact that these women are powerful? Are you aroused because you're thinking about a woman overpowering you that way? Does that show a potential where you might be able to ask a partner, and say, "You know what? I've always really wanted to be dominated by a strong, muscular woman, and you've noticed that the women that I've dated have all had kind of the physique, and this is what I'm into. Or is it the exhibitionism? That you're identifying with the wrestlers being watched? Or is it the voyeurism that you want to watch and you're not involved, and they're not even aware that you're watching? All of that stuff is super useful information.

One of the most important things you work on with people is helping them figure out how to go after what they want in bed. Yet, so often, when people do that on their own, they’re branded as “sluts.” Why do you think people slut-shame people who go after they want sexually?

Even when I was a teenager, I was just like, "What's wrong with being a slut?" It's just like, "Yeah, I like doing all that dirty stuff. Makes me feel better about myself — less lonely, more connected, less depressed … It feels good. What's the problem?" I made mistakes for sure, but once I developed a code (don’t fuck over other women, don’t sleep with people who don’t value sleeping with you) it just became one of the best parts of life for me. “Slut” is just a word used to make women feel bad about their sexuality because for some reason the patriarchy finds it threatening. Not sure why, seeing as the more slutty (heterosexual) women are, the more men get laid … seems like a win. One of the great parts about getting older is that you stop giving two fucks about what people think about your two fucks, so to speak.

I teach people to go with their gut. If you are a slut, you should be one. If you like the label, co-opt it. If it doesn’t feel good, find a better word that describes you. Or a feeling. What’s most important is that you’re okay with what you’re into. Other people’s judgment couldn’t be less relevant.

How would you recommend a couple get over a fundamental sexual incompatibility?

There's almost nothing that's unsolvable, when a problem within a relationship is strictly a sex problem. For every couple, there’s a Venn diagram, and the Venn diagram contains a certain amount of overlap that describes what both people are into. Usually, couples stay in that middle section and that becomes all they do. For example, you have just a decade of him eating her ass, because maybe that one kink can keep a marriage going.

It’s expanding on that comfort zone that can solve an incompatibility. It’s going beneath the surface and going, "Well, why is that arousing to her and to him? Is it the element of dominance or submission? Is it the taboo of the ass?” Then it’s using that knowledge to build off whatever mutual sexual interest you have because, you know, there are a lot of different ways to eat an ass.

What's relevant and what's important is to know yourself and know what priority this is for you personally. If figuring this stuff out is not a priority for your partner like it is for you, that’s a sign that the solution is not necessarily a sexual one.

For people who are trying to spice up their sex life, which is everyone these days, how would you recommend they communicate what they want to their partners?

I have a quiz my upcoming How-To book called "13 Questions," and it's designed to help you figure that out. First, you answer the questions for yourself, and then you go to your partner, and you have them answer the questions, and you share. For example, one of the questions is, "Is romance a component of arousal for you?" And that's something that's really valuable to know, as opposed to, "Oh, he doesn't take me to dinner and he just expects that he's going to stick his dick into me." There's not a lot of places you can go with that, because it's already become a callus. It's become calcified into a resentment. If you know that romance makes you wet, then that gives your partner somewhere to go.

What do you think keeps most people from having the type of sex life they want?

Most people have secret compartments of themselves. I believe in privacy, but I don't believe in secrecy. It’s just not what I teach. For me, that's not a sustainable relationship model, but I know many relationships built on the Clinton LGBT military policy — “If I don’t ask then don’t tell me!” I can work with people who need to configure things that way because they have joint lives financially, or share kids, or have other circumstances. If you’re going to be consciously dishonest though, how can I help it not eat you up inside? Even Dan Savage talks about it being okay to cheat in certain circumstances, but I think what’s most important is that you’re completely honest with yourself.

So what I teach is you is to try, and try until, you can't try anymore, to get your needs met. But because it involves other people and their needs, it's always going to be messy. You can’t make people do what you want them to do. First of all, we have a little thing called consent, and even beyond that, you can't force people … unless forcing is part of what arouses you both and then great! But how are you going to find out that stuff about both your and your partner’s needs if you don't have those conversations?

If you keep it in your secret little garden to yourself, it's like, well, good luck. Hopefully at some point, you feel safe or confident enough to let someone into that garden with you and that’s when the fun starts …

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For more about Susanna Brisk and her insanely cool X-Men powers (and sex advice), visit her website, www.sexualintuitive.com.

Instagram: @realsexdaily