Home Podcasts Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want
Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want

Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want

Laura Jurgens, Ph.D. 133 Episodes Oct 12, 2026

Pleasure Uprising, formerly The Desire Gap Podcast, explores why people feel disconnected from desire, pleasure, and partners, arguing that this disconnection stems from cultural and familial conditioning rather than personal flaws. Host Dr. Laura Jurgens, a somatic sex and intimacy specialist, explains that pleasure, secure attachment, and authentic desire can be learned. Each episode provides body-based tools rooted in nervous system science and attachment theory, going beyond typical relationship advice. The show aims to help listeners unlearn guilt and shame, and build genuine embodied connection and pleasure.

Episodes

Sex After Divorce and Purity Culture: How Amber Let Go of Sexual Shame
Sex After Divorce and Purity Culture: How Amber Let Go of Sexual Shame Oct 12, 2026 3472 "I want to create a relationship with my body, my mind, pleasure and intimacy that is rooted in my values & freedom, without guilt or shame. I want to have sex with someone I'm not married to and not feel dirty or immoral the next day." That's what my client Amber wrote on her intake form in June. She rated herself a 1 out of 10. Ten weeks later, she rated herself a 10. In
How to Last Longer in Bed: What It Really Takes & What Partners Really Want
How to Last Longer in Bed: What It Really Takes & What Partners Really Want Oct 5, 2026 2648 If you want to last longer in bed, the stopwatch is probably not your biggest problem. Most men who orgasm faster than they want to are carrying performance anxiety, and it shows up as tension in the pelvic floor, tension in the whole body, and a habit of pulling away from the person they're with.Here's the thing. When researchers asked women whose partners came quickly what distressed t
How to Initiate Sex With a Responsive Desire Partner
How to Initiate Sex With a Responsive Desire Partner Sep 28, 2026 2255 If you ask your partner "do you want to have sex?" and they say no almost every time, the problem might not be desire. Seriously. It's the question. Responsive desire doesn't show up to that question. It shows up in response to something tangible happening that enables desire. So if nothing has happened yet, there's nothing there to say yes to. That's not rejection. T
Your Superpowers: Building Sexual Confidence From What You Already Do Well
Your Superpowers: Building Sexual Confidence From What You Already Do Well Sep 21, 2026 1905 You know what you struggle with in bed, and you're probably pretty hard on yourself about it. But if I ask what you're good at, do you go blank? Focusing on our deficits is just what brains do, but it costs us more than we think.You're not broken, and you are not starting from zero.I spend a lot of time on this show talking about what gets in the way. Shame, performance, the stories
The Worth Wound: Why You're Attracted to People Who Don't Want You
The Worth Wound: Why You're Attracted to People Who Don't Want You Sep 14, 2026 1969 I used to break up with the good ones. The kind, available, clearly-into-me ones. Not because I got bored. Because it made my skin crawl. I knew it was bad for me, but I didn't fully understand why I felt that way until I learned to feel worthy, twenty years later.This is the final episode in my series on attachment wounds and how they shape desire and relationship dynamics. Today's is t
How to Say No to Sex Without Rejecting Your Partner
How to Say No to Sex Without Rejecting Your Partner Sep 7, 2026 2648 She wanted more sex with her husband. She flirted. She invited him to bed. She was not subtle. And he had an entire set of moves for avoiding it. Staying up working late. Taking a very long shower and hoping she'd be asleep by the time he came to bed. Acting harried, a quick peck, roll over.He almost never said no out loud. He told me directly that he was avoiding saying it because he didn&ap
The Freedom Wound: Why You Say Yes When You Want to Say No
The Freedom Wound: Why You Say Yes When You Want to Say No Aug 31, 2026 1377 Picture someone who says yes to almost everything. They're helpful, they're loyal, they always show up. And yet there's always some reluctance. A headache. A tiredness. They take forever to get out the door. Underneath all that yes is a wagon load of resentment about being asked in the first place.This shows up in bed exactly the way it shows up everywhere else. They think they want
Penis Size, Performance Anxiety, and What Women Really Want
Penis Size, Performance Anxiety, and What Women Really Want Aug 24, 2026 2568 A man came to me because his marriage was close enough to over that they'd both used the word divorce. Underneath the resentment and the withdrawal and the fights about everything else was this: his erections came and went. Sometimes they softened partway through. Sometimes they didn't show up.That is normal. It happens to men at every age. But he was so ashamed of it that he avoided sex
The Trust Wound: Why Being Vulnerable Feels So Dangerous
The Trust Wound: Why Being Vulnerable Feels So Dangerous Aug 17, 2026 1734 I used to chase accomplishment hard, and I dismissed soft skills and people skills entirely — mostly because I had no idea how to do them. I'd put on this dissociated charm self when I met new people, which wasn't connection at all. It was a disarming move. If I could charm you first, you couldn't get to me. Underneath all of it was a deep fear of being publicly rejected.A close col
Is My Vagina Normal? Undoing Vulva and Labia Shame
Is My Vagina Normal? Undoing Vulva and Labia Shame Aug 10, 2026 1925 Around 40, I realized I felt disgust about my own genitals. I'd been carrying middle school bullies' words about female bodies in my head for more than thirty years without ever once questioning them, and it wasn't until I started trying to reclaim my own sexuality that it smacked me in the face. It's very hard to feel pleasure in a part of your body you feel bad about.If any o
The Dependency Wound: When Care Was Never Something You Could Count On
The Dependency Wound: When Care Was Never Something You Could Count On Aug 3, 2026 2218 One partner wants sex constantly and can't understand why they're being refused. The other has quietly stopped wanting it at all and feels like they're constantly being pestered. Most people assume these two have opposite problems. Often times, they don't. They have the same challenge underneath, but they are coping in different ways.We're going beyond the standard "a
Body Shame and Your Sex Life: It's Not Your Fault, and Only You Can Fix It
Body Shame and Your Sex Life: It's Not Your Fault, and Only You Can Fix It Jul 27, 2026 1986 Body shame is pervasive, especially for women but increasingly for everyone, and it gets in the way of much more than how we feel in a swimsuit. It gets in the way of presence, pleasure, and our capacity for real connection. This is the first episode in a series I'm doing on body shame. If you've ever been so in your head about how you look that you couldn't stay present with a part

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