Oct 13, 2026 · 33 min · 12 segments
On this episode of the What Are You Made Of? show, Mike “C-Roc” sits down with Jessa Zimmerman, couples counselor, certified sex therapist, author of *Sex Without Stress*, host of *The Better Sex…
Mike C-RocHost
And so when a couple comes to you, you know, obviously you wrote a book, Sex Without Stress.
Like, there's stress, everyday stress people have in their lives that come and, and hinder their, their relationship.
Like, where do you start with a couple? Like, a couple comes to you, is there a framework you use or how does that work?
Yeah, I mean, so mo- I guess most of the work I do with people or a lot, it's certainly what the book's about, I started to identify what I call the sexual avoidance cycle, which is, um, which is all around stress.
[laughs] So what'll happen for people is sex is somehow stressful for them.
Now, it could be trauma, could be life stress, but it could just be the expectations about what's supposed to happen or what they're supposed to want or what they're supposed to do or how it goes, and it starts to feel kind of fraught, like we can fail at this, like it can go badly.
You know, and that starts to generate, of course, a lot of negative feelings, right? Worry and fear and self-consciousness and shame and all this stuff.
Like, people, uh, in general, right? We do not go [laughs] approaching the things that are, uh, likely to make us feel bad.
And that-- but that increases the pressure on it 'cause now we're not doing it, right?
But that pressure then seeps into the whole thing, and it makes it more and more difficult to have an actual, you know, like, good, satisfying experience.
So with a couple, I mean, I wanna start with some of those, um, I don't know, describing some of this.
That and the fact that desire discrepancy, right? Two people want different amounts of sex, which is totally normal, 'cause why would any two people be a perfect-
... match that way, right? But they fall into these traps with it, like feeling like it's a problem and like somebody's broken and like it's rejection and certain things that make that worse.
So the first thing I do with the couples go over all of this because that actually gives them hope.
Like, "Wow, if we can see how we've been thinking about this, approaching this, that's gotten us stuck," [laughs] then it's, it's like, "Oh, if we, if we could find something different to do, we could get a different result," right?
And so when a couple comes to you, you know, obviously you wrote a book, Sex Without Stress.
Like, there's stress, everyday stress people have in their lives that come and, and hinder their, their relationship.
Like, where do you start with a couple? Like, a couple comes to you, is there a framework you use or how does that work?
Yeah, I mean, so mo- I guess most of the work I do with people or a lot, it's certainly what the book's about, I started to identify what I call the sexual avoidance cycle, which is, um, which is all around stress.
[laughs] So what'll happen for people is sex is somehow stressful for them.
Now, it could be trauma, could be life stress, but it could just be the expectations about what's supposed to happen or what they're supposed to want or what they're supposed to do or how it goes, and it starts to feel kind of fraught, like we can fail at this, like it can go badly.
You know, and that starts to generate, of course, a lot of negative feelings, right? Worry and fear and self-consciousness and shame and all this stuff.
Like, people, uh, in general, right? We do not go [laughs] approaching the things that are, uh, likely to make us feel bad.
And that-- but that increases the pressure on it 'cause now we're not doing it, right?
But that pressure then seeps into the whole thing, and it makes it more and more difficult to have an actual, you know, like, good, satisfying experience.
So with a couple, I mean, I wanna start with some of those, um, I don't know, describing some of this.
That and the fact that desire discrepancy, right? Two people want different amounts of sex, which is totally normal, 'cause why would any two people be a perfect-
... match that way, right? But they fall into these traps with it, like feeling like it's a problem and like somebody's broken and like it's rejection and certain things that make that worse.
So the first thing I do with the couples go over all of this because that actually gives them hope.
Like, "Wow, if we can see how we've been thinking about this, approaching this, that's gotten us stuck," [laughs] then it's, it's like, "Oh, if we, if we could find something different to do, we could get a different result," right?
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