From Strip Club to Sacred Work: Tantra, Menopause, and Desire with Maria Merloni
The Intimacy InquiryShow Notes
What if everything you were taught about sex was designed to disconnect you from your own body? In this episode of The Intimacy Inquiry, Andrew Phipps sits down with Maria Merloni, psychotherapist, sex and relationship coach, and sacred spot massage practitioner, for one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversations the show has produced. Maria's story begins in a Catholic household where sex was never mentioned but nudity was ordinary. She became a nude model at university, then an exotic dancer, then a clinical social worker, and eventually a therapist specialising in sex, relationships, and somatic healing. Now 60, she says she is having the best sex of her life, a statement she backs up with both personal experience and clinical insight. The conversation moves across a remarkable amount of ground. Maria explains what men at strip clubs were really seeking when they broke down in front of her: not sex, but genuine connection, the same thing that brings people to dominatrices, OnlyFans creators, and therapists alike. She describes her journey toward what she calls her sacred work, including a course for women navigating perimenopause and post-menopause, built on the practice of self yoni massage, which she credits with eliminating her own vaginal dryness and restoring her libido after just a few weeks. Maria and Andrew explore why talk therapy so often fails to create real change, and how somatic techniques such as gentle reprocessing and EMDR work differently, rewiring the brain at a level where language cannot reach. Maria shares her own experience: years of unknowingly choosing partners with addiction issues, a pattern that only ended after she worked through the childhood trauma that was driving it. She explains how unhealed wounds do not disappear; they recruit new people to re-inflict them until something shifts at the cellular level. The pair dig into what tantra actually is, not the westernised caricature of exotic positions, but a philosophy that everything in the universe is sacred and connected, and that the deepest intimacy begins with presence. Maria describes simple practices, including eye gazing and synchronised breathing, that can transform a conversation or a sexual encounter in under two minutes. They also cover the psychology of erectile dysfunction, the real logistics of polyamory, why couples stop touching each other and what that costs them in oxytocin and closeness, and why redefining pleasure beyond a narrow heteronormative script opens up possibilities that many people close off prematurely, often in their forties or fifties, assuming their best years are behind them. This is a conversation for anyone who has ever felt that their desire was something to be managed or suppressed rather than understood and celebrated. Maria makes the case, calmly and from experience, that it is not too late. It may, in fact, be just beginning. Maria Merloni: mariamerloni.com Free five-minute guided yoni reconnection practice: mariamerloni.com/ritual Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and via RSS.
More from The Intimacy Inquiry
Shoshanna Blanca, also known as Jesus Christ Pornstar, returns for a deeper conversation. She now describes herself as one of several Messiahs and talks about moving between several identities, including what she describes as a past life as Mary Magdalene. She and Andrew talk about the psychedelic ceremonies that she says first revealed this material to her, why she believes organised religion became "sex negative," reclaiming words like "whore" and "slut," and a pattern she describes in highly sensitive people she calls "sons and daughters of God." They also discuss body image, small acts of everyday kindness as a spiritual practice, and what she means by "Christ consciousness" in ordinary human relationships. This episode discusses extensive psychedelic drug use, explicit sexuality, and religious and messianic beliefs candidly and is intended for a mature audience. Guest: Shoshanna Blanca/Suzannah Weiss (AKA Jesus Christ Pornstar), sex writer, performer, sexologist, therapist https://linktr.ee/shoshannalovesjesus https://onlyfans.com/shoshannablanca https://onlyfans.com/uncoveringeve Host: Andrew Phipps, Intimacy Inquiry
Olivia Dydyna is a certified sex, love and relationship coach, Theta Healing practitioner, and couples tantric sex coach based in Miami, currently living on Bali time. For six years she's worked with men, women and couples on sex, intimacy and embodiment. She's the creator of her own breathwork method, which has guided over 700 people, and co-author of the bestseller We Are the Sacred Feminine Rising. Olivia and Andrew talk about the sexual shame she carried from a Roman Catholic upbringing and years of people-pleasing, the breathwork experience that changed how she understood her own sexuality, and why presence, not technique, is what actually creates connection. They also cover ongoing consent, where porn helps and where it distorts expectations, and the sexual trauma so many women carry for decades before ever naming it. This episode discusses sexuality, shame, consent and sexual trauma candidly and is intended for a mature audience. Guest: Olivia Dydyna, certified sex, love and relationship coach, Theta Healing practitioner, couples tantric sex coach https://www.oliviadydyna.com/ https://www.oliviadydyna.com/blog/doing-fine-not-the-same-as-free Host: Andrew Phipps, Intimacy Inquiry @theintimacyinquiry
Professional dominatrix Porcelain Victoria, who hosts the podcast Behind the Paddle and runs her own dungeon in Scotland, joins Andrew Phipps for a frank conversation about a decade in kink. She talks about discovering BDSM as a self-taught teenager, the accidental booking that turned her into a professional dominant, and why she found the same relief in consensual spanking that she once found in self-harm. The conversation covers aftercare, the emotional demands of the job, what clients are really looking for when they hand over control, and a detailed, sobering look at UK sex work law and the case against the Nordic model. Warm, unflinching and genuinely educational. Guest: Porcelain Victoria, Behind the Paddle podcast. https://porcelaindolly.co.uk/ https://www.youtube.com/@BehindthePaddle/videos Host: Andrew Phipps.
Certified sexologist and sex coach Jenn Mason, founder of the inclusive Bellingham sex shop Wink Wink and an elected member of the Bellingham School Board, joins Andrew Phipps to talk about pleasure after trauma, the sex education most of us never got, and why she believes a solo pleasure practice matters as much as a partnered one. The conversation ranges from the impossible gap between a puritanical culture and unlimited online pornography, through desire in long, logistics heavy relationships, to the sex education gap in midlife and beyond. Honest, funny and genuinely useful. Guest: Jenn Mason, Wink Wink, Bellingham, Washington. https://www.heyjennmason.com/ https://winkwinkboutique.com/ Host: Andrew Phipps.
Dr Lori Davis, a Doctor of Nursing Practice, AASECT certified sex counsellor and Relational Life Therapy coach, joins Andrew Phipps to unpack why she's banned the word "sex" from her own practice, and why what most couples call "mismatched desire" is better understood as a desire bind, a shared dynamic rather than one partner's fault. The conversation ranges across menopause and hormone therapy, the somatic roots of shame and desire, pornography's "fast food" effect, and whether monogamy is really the natural default it's assumed to be. Honest, warm and genuinely practical. Guest: Dr Lori Davis, sex counsellor and relational therapy coach. https://dr-loridavis.com/ Host: Andrew Phipps. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-phipps-ap/