Episode 14 - Jump Start His or Her Sacred Sex Motor with Alison Armstrong, Creator of “Satisfying Men, Celebrating Women” workshop series.
Transcript
Transcript
Jump Start His or Her Sacred Sex Motor with Alison Armstrong, Creator of "Satisfying Men, Celebrating Women" workshop series.
Announcer: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome to “Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra”. I’m your host, Francesca Gentille, bringing you “The Soul of Sex”. And with me today is Alison Armstrong. Educator, advocate, author of “The Keys to the Kingdom”, creator of “Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women”. A woman who has studied men for over sixteen years. And the CEO and co-founder of PAX program which I just found out stands for “Partnership, Adoration, Ecstasy”
Alison Armstrong: Before that, my sense of relationships were that the best sex was in the beginning. And then either you get to know each other better and there was more intimacy, there was less spark.
Alison Armstrong: A couple of weeks ago, we were making love and I was laughing! I’ve never laughed during sex before. And he was laughing that I was laughing. It was really quite amazing.
Alison Armstrong: When we’re happy, when we’re content, our skin emanates an energy that feeds men. It literally nurtures them. It energizes them. It fills them up. They’ll touch us. There’s nothing like holding a naked woman in your arms.
Alison Armstrong: Wait a second, you’re asking for sex? Hello? And he got this look on his face when he realized how many times I had touched him the exact same way. His eyes got big and he goes, “All those parties I was invited to! I had no idea!”
Alison Armstrong: One, I call “pumpkin hour”, which if you remember Cinderella, and at midnight the coach turns back into a pumpkin? This refers to there are times of the day or night when both men and women would resent a request for sex.
Francesca Gentille: Welcome, Alison.
Alison Armstrong: Thank you.
Francesca Gentille: Now Alison, your programs --and I’ve actually taken your programs and felt that it very much shifted my life and brought harmony in my relationships with men--- your programs are very practical, very much translating the mind of men for women and women for men. How does that relate to that expanded sacred sexuality that our listeners are looking for?
Alison Armstrong: Well, what I found is that if men and women have hurt feelings or any kind of resentment, any kind of concern—Am I loved? Am I accepted? All of those are going to get in the way of an emotional, intuitive, spiritual, sexual relationship. And by teaching men and women to understand each other and to interpret each other’s behavior in the context of the opposite sex, which is not normally what we do (we normally interpret each other in the context of what it would mean if another woman or another man had done that. By teaching men and women to understand each other, hurt feelings are just dramatically reduced. I mean they happen rarely instead of frequently. And resentments and the concerns that men and women have about being “am I loved? am I accepted? am I okay?”. Those go away. We’ve experienced being loved and accepted and cherished and adored and all that easily translates to our sex life.
Francesca Gentille: [laugh] That makes so much sense---is that, if I resent you, I might not want to have sex with you. If I’m feeling a sense of understanding, which you teach, those erotic feelings which pretty much got me in the relationship to begin with, are going to resurface. And have you found that in your own life, I know that you’ve been married once before?
Alison Armstrong: Yes.
Francesca Gentille: And now you’ve been married fourteen years. You have three children and have you found that these tips really give you that erotic connection---that beautiful erotic connection with your beloved?
Alison Armstrong: Well, it’s actually been amazing. Before I started studying men and I met Greg, my husband, about six months after I’ve started studying men, and two weeks after I gave up emasculating men [laugh]. I don’t think that’s a coincidence that I met him immediately. Before that, my sense of relationships were that the best sex is in the beginning. And then either you get to know each other better and there was more intimacy, there was less spark. Because so much of sexual attraction is based on some kind of distance.
Francesca Gentille: That’s what you used to think.
Alison Armstrong: Either you go that route or it will go into the realm of the anger and the resentment and fall apart at that point. So I was really unprepared for my relationship with Greg and how I’ve grown to understand men and women and obviously he’s shared in that. He’s been to all the programs that he can at PAX, the coed programs, and I shared a lot with him about what I’ve learned, and as our understanding has grown, and our communication has improved, I can honestly say our sex life is better than ever.
Francesca Gentille: And that’s for fourteen years?
Alison Armstrong: We’ve been together for fifteen and a half years.
Francesca Gentille: Oh god.
Alison Armstrong: If somebody told me fifteen years ago—like given me a snapshot of my sex life, and my children, and the kind of dad he is, I would have married him on the spot. I put up some kind of fight. But I had no idea, that if you keep getting more intimate, even more erotic, more satisfying, emotional, even more playful experience. We laugh. We laugh. I was cracking up! A couple of weeks ago, we were making love and I was laughing! I’ve never laughed during sex before. And he was laughing that I was laughing. It was really quite amazing.
Francesca Gentille: I think laughing’s the key to sacred. There’s some kind of myth in our society that sacred’s serious and heavy and something that you would do in church quietly [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: Yeah. I totally agree. My experience when I was laughing was that I was so vulnerable. And I felt safe. I was delighted. It was that kind of delightful laughter. But definitely understanding each other. One of the things that we worked out, omigosh, it’s sort of sad that it took so long. It was only about three years ago, that I discovered that one of the what I would call the seven things that a couple needs to work out to have an amazing sex life. We hadn’t worked it out and I didn’t know it! It was that we didn’t understand each other’s signals. So when I was, from my point of view, initiating sex, he didn’t know it. And I thought I was getting turned down.
Francesca Gentille: You’ve really intrigued me now. The seven keys to a satisfying sex life and that misinterpretation. That’s very common between men and women, where a man would initiate and end up feeling rejected or a woman initiated and end up feeling rejected. Tell us more about that.
Alison Armstrong: Well, it’s one of the things that couples need to talk about. When I want to have sex, this is what I say or this is how I touch you. And if I’m not touching you that way or I’m not saying that, I’m not initiating sex. And it’s really important because especially women, they assume that if a man is snuggling up to her, spooning her, touching her, fondling her, that he’s initiating sex.
Francesca Gentille: And he’s not?
Alison Armstrong: No, not always. And that’s why you have to talk about it. Most women don’t know that our skin, omigosh, we’re like petting kittens. Our skin is so soft and we also, when we’re happy, when we’re content, our skin emanates an energy that feeds men. It literally nurtures them. It energizes them. It fills them up. They’ll touch us. One thing a man says: there’s nothing like holding a naked woman in your arms. There’s nothing like it. So they’re touching of us isn’t always reaching out for sex. It’s reaching out for our skin. It’s reaching out for the warmth. It’s reaching out for the energy. It’s reaching out for the snuggle, the cuddle, the comfort. And if a woman thinks it’s always for sex and she’s not open to having sex, then she’ll freeze up. She’ll turn cold on him and he could feel it. We will stiffen up and then he’ll feel rejected. But that wasn’t what he was asking for. So it’s really important to talk about it. Like, sit down, I mean I used to not being able to talk to Greg about sex. I was too shy. I’d have to call him at work on the phone to talk to him about sex. But if that’s what it takes, just one time, have this conversation. If I wink at you, I’m asking for sex. If I put my hand right here like this, I’m asking for sex. Whatever the signal is, make sure you work it out.
Francesca Gentille: And that will be for both. So the woman understands that if he doesn’t do or say that thing, he’s actually in a cuddle mode, and that he understands if she doesn’t do or say that thing, she’s more in a cuddle mode.
Alison Armstrong: Yes. They got to talk about it, because I was initiating sex and my husband didn’t know I was! He thought I was just being friendly.
Francesca Gentille: [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: And when I, I mean, this whole thing came out because I was just in tears one morning, just “When I have sex with you, I have sex. We never have sex when I want to have sex, and I can’t stand it anymore!”. And he’s like, “What are you talking about? When did you want to have sex?”. “Like you didn’t know”. He’s like, “What are you talking about?”. “Last night”. He’s like, “You wanted to have sex last night?”. I was like, “Yeah, duh”. [laugh]. “Wait a second, you were asking for sex?” “Hello?”. And he got this look on his face when he realized how many times I had touched him the exact same way. His eyes got all big and he goes, “All those parties I was invited to! I had no idea!”
Francesca Gentille: [laugh] You know Alison, I love this, and I want to talk more about how we can understand one another more clearly and some of the mistakes men make and how they reach out for sex and how that might not get them what they want and how to get to that place of connection with a woman after we come back from a word from our sponsors.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to “Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra”, bringing you the soul of sex with Alison Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of PAX Programs Inc., which stands for Partnership, Adoration and Ecstasy. We were just talking about men and women understanding each other’s signals in sexuality. And we’re about to get into how men can do something sometimes that turns off a woman and what that is. I was thinking of the classic when I’ve heard from men when they get a call from their beloved saying “Ooh, I’m thinking of you, Honey. I can hardly wait for you to get home”. And then when they get home and something happens and she’s no longer in the mood and it feels like they’ve lost the combination to the lock. [laugh] What is the combination?
Alison Armstrong: Well, this can become one of the biggest things between a man and a woman, which is the way that we think. And women have what I call diffuse awareness which diffuse means “to pour in every direction” and this is very strange for men to try to contemplate since men are single-focused. The best they usually can imagine is, okay, instead of paying attention on one thing, she’s paying attention on three or four things? She’s focused on three or four things? And it’s much worse than that. It’s literally that women rarely focus. It’s not that we can’t focus, it just takes about the same amount of energy as it does to get the shadow free from earth’s gravity. [laugh] It takes a lot of energy for a woman to focus. So what could happen is, she’s thinking about him during the day. He gets that call…he comes home and she’s being pulled in multiple directions. She might be pulled by getting dinner on the table, and if there are kids involved, or if the house is what I would call “not quiet”. Diffuse awareness makes our environment very loud to women. And for us to be peaceful, they need to be quiet. So there’s a whatever level of “picked-up” each woman needs. If her environment is picked up, then she can be more peaceful. So he probably comes home to her being pulled in different directions by her awareness. And what he needs to do is override that. Fortunately, women have an override, which doesn’t get her focused but it will make him be the loudest thing in her environment. And the override is touch. Once he touches her, he should never let go [laugh].
Francesca Gentille: [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: And she might look like she’s in the middle of something. She probably will because we always are. And he needs to go over and touch her. Take her by the hand. “Honey, remember that call that day?”….
Francesca Gentille: And we’re not talking flap the butt or grab the breast, you know, that kind of touch.
Alison Armstrong: Yeah, that…something a little gentler, something that will ease into it. Given our diffuse awareness, something like grabbing our breast or slapping our end would be kind of shocking. It wouldn’t be an experience of sexual intimacy. It will be more shocking. So if he took her butt by the hand and moved her hair and kissed her in the back of the neck and then took her hand…but you wanna take her hand [laugh]. “Honey, remember that call you got today? I’m taking you up on that Come with me.” And literally lead her. Lead her to some place that’s quiet. Not quiet like there’s no noise. Quiet like there’s no visual noise. Nothing she needs to do. This is why for a man and a woman an unmade bed occurs very differently. For a man, an unmade bed is efficient. For a woman, an unmade bed makes her bedroom too noisy to be peaceful in.
Francesca Gentille: This is very tantric as well. You wanna have the bedroom be beautiful and peaceful and a temple and it’s worth it to hire a housekeeper. To have someone redo the bedroom so that when the beloved walks in, then she can relax.
Alison Armstrong: Yes. Otherwise, her diffuse awareness---those things that are out of place---literally is talking to her and saying she needs to straighten them or pick them up or put them away. And it will distract her from the point.
Francesca Gentille: And I notice when I first get into the bedroom with my beloved, even when I’m the one that wants sex, it often feels like it takes me a good five to ten minutes, sometimes longer, of just getting there. I could be naked, laying next to my beloved and he could be holding me and caressing me beautifully, and yet my mind…it takes a lot of time for my mind to be quiet. Is that common?
Alison Armstrong: Very normal. Very normal. Why women need what we usually call “zone out time” before we can fall asleep at night. And it’s like either watching a movie, or reading a book. Something that is so engaging to remind that those ‘to do’ lists the amygdala is the part of the brain that worries. Much more active in women than it is in men. And for our pleasure center to take over in the brain, the amygdala has to deactivate. And that’s probably what’s happening to you when you’re just…just getting to be there. Let all of the rest of life go.
Francesca Gentille: And one of the things that I would love to talk more about is imagine, some of our listeners are couples so having this information of how to transition and signal one another once they’re already a couple is very important. But I’m imagining that some of our listeners may be single men and single women who…It’s a nice tip for guys to still have a neat bedroom and for single women as well. Some other tips for some of our single people on how to make that graceful transition from dating to deepening the relationship either erotically or emotionally, and right after we come back from a word from our sponsors.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to “Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra”, bringing you the soul of sex. We’re still with Alison Armstrong who’s been studying men for sixteen years, creator of “Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women”. And Alison, we were talking a little bit on behalf of our single people who are trying to maneuver through that whole dating-sexuality-love-relationship thing. And from your experience and wisdom, what do you have to say to them?
Alison Armstrong: Well, the first thing I’d say is, all good things that happen between men and women happen because someone was willing to be vulnerable. So trying to navigate it gracefully, I’d just give that up [laugh]. I’d go for honesty and consideration instead of trying to be smooth or looking for the right opening, or when is it appropriate. I think there’s a point where you just have to go “Okay, could we talk about sex?” [laugh] You know, you’re in the middle of that artichoke and you go “Could we talk about sex?”. “Okay, let’s talk about sex.”
Francesca Gentille: Now, let me just say something about that because I hear from men all the time that they feel that if they’re honest and vulnerable, that they lose out. They say I have the “nice guy syndrome” where women devalue me because I’m a nice guy. What are they doing wrong?
Alison Armstrong: This is something tricky between the way that cavewomen respond to men and the way in what I call the clean or human spirit response to men. And it makes our sex lives complicated. Because what turns the cavewoman on is the opposite of sacred sexuality. So what turns a cavewoman on is when a man takes charge. When he’s being masculine. When he’s in his what she perceives as strengths and which appeals to cavewomen—“Ooh, good projector here.” But that kind of hormonally-driven, what I call “chemical sex” is rarely going to end up being deeply satisfying.
Francesca Gentille: Or last past the first couple of weeks. [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: Yeah, Honestly, I would say a couple who is really really really sexually attracted to each other, you know, ten on each other’s charts, their relationship’s gonna blow up very quickly because in general, the more intense the sexual attraction is, the more cavemen and cavewomen are going to be in charge. And the last people will be able to be themselves, to be authentic, to be vulnerable, to say what they need. So for the nice guys…what you’re calling the “nice guy syndrome”, I think that how that’s interpreted by women is as being weak.
Francesca Gentille: So how do they let women know that underneath nice is actually a great guy who can be a good provider, who can have a lot of strong foundational care for a woman. How does he get through that initial veil?
Alison Armstrong: Well, I would ask her, “What do you need?” I’ve been teaching women for years now. Thousands and thousands of women. And one of the things they don’t know is men only ask women out that they are sexually attracted to. And there are women who don’t know that. They don’t know that the guy sitting across from them is only sitting across them because it’s a given that he will be happy to go to bed with her. So she’s more in the dark than he might imagine. What is obvious to him is not obvious to her. Women are shocked when I tell them, “If he asks you out, he wants to sleep with you.” They’re like, “What?” Younger women think they only ask you out when they want to sleep with you. And all the more getting them backwards. So I would say for a man to say, “Look, I really like you. I’m really attracted to you. What is it that you need to have a sexual relationship?” And then just listen. She may really have to think about it, because unfortunately, women don’t think about it enough. “What do I need to have a sexual relationship?” And men I noticed and I would advise is often what women need to have a sexual relationship is they need some kind of exclusivity. Cavewomen, our [xx] would just freak out, at the idea of a man having multiple partners. It’s threatening at a very primitive level that some women can overcome, but most women can’t.
Francesca Gentille: So that exclusivity, in and of itself, might be erotic. And to give her the time to answer. She may need to take a while to check inside to find that. Like it takes men a long time to find their emotions, it can take a woman a long time to figure out what really is the pathway to my sexuality. And if a woman is expecting a man to be a better guesser, like she’s looking for a caveman and she’s looking for a better guesser, is that actually a gift for a guy to say, “Great, if she’s one of those, and I’m not one of those guys, it’s just nice to know it now and we can shake hands and say goodbye.”
Alison Armstrong: Did you say better guesser?
Francesca Gentille: Better guesser, yeah.
Alison Armstrong: Like as in guessing.
Francesca Gentille: Yeah, like, if you really love me, you just figure it out and I wouldn’t have to tell you anything.
Alison Armstrong: [laugh] Yeah, men don’t guess.
Francesca Gentille: [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: Men don’t guess. The odds of succeeding when you’re guessing are way too low for a man to ever engage in it. Men are only going to do what they think has a very high likelihood of working. Including---and this is part of the problem maybe with your nice guy thing---a man is only going to make a sexual advance if he thinks he has a really high chance of it being received well. So if a woman isn’t encouraging him, you know, if you kiss me, I’d kiss you back. If she isn’t giving the green light to him, then he is going to hold back and that could be to his downfall.
Francesca Gentille: And when—I wanna talk more about this when we come back—about the hussy thing, because I know some of the women out there are thinking, “Well, if I just tell him, I’ll kiss you back if you kissed me”, or “Am I going to be perceived as a slut” and then they still have a concern that guys are drawn to bitches and not drawn to nice girls. So, I’d like to talk about that more.
Alison Armstrong: Be happy to.
Francesca Gentille: After our break.
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Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to “Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra”. This is Francesca Gentille and I’m with Alison Armstrong, author of “ Keys to the Kingdom” and we were talking about the women’s side this time, about how they can sometimes be nervous that they’re going to be seen as either a slut or a nice girl and also not be successful as a nice girl. How do they maneuver through that?
Alison Armstrong: Well, what I’ve discovered in listening to men is what would have them think of a woman is a slut was only if sex wasn’t important to her. That’s the word that they use when a woman has a very casual relationship to sex, like it’s not something special, it’s not a gift, it’s not something that she regards as important. Something just to be thrown off.
Francesca Gentille: Something sacred.
Alison Armstrong: Yeah. It doesn’t really matter how many partners she’s had or how soon in the relationship she has sex. A lot of women are worried---the first or second or third date, if you have sex, it’s just never going to go anywhere. From a man’s point of view, he just doesn’t want a woman to be strategic about sex, like try to trade it for something else. He wants her to be authentic about it, like the best time for us to have sex is when we both really want to have sex. And anything else would be a manipulation. So as long as she’s being honest to herself and true to her own relationship to sex, he’s going to be fine with it. As far as being nice, what you said before about the perception that men are attracted to the bitchy women, men are attracted to confident women and when a woman is too sexually attracted to a man, she loses her self-confidence. She goes into a, what I call, “pleasing overdrive”. She just turns herself into a pretzel to be whatever he wants. And that’s really unattractive. A woman who, again, is going to keep her center in who she is. This is who I am and this is what I want and this is what matters to me. Irresistible.
Francesca Gentille: And that’s actually men or women. If a man becomes a puppy dog just trying to please, please, please. Equally unattractive.
Alison Armstrong: Yup.
Francesca Gentille: Perfect. That leads me---I know we only have a few minutes left. I wish I had hours with you---that leads me to, we were talking right at the beginning about those seven things that couples need to know to work out sex between them, and I’m wondering if there’s something in the few minutes we have left that could apply to both couples and singles.
Alison Armstrong: Yeah, two of my favorites. One, I call “pumpkin hour” which if you remember Cinderella, and at midnight the coach turns back into a pumpkin? This refers to there are times of the day or night when both men and women would resent a request for sex. And again, anytime you’re getting resentments involved, you’re going to get in the way of having a really profound sex life. Do you want to prevent resentment? So if you know when is it too late to ask and when is it too early to ask? If you know your partner’s “pumpkin hours” then you can avoid creating that kind of resentment. The second thing is what I would call “dessert”. This comes from, if you think about sex drive as a hunger---when you have an equal sex drive, one partner has to get the other partner to eat when they’re not hungry. And if it’s a woman who wants to have sex, not only does she have to get her partner to eat, she’s going to get him to cook. And, I’m thinking and thinking and thinking, because men are always asking me how do they get their wives or their girlfriends to want to have sex more, and I thought, when can you get a woman to eat when she’s not hungry---how do you get her to eat when she’s not hungry, and I thought, dessert!
Francesca Gentille: [laugh]
Alison Armstrong: [laugh] You offer her dessert. Any time is a good time for dessert. It doesn’t matter how full you are or how sleepy you are, it’s a good time for dessert. So, another thing for people to let each other know is what is their dessert? What is it that when you, you think you’re not in the mood for sex, you’d still say yes to that?
Francesca Gentille: I love that. That is so…it’s brilliant. To just ask someone, what is your dessert? What is that thing that you love? One of the things that I’ve personally found that I never get a no…could I give you a luxurious pampering massage? All you have to do is lay there and be beautifully naked for me. You can fall asleep if you want to. I’m just there to adore your body. And I’ve never heard someone say no to that.
Alison Armstrong: [laugh] I can’t imagine anybody saying no to that.
Francesca Gentille: [laugh] Do you think that would work for women as well?
Alison Armstrong: I think it would, and interestingly enough, I asked my husband what his dessert was, and I thought it would be something that I would do to him, and it wasn’t. His answer was, any time I can provide something for you. That’s his dessert. Anytime, except for the pumpkin hours, if I said, “Honey, would you make love to me?” “Sure!”, because they’re providers.
Francesca Gentille: And that would include, “Honey, would you massage my feet?”
Alison Armstrong: His dessert is something that he can give, instead of something he can receive.
Francesca Gentille: And so what I’d ask is, if I said, “Darling, would you massage my feet? I would adore that.”, that that would work?
Alison Armstrong: It probably would.
Francesca Gentille: You know Alison, you are a gift.
Alison Armstrong: The other is, if you have time, to find out what each other’s jumpstart is. What is it that has you go from zero interest in sex to sixty. [laugh] And everybody has a place that they can be touched in a certain way that has them go from zero to sixty. And you want to find out what that is too, because you want to cause your partner to want sex when the moment before, they didn’t.
Francesca Gentille: Or how they can be spoken to, or looked at. Because I would have to say, for me, I’m one of those girls that a certain kind of loving---a combination of loving and primal look and something that speaks of him adoring me. Is this a total turn-on?
Alison Armstrong: Yeah.
Francesca Gentille: It’s not being touched, it’s something else. And that probably goes with that you know how some people are more visual, some people are more aural, they eat the words, it is more touch. Regardless, there will be that thing.
Alison Armstrong: There will be that thing, and it really matters to find out. Because mostly, especially the more a man cares about a woman, the less he’s going to be willing to initiate sex when he thinks she doesn’t want it. He’s waiting for her signs that she wants it before he initiates it, not knowing that him wanting us makes us want them back. That we’d respond to their desire. There’s a lot of misunderstandings in this area, which makes the initiating of sex something..the more you can make a partnership about it. If you work it out and know each other’s triggers, then they can have a lot of fun and a lot of sacred sex.
Francesca Gentille: And if there’s been a little bit of resentment built, any good last tip about how to reduce the resentment?
Alison Armstrong: Yes. One is, stop expecting men to act like women and women to act like men, which is what gets our feelings hurt, and then these words: “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” That is a magic word, you have to mean them: “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”. We can heal each other with those words.
Francesca Gentille: Alison, thank you so much for joining us. And how do people find out more about you and your programs which are amazing?
Alison Armstrong: Thank you. It’s been great. The easiest way to do is to go to understandmen.com. We have articles. We have interviews. We have two-minute audio morsels that go out every couple of weeks. Our books, our workshops are there. Everything.
Francesca Gentille: Information for both women and men.
Alison Armstrong: Women and men, yes. We have programs for men now too, Francesca. We have a program called “Understanding Women: Unlock the Mystery”.
Francesca Gentille: Ah, I’m just going to breathe that in, because you are the foundation of sacred relationships and sacred sexuality. Thank you. And I just want to let our listeners know, to find more about Alison—her bio, her website—to connect with her and other great authors and speakers, go to www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia.com, with two L’s in the middle.
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