“My feminist mother raised me to trust myself. To believe in myself. To never let anyone tell me what to do with my own life.”
Nearly twenty five years ago, Susan Bratton sat across from her husband Tim on their wedding anniversary, two gin martinis in, and told him the truth she had been avoiding for over a decade. That single moment of honesty became the seed of Better Lover, Personal Life Media, and a body of work that has since reached more than 20 million people around the world.
Susan is a motivational speaker who travels the world showing people how pleasure powers health and happiness, and how to create an easy relationship with your own intimate life. In this conversation, she reflects on the night that nearly ended her marriage, the sex workshops that rebuilt it, the mother who taught her to trust her own instincts before she had the words for it, and the framework she now teaches for reclaiming a sexuality that culture spent a lifetime trying to take from her.
Could you tell us a little about yourself and what led you to start Better Lover and Personal Life Media?
I’m Susan, and I’ve spent over two decades teaching people how to have a sex life that gets better with age. I speak on stages around the world now, but it did not start there. It started as two people in a marriage, coming undone in the bedroom while everything else about our life together looked good on paper. Tim and I had a beautiful daughter, a strong friendship, and a business partnership. What we did not have was a sex life either of us actually wanted.
You’ve spoken about a night that almost ended your marriage. What happened?
We had been married about twelve years, and I had been avoiding sex with Tim for most of them. I had never had an orgasm from intercourse, and we both thought it was me. That I just was a woman who couldn’t orgasm from intercourse, and that was simply how it was going to be. Tim tried everything he knew to reach me, and when nothing worked, he checked out emotionally and found comfort outside our marriage.
One night, two gin martinis in on our anniversary, the truth just came out of me. It had never been good for me. I did not know what to do about it, and I did not want to lose him. That honesty is what saved us. We chose to go learn, together, instead of walking away. That was nearly twenty five years ago now, and it was the opening that changed the entire direction of our lives.
What did the workshops teach you that changed everything?
We went to counseling first, and it helped us open the conversation, but what actually transformed our marriage was learning skills. We took workshops together, we learned bedroom communication, and we practiced radical honesty with each other every single day. Within months, we were having the kind of connected, passionate lovemaking we did not know was possible. I remember thinking, if someone had just shown us how to do this years ago, none of that pain would have happened. That thought became my mission. It is why I built Personal Life Media and Better Lover, so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could learn what took us over a decade to discover on our own.
You’ve also shared that your mother gave you something powerful as a child. What was that?
My mother told me, from the time I was very young, that I was a good decision maker. She taught me to trust myself, to believe in my own judgment, and to never let anyone else define what was right for my life. I have carried that gift through every hard season, including the ones I could not have predicted as a girl. It is the foundation underneath everything I teach today, that you are the authority on your own body and your own pleasure, and no one gets to write that story for you but you.
You have spoken openly about surviving sexual trauma in your own life. How did you find your way through it?
I experienced sexual abuse as a child, and I carried that privately for many years the way so many of us do. Healing came slowly and in layers, through being witnessed, through compassion for myself, and eventually through compassion for the people who hurt me. I did the work my body and heart asked me to do, in the order they asked for it. That healing is deeply personal, and it looks different for every single person. What I know for certain is that the past does not have to be the ceiling on your pleasure. Mine certainly is not.
You always say that what you teach is not therapy. What is it, then?
It is not therapy, and I am not a therapist. What I bring to this work is clarity, a plain and steady way of speaking about a subject most people were never given the language for. I think of overcoming cultural sexual trauma and oppression as resting on three pillars. The first is awareness, learning what has been done to us culturally and speaking that truth openly rather than staying silent about it.
The second is trauma healing, however your body and heart intuitively need to do that work, often alongside a trained professional. The third pillar is where I live, and it is remaking your own sexual experience. That means giving you real coping mechanisms you can lean on, teaching you how your arousal process actually works, and giving you sexual skills you can practice solo and with a partner so pleasure becomes something you build, not something you wait for. I believe that clarity is the thing that has let so many people trust me with a subject this tender.
What is next, and what do you want people to take away from your story?
I am putting the finishing touches on my Yoni Massage Master Plan, which will be my 35th book, and it continues a body of work that now includes 44 books and programs in total. I have written most of them myself, and I have also had the honor of publishing the work of several of my own mentors, the teachers who guided me when I was first learning all of this. I write about all of it every week in my Better Lover newsletter, and I bring it to stages around the world as an international motivational speaker, because this message belongs in rooms full of people, not just in private conversations. Orgasmic intimacy is not a luxury or an afterthought. It is the fourth factor of longevity, right alongside sleep, nutrition, and movement, and it deserves the same attention and respect we give the rest of our health.
So here is what I want you to carry with you. A marriage that felt over became the beginning of my life’s work, because one honest conversation opened the door to real skills. My mother’s gift of self trust became the compass I have used ever since. My own healing taught me that the past can be witnessed and released without becoming your whole identity. And the path forward for all of us rests on three things: speaking the truth about what culture has done to our sexuality, healing in whatever way your body calls for, and rebuilding a sexual life that is truly your own. That rebuilding is where I get to walk beside you, and it is the best work I have ever done.
