Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / What Does A Healthy Sex Life Look Like?

Transcript

What Does A Healthy Sex Life Look Like? · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the doctor.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today, I'm going to be talking about what a
• 0:10
  healthy sex life looks like. Because many people grow up
• 0:14
  seeing affection Le sexless marriages or in very religious
• 0:17
  cultures that are very sexy, a verse or with parents, who hate
• 0:22
  each other or with single parents or divorced parents or
• 0:25
  whatever. And they have no idea what a
• 0:28
  healthy marriage looks like, never mind what a healthy sex
• 0:31
  life looks like. So a lot of what I talk about is
• 0:34
  A healthy marriage overall, in terms of attachment, and
• 0:38
  interdependence, and being secure, and being kind, and
• 0:42
  various things that you could read all about on dr.
• 0:44
  Psych mom.com or Listen, to, In This podcast, but frequently,
• 0:49
  I'm talking about unhealthy sex lives in here.
• 0:51
  So a lot of people find it much more useful to hear what is a
• 0:55
  normal healthy sex life between you know, married people.
• 0:59
  So I will get into that as soon as I tell you to subscribe my
• 1:03
  most recent subscriber episode Is about how my advice differs
• 1:06
  from religious advice and that we both say to have sex with
• 1:09
  your husband, but there is a key difference and I will discuss
• 1:13
  that or I did discuss that in my most recent subscriber episode.
• 1:17
  So, please do subscribe and separately, you can join my
• 1:19
  Facebook group. If you like talking about things
• 1:21
  like this Facebook group doesn't get you the podcast.
• 1:24
  People keep asking me that. I try to make it a super clear
• 1:28
  as possible. Its separate Facebook groups,
• 1:30
  separate and the podcast subscription is separate.
• 1:33
  So I can't blend Those platforms.
• 1:35
  I can't give you a discount but they are both very valuable in
• 1:39
  my estimation. I'm very cheap for for the sort
• 1:42
  of thing that you get. All right?
• 1:44
  So anyway, what does a healthy sex life look like?
• 1:47
  Well, the keyword and I know I say this a lot is open-minded in
• 1:52
  a healthy sex life. People can talk to each other.
• 1:54
  They could talk about sex and they talk about their
• 1:58
  preferences. They could talk about having sex
• 2:00
  like, talk about not having sex. I could talk about where their
• 2:03
  desire is or And at a certain time or, you know, due to
• 2:07
  feeling differently biologically emotionally like they just talk,
• 2:12
  they talk about sex. This is like something that
• 2:14
  couples do when they have a good sex life, you know, I mean
• 2:18
  there's some couples who don't talk about it and they're just
• 2:20
  on the same page. They're usually pretty young new
• 2:23
  into the relationship or they just somehow are you know,
• 2:27
  couples where they just automatically have the same
• 2:30
  conceptions of things. You know, that's very rare for
• 2:34
  most People. They don't have the same libido,
• 2:36
  certainly, and they do not have the same ideas about what sex is
• 2:42
  because they weren't raised in the same family and they're not
• 2:44
  the same gender and a million different things that make them
• 2:46
  separate people. But obviously don't need to have
• 2:49
  the same exact drive and the same exact preferences to be
• 2:54
  compatible and to be in a healthy relationship, you just
• 2:56
  need to be able to communicate. So in a healthy sex life, people
• 3:00
  are non-judgmental communicators and they can hear what each
• 3:04
  other. On Sand and likes and not take
• 3:07
  anything super personally and not shut it down and not
• 3:10
  Stonewall and not say, you know, oh that's gross.
• 3:14
  I don't want to talk about that. So in in healthy sex lives, both
• 3:19
  Partners, feel free and open an able to communicate honestly
• 3:24
  about their desires and needs. And this is something that you
• 3:28
  can learn, obviously in couples counseling and it's, it's really
• 3:33
  what we do in couples counseling this It's at least vis-à-vis sex
• 3:36
  is talked about it just talking about, it can be really
• 3:39
  transformational for people who have never really talked openly
• 3:42
  about sex before you know they just never talk about it and
• 3:45
  then they have a fight or something and then the woman
• 3:47
  will say something like well I never liked sex anyway or the
• 3:50
  man will say. Well you've always been like
• 3:52
  cold anyway and then they don't talk about it for another 10
• 3:55
  years. I mean, it's that's very
• 3:57
  unhealthy and in contrast. So what sorts of things that
• 4:02
  people talk about? So a woman could say, I'm, you
• 4:05
  know, I'm getting my period tomorrow, I don't feel like
• 4:08
  doing it today and the guy could say, oh well maybe, you know, in
• 4:12
  a couple days we could do something for me and she could
• 4:15
  say, okay, you know, or not or no, you know, I mean and if she
• 4:19
  says no, then there would be a reason because like okay here
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  I'll give you a good analogy. So your kid comes up to you and
• 4:25
  says, can we play Parcheesi? You don't just say no.
• 4:28
  I'm never going to play Parcheesi with you if you don't
• 4:31
  feel like playing Parcheesi you would in a healthy manner.
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  Say I Can't play Parcheesi right now.
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  Or even I don't like Parcheesi. You know if you really fucking
• 4:40
  hate it, right? And you could be like I will
• 4:42
  either play Parcheesi with you tomorrow when I'm not busy or
• 4:45
  tired or let's play. Sorry now.
• 4:48
  Right you wouldn't just tell your kid, no go away, right?
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  So that wouldn't be healthy, that would be like a really kind
• 4:54
  of shitty parent. And if you did that then then,
• 4:57
  you know, don't like go beat yourself up, just go realize
• 5:01
  that, you know, you need a different podcast and and
• 5:04
  individual. Therapy because probably someone
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  who's always telling you, fuck you.
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  I don't want to play with you and now you do it to your kids
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  but you can't really do that. You can't just say, no, it's
• 5:13
  fucked up. That's like, you know, that's
• 5:15
  messed up unless they have somebody else to play Parcheesi
• 5:17
  with but right? But like if if they really want
• 5:20
  to connect with you, then it really doesn't matter even who
• 5:23
  they if they have somebody else to play Parcheesi with because
• 5:26
  they want to connect to you. So you can't just say no.
• 5:29
  You have to either do it fine. Suck it up, purchase is not that
• 5:32
  bad or you have to offer an alternative.
• 5:34
  T''v, you can't just say no. So this same sort of idea should
• 5:39
  be translated to tell you exactly what it's like in
• 5:41
  healthy relationships. In terms of communication about
• 5:44
  sex, you may not want to do the thing they want but you would
• 5:47
  offer something else or you would defer it until a different
• 5:50
  time the different time. Not being whenever I decide to
• 5:54
  deign to tell you that we can it would be a specific different
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  time so I don't feel like doing it tonight.
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  Let's do it tomorrow morning like that would be the
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  equivalent, right? And so you Just see in healthy
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  sacrifices people don't just say no.
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  They say maybe not now how about in you know, 24 hours from now
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  or whatever. So that's the first thing.
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  The other thing is that if you don't like what they want to do,
• 6:21
  you get like just a couple of those, you know, same as you
• 6:23
  would with friendship, so you gotta like, take the healthy
• 6:25
  relationships in your life and make analogies, right?
• 6:28
  So if a friend says you want to go for pizza, you don't say no
• 6:33
  you say okay? And and if you really hate
• 6:36
  Pizza, you probably go anyway but you would you know, just to
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  be like a normal flexible human being, that could be sometimes
• 6:43
  do things I don't want to do or if you really hate Pizza, I
• 6:46
  guess you could say. No, let's go to Chinese.
• 6:48
  All right, fine. So we go to Chinese, we don't do
• 6:50
  nothing. And I talked about this in my
• 6:52
  podcast a long time ago. That was like, here's a, you
• 6:56
  know, simple hack. If your husband wants to do
• 6:59
  something in bed that you don't want to do, literally, do
• 7:01
  anything else ever. Write, like, come Than any other
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  fucking idea the same as you would with a friend who
• 7:07
  suggested Chinese and you want sushi.
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  So anyway, so that's one thing is, you can't just say, like no
• 7:15
  and that's not healthy. Healthy is to say, okay?
• 7:19
  Usually I'll try or let's compromise and do this, but it
• 7:25
  can't always be like that. Like, in a healthy sex life,
• 7:28
  both people are trying to do what each other wants, like as a
• 7:30
  rule, the same as you would with anything else in your life with
• 7:34
  another. A human being like your child or
• 7:36
  your friend. You are trying to say, yes, you
• 7:38
  are trying to be open, you're trying to go with the flow.
• 7:40
  So that is what it would be like, sex isn't like the special
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  place where everybody's allowed to like, be a complete asshole
• 7:47
  like instead like, like that's how people like they're like.
• 7:50
  Oh yeah. Sure.
• 7:51
  We could compromise about other things but with sex my
• 7:54
  boundaries are my boundaries. Why like why is that?
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  You know that doesn't make any sense, especially given that sex
• 8:00
  is the only thing that your partner can't do with anybody
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  else. So it should be the place where
• 8:03
  the most Find it in the most flexible.
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  So one way to transform your marriage into a healthier, one
• 8:09
  would be to grow more flexible and open-minded and say, Yes
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  more often and frequently. You don't know what you don't
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  know, you don't know what you're going to like, you know, and if
• 8:18
  your husband, let's say I want to go down on you and he's
• 8:20
  really shit at going down on you, then you would say, well,
• 8:23
  yeah, okay, we could do that. But the thing is is I want you
• 8:26
  to like read up more on that because we're maybe we could
• 8:30
  Google something on it because I don't honestly get off like
• 8:34
  that. And I don't like it.
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  It's sometimes it's too harsh. I get cold while we're doing it.
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  I don't feel like you're really thinking about me, I don't feel
• 8:42
  connected. It's not when I'm excited yet.
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  Like, all these different things, that's what it would be
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  for, in a real healthy. Open marriage, not open
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  marriage. And I have another podcast on
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  poly and open marriages. That's not what we're talking
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  about. Talking about an open mind in
• 8:56
  marriage where people can say what's on their mind you know or
• 9:00
  if your wife said I want to I mean I want you.
• 9:04
  To go down on me, you don't like going down on women, then you
• 9:07
  would kind of research why you don't like going down on women.
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  You would do a deep dive on whether that's like a nice way
• 9:15
  to be same. As a woman going down on a man,
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  and you would try anyway, you know, I mean, it's not usually a
• 9:20
  problem, but with certain men, it's a problem.
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  I still hear about it. That women date men who don't
• 9:25
  want to go down on that, that they like somehow keep dating
• 9:27
  them. I have no idea why.
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  Just probably, because they don't und have low self-esteem,
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  they don't understand that. That it should be a
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  deal-breaker. And I'll have a podcast coming
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  out about that. Samantha's, want to go down and
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  you're listening to this. You're single woman.
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  Your it's a deal-breaker better supposed to want to be, they're
• 9:44
  supposed to want to think that you're real hot and sexy and
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  want everything to do with your body - supposed to have high sex
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  drive. So demand has want to go down on
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  a woman, it is really never a good sign.
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  Usually there's sex itself is going to stop later on in the
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  latrine, the relationship also. But anyway in a healthy
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  marriage, people are coming from a place of yes, insects and
• 10:03
  everywhere. Else.
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  And so a healthy sex life, looks like something where people are
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  talking about it where they can bring up fantasies where they
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  could say. I had a sex dream and it
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  involved this this and this, I always wanted to do this.
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  If you see a sex scene in a movie, you talk about it.
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  You say, oh, that looks fun or oh, I would I would want to do
• 10:25
  that. I wouldn't want to do that.
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  Whatever. Like sex is something that you
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  talk about, you know, the I can't get can't like underscore
• 10:32
  this point enough, you Only talk about it, whatever comes up.
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  There's a sex scene in a book. You could share it with your
• 10:38
  partner. If there's something that you
• 10:40
  think that you would want to explore your, share it with your
• 10:42
  partner. If you had sexual abuse history,
• 10:45
  you can still have a healthy relationship but you'll have to
• 10:49
  share it with your partner. You can't have, you can't be in
• 10:53
  a healthy marriage about sex. A he'll have a healthy sex life
• 10:57
  if you unfortunately had a sexual abuse history and then
• 11:01
  you don't share that fact with them because then they're
• 11:03
  flying. Blind.
• 11:04
  They have no idea why you're so averse to certain things and
• 11:08
  clothes off and stuff, you can still definitely have a healthy
• 11:11
  sex life afterwards, but you need to give the partner a
• 11:14
  chance in hell, you know, to understand you and frequently,
• 11:17
  you know, therapy can really help with this because then you
• 11:20
  could get into couples therapy, somebody else can help them,
• 11:22
  understand how a sexual abuse history is impacting.
• 11:25
  You how that's totally normal and how you guys can work
• 11:28
  through it. Also, if you've had other bad
• 11:31
  experiences with sex, you want to be able to share those.
• 11:34
  This is I think you always have to talk about exes, you know,
• 11:36
  and a healthy relationship. If you don't talk anything about
• 11:39
  X's them, they have, no, your partner is no idea about like a
• 11:43
  whole like basically like so much of your life and so much of
• 11:48
  what you did. So, in open in open,
• 11:52
  communicative marriages, people say, oh yeah, I did that with so
• 11:56
  and so I did that with. So and so and that's okay
• 12:00
  because nobody takes it. Super personally, if you're
• 12:02
  very, very insecure and both Have you have limited
• 12:05
  experience. Many men who are late bloomers.
• 12:08
  I did a whole podcast about that hate hearing about a woman's
• 12:10
  prior experience because it makes them feel insecure.
• 12:13
  But listen, she still has the experience so it's better to
• 12:17
  know information than to not know it to see like kind of all
• 12:21
  about her as a person and what she likes and doesn't like and
• 12:24
  it just gives you so much of an understanding in sessions where
• 12:28
  we talk about exes couples, leave with so much of a better
• 12:32
  understanding of each other and often.
• 12:34
  There's completely transformed. They're like, oh my God, like he
• 12:37
  did such and such like let's say like a man who who's always been
• 12:42
  begging his wife to go down. On him will say something like
• 12:45
  well, yeah, like in my earliest relationship in high school.
• 12:48
  She didn't want to get pregnant so that's all we did.
• 12:51
  So she went down on me all the time and that's it was a year
• 12:53
  long relationship and so the woman will be like oh my God.
• 12:57
  I didn't know that. You don't like she.
• 12:59
  The woman may have thought about like oral sex is like and many
• 13:03
  women do. Ooh, that have limited sexual
• 13:05
  experience as a cherry on top of a relationship, something that
• 13:08
  somebody might do every, you know, couple months Max and the
• 13:12
  honeymoon stage to hear that, this man had it happen.
• 13:15
  All the time. Her husband is like
• 13:17
  transformative. It's like a window opens in her
• 13:20
  mind, she's like, oh my God, you know, like, that's something
• 13:24
  that he can said that was his whole sex life, you know.
• 13:28
  So then if that was his whole sex life, then what then I've
• 13:31
  been thinking about it totally wrong and it's not like she
• 13:33
  dropped. Down in the middle of the
• 13:35
  session starts, giving him head, you know, things are not like
• 13:38
  that simple but at least it's like an undersea.
• 13:40
  It's like an aha moment, a moment of empathy so that and
• 13:44
  and the guy will be like, well I thought you, you know, I mean, I
• 13:47
  thought you understood that, I mean, you know, because I said,
• 13:50
  you know, that I didn't lose my virginity until I was 18.
• 13:52
  But you know, I had this girlfriend in high school.
• 13:54
  She didn't understand shit. She doesn't know that, you know.
• 13:58
  So like that's just an example that like, you know, I made up
• 14:02
  and there's many examples like that.
• 14:05
  You know, and I I just cannot, I'm trying to think of more
• 14:10
  things I could make up, or more examples.
• 14:13
  I could come up with to show you or, for example, definitely when
• 14:18
  there's been with a woman when they're sleeping, like a bad
• 14:21
  experience, like a guy pushed her head down.
• 14:23
  So frequently, she won't go down on a guy because her first
• 14:26
  boyfriend, when she was 16 years old, used to like, push her head
• 14:29
  down. And so she associated with like,
• 14:31
  fear and revulsion. So if a guy knows that Then he
• 14:35
  could be like, oh wow, I totally get it.
• 14:37
  I empathize we could talk about like never doing it in that
• 14:40
  position. We can talk about this, we can
• 14:41
  talk about that woman, might not even know there's other
• 14:43
  positions for that. I have an oral sex podcast
• 14:46
  coming up. That's why I'm so into thinking
• 14:48
  about the oral sex examples. Also, it's like half of what
• 14:51
  people complain about in session, so, I mean, that's
• 14:55
  always a big deal. But anyway, so the point is
• 14:58
  that, if the more open you are talking about your prior
• 15:01
  experiences, their prior experiences, your current
• 15:03
  fantasies their current fantasies, their current absence
• 15:06
  of fantasies as many women have an absence of fantasy and their
• 15:09
  partner doesn't realize that. That's true.
• 15:11
  It's true. Many women have zero sexual
• 15:13
  fantasies. If they have low sex drives, but
• 15:16
  whatever the case may be, you got to talk about it.
• 15:18
  Like you would talk about every other type of thing, every other
• 15:23
  issue in your life. Another thing is a healthy sex
• 15:26
  life does not go very long in between encounters.
• 15:29
  That's the truth of it. You know, it's like real hard to
• 15:32
  have a healthy sex life once a month.
• 15:34
  You know, unless you're both very low libido people in which
• 15:37
  case you never gonna be listening to my podcast, so it
• 15:39
  doesn't really matter. But for the people listening to,
• 15:42
  my podcast, usually at least one of you has a high libido and if
• 15:46
  you can't do it every few days or a couple times a week at
• 15:49
  least, how is it ever going to get better?
• 15:50
  You're not practicing, you're not comfortable with each
• 15:53
  other's bodies. It's not becoming part of your
• 15:55
  routine. It's not like something that you
• 15:57
  rely on each other for, you know, it's not like like the
• 16:01
  same way as, you know, that you're going to talk to your
• 16:03
  partner about your day. Day.
• 16:04
  Or, you know, that you're going to eat dinner with your partner
• 16:07
  at night or whatever. Sex has to be like that, you
• 16:10
  have to know that it's coming, that it's coming regularly.
• 16:13
  This is allows people not to masturbate, you know, and
• 16:16
  masturbation as I've discussed is not really good with in a
• 16:19
  marriage where sex is not just awesome and omnipresent if
• 16:22
  there's any sexual problems at all, then masturbation doesn't
• 16:26
  help anything. And I've talked about that ad
• 16:28
  nauseam in podcast which are like masturbation, the junk food
• 16:31
  of married sex or vibrator is why they Too bad sex or porn in
• 16:36
  marriage, like a million podcasts about this.
• 16:38
  But the point is, is you need to know that sex is happening
• 16:41
  regularly for like a man in his 30s.
• 16:44
  Let's say that's like, you know, every other day.
• 16:47
  Every third day would be great man in his 40s, maybe every
• 16:50
  third day, every fourth day would be great.
• 16:52
  Like that's like the level at which, you know, somebody could
• 16:56
  not masturbate after that, then of course they're gonna
• 16:58
  masturbate. If you only had sex once a week,
• 17:00
  you know, then a guy is definitely at least is going to
• 17:03
  masturbate and once he's Masturbating.
• 17:05
  Then it's not you know he's not fully fully into you really.
• 17:09
  It's not you because he's also thinking about other things.
• 17:12
  She's probably looking at porn I guess he could do it without
• 17:15
  porn but I mean if you're if you're not interested then it's
• 17:19
  a hard sell for somebody to not masturbate and I have something
• 17:23
  coming up on that or I think I have a post coming out on that
• 17:26
  but yeah if the way for people to make their sex lives focused
• 17:29
  on one another is to have sex with one another Lee.
• 17:34
  That's why I talk about things like try daily sex to
• 17:37
  reinvigorate your marriage, try daily intimacy.
• 17:40
  How much better would your partner act, your high libido
• 17:42
  high-touch, partner act. If they knew, they were going to
• 17:45
  have sex every day or every other day, they would act a hell
• 17:47
  of a lot better, because they're need would, finally be being met
• 17:50
  and addressed. So, you need to have regular,
• 17:52
  practice, and reliable practice for a sex life to improve.
• 17:57
  And you also have to have good communication.
• 17:59
  If you have both of those things, your sex life is going
• 18:01
  to be much healthier. Much much healthier and In fact,
• 18:04
  it would be pretty good. You have sex pretty regularly
• 18:08
  very open talking about things. I'm not saying this is easy to
• 18:11
  get here and therapy can really help you get to a place where
• 18:14
  both of these things are happening but those are the two
• 18:16
  guiding principles. I like to make it simple to
• 18:19
  summarize open, communication and frequent practice that is
• 18:23
  going to make anything healthier.
• 18:24
  You know like you'll get better at anything with that.
• 18:26
  So sex is no different. So you know, discuss those two
• 18:29
  points with your partner if if you want you know, and if you're
• 18:32
  really struggling then again Both counseling, especially it
• 18:35
  has to be somebody who talks about sex.
• 18:37
  If you have sexual issues, will really help you with both of
• 18:40
  these. I also do have a sexologist
• 18:43
  Heather. I she is on my team and you
• 18:45
  could reach out to schedule with Heather.
• 18:46
  She works in any state because everybody can't work with me,
• 18:49
  unfortunately. I don't have that many hours in
• 18:51
  the day and so and she is great on her own.
• 18:55
  Obviously, of course and you you can it's interesting because in
• 19:00
  initial sessions, what she does is exactly what I'm talking
• 19:02
  about. You know, she gets the full
• 19:04
  sense of of what your sex life is like, and you start open
• 19:07
  communicating about it right away.
• 19:08
  She works with couples and individuals.
• 19:10
  All right, well, I'm so anyway, that was my plug for her and
• 19:12
  she's worth it and I'll talk to everybody soon.
• 19:16
  Have a great day.